It is clear to me that the Denver Broncos are/should be interested in the fine crop of Defensive Tackles available in this year's draft. There are a number of reasons for this sense of urgency IMHO: 1) we've been making due with a patchwork collection of FAs, 2) We lost Bunkly to the Saints, 3) McBean is suspended for 6 games and 4) Marcus Thomas is a FA and unsigned. Sooo..the million dollar question is "Who Do We Draft?" I've seen a lot of discussion but not a lot of side-by-side comparisons of this year's DT crop of prospects. Sooo...without further ado...(all numbers are taken from nfldraftscouts.com for either combine or proday numbers...the Tackles/TFL/Sack numbers come from cfbstats.com and are for 2011 only)

Ok...what numbers really jump out at you? Clearly, Poe and Marin did incredible jobs at the Combine...putting up some incredible numbers in terms of speed and strength. Cox’s agility for a 298 lb lineman is remarkable. His 7.07 in the 3 cone drill was more than a full second ahead of Harris (and .8s ahead of Poe). Reyes, Randall, Martin and Wolfe can all jump out of the gym…while Cox, Brockers and Ta’amu are all pretty vertically challenged. Martin 4.25 in the 20 yard shuttle is amazing…2 tenths ahead of Wolf and Howard and a half second ahead of Randall, Brockers and Foreston. Poe’s 44 reps of 225 lbs puts him on par with the best combine performances ever. Reyes, Marin, Ta’amu, Wolfe, Thompson and Forston’s reps would have all been impressive, had Poe not posted such an amazing number. What I really like is seeing the production and the combine/proday numbers at the same time. While Poe’s Combine numbers are remarkable, his 33 tackles and 1 sack is pedestrian. Someone that large and fast should have put up better real world numbers against opponents in Conference USA. Similarly, Harris’s 22 tackles and Chapman’s 23 tackles are areas of concern. Wolfe’s 21.5 TFLs are remarkable, as is his 9.5 sacks. He leads all DTs with 70 tackles in 2011. He had above average vertical, above average 20yrd shuttle and above average 3-cone drill. After crunching these numbers and comparing these DTs side-by-side…I HOPE we don’t end up with Brockers or Worthy. Neither stands out. Brockers’ 19 reps at 225lbs is a clear concern. Worthy only had 31 tackles last year for Michigan State while Still had 55 for Penn State and Martin had 64 for Michigan. Against comparable conference opponents, Worthy had essentially half the tackles of the other 2. That is a concern to me. I’m not excited by Chapman’s 23 tackles. I’m not excited about Randall’s 4 TFLs. I’m not excited about Harris’s slow footed 8.12 3-con drill or his 22 season tackles. At the end of the day I hope we end up with Cox (not likely), Still (likely) and either Martin (my new favorite), Ta’amu, Wolfe (an emerging favorite) or Howard.

Thoughts?