LAOJoe & RTTRUTH's 12th Annual Collaborative Mock Draft

Los Angeles Rams 2021 Draft

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1. O-Line Improvement/Depth
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3(24) Josh Myers / Ohio State -- Weakest spot on the offensive line gets a new starter. Strong, smart, and mobile. Will fit in beautifully in McVay's creative offense.
UDFA Landon Young / Kentucky -- Will compete in camp for a depth spot, likely swing tackle. Shows enough mobility and strength to win a roster spot.

2. Second Level Defensive Help
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2(28) Ronnie Perkins / Oklahoma -- The up-and-coming alpha in the pass-rush group. Can provide enough pressure to help this team push for SB this year. Him and Floyd should be a nice combo.
4(28) Cameron McGrone / Michigan -- I think he's immediately the #1 inside for us at LB. I really like this kid's chances. Watch the Goal-line highlight vs Wisconsin. We need more of that.
6(25) Tre Brown / Oklahoma -- Can provide KR depth and provide early nickel/dime depth. A competitive kid who ups the talent level on the CB depth chart.
7(27) Amen Ogbongbemiga / Oklahoma St -- Another athletic kid fighting for a roster spot at a position that could use competition. Has a puncher's chance.
UDFA DeAngelo Malone / WKU -- Hyper athletic, undersized but bendy rusher. Pass-rush specialist if he can win a roster spot. Possibly practice squad candidate this year.

3. Stay Creative Offensively
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3(34) Anthony Schwartz / Auburn -- "Mr. Pro-day" put on a show. Has the instincts and speed game to keep this offense humming. Might be a starter down the line.
7(24) Jacob Harris / UCF -- Another pro-day superstar. Might be TE depth, possibly WR depth. My thoughts are he fights for the #3 TE spot. Receiving weapon only for now. Needs weight.

 

Washington Signs
RB - Brenden Knox, Marshall
DB - Lawrence White, Iowa State

Arizona Signs
DB - Jerry Jacobs, Arkansas
WR - T.J. Vasher, Texas Tech

 

Indianapolis Colts 2021 Draft

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** Trading back from 1(21) netted me a 3rd (33) and an extra 2nd Rounder in 2022 (LAC) that will help replace the assets lost in acquiring Carson Wentz

1. New LT/ O-Line Depth
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2(10) Liam Eichenberg / Notre Dame -- Our left tackle of the present and future. I think this is Indy's BEST option, trade back for value, grab Eichenberg or Radunz.
6(44) Robert Jones / Middle Tennessee -- Natural on the move. Shows natural strength. Developmental G who can battle for depth spot inside.

2. Receiving Options: Present and Future
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2(22) Pat Freiermuth / Penn State -- Our TE1 of the future. Will immediately step into #2 role. Talented and fell further than expected.
3(33) D'Wayne Eskridge / Western Michigan -- I loved this kid's tape. If I try to imagine what T.Y. Hilton's college tape looked like, I'm guessing pretty similar to Eskridge. Plays bigger than his size.
6(24) Nick Eubanks / Michigan -- The Colts have run lots of 3TE sets. Eubanks will likely hold down the 4th spot this year while he learns the game. Love his athletic profile.

3. Mine for Cheap Depth
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5(21) Elerson Smith / Northern Iowa -- Has some serious pass-rush potential. Between his tape, Senior bowl performance, and pro-day numbers, I'll take that chance all day.
7(13) Lorenzo Neal / Purdue -- Late round upside pick. I think he can be a quality backup at 1-tech behind Grover Stewart.
UDFA Antonio Phillips / Ball State -- Just an athletic, feisty specimen. We'll bring him into camp in hopes his tenacity can win a job. Physical as hell on tape. Probably should gain weight.
UDFA Romeo McKnight / Illinois State -- Odd testing numbers. 38' in the vert. Looks explosive on tape. Worth a flier to see if he can prove it in camp.

