April 26, 2013
While the typical "NFL Draft winners and losers" lists are based almost solely on trades up/down and picks deemed to have just the right amount of sex appeal, the Cardinals flew largely under the radar on the first day of the draft with the selection of North Carolina guard Jonathan Cooper with the No. 7 overall pick. After all, interior linemen are as unsexy as draft picks can get.
But for a team desperate for O-line help, the pick obviously took care of at least one need -- new coach Bruce Arians said after the first round that it's "a safe bet" that Cooper will start as a rookie, so this isn't a development pick as much as an instant-impact one. And the grades from the people who grade such things have been accordingly favorable.
CBS Sports, which graded every first-round pick and handed out just five A's, gave the Cardinals a solid B for the pick, although the grade did not include any written analysis.
And Sports Illustrated went a notch higher, handing out a B-plus while pointing out both the Cardinals' desperate need for an upgrade on the line and Cooper's apparent better fit than the draft's other highly touted guard, Alabama's Chance Warmack, for a team basing its offense more around the passing game than the running game. Sexiness aside, the review refers to Cooper as an "outstanding" lineman.
But those two weren't to be outdone by Bill Polian, a longtime NFL general manager now working for ESPN who had the task of video analysis of each pick Thursday evening. Polian called Cooper "as athletic a lineman as we've seen come into the league in years," then going on to point out Cooper's strengths, which apparently include literally everything a lineman could be asked to do. Perhaps more interesting: Polian said that "in time, I think he'll move over to center and become the leader of (the Cardinals') offensive line."
While Polian didn't specifically provide a grade, his reference to the pick as "a home run" made it clear where he stood.
-- Matt Swartz
