I wonder if Jim Turner had anything to do with his drafting. Kheeston Randall DESTROYED Turner's line when they played this year. There were times you thought you were looking at Ndamukong Suh.

 

We'll see if it's cool if/when it produces points.

But I will say that usually when you hire a college coach on as your head coach everyone thinks you have something of an advantage with the Draft in the short term because of the intimate knowledge that coach has of the players on his former team and in his conference. Dolphins didn't hire a guy out of college to be their Head Coach but Mike Sherman is so esteemed by Joe Philbin and Jeff Ireland you might as well have, as you now find no coincidence that guys like Ryan Tannehill and Jeff Fuller are here, and possibly Kheeston Randall and Michael Egnew, the same thing. I think we've had some pretty good indications that Michael Egnew was a pick that the coaching staff convinced Jeff Ireland to make for them. B.J. Cunningham smells like an O'Keefe favorite, too.

The other three are all Adam Engroff players (Jonathan Martin, Rishard Matthews, Josh Kaddu).

 

I found something a little amusing but in an interesting way. It is this very VERY early mock of this year's draft done by SI.com way back in May 4th 2011. The person who did it, Andrew Perloff, picked Kheeston Randall to go late in the first round. I'm guessing Randall must have shown some kind of great potential earlier on.

Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/20...5/03/2012.mock.draft/index.html#ixzz1uW2JWhGB

 

And look at Martin at #9 :up:

 

Pretty cool to see him get a first round grade, no matter how long ago it was!

 

i think he can beat out baker. ryan b has been hangin in there for a few years but it seems ireland likes to go with the youth movement when its close. i think randall has real good upside potential, dude looks pretty stout at poa for that tall frame, moves well pretty quick, long arms and can prolly play any spot on the dl, i like his chances

 

Grabbing a spot on this DL would be impressive feat for a late round draft pick. I'm all for it.

 

If O'Keefe's input carried much of the weight, it says something that we drafted BJ over McNutt. That was one of the biggest surprises to me, that in the 6th we took a WR other than the also available McNutt. BJ perhaps really impressed O'Keefe when their teams played each other. BJ had 3 TDs in the past two years against Iowa I believe.

 

For a taller DT, Randall does a fine job of sinking his butt and maintaining leverage against OLinemen who are often shorter and should have a leverage advantage. His ability to hold his ground vs the run while showing good leverage is his most impressive trait.

Like a football scout told me once, if you could sum up football in 3 words it would be "low man wins".

 

Randall's stock was it's highest early in the 2011 season, and slowly and steadily declined as the year went along.
When we did the Club Level mock draft Van took him in the 4th, I think partly because NFLDS rated him around that area, but by draft day, he was rated as a 7th rounder. Amazing when you consider his workouts were good and no games had been played. If anything, Randall should have held steady since Dec/Jan. As I posted in the Club thread about him, he had among the best DT vertical and broad jumps. That indicates a good deal of lower body explosion. I am expecting Randall to claim the final DT spot, assuming we count Odrick as one of the DEs.

 

Not surprising really. The date on that mock draft was 5-5-11. Had Harris repeated his 2010 season or close to it in 2011, he could have been taken that high. Perloff had no way of knowing Harris would implode off the field between May 2011 and the end of the year, or that he would stink up the joint at the combine.

 

Randall has a rep of being an ultra high character guy, and was one the locker room leaders for the Longhorns.
I'm sure our scouts were fully aware of this player, just like the rest of the ones we drafted. I doubt there was much more Turner could have told them that they didn't already know. I'd say his input just cemented what they already had on this guy.

We didn't really get almost TAMU's entire offensive staff. Just 3 counting the head coach, which wouldn't be any more than half.

 

Maybe the GM has to ask the college coaches, I think the scouting staff should form their own opinion. Then whoever is in charge of combining all the opinions, should be in charge of getting the coaches opinions.

