Locked On Colts - Daily Podcast On The Indianapolis Colts - LOCKED ON COLTS -2/28- Playing GM: Indianapolis Colts Draft Day

Episode Date: February 28, 2017

We've re-signed some guys in-house, we've grabbed some young, quality free agents who will bolster our roster and now we go to this talent-rich 2017 NFL Draft to grab our future. #Colts #MockDraft Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Learn more about our healthy benefits at fepblue.org slash getmore. No, I'm not for sale. You are lockeded On Colts, your daily Indianapolis Colts podcast. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Welcome back to Locked On Colts, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Matt Dainley. And we are all set to start off our mock draft here. We've already gone through bringing our own guys back, a few of them. We've gone through the free agency process and looks like we made some good decisions. At least we kind of stayed away from guys that

were about to be franchise tagged. At least it appears that way through what we've seen in the news in the past 24 hours or so. And not only that, it's a good thing that we signed Nick Fairley because we just lost David Perry more than likely. I think that all indications point to him being released after being arrested in Arizona for a DUI charge, apparently on a robbery suspicion and resisting arrest. So not a good start for David Perry for the 2017 season. But, you know, good thing we got a replacement for him. That should drop our cap just slightly. So we'll see. That's just, I mean, that's a shame. Not only that, but a Stanford guy, you know, how, how stupid, I don't understand what

he could possibly be doing or who he could be hanging around to where that sounded like a good idea in any way, shape or form had to have been a drunken episode. I mean, I don't even know. It almost makes me feel like he probably, uh, I think common thought makes you want to think that he wasn't actually involved with what actually happened just because he's a smart dude. At least we thought he was. So bad news coming already. More trouble for Colts guys in the news for the wrong reasons. So we'll put all of that behind us and we'll get this thing kicked off right.

So as we go through, it's really kind of strange. You just never know how some of these drafts are going to kick off. You never know what's actually going to happen in them. Everybody's all on board with Miles Garrett being the top guy. Just got off of a podcast with John Ledyard, and he made some points towards Jonathan Allen. Some others have made points towards him as well maybe in a couple other guys who seemingly ranked higher on certain boards other than others

and right now on the pick the first 13 picks right now on this simulation the Colts are drafting 14th there was a trade for the number one pick the Titans moved up to get Reuben Foster from Alabama. Now, with his injury history, I don't see that likely. However, in the same breath, I also don't see him being available when the Colts get there either, so we'll just move on and pretend that wasn't really the deal. Jonathan Allen went second to the 49ers. Miles Garrett, third to the Bears. You're welcome, Bears, for this simulation. The Jaguars grabbed Jamal Adams. Tennessee, the trade with them in Cleveland, moved them back to the fifth pick.

They took Solomon Thomas. The Jets took Mitch Trubisky. The Chargers, Ryan Ramsey. The Panthers, Dalvin Cook. The Ravens, on a trade with Cincinnati, took Jabril Peppers. Mike Williams went to the Bills. The Saints took Derek Barnett.

Deshaun Kaiser went to the Browns with the 12th pick. And Arizona traded out, gave the Lions their 13th pick. And Zach Cunningham from Vanderbilt went to the Lions. So here's where we go so far. Now, we're there there and I've got a couple of people trying to trade with me right now. Um, basically what that tells me is that I'm going to take it because I'm sitting at 14th and I've got people wanting, I've got five, six, eight guys right now on my board that I'm going to be more than happy with for my first overall pick.

