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It's that time of year again, with the combine one day from completion, for the 5th annual NSBB Mock Draft. Basically, the premise is this: 1. We'll need at least one person for each of the 30 teams. 2.The first person will be the person of record for that team, but it might be fun to have a bit of a "war room" type of activity. We'll limit War Rooms to five per team. 3. War Rooms participants should share IM names and might want to form a private chat room to discuss their selections. It is recommended that War Rooms take a vote on picks after the discussion and allow the person of record make the pick. If a consensus cannot be reached, the first person to sign up for each team will make the final decision. 4. Picks will be made in real-time, with a set amount of time between picks. After that time ends, a pick will be made for that team - much like the actual draft itself. Each slot will have 24 hours to make a pick. (Idea and wording courtesy of vance_the_cubs_fan) Posters can double and triple up if there's a need - I'd like to have more than one for most, if not all, the teams out there. If anybody has any suggestions, post in this thread or you can PM me. If you want to take one of the teams, post it in here or PM me and I'll update the list. And here's the list thus far: War Rooms ROUND 1 ROUND 2 ROUND 3 ROUND 4 1 (96) Rams - Senio Kelemete, OL, Washington 2 (97) Colts - Ladarius Green, TE, Louisiana-Lafayette 3 (98) Vikings - Aaron Henry, S, Wisconsin 4 (99) Texans (from Buccaneers through Eagles) - Brandon Washington, OL, Miami 5 (100) Browns - Sean Spence, LB, Miami 6 (101) Jaguars - Chase Minnifield, CB, Virginia 7 (102) Redskins - Nate Potter, OT, Boise State 8 (103) Dolphins - Greg Childs, WR, Arkansas 9 (104) Panthers - Marvin McNutt, WR, Iowa 10 (105) Bills - Matt McCants, OT, UAB 11 (106) Seahawks - Omar Bolden, CB, Arizona State 12 (107) Chiefs - Kirk Cousins, QB, Michigan State 13 (108) Broncos (from Jets) - Kelcie McCray, S, Arkansas State 14 (109) Redskins (from Raiders) - Tommy Streeter, WR, Miami 15 (110) Chargers - Chris Rainey, RB, Florida 16 (111) Bears - Ryan Broyles, WR, Oklahoma 17 (112) Cardinals - Demario Davis, LB, Arkansas State 18 (113) Cowboys 19 (114) Eagles 20 (115) Titans 21 (116) Bengals 22 (117) Lions 23 (118) Browns (from Falcons) 24 (119) Steelers 25 (120) Broncos 26 (121) Texans 27 (122) Saints 28 (123) Packers 29 (124) Bills (from Ravens) 30 (125) 49ers 31 (126) Patriots 32 (127) Giants 33 (128) Vikings (compensatory selection) 34 (129) Raiders (compensatory selection) 35 (130) Ravens (compensatory selection) 36 (131) Giants (compensatory selection) 37 (132) Packers (compensatory selection) 38 (133) Packers (compensatory selection) 39 (134) Vikings (compensatory selection) 40 (135) Cowboys (compensatory selection) Draft sites of interest: NFL Draft Countdown National Football Post - Wes Bunting Walter Football Football's Future Mel Kiper and Todd McShay at ESPN NFL.com Combine site Draft Tek Mocks of the past: 2008 mock draft 2009 mock draft 2010 mock draft 2011 mock draft And, as usual, I'll take the Titans.

Keep the Georgia Tech offense in mind. They don't throw it nearly enough for Hill to build up much of a reception total, especially if he isn't the top target. While 49 is still a pretty low total even relative to the offense, he did have 28 of those 49 catches his junior season for an average of 29.3 ypc. He also went from 1 to 3 to 5 TD catches each season. Definite signs of improvement as he became the top target in GT's offense.

If Al Davis were still alive, he'd probably trade his entire draft next year if that's what it took to get a first rounder to take Hill.

Pierre Garcon has turned down a 5-year contract offer from Indy. Looks like he's heading to FA.

By the way, I think I say this every year but NFL Network's coverage is really, really good. Watching Mayock, Davis, Lombardi, Saturday, and Billick analyze the combine today has been really enjoyable. NFL Network is so much better than ESPN (except NFL Matchup, it was really good).

Yeah, but he has long arms (good for an OT) which will hurt his bench. Billick even pointed out that teams have sliding scales that they use to evaluate the bench press of different O-linemen. 19 for a long armed guy is much better than 19 for a short armed guy. Still seems a bit low to me, though.

I definitely expect him to be shopped heavily at the deadline, but I do think there's a possibility that they keep him should they not get quite what they want. He does have a fairly team-friendly option and would still be pretty tradeable next year as well. He will be a year older and I do think it's more likely than not that he's dealt this deadline, but I don't think they'll take whatever they can get for him now, though (not that you were necessarily saying that).

Yeah, honestly for the top-end players, getting accurate weight and height measurements might be as helpful or moreso than watching them in drills vs air. You do have a ton of tape on all of these top athletes on the field, but you can't tell whether a QB is 6'4 or 6'2 for sure until you measure them yourself, since the schools can't be trust in theirs.

