Quote Originally Posted by bmorecareful View Post
I said it months ago and I'll say it again: every draft has a theme running through it of a position that gets hot, or a few prospects that shoot up boards, or something otherwise surprising and trend-breaking.

My prediction for this year's draft: a HUGE run on defensive linemen. I could easily see 8 or more interior linemen and another 7 edge rushers (DEs and OLBs). That's maybe upwards of 15 picks going toward the DL as a whole, which sounds ridiculous, but here are the guys who carry 1st round grades IMO:

Interior (DT/NT/5-tech DE) - Star Lotulelei, Shariff Floyd, Sheldon Richardson, Kawann Short, Johnathan Hankins, John Jenkins, Datone Jones, Margus Hunt, Sylvester Williams, Bennie Logan

Edge (DE/OLB) - Jarvis Jones, Bjoern Werner, Damontre Moore, Ziggy Ansah, Dion Jordan, Alex Okafor, Barkevious Mingo

That's 17 defensive linemen that I believe have a chance to go in the 1st round and I'm being fairly conservative with the DEs. Now obviously some of them are going to fall, but even having 12 DL in the first round would be WAY more than average. The 2010 draft was seen as having an incredibly deep DL group as well, and 9 went in the first round. That would definitely cause a lot of good talent to be available at 32.

Pass-rushing defensive linemen are just at such a huge premium in the NFL, and even if guys like Margus Hunt or Ziggy Ansah are raw, they just have too much pure talent to be sitting around for too long. Aldon Smith was very raw coming out of Missouri but the 49ers knew that he could be very impactful as nothing other than a nickel rusher in year 1. That's going to be the standard for a lot of these guys coming into the nickel in year 1 and preparing to be every-down starters by years 2 or 3.
Agree with everything. Going to be interesting who is there at 32 at other positions because of the run on front 4 guys.