And I'm going to pick up a couple of picks in the process. So I'm going to go to a reasonable trade, which the others are infallible, just ridiculous. They would never happen. Uh, so I'm going to go with the one where I'm going to get the 17th pick from Washington and their round two pick as well for my 14th pick. So I'm taking that and we are going to enjoy this because we've picked up a couple picks. And the last few picks have been Marshawn Lattimore went to the Redskins. Tease Tabor went to the Eagles. Malik Hooker to the Bengals. So missed out on a couple cornerbacks there. But you know what? I think we're just fine here. And with our pick, I went ahead and went after Malik McDowell out of Michigan State. Fantastic defensive tackle, defensive end, however you want

to play him. He's really a guy who's been climbing and has just been a guy that a lot of people are just falling in love with right now, and I'm all on board with that Malik McDowell my first round pick I'm I'm smitten with that so now we're going to our second round pick a lot of more guys a lot more are off the table right now obviously but I'm not going to go through all these right now however I will give you guys a rundown of what I'm looking at and who's available. Now with that trade in the first round, I ended up picking me up their second round pick at 17. So I had the 16th pick in the second round and the 17th pick. Now with the 16th pick, Tack McKinley's on the board. That's something I'm not going to pass up right now. There's still a ton of talent on that board. So I went ahead and went with Tack McKinley out of UCLA, outside linebacker

defensive end. Now I've got the 17th pick. I'm looking for coverage. I mean, you just, you know, I'm going to go as much as I can here. I've got three more picks here in the top 144 outside of this pick, and I'm looking for some coverage. And I'm going right after Quincy Wilson, cornerback from Florida, big guy, heavy, got some speed, great coverage. Talked to Jonah Toles about this guy a lot. He loves him. If he loves him, I love him. Everything I've seen from him has been pretty fantastic.

I'm taking Quincy Wilson out of Florida, cornerback. We've now got ourselves a defensive lineman, an outside linebacker, and Quincy Wilson out of Florida, cornerback. We've now got ourselves a defensive lineman, an outside linebacker, and Quincy Wilson. We've got three really good talents sitting there on our board already with our first three picks. Now, lots of talent on the board still. Lots of left on running back. Lots left in a lot of other places. This defense has to take a facelift. Remember, in our simulation earlier, as far as what I was doing, I let go of Arthur Jones. We've now seen that David Perry is probably going to be released, and we need some more guys up front. We've got Henry Anderson.

We've got Nick Farrelly so far. We've got some quality guys up front, but we need to get these young guys here on cheap contracts. And everything that I've been told about this guy has been fantastic. I see him sitting there in round three, which to me is just insane, but I'm taking him while I've got him. And Chris Wormley's my guy right there. Round three, pick 15, defensive tackle, Chris Wormley out of Michigan. I'm taking that in a heartbeat. So right now we've got Malik McDowell, Tack McKinley, Quincy Wilson,

Chris Wormley. That's a nice little pull already from our first round picks. You know what we need to do? We need to just shop the rest of these picks and then just be happy with what we've got so far because we've got some talent already. Now next, going through the running backs again, I'm still seeing a ton of talent left there for me, so I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to look around and see what else I can do defensively here. We've talked about Antonio Morrison. We did pick up Kevin Minner in free agency, and we've got Edwin Jackson sitting there too.

We've got three guys, one that we think is a starter for certain, Kevin Minner. We don't know if these other two guys are really moving forward, but we've got a guy sitting there that, in my opinion, again, should not be sitting there. But, you know, Kendall Beckwith, everything I've been told, I've gotten some good intelligence from Ledyard and a lot of draft guys around here. Yeah, as you guys have heard, I'm bringing you guys on not only so you can hear what

these guys are talking about, but so that I can learn just the same. Shane Alexander, the same. He was a high on Kendall Beckwith as well. And this inside linebacker out of LSU, that's an A-plus as far as I'm concerned, regardless what any grade is going to tell me of how I'm picking here. If I'm getting Kendall Beckwith in the fourth round, I'm doing pretty good. So right now we have completely revitalized this front seven already. We've got a cornerback in Quincy Wilson that we know that we need to rejuvenate the secondary.