More likely, I think, next year Dempster will be that MOR type guy (if he's back) and we'll be looking for somebody to pair with Garza as a TOR type guy. I'm not a big Maholm fan anyway, and tend to doubt he'll be pitching his best at 32.

Depends on how big an improvement that statement is implying. We won 71 games last year, so 72 wins would be an improvement on the win total from last year. What I meant by "right around the win total of last year" is that this team is probably going to be in that 71-win area, with the upside to maybe win upwards of 75-76 and the downside to fall into the high 60s (if almost everything goes wrong). A slight improvement on last year's win total wouldn't surprise me at all. A big improvement (say, closing in on .500) would surprise me because a whole lot would have gone right. As you said, 2 of those 5 guys will be expected to produce exactly what they're capable of - a BOR pitcher. If whoever gets slotted in between them and Garza/Demp can at least stay healthy and not be awful, then the pitching staff will be much better than last year.

Conversely, Michigan center David Molk did 41 reps.

From the player's perspective, as MR said, it's an unfamiliar environment, with unfamiliar receivers, sometimes running routes you're not as used to throwing. For the top QBs in the draft, they're not going to improve their stock by throwing, so why take the chance that you hurt your stock? From the team's perspective, what are you going to do? Are you going to instate a rule where you won't draft a player as highly who doesn't throw at the combine? I would expect scouts would prefer to see the QB perform in less-than-comfortable circumstances, but the combine isn't going to make the difference in your evaluation of a guy like Luck, so overall it's not that big a deal that they sit out.

I don't think it will be, actually. While the offense will almost certainly be worse than it was last year, the pitching will almost certainly be vastly improved over last year. Replacing the mess we had in the 4-5 slots of the rotation with consistency (even if it's average consistency) will give us a big boost. I'll be surprised if this team isn't right around the win total of last year's team.

We'd still have a mid-.700s OPS guy as our 3-hitter and a AAAA player as our cleanup guy. I'm expecting a rebound from Soto this year (which is why I want him as the cleanup hitter over LaHair) and if Sveum gives Soriano plenty of days off I think he can show some improvement. However, I think the most upside this offense has is to be average to above average and that's if absolutely everything goes right.

I'm not sure our offense is any better than that one, to be honest. It's really atrocious.

I'd swap Soto and LaHair, but otherwise that's probably about as good as this lineup can get.

Going by the reports out at the time (reliability is clearly a question here), the Cubs' top offer to Pujols was something like 5 years/25 mil AAV. If that's the case, Pujols' wife said he was insulted by a similar deal from the Cards. I think we were probably in a little more seriously for Prince, but given the other moves made during the offseason I don' think the chances of landing either ever approached realistic.

Oh ok, I see now. I still think the decision had been made long before, but that was the first time they articulated it to LaHair (or at least articulated the part about making him the starting first baseman this year).

You see, I think it's pretty clear now that they intended to do the full rebuild from day 1. Their offers to Pujols and Prince were token at best, according to the reports, and there was no sign of any interest in Wilson. The only players they've been real interested in this offseason have been cheap vets (Corpas, Sonnanstine, DeJesus, etc) and young reclamation types (Stewart, Volstad, Wood, etc). Given that, the DeJesus signing isn't the slightest bit odd even before you consider the good value. And your explanation of the Flaherty/Marwin non-protects would make sense, except they immediately signed Bianchi and put him on the 40 man. If they were trying to free up a 40 man spot, why sign a similar player immediately afterwards? And if Bryan LaHair played any part in their decision to rebuild, then I will begin to really question the judgment of our front office.

Probably so. I was under the impression that comp was more on physical features/tools than on expected future production. I'm more than happy to adjust my expectations for him, though.

Letting Flaherty go for nothing in the Rule 5 draft, then signing Jeff Bianchi, then letting Bianchi go was a pretty strange series of moves. The Reed signing was also completely befuddling since there's really almost nothing good about it and now we have a glut of OFs ourselves in DeJesus, Soriano, Byrd, Campana, Reed, and Sappelt. I don't think anything else has really been strange this offseason. Heck, I like pretty much every other move we've made. It's the moves we've not made that I've not liked, but that's a different conversation.

I find it interesting that Manuel sees similar offensive upside between Soler and Baez. I was under the impression that Soler has better offensive upside than Baez. Not sure if that means I was overrating the expected production from Soler or underrating the potential production from Baez, though.

isn't that exactly what we did? In a way, yes. Again, my annoyance isn't in giving up Carpenter for Theo, it's that prior precedent was much lower than Carpenter, but Lucchino pitched a fit and got his way. I really felt like we should have given up a lesser asset for Theo than what we did.

That's a pretty interesting thought. Seems odd that he'd make himself look that foolish, though. I'd think he could have delayed it in a much more graceful fashion than that, if that were his intent.

I do agree Lucchino didn't get exactly what he wanted, but I also doubt he truly expected to receive Castro or Garza either. My expectation is that he decided to pitch a fit in the hopes that he'd get something better than the already set precedent and he did that. This wasn't some awful defeat for the Cubs or anything, though. And as far as Carpenter goes, how you evaluate him means a lot in determining whether he's too much to give up. If you think his absolute upside is an average to above average middle reliever, then who cares. If you think he has the stuff to be more than that or to garner more in a trade than that, then it looks worse.