Denver should draft high character players

It’s the time of year when we get to read, listen to and talk about the 2019 draft ad nauseam with almost zero actual idea of what will happen. It’s a fun time of guessing, hypothesizing and falling in love with certain players who have at best a 50-50 chance of succeeding in the NFL. This is a tough league and there is only one certainty that comes out of each and every draft - nothing is certain.

GMs and their staffs fail over and over and over in their attempt to find talent in each level of the draft and yet they keep their jobs and are granted another year or more to pick names out of a hat and slap them on their “wish list”. Of course, a lot goes into scouting players, watching film and interviewing guys by asking really stupid questions but with such consistent inconsistency it really doesn’t seem like a big exaggeration to say that you and I could be just as good at seeing NFL talent/intelligence in college players than these “pros”.

The key word here is intelligence and it’d be fitting to add the words character or perhaps “football player” as well. Scouts and GMs and football nerds can spend countless hours in watching film and say which players are the fastest, quickest, strongest or baddest but they can’t seem to be able to recognize the players that have “it.”

The “it” factor is vitally important to finding athletes who will be successful in the top level of football and discovering this and elite physical talent in a young player seems to be nearly impossible.

John Elway has apparently realized the importance of “it” and intelligence in young players, and in 2018 he brought in a group of what appears to be really smart and skilled guys. We should all hope that in doing his research he will find the same success in 2019 and other future drafts.

Now, who do I think will be the right fit at #10 in terms of ability and character? Of course it’s a crap-shoot as always but I’ll throw out three names that both make some sense and have been rumored to have peeked the interest of the big wigs at Dove Valley.

Devin White

White is a guy I have liked since the regular season ended and the discussion about this draft class began. He’s crazy fast and athletic for an ILB and won the Butkus award as the top LB in the NCAA last season. He was also a full-time captain for his sophomore season and thus clearly shows the ability to be a leader both on and off the field. Love it.

Drew Lock

I have not been so hot about Lock, but he does appear to be a guy with very good leadership skills and a fantastic personality. He is a media darling and would be a really good “face of the franchise” and that together with his big arm and ability to make all the throws does, in fact, put him on my list of guys the Broncos should look at. That said, I firmly believe that he’s not a top-ten talent and I don’t think that the Broncos will select him that high.

Ed Oliver

Oliver may be my favorite personality in the whole list of top 10 candidates. He claims that his absurd strength and toughness come from “being a country boy” and working with horses since he was a kid. He’s a big-nasty guy, but many experts think he hasn’t even scratched the surface of his abilities, and with proper coaching, he could become a monster talent. He’s humble, hard-working and perfectly fits my idea of a guy with the right “locker-room morality.” Oliver would do things the right way and that would be a great addition to this team.

Of course there are many other players who could fall to 10 that may fit the bill and there’s always the possibility that the team trades back in the draft.

But these are three guys that very possibly may be the future star of the Denver Broncos.

Who would you pick?

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