Todd McShay of ESPN.com released the latest iteration of his mock draft yesterday, with this one being the first one he has expanded to two rounds. As you'd expect, he still has the Vikings taking Matt Kalil with the third overall selection, but the praise that he puts on Kalil is. . .well, here it is:
The most complete tackle I have evaluated in my time scouting prospects, Kalil has the athleticism to excel as a pass-blocker and the mean streak to be a force in the running game.
That's not an unexpected pick, and I still don't think that Rick Spielman is going to screw around with this pick as much as he's giving the impression that he is.
In the second round, McShay has the Vikings filling another one of their major needs, this one at the wide receiver position. This isn't totally unexpected, either. The "unexpected" part is that McShay has the Vikings filling that spot with the player that might be the most polarizing guy at the wide receiver position in this year's draft.
That player is South Carolina's Alshon Jeffery. Jeffery was an all-SEC wide receiver as a freshman with the Gamecocks, Jeffery was allegedly grossly overweight earlier in the off-season. However, he weighed in at 216 pounds at the Combine, and weighed the same at his Pro Day on Wednesday. His numbers from the 2011 season don't immediately make you say "damn" or anything. . .49 catches for 762 yards and 8 touchdowns. . .but you have to look at those numbers while remember that the Gamecocks got some awful, awful quarterback play in 2011. The previous season, Jeffery caught 88 passes for 1,517 yards and 9 touchdowns.
I know that the Vikings have gone to the South Carolina receiver well a couple of times in their recent history with both Troy Williamson and Sidney Rice. Watching Jeffery, however, it isn't hard to imagine him being much closer to the latter than to the former.
Jeffery is a guy that a lot of draft folks out there seem to either love or hate. You can put me firmly in the former category. If the first two rounds of our 2011 NFL Draft bring us Matt Kalil and Alshon Jeffery, someone's going to have to cover the site for a couple of days, because I'm likely going to hurt myself somehow doing backflips.