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Alright, folks, we're about an hour and a half away from the start of this evening's festivities. The Vikings, having traded out of the first round, are set to pick second in Round Two. . .provided that they don't trade out of that spot, too, which is entirely possible. Accounts are that St. Louis GM Billy DeVaney has said that he "would be surprised if the Rams stayed at #33," which may or may not be a smokescreen to try to get teams to jump over the Vikings, who may or may not be interested in Notre Dame quarterback Jimmy Clausen.
Man, I love the draft.
I, personally, am hoping for Clausen at #34. Why? Well, this team needs a QB of the future, for starters, and Clausen is the most pro-ready quarterback available. That and I found this little article about the ridiculousness of the Clausen hatred that's out there, and the fact that he made it through three years at Notre Dame alive is amazing to me, particularly when you consider. . .
Clausen never shared a backfield with a 1,000-yard rusher.
No running back eclipsed 700 rushing yards while Clausen was at Notre Dame.
No running back had a run longer than 27 yards during Clausen's final two years at Notre Dame.
No running back topped five rushing touchdowns during Clausen's career.
The team as a whole never scored more than 13 rushing touchdowns.
Non-quarterbacks never accounted for more than 11 touchdowns in a season.
Clausen's running game (excluding quarterbacks) averaged 3.56, 3.57, and 4.8 YPC during his career.
Clausen's offensive line gave up a school-record 58 sacks in 2007.
At least three members of that offensive line were still starting his junior year.
Clausen had three different left tackles and three different centers over his collegiate career.
There's a lot more in the article. Sufficient to say, we could do a whole lot worse for ourselves than to take Jimmy Clausen at #34, in my opinion.
But, that's part of the intrigue of the draft, folks. . .none of us really know anything until someone goes to the podium with that card and reads the name off of it. Hopefully the Vikings will be in the thick of the action all night long this evening.
As much fun as last night was, I'm afraid I won't be doing the "Gonzonalysis" that I was doing last night. . .reason being that there's less time to do it (7 minutes between picks in Round Two, 5 minutes in Round Three and beyond), and the fact that the site really, really got bogged down last night during the draft. So, I'll just be hanging out in the comments section with everyone else. Hope to see a bunch of you here. . .should be a lot of fun!