The Seahawks were very quiet for much of the opening night of the draft since they did not have a pick until the end of the second round. Where did their 1st round pick go, you ask? Well, they traded it with their center, Max Unger, for a little known player named Jimmy Graham (more on him later). Much of their draft was spent on defensive players as they have lost a bit the past few years via free agency The three defensive linemen that they nabbed all look solid, particularly 2nd round pick, Frank Clark from Michigan. The most notable draftee, in my opinion, was WR Tyler Lockett from Kansas State. He is a playmaker and will find a home returning kicks and working the slot right away for Seattle. 슬롯사이트
Non-draft moves of note include adding DB Will Blackmon from Jacksonville. Funny thing, Seattle cut him 2 years ago when he wasn’t good enough to make the team out of training camp. With Kam Chancellor, Earl Thomas and Richard Sherman roaming the secondary, lessor DBs tend to look a little better. After talk of retirement, RB Marshawn Lynch is back to inflict lots of pain on opposing defenses, when given the ball. Fans are hoping that QB Russell Wilson’s contract differences don’t carry over to this season especially since he has a brand new toy in Jimmy Graham. I did like the way TE Luke Willson played down the stretch last year, but Jimmy Graham immediately makes a massive difference on this team. He is now THE big play threat that the Seahawks have been lacking. After damn near starting a different QB every game last year due to injuries, the Cardinals focused on protecting their QB and helping out their run game by drafting OT D. J. Humphries from Florida with their first pick after they picked up G Mike Lupati in free agency. After that, they addressed the defensive line by adding defensive linemen with three of their next four picks, DE Markus Golden from Missouri being the top choice with their 2nd pick.
They are rolling the dice that their current crop of RBs stays healthy or hope that their 3rd round pick, RB David Johnson from Northern Iowa, is ready for the pro game. For a smallish guy myself, ya gotta like a player like J. J. Nelson getting drafted. Granted, he has 4. 3 speed, but he is listed at 5’10” 160lbs! It will be entertaining to see opposing defenses try to locate him when he is on the loose. I certainly hope that the Cardinals can stay healthy this year. My favorite receiver, Larry Fitzgerald, isn’t getting any younger. Also, it would be nice to see WR Michael Floyd deliver on his potential. He was supposed to take a step forward towards All-Pro last year but the injuries at QB put a lid on his season. Except, of course, that Robert Lloyd is a central character in an alternative, off the record history of popular music! Even when you allow for the group’s seven Peel Sessions and their unanticipated longevity, the spotlight has barely creased the brummie singer’s brow, let alone lingered there for the full fifteen minutes! Lloyd, despite making a series of wonderfully abrasive post-punk albums and writing a plethora of incendiary pop tunes over a 40 years period, remains completely invisible to the population at large. This is despite the fact that you could make an excellent case for Robert Lloyd being the best British lyricist of his generation. If you were to imagine a spectrum of pop wordsmiths stretching from Lennon and McCartney to Alex Turner and Ben Drew, incorporating the likes of Ray Davies, Kate Bush, Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, Billy Bragg, Mark E. Smith, Morrissey, and P. J Harvey, then you’d have all the bases covered. Yet none, in my opinion, are the equal of Lloyd. When the band re-formed in 2004, after a 15 year hiatus, which Lloyd spent mainly working as a Postman, the “comeback” album “Out of True” (2006) saw the band pick up exactly where they left off, with a bellicose Lloyd demonstrating that he still had the stomach for the fight on tracks like “Born Again in Birmingham”, “Let’s Talk about Living” (Single of the Week on BBC 6) and the gigantic slab of glam rock that is “Taking Away the Stigma of Free School Dinners”, each being as good as anything they’d ever committed to vinyl in their heyday. “Out of True” also proved that Lloyd hadn’t lost his eye for toe-curling character assassination either, as the devastating ballad “Black Country” highlights,