For my money, this year’s incoming draft class is as talent loaded as any I have seen. Top to bottom, there will be no litter runts or rejects come your respective team’s turn to pick. Every need has a legitimate prospect, and, unless your name is Andrew Luck, you are all but certain to see immediate playing time. Also more than any recent memory, there are more teams with more riding on these draft hopefuls than we are probably aware of.
There aren’t many teams with a balanced roster that don’t have a gaping hole and dire need in at least one position. Who out there, legitimate competitor or not, has a roster that has no weakest link, and instead is just “not very good,” or in the process of “gelling?” We could certainly make an argument for the balance of the Giants, whose Super Bowl run would have been derailed long before the post season even started had all the elements of superb and cohesive team play at least not existed on the same roster. Sure, they could have made the move to fire on all cylinders together down the middle stretch of the season and in turn made their lives a little easier, but that’s all water under the Brooklyn Bridge now.
Desperation is around the bend for most teams in at least one position, for those we consider title contenders, but for bottom feeders as well. The Patriots have a dire need for someone to stretch the vertical limits of their passing game. We all know Brady has the pop in his arm to make those throws, but Welker plays small ball (very effectively), Gronkowski makes his money on yards after the catch, and Deion Branch is on the exiting horizon of his career. They also need pass rushers, perhaps more than anything, as do the Green Bay Packers and Jacksonville Jaguars; merely the most needy among the herd.
Every year, the endless speculation surrounding the top 10 picks is just too much fun to avoid. By the end of the 1st round, the discussion weight shifts completely to “how did ‘this guy’ fall so far in the first round?“ Somewhere in there, the middle of the road first round draft picks get lost in translation. Before we look at a said mid-round picker this coming year, weigh the swing that some of the following factors on both sides of the professional fence will play in the decision making process: the unstable future of Peyton Manning. The need for a quarterback attack and the limited free agency pass rushers -Mario Williams, John Abraham, Cliff Avril, Robert Mathis- that rocket the stock and value of Quinton Coples from UNC. The wildcard in RG3. The Great Walls of Matt Kalil, Jonathan Martin, Mike Adams and Reilly Reiff to protect those franchise triggermen.
Are we forgetting something? Anyone for a wide receiver?
St. Louis is going to draft Justin Blackmon. I have a hard time seeing it any other way. He is entirely too gifted for the Rams front office to pass on, speaking both literally and figuratively, especially since they have committed their future to Sam Bradford. Other than that, who is certain to take a wide receiver in the first round? Well, who needs one? Cleveland, absolutely. But the future of that offense needs to ride the wheels of the latest make and model of Alabama Hammers, and with the depth at the wide out position in this draft, wait until your second pick in the first round to make that acquisition. Jacksonville could use something, and I mean ANY-thing to help Blaine Gabbert out, but with the freak of an athlete named Coples at your disposal, there’s no decision to be made. And if it’s not Coples, pick up one of the many Juggernauts of offensive lineman that will help your young quarterback not get so flustered and shutter at pocket pressure.
If you comb the draft board and look at teams’ most desperate needs, it’s really not until you hit the 19th pick and the Chicago Bears where we find a team who absolutely must pick some downfield talent, and midway through the first round, their potential options are nothing short of theft in terms of talent, value, and immediate impact. With Blackmon spoken for, and no one even remotely close to 2nd in line for need at this position like Chicago, the Bears can expect, with a reasonable amount of certainty, to have either Michael Floyd from Notre Dame or Alshon Jeffrey from South Carolina available for harvesting.
Are you kidding me? If you even scrape the surface of their college careers you can see why these young men are such potential steals.
While Alshon Jeffrey is certainly nothing to scoff at and will become a formidable weapon for wherever he finds a home in the league, Chicago included, let’s be honest: if he’s available, the Bears will draft Michael Floyd. Floyd is a big bodied possession talent at 6’3” and 224 lbs. He maintains remarkable quickness given his size that turns into separation from defenders, presents a redzone threat, and finding a corner who is both big and strong enough to contain him in bump and run coverage is a task too tall for the majority of backs who lined up opposite him in college. He’s big enough to effectively hold onto quick slants with NFL linebackers awaiting his arrival behind the defensive line, and what he does perhaps better than any other receiving talent in this class is leap with outstanding timing to play the ball at its highest possible receiving point. This was a guy who split receptions from the likes of Tommy Rees and Dayne Crist, and still caught 100 passes for 1147 yards and 9 scores. If Irish coach Brian Kelly had not flip flopped with his starter in the early goings of the season and given committed snaps to either one or the other, Floyd may have been able to find better rhythm with his quarterback and develop a more effective chemistry than what he was dealt in his time at South Bend.