And, you know, so far so good, right? So let's keep moving. Let's see what's going to take us to next. Again, going right to the running backs. I want to see what I got left for me. My guy Jamal Williams is off the board. He's not there for me to take. I really was liking to get him, but there's another guy that's been talked up a lot lately, just as much, who's just as tough, falls forward a lot for extra yards, runs well between the tackles, very shifty, very smooth in his transitions once he gets outside the tackles. And it's Kareem Hunt from Toledo. This guy has been talked up more than anybody I know. And this is part of our comp pick. We get Kareem Hunt for free, basically, on our cheap pick. I'm

loving that because Kareem Hunt's a hell of a running back and we need a running back. So we got Kareem Hunt now. He's going to be that guy that is ultimately going to be taking over the starting running back position here in the next year or so. We've got Frank Gore now. We kept Turbin around in free agency as well, trying to keep him off the market. He likes Indy, wants to stay in Indy. At least that's the story I'm telling. And we're going to pick up Kareem Hunt there to round out that backfield. So that to me is about as good as it gets right now through four rounds. We're about ready to head into round five. Let's see what we got left. Now, as we go on,

we're kind of getting into uncharted territory here. We're looking for some of that back end stuff. We did bring in Tony Jefferson in free agency, but we still need, I still think we need a young guy who can come in here and kind of battle TJ Green for, you know, basically that third safety spot. I think that, you know, basically let those two fight it out and kind of see who ends up on special teams, who ends up as that backup safety role, or maybe they find a way to work him in with Clayton Gethers coming down on the box or something like that. You just never know. And with this, there's a guy in here who isn't a great tackler in the secondary at safety, but he is a better coverage guy. And

that's where, you know, you get that, that mix between TJ green and this guy, and you've got a pretty darn good safety, but J.R. Johnson really like his coverage ability. Uh, they think that he's kind of a, a fantastic, has fantastic ball skills. They talk about the way he covers and the way he does on limited, really limited reps at the position just one year as a starter. So they do say that he needs help and run support, that he needs to improve in that area. But if you can put him on special teams for a while, or you can get him into training camp and turn him into a ball hawk back there or something like that. That's something the Colts could definitely use for the future in some sort of

a rotation. So, you know, not only that, but then that pushes TJ Green. Jadar Johnson's out of Clemson. These two know each other. So we're going to go with that for our fifth round pick. That might be a little steep, a little high for him, but right now, you know, we're trying to cover all of our bases here and we've done a pretty darn good job so far. And unfortunately, we're going to not necessarily end this draft on a bang because, you know, ultimately Pat McAfee and not trying to discount his issues that he had physically or anything like that playing in the league, but kind of left the Colts and the organization as a whole high and dry with his early retirement. So the Colts are going to have to look punter in this draft at some point. And when we end up having our last pick in the sixth round, this is something that we need to address. It wasn't going to take any unrealistic

trades to move back even more and stuff like that. Tried to keep this as realistic as far as draft position and what we were going to be doing throughout the draft as possible. So I'm sitting here looking at the punters, and I don't think that there's anybody else that even catches my eye. We're looking at Austin Rayco, a punter from Idaho, top punter in the class, still on the board, obviously. And there's really no reason for us not to think that that's the guy we should go for. I mean, it makes sense. He averaged 46.3 yards per punt. I think that that was a school record.

And he's also, I think he doubles as a field goal kicker as well. So we kind of get a guy in there with a big leg to replace our old boomstick there in Indianapolis. So looks like Austin Rakow or Ruckow. Man, I hate that. I'm not going to have fun saying that if we actually draft that guy, uh, get him in the sixth round to kind of round out our draft. I think that we've come away with a stellar draft guys. I really do. We came away with Malik McDowell out of Michigan state, Tack McKinley out of UCLA, outside linebacker, Quincy Wilson,

