Sturm: No fluke! These Cowboys have opponents looking as flustered as they were during 'Triplets' era

[Cowboysrock55]

Alot of people will mention guys like Allen and Garrett but that does us no good since our 1st round pick looks like it's basically going to be an early 2nd, somewhere in the 26-32 range.

But there is still alot of depth at the position with guys like Carl Lawson, Tim Williams, Takkarist McKinley, Charles Harris, and Derek Barnett. Of course several of those guys are juniors and most of them will be gone in the 15-25 range, but it still adds to depth and pushes other guys down. Taco Charlton is an interesting one, although I have to look into him more, I think he may be redundant with some of our other "jumbo DE's who shift inside in nickel/dime" types.

There are a few other guys who could pop up too like Harold Landry, but we'll have to wait to see who declares. Right now I'm looking hard at McKinley, I will be very interested to see how he does at the Senior Bowl. I think it's possible he puts himself out of our range with an impressive performance there.

One wild card is DeMarcus Walker, he looks like a DE/DT tweener in a 4-3 but I'll be interested to see what he weighs in at. He looks like he has Aaron Donald type of pass-rushing ability from the interior though, and even though DE is a much bigger need at DT you can't pass up pass rush like that/

Allen isn't even a DE in our defense. He is a DT. Garrett will be gone in the top 3 picks unless he has some sort of a freak injury or something bad come up on medicals.

Walker is very interesting. You can't really argue with a guy who put up 15 sacks this past year. He played DE for Florida State but obviously they don't run a traditional 4-3 defense. Still I think Walker can play DE in any NFL defense with that type of pass rush ability.

Charles Harris would also be a perfect fit as well in our defense. Productive guy at Mizzou who has more of that size and build for a 4-3 DE in our defense.

Kiper has a Dawuane Smoot up there in his top 25 as well. But I'm skeptical of a DE from Illinois who didn't really produce that many sacks. Maybe he is good but he was on such a bad team I'd have to go back and watch just him specifically play.

 

[Simpleton]

Allen isn't even a DE in our defense. He is a DT. Garrett will be gone in the top 3 picks unless he has some sort of a freak injury or something bad come up on medicals.

Walker is very interesting. You can't really argue with a guy who put up 15 sacks this past year. He played DE for Florida State but obviously they don't run a traditional 4-3 defense. Still I think Walker can play DE in any NFL defense with that type of pass rush ability.

Charles Harris would also be a perfect fit as well in our defense. Productive guy at Mizzou who has more of that size and build for a 4-3 DE in our defense.

Kiper has a Dawuane Smoot up there in his top 25 as well. But I'm skeptical of a DE from Illinois who didn't really produce that many sacks. Maybe he is good but he was on such a bad team I'd have to go back and watch just him specifically play.

I think alot of Walker's sacks come when he lines up inside, I've only watched him closely in one game this year though so I can't say for sure. Even so, that type of pass-rush ability from the interior is valuable enough to warrant a 1st round pick.

I've watched Smoot in a few games, he's good but I think we could do better with the depth at the position in the 1st. He'd be a candidate if we traded down into the 2nd, or definitely at our pick late in the 2nd. The interesting thing about Smoot is that our coaching staff should have better insight into him than any in the league since he played for Lovie Smith who Marinelli is obviously very close to, and in a defense that is as close to anything in college football to what we run.

Another interesting thing about Smoot is that they have a no-name DE across from him who put up 9 sacks as a senior after only 3 prior to this season, so I'm sure Smoot had something to do with that.