Draft Day

Well, the draft's begun and right now, somewhere in Central Jersey, Jeremy Zuttah's playing video games. Seriously.

There are maybe only a handful of players whose stock has risen as much as Jeremy's over these last two months. At the combine, where only No. 1 pick Jake Long benched more than him and where no offensive lineman ran faster than him, he wowed everyone. GMs have spent the last month raving about his demeanor, one scout told me he's easily the smartest guard in the draft and really, there's not much he should be stressing over today.

"Oh, he's a little stressed," Pedro Sosa said to me earlier in the week. "Why do you think he won't watch?"

Jeremy of course tried to pretend nerves had nothing to do with refusing his mom's entreaties to watch the draft with her. He said it's going to take a phone call from a GM to know he's picked anyway, and he said he has no interest in checking out other draft picks' suits. (BTW, was that a sweater vest Matt Ryan had on under his suit?) He also hasn't watched any of the pre-draft programming, so it's not like he's curious to see which ESPN draftnik, Mel Kiper or Todd McShay, had him pegged better.

Speaking of Kiper and McShay, hasn't watching the two of them go at it been delicious? That's no staged animosity between those cats and while the rumor is ESPN's trying to phase out the older Kiper, I think the ensuing competitiveness between the constantly-trying-to-one-up analysts has been great. If I had to vouch for one, though, it'd have to be McShay. I tried calling both these men the last two weeks and guess which of the two actually got back to me?

So on that note... here's what McShay had to say about our two favorite tackles-turned-guards:

"Jeremy Zuttah is probably the fastest-rising of all the Rutgers players, and if you did a list of the players who have risen the most in the last month he would be in it. He had a tremendous post-season. He's worked out well. His indiv workouts with teams have been good as well because he's shown versatility. He has experience at tackle and guard and some teams are even projecting him as a center. With that versatility has come a lot of interest in a year where the tackle class is great but the guard and center class is not so good. I think that's helping his cause. Best case is late second round, maybe third round, but this is someone we were talking about in the fifth-sixth range for a long time."

"Pedro Sosa, probably is a better college player than he will be pro prospect, and he was certainly a better college player than Zuttah. I like the fact that he's so mobile. He moves well. I know he's undersized and he's going to have to move inside to guard, but he could be a good fit for a zone-blocking team -- Denver Broncos, Houston Texans -- to bring him in, try to put some beef on him and get him to be more physical at the point of attack and improve his strength. He probably projects to the fourth-fifth round range, as one of the top 10 guards in this year's class, making that transition inside."