Sunday, April 09, 2000
Bengals ready for No. 4 pick
It looks like Warrick or trade down
BY NEIL SCHMIDT
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Only six days remain until the NFL draft. Around the league, scouts and coaches will pull all-nighters in preparation. Not here. Bengals draft weeks stay on schedule like Swiss watchmakers' meetings.
“It'll be smooth because we're very organized,” said Jim Lippincott, the team's director of pro/college personnel. “We've all worked together so long. We make the most of the time we're here.”
The massive draft boards in Lippincott's office came down last week. The war room is assembled. The Bengals will run mock drafts, analyzing every angle.
Save stress for the season.
“I don't believe in long, unproductive meetings,” Bengals President Mike Brown said. “We have a set way of going through this, which has been arrived at from having done it for many years.
“By the time we get to the draft, very little surprises us.”
The focus next weekend will be on the Bengals' first pick at No.4, their seventh time in 10 years with a top-10 pick.
The Bengals say there are four standout players — linebacker LaVar Arrington and defensive end Courtney Brown of Penn State, offensive tackle Chris Samuels of Alabama, and wideout Peter War rick of Florida State — and they'll follow the leads of Cleveland (No.1) and Washington (Nos.2 and 3).
“The others will pick one for us,” Brown said. “That makes it easy.”
Making that and their subsequent six selections shouldn't cause consternation. Lippincott filed his first report on this group of draftees last April 29, 11 days after last year's draft ended, and
every possible prospect has long since been categorized and ranked.
“(Scout) Duke (Tobin) and I are at the point where we're tired of thinking about it, talking about it, and looking at them,” Lippincott said.
“For those organizations who just started their scouting in January, they probably look at it differently. Those coaches are still doing their homework. But from my perspective, I'm ready to go on to the next group, ready for this to be over.”
The Bengals consider their most dire needs to be cornerbacks, offensive linemen, wide receivers, defensive linemen and running backs.
“Corner is the biggest need,” said draft guru Jerry Jones, the former Mariemont druggist who publishes the Drugstore List player ratings. “If I was them, I'd be sitting there drafting cornerbacks galore. They ought to call this the "four corners' draft.”
Yet it's a poor crop of corners available, so that need won't be filled by the first selection. It will likely be the third consecutive year the Bengals spend their second-round pick on a corner.
The Bengals historically have resisted trading up or down in the draft. So who arrives at No.4?
A sampling of nine Web sites' mock drafts found seven saying Warrick will be a Bengal. The other two had Cincinnati taking Florida State defensive tackle Corey Simon.
The presumption is Cleveland will pick Brown and Washington will take Arrington and Samuels.
Jones figures the Bengals would most prefer Brown fall to No.4 — “He's a pass-rush machine,” Jones said — with Samuels their next-favorite player, followed by Arrington and Warrick.
The Bengals' first-round plans are clouded by uncertainty about the status of disgruntled players Corey Dillon and Carl Pickens. Both are under contract, but if the team accommodates their trade desires, it could replenish those positions with new draft choices.
Brown and Lippincott say they're planning for both players to return this season. But a possible trade scenario with Baltimore for Dillon, in which Cincinnati gets a first-round pick and either a third- or fourth-round pick, might change things.
Jones hears those rumors and thinks the Bengals could bite. That would give them the 15th pick in the first round and three picks among the first 34 in the draft.
Despite the subsequent scenario of taking Warrick fourth and a running back 15th, Jones suggests snatching one of the four marquee rushers early.
“At four, you could get (Virginia's) Thomas Jones, (Alabama's) Shaun Alexander, (Wisconsin's) Ron Dayne or (Tennessee's) Jamal Lewis,” Jones said. “They could all be gone at 15. There are plenty of good receivers you could take at 15.”
The Bengals have long loved local prospects such as Alexander, a Boone County High alum. The second team All-American rushed for 1,383 yards and 24 TDs last fall.
Another local prospect they covet is Ohio State cornerback Ahmed Plummer, a Wyoming High grad. But he's graded the top corner and fig ured to go late in the first round, so don't expect him in stripes.
The anxious moments come after Plummer is picked. That's when the annual run on cornerbacks begins.
“It's like how I had my house up for sale, as did some others in my neighborhood,” Lippincott said. “As soon as I sold mine, there's three that went boom (and sold), just like that. That's how the corners go, in rapid succession.”
After Plummer, Jackson State's Rashard Anderson is the corner expected to go next, probably at the end of the first round or the start of the second.
If Anderson is gone, the corners the Bengals covet are — in order — Virginia Tech's Ike Charlton, Wake Forest's Reggie Austin, Arkansas' David Barrett and Mississippi State's Robert Bean.
Or, maybe they won't take a cornerback there.
“One of the ways we've always been good about putting the bat on the ball is having a plan for each round, who you can take in each round, but being flexible enough to take a very good player,” Lippincott said. “That's how Carl, Darnay (Scott) and Corey got here (all second-rounders). We may get to the second round and be saying to ourselves, "We really need a corner, but there sits two or three wide receivers who could really help you.'”
Until Saturday, the waiting is the hardest part.
“We think we've done all we can,” Lippincott said. “It just unfolds naturally now.”
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