 

Seattle Seahawks 2021 Draft​

** Started with 3 picks total. Traded back from 2(24) to add two picks.

1. Protect Danger-Russ
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6(41) Kayode Awosika / Buffalo -- Powerful, smooth mover who played tackle in college. Could potentially win a depth spot at Tackle or Guard. Built like a Seattle lineman.
7(22) Ben Mason / Michigan -- Gets comparisons to Kyle Juszczyk. Hawks can appreciate that. Can help protect Russ and build up the run game. Short yardage battering ram also.
UDFA Ryan McCollum / Texas A&M -- Has experience at G and C. Built a bit like Ethan Pocic who the Hawks have drafted previously. Shows some power. Roster spots available on this team.

2. Improve the Defense
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3 (6) Daviyon Nixon / Iowa -- Strong presence inside. Can play the run or rush the passer. Needs to improve consistency. Takes up the hole Jarran Reed left.
4(24) Keith Taylor / Washington -- Physical corner that will compete at the catch point. Small reach, but that's a classic Seattle pick. Had a great Senior Bowl. Made the radar. We need help there.
UDFA Bryce Thompson / Tennessee -- Competitive CB that reacts quickly to what's underneath. Physical in press. Has a chance to win a role in an unproven roster group.

3. Add to Receiving Group
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4(18) Seth Williams / Auburn -- Can't think of a guy in this class built more similarly to Metcalf than Seth. He's the immediate backup there, and Carroll can find a role for him where needed. Competes run blocking. Needs to improve route running/tree and improve consistency, but there's a good amount of talent to be found here.

 

I'll post auto-signings sometime tonight. You can sign guys until I get to it.

 

Jaret Patterson undrafted? Wow.

EDIT: And Roundtree and Mitchell. That's surprising.

 

Yeah I wanted to take Patterson a couple times. But RB just isn't a big need for us. Always felt like there was an OL or WR we needed more.

 

Wow... I just got an email that my order for a 16TB hard drive was canceled due to a "severe shortage". And the smaller drive that I would have ordered as a replacement is listed as backordered.

I'd assume that this is related to the ongoing CPU shortage, and it seems like it's getting worse rather than better.

I had planned to take a lot of older computer gear for recycling this year and replace them all with one new Ryzen-based system. But the new CPUs are ridiculously expensive due to the shortage, and getting true on-board graphics on the motherboard isn't an option with the Ryzen chips. So you HAVE to have a separate graphics card, and the shortage has hit those even worse.

I guess this summer I will once again be indulging in my hobby of overhauling older gear and making it into functional "contemporary" computer equipment. But I suspect there will be a heck of a lot of that going on, so it will probably be harder than usual to get those extra parts (such as USB3 and SATA controller cards) to make it happen.

 

(Modern hard drives do have small motherboards with built in controllers. I don't know if the processors on those boards are what's causing the sudden unavailability of the drives, but it's a prime suspect.)

So if you've heard about the likelihood of vehicle shortages this year, I'd say expect it to be worse than you've heard. New cars and rental cars will be extremely difficult to come by, and used car prices are likely to spike more than they already have.

 

What graphics cards do you need?

 

Well, I don't at the moment, because I'm not going to be building any new Ryzen-based systems to replace the older gear after all. Most of the things I do aren't video intensive. I can usually make things work even with the old 128-meg cards.

One of the things I was planning to do this summer was finally retire and recycle four ancient motherboards with AGP slots for graphics cards. Yes, they're still running - and except for the graphics limitations, they're still functional as computers. But AGP instead of PCI-E is now a show-stopper for a Windows-based system. The cards out there are typically 128 meg or smaller. I have a few 256 and 512, but many of the boards can't make them run under Windows anyway. Might be because AGP was from the days of DirectX 8, and for the most part there aren't dedicated drivers to make any of those cards work under WIn 10.

They still work just fine under Linux though, and the motherboards can be brought up to date if you so choose. It's typical for the boards of that era to have two SATA ports on board and two legacy PCI card slots along with the AGP slot. Full sized ATX boards have more - and probably have other obsolete slots like a CNR or even ISA.

