Many mocks have him in the high second round, which is probably why it took him so long to officially declare. If he has a good pro day, best case scenario he can pass Otah for the #3 OL spot off the board, but that still won’t get him any higher than 15 overall.

I would point out that the draft is simply a part of the team construction process, not a miracle elixir. If last year’s draft was done over, both Revis and Harris would be top fifteen picks- the front office hit the ball out of the park in what was a very shallow draft. But it all added up to 4-12 and one of the worst defenses in football. We’ll talk our heads off about all these players for the next few months, but come September, they’ll just be guys on the field. You put together a good team by consistently picking up good players over a series of years. Good front offices establish themselves over time with quality player evaluation and a firm philosophy. This front office is off to a good if not spectacular start- Ferguson, Mangold, Washington, Revis and Harris are all players who you can build around, and Clemens is still a very worthwhile experiment from a skill set to cap number perspective; if he doesn’t pan out, he hasn’t cost the team much, and they won’t be saddled with a lot of dead money moving forward. We’ll see if it works out- Terry Bradway had a clear plan and wasn’t able to pull it off, so plans aren’t everything. But I feel comfortable with Tannenbaum and Mangini pulling the trigger based on the way they’ve approached personnel acquisition to this point.

That said, I agree with you that San Diego is kind of a good model for the argument that you don’t ignore the quarterback position just because you’ve drafted one recently. Quarterbacks retain their value even when they are sitting on the bench, which is why a team like Green Bay was consistently able to get value out of guys they drafted who never played for them outside of the preseason. (San Diego, in contrast, pretty much screwed the pooch when it came to getting value for Brees.) Matt Schaub was a trade waiting to happen for Atlanta, and while they picked the wrong year to actually move him, they were able to take a third round investment and turn it into a high second round pick. So the fact that a quarterback can’t play doesn’t mean that he’s a bad pick up, even on the first day. Just not at the top of the first round, unless he’s had a college career that would justify the selection.

Bottom line: either one of the top 6 is going to fall, and someone will want to trade up to our spot to get them… or we’re going to have to be happy with one of the OSU guys.