Head coach Bruce Arians and the Cardinals have had success with players drafted in the third round. Will the 2017 draft, which begins Thursday, continue the trend?
S Mathieu, RB D. Johnson have developed into stars
Cardinals General Manager Steve Keim challenges himself and his scouting staff to honestly evaluate their work, mostly to identify how and why mistakes were made. But there’s also value in dissecting successful decisions, such as why the team has drafted so many good players in the third round over the past four years.
Is it because there is less pressure picking in the third round than in the first two?
Do players chosen in the third round have more motivation?
Is the third round the point where teams’ draft boards begin to diverge?
How big a factor is it that coach Bruce Arians is more willing than many coaches to play rookies?
Are player evaluations kinder because expectations for the player are lower?
Most likely, all the above are factors in the Cardinals’ success in the third round over the four years Keim and coach Bruce Arians have been together.
“A lot of times the first-round picks come through the doors and feel like they should be given something,” Keim said. “Whereas these third-rounders have to fight for it and have fought for it their whole lives. So, I think there has to be something said about that, to have that natural chip that continues to sit on your shoulder.”
That’s true of the Cardinals’ three best third-round choices over the past four years.
Safety Tyrann Mathieu (2013) realized how much football meant to him when he was kicked off the team at LSU. He was a serious defensive player of the year candidate late in his third NFL season and was selected to the Pro Bowl.
Receiver John Brown (2014) played at Pittsburg State and has been told since he was a kid that he was too small
to play football. He had 1,003 yards receiving in 2015.
Running back David Johnson (2015) is a triplet born to a single mom. He had just two college offers and went to Northern Iowa, where he worked summers in dormitory maintenance. He was selected to the Pro Bowl and set a Cardinals franchise record last year with 2,118 yards from scrimmage and 20 touchdowns.
Those kinds of players and stories are why Arians calls the third round “my round.”
There is no “bulls--t” in third round, Arians said. Like? “… like ‘he is not the first-round guy,’ ” Arians said. “This is a guy we really like, he is going to make our team, and normally you’ll have a really good thirdround pick every year.”
It’s not foolproof, of course. In 2014, the Cardinals had two picks in the third round and took outside linebacker Kareem Martin seven selections before they picked Brown.
Martin has a small role on defense and contributes on special teams, but he’s started only four games over three years.
Last year’s third-round pick, cornerback Brandon Williams, struggled after moving from running back to the secondary in his last college season.
It helps that third-round picks aren’t judged as critically as first-rounders. For instance, had Brown been a firstrounder, producing one 1,000-yard season in three years, he wouldn’t be viewed so positively.
Caveats aside, the Cardinals’ track record in the third round over the past four years is among the best in the NFL.
Over the past four years, 141 players have been drafted in the third round, according to profootballreference.com. Its staff assigns a value to every player, and the Cardinals have three ranked in the top 15 of that group: Johnson (third), Mathieu (11th) and Brown (15th).
(Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce is No.
Luck also has played a role in the team’s success in the third round. In 2015, the Cardinals were ready to take Nebraska running back Ameer Abdullah in the second round with the 55th overall pick but the Lions selected him with the 54th pick.
If the Cardinals had taken Abdullah, they wouldn’t have selected Johnson in the third round.
As Keim has said several times since, sometimes the best decisions are the ones you don’t get to make.
During the three days of the draft, the Cardinals work from a list of 120 players that is finalized the week before the draft. Talent is only one consideration. Almost as important is how that player will fit their system.
After the top 60 or so players are taken, opinions of players among teams begins to widen. A fit for one team might be a reach for another.
“The challenge starts in the top of three,” Keim said, “which is good for us because I have a tremendous amount of confidence in our scouting department and our coaches to help unearth some of those guys that are from smaller schools. So even though our boards will look different, we felt like in every round we can get a guy with some value, and that’s what has happened.”