By Bryan Burwell
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Monday, Apr. 28 2008
By the end of the biggest weekend of his professional life, Billy Devaney still
looked rather tidy. Not a hair out of place. Hardly a wrinkle in his
stone-washed jeans or his tan pullover shirt, not a speck of dirt on his crisp
white and red running shoes.
But you could see it in the eyes of the Rams' new executive vice president just
how exhausted he was early Sunday evening after overseeing his first NFL draft
as the franchise's de facto general manager. The diminutive personnel man stood
in the front of the team's auditorium after the seventh round and his red,
puffy eyes seemed a million miles away. Only a few feet away, coach Scott
Linehan stood near the podium with a big, refreshed smile on his face, while
Devaney stood on the opposite side of the podium with an expression that reeked
of exhaustion.
"I feel just as tired now as I've ever felt," said Devaney.
That's what pressure does to you. Football Saturdays and Sundays are the truest
proving ground for players and coaches to assert their greatness. For personnel
men like Devaney, draft weekend is a condensed 48-hour trial by fire.
So what can we cull, if anything, about Devaney and the direction he's taking
the Rams after this weekend?
We can judge his style almost immediately, but we'll have to wait awhile to
determine what sort of taste he has as a talent evaluator. We know that in some
cases (see: Chris Long over Glenn Dorsey), Devaney might be a bit too cautious
for his own good. In other cases (making trades in the fourth and fifth rounds
to move up 11 and nine slots), he showed a sharp aggressiveness to get two
targeted players who might not have been there if he had sat tight.
The first-round grade for the Rams will be determined over the course of Long
and Dorsey's careers. Whether Long becomes a defensive terror as a pass rushing
defensive end for the Rams, it won't be his Hall of Fame father's shadow that
he'll necessarily be measured by. It will be the potentially daunting shadow of
LSU defensive tackle Dorsey, who was drafted three slots later by the
cross-state rival Kansas City Chiefs, and the player most Rams insiders will
tell you was the top-rated player on their draft board.
Devaney's eye for talent will be measured by that comparison as well. And for
his sake, he'd better hope that Long is the stud that he thinks he will be, or
at the very least that Dorsey isn't the second coming of Warren Sapp that the
rest of us think he will become.
You can't make that determination overnight, but you can be sure that a lot of
people want to. I can't wait to see how this plays out, and I'm anxious and
hopeful that Howie's kid grows into a pass-rushing, run-stuffing monster.
Yet this much we know: Devaney's style is clearly unconventional. He apparently
ignored his own draft board in the first round to take Long. Then in the second
round, he ignored conventional draftnik wisdom when, with the 33rd overall pick
— and with absolutely no other wide receivers off the board — he determined
that the best receiver in the draft class of 2008 was 5-foot-11 speedster
Donnie Avery.
Picking Avery is going to be one of those deals that will either make Devaney a
certified genius or subject him to a double-barreled second guess by the entire
pro football world, because so many far more recognizable wide receivers were
still on the board. So if Avery doesn't become the big-play deep threat and
home run-hitting return man Devaney thinks he is, there won't be any excuses
about "well, we wanted to take Player X, Y or Z, but they were already gone."
But if he's right — and in a Rams offense that is in dire need of a
breathtaking speed receiver, we should find out Avery's value almost
immediately — Devaney will look like the kind of guy who fearlessly walks to
the tune of his own music.
The Rams are betting that their future — and Devaney's — will be full of
promise and prosperity that began with the draft class of 2008
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Monday, Apr. 28 2008
By the end of the biggest weekend of his professional life, Billy Devaney still
looked rather tidy. Not a hair out of place. Hardly a wrinkle in his
stone-washed jeans or his tan pullover shirt, not a speck of dirt on his crisp
white and red running shoes.
But you could see it in the eyes of the Rams' new executive vice president just
how exhausted he was early Sunday evening after overseeing his first NFL draft
as the franchise's de facto general manager. The diminutive personnel man stood
in the front of the team's auditorium after the seventh round and his red,
puffy eyes seemed a million miles away. Only a few feet away, coach Scott
Linehan stood near the podium with a big, refreshed smile on his face, while
Devaney stood on the opposite side of the podium with an expression that reeked
of exhaustion.
"I feel just as tired now as I've ever felt," said Devaney.
That's what pressure does to you. Football Saturdays and Sundays are the truest
proving ground for players and coaches to assert their greatness. For personnel
men like Devaney, draft weekend is a condensed 48-hour trial by fire.
So what can we cull, if anything, about Devaney and the direction he's taking
the Rams after this weekend?
We can judge his style almost immediately, but we'll have to wait awhile to
determine what sort of taste he has as a talent evaluator. We know that in some
cases (see: Chris Long over Glenn Dorsey), Devaney might be a bit too cautious
for his own good. In other cases (making trades in the fourth and fifth rounds
to move up 11 and nine slots), he showed a sharp aggressiveness to get two
targeted players who might not have been there if he had sat tight.
The first-round grade for the Rams will be determined over the course of Long
and Dorsey's careers. Whether Long becomes a defensive terror as a pass rushing
defensive end for the Rams, it won't be his Hall of Fame father's shadow that
he'll necessarily be measured by. It will be the potentially daunting shadow of
LSU defensive tackle Dorsey, who was drafted three slots later by the
cross-state rival Kansas City Chiefs, and the player most Rams insiders will
tell you was the top-rated player on their draft board.
Devaney's eye for talent will be measured by that comparison as well. And for
his sake, he'd better hope that Long is the stud that he thinks he will be, or
at the very least that Dorsey isn't the second coming of Warren Sapp that the
rest of us think he will become.
You can't make that determination overnight, but you can be sure that a lot of
people want to. I can't wait to see how this plays out, and I'm anxious and
hopeful that Howie's kid grows into a pass-rushing, run-stuffing monster.
Yet this much we know: Devaney's style is clearly unconventional. He apparently
ignored his own draft board in the first round to take Long. Then in the second
round, he ignored conventional draftnik wisdom when, with the 33rd overall pick
— and with absolutely no other wide receivers off the board — he determined
that the best receiver in the draft class of 2008 was 5-foot-11 speedster
Donnie Avery.
Picking Avery is going to be one of those deals that will either make Devaney a
certified genius or subject him to a double-barreled second guess by the entire
pro football world, because so many far more recognizable wide receivers were
still on the board. So if Avery doesn't become the big-play deep threat and
home run-hitting return man Devaney thinks he is, there won't be any excuses
about "well, we wanted to take Player X, Y or Z, but they were already gone."
But if he's right — and in a Rams offense that is in dire need of a
breathtaking speed receiver, we should find out Avery's value almost
immediately — Devaney will look like the kind of guy who fearlessly walks to
the tune of his own music.
The Rams are betting that their future — and Devaney's — will be full of
promise and prosperity that began with the draft class of 2008