 

You can be very sure that long before Jim Turner ever got hired, that Miami had an extensive in-depth scouting report on Randall, as with every other player in the draft.
Ireland emphasizes how he stays true to his board. Also it's been said that teams usually have their board pretty much set in January and what happens after that generally amounts to minor tweaks in their overall rankings. Unless something out of the ordinary happens with a player, nothing magnanimous usually happens in the rankings.

 

Yah that was part of the reason. The other part was that he seemed to be versatile and could plug up the run. Wasn't going to provide much if any pass rush, but was a guy you weren't going to move backwards.

 

BJ over McNutt surprised me too, but there's was a late injury rumor about McNutt and I had attributed the pass to that. :confused2:

 

How many complete Texas games do you think Turner watched the past two seasons? How many complete games did our area scout watch of Texas the past two seasons?

 

Generally scouts don't watch every snap of a prospect unless it's a first round type or QB prospect. Attending a practice and watching three games worth of tape is generally considered doing more than your due diligence on a later round prospect. Most of your time is used on speaking with the coaches and getting their opinions or finding any red flags. Before that you're watching snippets of 1000s of prospects to get it whittled down to your final 150 - 200 player board (approximately). Coaches, on the other hand, will often watch more film for game prep purposes. I think that's why you've seen some college coaches come in and have some very successful drafts early on. Obviously, it still comes down to making the right evaluation, but I do think having a recent college coach on the staff is a draft time advantage.

 

I think it would be a waste of the scout's job to get their opinion, when they could write their own opinion down and submit it to the GM. Let the scouts look at other acorns.

 

After the McNutt pick was made later in the 6th it seems like they mentioned on whichever channel I was watching that there was some concern about a shoulder injury. He never benched at the combine or pro day so it is probably true. PFW mentioned a right shoulder injury in his profile. I have to believe though that our board had BJ higher based on talent, and if so I have seen no online site that also did so. It's not like a lineman or linebacker, where I'd think a shoulder injury would drop you more significantly. Lamar Miller was a 2nd round talent who went two rounds later based on a shoulder injury concern. McNutt was a 4th round talent at the least or so the online draft sites told us as much, and went two rounds later perhaps also due to the shoulder. I guess we will never really know unless someone asks the newly effusive Ireland why BJ over McNutt. Did our scouts see BJ as better than McNutt straight up, or as better than McNutt coming off a shoulder injury. O'Keefe would likely have some first hand knowledge on the injury and I'd see this choice as the most likely where one of our new coach's inside intel made the difference. I still think it is possible we'd have taken BJ over him if MM was completely healthy anyway.

 

I agree we'll likely never really know. I personally had McNutt rated as a 3rd-4th round guy. I was generally happy with this draft, but I would have been even more optimistic with McNutt on board.

 

Speaking with coaches to get inside dope on a player, in this case Randall, would seem to me to come from the Texas coaches. As for how much film of an upcoming opponent the coaches would watch, wouldn't that be just in the week leading up to their game with that opponent or mainly during that week? With the extended break before bowl games, in those cases I could see there being time to watch a lot more film of your opponent than usual.

 

Hard to argue when his offensive coach is on a team and they do not draft him.

 

Much of what a scout does is get coaches opinions on prospects (both they're own players and opponents they faced). They use that to decide on whom to focus on when whittling their board down and deciding how to allocate their time. It would be ridiculous not to ask the coaches in your own organization for their opinions.

 

Who knows, maybe he pounded the table for him, but Ireland simply liked BJ better or just had a gut instinct on him. Maybe the medical report was scary enough to tip the scales. There could be myriad reasons and it may or may not have anything to do with our coaches opinion. That's why I say we'll likely never know.

 

I think it's very hit-and-miss. It didn't really help Nick Saban much. Some would say it helped Jimmy Johnson.

 

Every time I see him I wonder how in the hell he weighed only 294 lbs. He probably played at 305 but even so.

 

I don't think Ireland asked O'Keefe the question of one over the other, but I do imagine Cunningham was an O'Keefe favorite and B.J. said one of the first things O'Keefe said to him was about how he killed Iowa when they played.

 

Why would the scout need to do that if the coaches are on the same team?

*meant to be an actual question to gain knowledge*