But as an example, I have several AM2-based boards from around 2007. They support dual core, 2.6 gHz CPUs and 4 GB of DDR2 memory. They have two SATA ports on board = SSD for the operating system plus either an optical drive (Bluray burner) or larger storage drive. One of the PCI slots can take a controller card adding four more SATA ports.

So the two limiting factors are the AGP graphics and the lack of USB3. And if I really, really wanted it, I could shell out about $60 for a PCI-based USB3 controller card for that other card slot. It wouldn't be full USB3 speed (the PCI bus isn't that fast) but it would be much, much faster than USB2. I would only need it for large file transfers though, and I can do that through hot-swappable drives instead of USB3.

 

Huh?

 

I got lucky building my bro's PC. We got the 3060ti on release date and returned a 5700xt that was yet to be shipped that cost the same price.

Canadian prices of my bro's build https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/9nhJt8

 

I was looking forward to last year's new generation of Ryzen chips with on-board graphics. But they were never made available to the general market - only to the system manufacturers. Specs for the next generation are looking fantastic, but I can't see them hitting the market anytime soon.

And in a sense, those chips make the issue worse rather than better. In the days of AM2 and AM3 CPUs, the mATX and mITX motherboards always had their own on-board graphics. But now that some of the CPUs are system on chip with built in graphics of their own, the graphics connectors on the boards are dedicated to the graphics output that MIGHT be coming from the CPU.

I don't know of any Ryzen-compatible motherboards that you can actually purchase at the moment that have true on-board video. So now anyone building one of those systems has to add a separate graphics controller.

 

Translation: trying to build your own new desktop computer will likely run you $1500-2000 right now, if you want to build a good one.

So finding ways to hot-rod the outdated stuff suddenly makes a lot more sense. I do it anyway just for fun - sort of like rebuilding an older car. What I do is the computer equivalent of overhauling a 1974 Dodge Dart and trying to bring it into the 21st century.

 

That nails the problem on the head. That graphics card all by itself cost as much as the CPU, motherboard, memory and one SSD drive combined.

 

Ya they are expensive but a GPU costs the TOTAL if you can't get them MSRP. We got that MSRP.

 

Translation for RT... if you have to buy a separate graphics card, you're lucky if you only get screwed on the price...

 

Felton is a RB, though he does have excellent receiving skills...

 

I got lucky and managed to buy some AM1 CPUs and motherboards right before they were discontinued (which officially happened when pre-orders for Ryzen CPUs began).

I have been tempted at times to sell off some of that stuff, because those thing go for more now than they did when they were new.

They're a bit funky if you weren't familiar with them. The architecture was renamed AM1 to fit in with the rest of the line. It was actually around at the same time as AM3/AM3+. The idea was to push a low-energy system on a chip, where the CPU controlled everything. Completely the opposite of a gaming or mining system, but for a while it was gaining popularity for home theater.

The CPU itself had on-board graphics along with a controller for 2 SATA devices. The later chips went up to 4-core, 2.2 gHz speed - and still stayed under 25 watts TDP. For a while Intel was pushing a similar strategy with some of the Core i3 chips. Then Ryzen and the next generation of i7 hit the market and everyone was back to MORE POWER!!

But in those later days while AM1 was still available, I was able to get a 4-core 2.0 gHz CPU and a mITX motherboard as a combo deal for $40. These particular mITX boards had an extra SATA controller on board, so they run 4 devices instead of 2. They also have the USB3 header for front-side USB ports. So even though they only have the one PCI-E slot (the mITX form factor is tiny), you really don't need it. The graphics are fine for normal usage and even home theater.

What is really crazy about those CPUs is that you can actually get a passive CPU cooler (just a heat sink) for it. My favorite build for those systems uses the Cooler Master "Elite 130" case (nothing really elite about it at all - it's a big clunky box, which is why I like it) that has a small intake fan on one side, towards the rear. That fan blows directly onto the big metal heatsink. I've had that setup running a mem test, and the heat sink was still cool to the touch. Amazing.

By contrast, a Ryzen or i7 without active cooling would probably fry in less than five seconds. Touching the heatsink would necessitate a trip to the emergency room.