OK, I’ll admit it, like you, I never really watch offensive linemen. Neither do any other football writers-- they just say they do because, well, linemen do occupy nearly half of the 11 spots on the offensive unit, and it makes us seem like we know more than we really do.
The problem with watching them is two-fold: 1) it makes watching paint dry seem like a Six Flags trip; and 2) focusing on them means not focusing on the ball.
Like a referee, a secret service agent, or your home’s plumbing, you really only notice a lineman when he’s not doing his job well. He’s the 340-pound guy trying to look invisible near the edge of the TV feed while the guy who trampled him is front and center mid-sack dance.
I’ve never watched Ereck Flowers play football, both because, as I said, I don’t watch linemen, and since his school, the University of Miami, basically dropped off the gridiron map at the end of the 20th century.
I do know Flowers, whom the Giants selected Thursday night with the ninth overall pick in the NFL Draft, is enormous -- 6 feet 6 inches tall, 329 pounds -- and that he runs the 40 faster than I can. In my defense, I’m twice his age. I’m half his size.
I also know that the Giants shouldn’t have drafted him, at least not with the draft pick that they did. I understand that the lineman they wanted most, Iowa’s Brandon Scherff, was gone by their turn (though that was hardly a surprise), and that general manager Jerry Reese and coach Tom Coughlin are very high on the potential of the just-turned-21-year-old Flowers.
But there’s simply no good reason to draft a player at nine that you can get at 19. A host of teams didn’t have Flowers ranked as one of the draft’s top 20 prospects. So why not trade down with one of them, accrue additional picks and/or players -- something a team coming off a 6-10 year sorely needs-- and draft Flowers at a later slot?
By not doing so, Reese committed an unpardonable sin: surrendering value at the most important time of the year for team-building.
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Of course, if Flowers turns out to be the kind of player the GM and coach expect, no one will care in a few years when he was drafted. But if the Giants played it right and traded down, they’d have come out of it with several young prospects to pin their hopes on, instead of just one.