“Chemistry” can be an abused and misunderstood term in professional football, but when we see it played out the way it’s meant to be applied in thrower-receiver pairs, we see connections like Tom Brady to Deion Branch. Branch, a nobody upon arrival who developed an intuitive relationship with one of the great quarterbacks of all time to the tune and label of significant contributor to multiple Super Bowls. That being said, how would Floyd fare lining up to the left or right of Jay Cutler?
Cutler is a guy who has received more than his share, both due and unfair, of bad rap in the past. Either because of his indifferent attitude on the field, or his questioned toughness after
his knee injury sidelined him in the NFC Championship game against the arch rival Packers a couple of years ago. I don’t know because it wasn’t my knee, but any questions about his grit for me were answered when he played a good deal of the second half with a broken throwing hand against the Chargers last season. If you look at Cutler, raw and by the numbers, he is an outstanding pocket passer… when he has time. Until he had time, he was hit in some fashion at one extended point in his Chicago tenure every 3 drop backs. Unacceptable.
The Mike Martz offense was at it again, this time on Cutler, before him on Kurt Warner. But the sudden and unavoidable need to account for Matt Forte, as well as the excellent blocking application of the Bears tight ends, actually remedied Cutler’s woes of being harassed in the pocket, and when he had time to throw, he has proven quite impressive. His arm strength is outstanding and he has the accuracy to make that strength useful. The issue here, as we have seen, is that he has no one with the complimentary talent at wide receiver to throw it to. He made due with guys like Johnny Knox and Roy Williams, and though fast, they lack positioning ability on the deep ball and that is simply not going to get it done. If your offensive line is going to leave you subject to getting blasted from time to time, you need a guy who can get open quick with a physical break on his defender and the athletic superiority to get the ball at its highest point; things Michael Floyd does very well.
Fact is both of these men will have a new offense to learn under former offensive line coach Mike Tice, now the promoted offensive coordinator in Chicago, though Floyd’s abilities seem to be exactly what Cutler needs to run a more effective passing game. With all the changes in the windy city’s front office, the most drastic of makeover moves may not be anybody’s hiring, firing, or promotion, but simply the inability to stave off father time any longer. The number of years left on the tickets of some of these Bears team pillars is debatable, and for now, it appears as though the new GM and Coach Lovie Smith are giving the crux of this team one more year to finally get over the top. It seems ridiculous upon initial evaluation to say such a thing of the Bears, but before injuries crippled the team on both sides of the ball last season, the Bears were very respectable wildcard contenders. There’s no point in wondering how it would or could have turned out, but with everyone healthy next season (particularly on the offensive line), look at the guys you will have back next year: Urlacher, Forte, Peppers, Tillman, Cutler, Hester, Briggs. You will have them all back this coming season, though nothing beyond that is guaranteed.
That has to be the reason the Bears are going to stay so far under the salary cap (roughly $20M) for this offseason, and likely the reason they will franchise tag Matt Forte. There is no reason to bring Forte back in the long term picture when you have Marion Barber and an explosive young gun in Khalil Bell; runners who could give your offense a stable ground attack for many years for a much cheaper price. Rebuilding is inevitable because of the avalanche of age that will hit the organization over such a short period of time, and with the new floor for the salary cap spending not taking effect until next year, it only adds to the idea that the Bears are giving this corps one more chance to win it all before they go on a free agency shopping spree.
All things considered, is it really so ridiculous to put so much hope in a rookie wide receiver? Why not? And if you’re the Bears, what choice do you have? It is of course every team’s goal to win a championship every year, and it should be. In Chicago, the window isn’t closing, the window has already tried to slam itself shut, but the aging hands of this team are pinched in the sill keeping it open for one last ditch effort. If Michael Floyd, Alshon Jeffrey, Nick Toon (Wisconsin), Kendall Wright (Baylor), or any other receiver they take does not become the be-all-end-all answer, the offensive line and line backing corps will soon cave to wear and tear, and Bears faithful can book a rebuilding period of hibernating years where the only team they are sure to finish ahead of in their division is the Vikings.
Wake up hungry, Bears. Now or never.