GoldandBlack.com's Purdue player draft: No. 6 overall
This summer, the Boilermakers are being divided.
Reporters Stacy Clardie and Kyle Charters continue Monday in GoldandBlack.com's Purdue player draft, a daily selection in which separate groups of 25 are assembled over the next two months. In late July, we'll decide — based on GoldandBlack.com staff and member feedback — which team would win.
Charters' turn at No. 6 overall, and he chooses ...
All right, it's easy to see Stacy's draft strategy, choosing positions where the drop off is significant between the No. 1 and No. 2, thinking that will cause me a steep disadvantage.
But my question: Hasn't that strategy now caused her to reach on two of her three picks, taking center Kirk Barron, a player with probably 100 or so career snaps, with the first-overall selection, and cornerback Da'Wan Hunte, who has likely less than 300, at 5?
Maybe this will cause me such difficulty later that my team will have insurmountable holes. Maybe. Or perhaps because I'm taking the best players now, I'll win with playmakers. That's who wins games, so that's how I'm building.
With that said, I'm drafting the next best available, selecting wide receiver DeAngelo Yancey at No. 6 overall.
I have to admit that it was good to have a couple days to think this one over, because I needed it. Cameron Cermin is still on the board — hanging out in imaginary green room, where his rider isn't quite as needy as Ludacris' — and I'm in need a center. Or an offensive linemen in general, and Cermin's versatility has value. That center deal is going to have to be resolved at some point, or maybe not; I could just go to the end of the draft and take whoever.
Nose tackle Eddy Wilson would be an interesting pick here, because it'd be a big "haha" at Stacy — and that is always fun — pairing the sophomore and Jake Replogle inside to give me the only experienced DTs, but then I think I'd be in line for some sort of retribution. And Wilson would be a reach at 6.
But ultimately, it was the Hunte pick that convinced me that Yancey was the right move. If I don't take the 6-foot-2, 216-pound wide receiver now, I risk letting Stacy have him at 7; and if she does, then her team would have Yancey and the only cornerback who has a chance to check him down the field. And that would be bad, really bad for my group. Then, my defense, which I've put a priority on early in the draft, would start to crumble. Odd how the Yancey pick helps out my defense, but it does.
With Yancey, I get one of Purdue's best game-breakers — and I don't want to hear about how he quit a couple seasons ago; he's a different, more mature, guy now — who can make big plays down the field. And he's more reliable than ever, coming off a great spring, a spring in which he and Hunte battled often. And now they will on our virtual football field.
Draft Ticker: 1. Kirk Barron | 2. Jake Replogle | 3. Markell Jones | 4. Ja'Whaun Bentley | 5. Da'Wan Hunte
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