If you are an Arizona Cardinals fan, you have to feel excited about how the NFL draft turned out for the team. They landed linebacker Isaiah Simmons, a potential starting tackle in the third round and a popular Arizona State running back.
And the draft grades coming out from all sorts of analysts and publications are largely positive.
How about an A+ from Touchdown Wire’s Doug Farrar?
Cardinals general manager Steve Keim has had his share of detractors through the years, but it’s hard to see the Cardinals’ 2020 draft as anything but one great move after another. With the eighth overall pick, they got Clemson defender Isaiah Simmons, the perfect distillation of the modern “linebacker” who can do all kinds of things.
“The only guy I could think of, with similarities, was Brian Urlacher when he came out,” Keim said of Simmons. “He was a safety at New Mexico, for the most part … not quite as fast, but a guy who became a great player and who made that ascension to playing more in the box. He was the one guy who I’d say, if there was any kind of comp and you could make a projection, it’d be Brian Urlacher.”
I made exactly the same comparison, and Keim has always been on point when it comes to multi-position defensive players. It’s a perfect fit for Simmons, who might have been lost with the wrong coaching staff that may have miscast him as a traditional linebacker. Urlacher was one of the pre-eminent Tampa-2 linebacker in his era, and Simmons projects just as well in an NFL where the ideal linebacker can work everywhere from the box to the defensive line to the slot.
Arizona wasn’t done, though. They sent their second-round pick and running back David Johnson packing to Houston for receiver DeAndre Hopkins in Crazy Bill O’Brien’s Fire Sale (“I will trade any good player for ninety-nine dollars!”), which is kind of a good deal. Then, in the third round, they absolutely stole Houston’s Josh Jones, perhaps the best pass-protecting offensive tackle in this draft class.
And then, with their two fourth-round picks, they nabbed Utah’s Leki Fotu and LSU’s Rashard Lawrence, two of the sleeper defensive tackles in this group. This team is getting better in all the right ways, and if you believe as I do that 2020 will be the Year of Kyler Murray… well, watch out for these guys.
Simmons could be a star. Jones could be a starter this year. Both Fotu and Lawrence should play on defense. If linebacker Evan Weaver and running back Eno Benjamin at least do things on special teams, this is a great draft class.
If Simmons is to be like Urlacher, the Cardinals will have to use him right. That is the challenge moving forward for defensive coordinator Vance Joseph.
But at least for now, it seems like the Cardinals hit a home run with every pick.
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Ep.265
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Ep. 264
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