GETTING DEFENSIVE
First five picks all either pass rushers or cornerbacks
It isn't true anymore that defence wins championships in the NFL.
That didn't stop the first five teams in the 2022 NFL draft on Thursday night from picking defenders.
Particularly, three pass rushers and two cornerbacks — the most important two positions on any defence.
From pick Nos. 6-12, teams scrambled to grab the best offensive players: Three offensive tackles and wide receivers.
No quarterback was picked in the Top 10 — let alone the Top 3 — of an NFL draft for the first time since 2013, when the Buffalo Bills reached at No. 16 to take EJ Manuel.
Long before sundown in a glitz-soaked, outdoor Las Vegas setting, the Jacksonville Jaguars used their No. 1 overall pick on edge rusher Travon Walker.
Until the Walker buzz blew up last week, most draft experts had expected the Jags to take University of Michigan pass rusher Aidan Hutchinson. He and Walker are similar elite talents off the edge, but some believe Walker has slightly higher upside.
Walker rose to become the highest-regarded draft prospect from a University of Georgia defence last season that boasted so many fivestar high-school blue-chippers, it might well go down as one of the most talented defences in U.S. college football history.
The 21-year-old Walker grew up just south of Atlanta. His supreme athleticism and speed (4.51 seconds in the 40) for an athlete who stands 6-foot-5 and weighs 272 pounds is practically off the charts. But he started only one season with the Bulldogs, and that's one reason he lacked impressive college production (9.5 career sacks, compared to Hutchinson's 18.5).
Walker did not attend the draft, but rather watched with family back home in Georgia.
At No. 2 overall, the Detroit Lions wasted no time in snagging hometown boy Aidan Hutchinson, seen by most as the draft's top overall talent. He grew up just a halfhour's drive from Lions headquarters, in Plymouth, Mich.
The 6-foot-6½, 260-pounder is the son of Chris Hutchinson, an all-American pass rusher at Michigan in 1992, whose single-season Michigan sack record his son broke, with 14.
“I'm happy I get to go back to Detroit … back to the Motor City, hopefully win some ball games,” Hutchinson told NFL Network. “I'm fired up.”
At No. 3, the Houston Texans took cornerback Derek Stingley Jr., who has all the skills worthy of such a lofty pick, but who played only 10 games over his last two years at LSU because of injuries.
At No. 4, the New York Jets took Ahmad (Sauce) Gardner, rated as the top cornerback in this draft according to most experts.
The University of Cincinnati product is tall for a corner (6-foot-2¾) whose forte is press-man coverage. The Detroit native is certainly fast enough (4.41 seconds in the 40), which is one reason he was seen by many as a Top 5 pick. ESPN's Mel Kiper Jr. saw him going No. 2 overall.
Gardner told NFL Network before the draft he actually could not remember the last time he allowed a touchdown. On stage after getting his obligatory congratulatory hug from NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, Gardner showed off an enormously thick, gaudy necklace that, as he said, proudly sported “extra sauce.”
That is, a mini metal bottle with the word SAUCE.
“The Jets fans know, man,” Gardner said. “They know about the sauce. You can't have too much sauce. So I added a new addition, because I knew that's where I was going to be at.”
At No. 5, the New York Giants took pass rusher Kayvon Thibodeaux, a 21-year-old from Los Angeles. In three years at the University of Oregon, the pass rusher notched 19 sacks, relying on speed, long and strong arms, and — good or bad — has been compared both favourably and unfavourably to Jadeveon Clowney, the Houston Texans' No. 1 overall pick in 2014.
Just as Gardner moments earlier said he had a feeling he'd be picked by the Jets, so Thibodeaux with the Giants.
“I knew,” Thibodeaux told NFL Network. “They FaceTimed me right before I got on the plane. I knew it was time.”
At No. 6, the Carolina Panthers did not reach — as many mock-drafters has been predicting for months — and take one of the top two quarterbacks, neither of whom is that highly regarded. Namely, Kenny Pickett of the University of Pittsburgh or Malik Willis of Liberty University.
Instead, the Panthers made the smart move by taking the night's first offensive player, and a fabulously talented offensive tackle, in Ikem (Ickey) Ekwonu.
Ekwonu, a 21-year-old who stands 6-foot-4 and weighs 310 pounds, is both athletic, limber and fast for his size (4.93 seconds in the 40).
Like Hutchinson with the Lions, Ekwonu is a hometown pick. He grew up in Charlotte, N.C., which is where the Panthers are based.
“It just feels so surreal,” Ekwonu said on stage, “the fact that I grew up a Carolina Panthers fan, and now I'm gonna be in that building. It's really just crazy to me. Crazy.
“I'm just going to do everything I can to be the best player, the best person, I can be. I'm from that area … I just love the Panthers so much and I'm so grateful for this opportunity.”
At No. 8 overall, a second team in search of a long-term answer at quarterback — the Atlanta Falcons — also passed on both Pickett and Willis. Instead Atlanta took the first of yet another outstanding crop of wide receivers this year, in USC's Drake London. Not many draftniks regarded London as the top WR. A 20-year-old from California's Ventura County, London is big (nearly 6-foot-4) and a big-play specialist.
At No. 9, the Seattle Seahawks — another team in desperate need of a better long-term answer at quarterback, after trading Russell Wilson to Denver last month — eschewed picking a QB and instead grabbed the third best offensive tackle in Mississippi State's Charles Cross, filling another huge offensive need of the Seahawks.
To round out the Top 10, the Jets took the second wide receiver of the night, Ohio State University's Garrett Wilson.