a cornerback from Florida, Chris Wormley, a defensive tackle out of UCLA, outside linebacker. Quincy Wilson, a cornerback from Florida. Chris Wormley, a defensive tackle out of Michigan. Kendall Beckwith, an inside linebacker out of LSU. Kareem Hunt, a fan favorite, especially on draft Twitter, a running back out of Toledo. Jadar Johnson, safety out of Clemson. And Austin Reckho, that sounds better, I think. Reckho, yeah. A punter out of Idaho. So we've come away with a pretty nifty little draft class here, guys. I think that this complements what we've done in free agency pretty stinking well. And ultimately, this is a pretty good deal, I think, for us. You know, when we kind of finalize all this and look at it, we've got ourselves a nice little showing for it. I mean,

look at our depth now, what kind of where we're at. And this is pretty nice. An outside linebacker, Walden, Perry, Simon, McKinley, Carter and Ayers, not necessarily in that order. Morrison, Jackson, Minter and Beckwith at inside linebacker along the defensive line. Anderson, Fairley, T.Y. McGill, McDowell, and Wormley. That's nice. I like that. Cornerback, we got Davis, Robinson, Wilson, and Melvin. Probably a couple others in there sprinkled around. Safety, we got Gethers, Jefferson, Green, and J.R. Johnson.

Running back, we got Gore, Hunt, and Turbin now. Offensive line, we hadn't really done much with it. You know, added Warford there just as a depth piece, a guy to either fight for the starting position there if he can beat anybody out or, you know, become a depth guy across the board there. And we got Costanzo, Muhort, Kelly, Warford, Haig, and Good there at right guard. Haig and Clark at right tackle, kind of mixing out, throwing Jonathan Harrison in there somewhere along the line. We've done a lot of movement. We've done a lot of stuff that we can do.

We've solidified quite a bit. We're underneath the salary cap. We probably are about $3 million underneath now. According to over the cap, we needed about $6.5 million in order to sign these draft picks. We ended up picking up another draft pick, so we probably are closer to $7 million, around $12 million before we started the process. So the Colts now have upwards of $4 to $5 million left for tertiary signings and other issues and stuff. That's a pretty good spot to be.

I think we needed a little bit more than that just money-wise just to have laying around, have some spending cash, so to speak. So far, I mean, we've gotten ourselves through these three processes. We've gotten ourselves through signing our own guys. We got ourselves through free agency. And now we got ourselves a hell of a draft. And I think that we did a nice job. I would like to get any of those guys, any combination of them would be nice. This is no less than exciting for me.

I'm ready to see what our GM, Chris Ballard, can do with all this. Of course, this is a simulation, so it's all not totally 100% realistic, but that's what we did today, guys. I mean, Malik McDowell, Tack McKinley, Quincy Wilson, Chris Wormley, Kendall Beckwith, Kareem Hunt, Jadar Johnson, and Austin Rayco. So now we've got a punter too, a pretty darn good punter at that. Best in the class as far as what they've been ranked in a few different sites. So I'm happy with that. I hope you guys are happy with that. Thank you guys for joining me.

This was a fun exercise. I really enjoyed it, actually. It was nice to go through and kind of research these guys and kind of see who I thought that we had a shot to get. It's a good thing because none of the guys that we picked up in free agency were any of the guys that got tagged with a franchise or otherwise. No tags on any of the guys that we picked up in free agency. So we came out of that pretty good.

I'm pretty excited about that. So thank you guys for joining me. And we've got John Ledger coming up on tomorrow's show. That'll be interesting. Kind of talk to him. I just want to pick his brain, you know. Talk to him. I just want to pick his brain, you know, talk to him. I've known John for quite a while and he's done a great job with Luke Easterling on the Locked On NFL Draft Podcast right here on the Locked On Network. So really happy for him. They've done a great job on that. If you guys aren't subscribed to that, do that.

So I'll have him here on tomorrow's show and that'll be a blast as well. So thank you guys for joining me and I'll talk to you tomorrow right here on Locked on Colts. You are locked on Colts, your daily podcast on the Indianapolis Colts, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. We'll see you next time.