Bottom of the Bird Cage 4/22
It’s Day No. 112 of the year.
Born on April 22, 1922 on a U.S. Army base in Nogales, Arizona was Charlie Mingus, one of the great jazz musicians in history. Mingus played the bass like nobody before or since. He was also incredible prolific as a writer and composer and his discography would take months to listen to all the works. He suffered from depression and ALS late in life and died in January 1979.
Mingus also had one of the great lines of all time:
“Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.”
Born on April 22, 1937 was actor Jack Nicholson. On April 22, 1984 the great photographer Ansel Adams passed away. A decade later, former President Richard Nixon died.
And on April 22, 2004, former Arizona Cardinals safety Pat Tillman (left) was killed by friendly fire in the mountains of Afghanistan. He was 27 years old.
The bird cage stays in the AFC West today with a pre-draft bent.
From the San Diego Union-Tribune:
Midas’ touch has gone cold, not quite turning out fool’s gold but perhaps at times generating a lesser metal than the pure bullion of 2004 and ‘05. There was a time not too long ago that the widespread perception was that Chargers General Manager A.J. Smith could practically do no wrong.
The Philip Rivers-Eli Manning trade and entire 2004 draft. Shawne Merriman. Antonio Cromartie. Luis Castillo. Chris Chambers. Keenan McCardell and Roman Oben. But the past year or so has brought a spell of unfulfilled promise. Buster Davis. Anthony Waters. Antonio Cromartie. Luis Castillo. An 8-8 record.
Smith has acknowledged publicly that he needs to do a better job in personnel decisions and that this team he’s built is not quite capable of “competing with the big boys.”
Three years ago the Chargers were on the cusp of greatness. Smith had done a good job of building the roster from the draft. The team was young, talented and all signed to contracts that ended four or five years out. Then, Smith’s ego got in the way and he couldn’t get along with Marty Schottenheimer. He convinced ownership to pull the plug on Marty. I know it’s convenient to believe Schottenheimer couldn’t win in the playoffs and it’s hard to argue with the record. But with previous teams in Cleveland and Kansas City, he did not have the type of talent that was in San Diego. Schottenheimer certainly did not have a quarterback with the skills of Phillip Rivers when he as in Kansas City. The NFL Draft travels two avenues. First, there’s the recognition of talent and potential. Second, there’s working to take advantage of that talent and make that potential come true. Drafting is never done in a vacuum.
From the San Francisco Chronicle: Raiders running back Darren McFadden had a wonderful whirl through college, and he chased it with a promising start to his NFL career. It was that rickety bridge between the two play stations, those few months between the Cotton Bowl and the fourth pick of the NFL draft, where McFadden faced a most magnified misery.
“That’s the most up-and-down part there is about the whole thing,” McFadden said with a bitter shaking of the head. “People build you up and then drag you down. It’s very frustrating but, at the same time, leading all the way up to the draft, they’re going to critique you to the T.”
McFadden got his happy ending when the Raiders dismissed any and all character red flags - from the Little Rock bar fights to the multiple paternity suits - and embraced him in last year’s opening round.
Keep that in mind when the Raiders pick again this year with the No. 7 overall pick of Saturday’s NFL draft. Thanks to a new batch of five-star attractions with their own issues, the Raiders can choose again from several players with no business still being on the board beyond the top five.
Former Raiders coach Jon Gruden said this week that Oakland needs to get some targets for JaMarcus Russell. Hard to believe but it appears quite true. Over the years, Al Davis has loved collecting receivers, especially guys that run very fast. The Raiders always believed they could teach players how to catch. Turns out that didn’t work very well. Oakland was 5-11 last year, its sixth losing season in a row. Like the Chiefs, they need help everywhere.
From the Denver Post:
Watch Brian Orakpo walk through a room and it’s hard not to be impressed. At 6-foot-3 and 263 pounds, Orakpo, who played defensive end at Texas, already looks the part of a prototypical NFL outside linebacker. A guy in the mold of San Diego defensive menace Shawne Merriman or Dolphins’ star Joey Porter. A guy NFL coaches and executives hope can terrorize quarterbacks for years, regardless of whether he plays as a down lineman in a traditional 4-3 or as a linebacker in the 3-4.
“In a perfect world, I just want to rush the passer, first through fourth down,” Orakpo said at the NFL combine. “Any position where I can be effective doing what I naturally do best — and that’s getting after the passer and affecting him. It’s not all about the sacks, it’s all about pressure.”
After recording only 26 sacks last season — an average of 1.6 per game — the Broncos desperately need players who can create that type of pressure. And in the conversion to a 3-4 defensive scheme, that pass rush will come from the outside linebackers. In the team’s first mini-camp for veteran players last weekend, former linemen Darrell Reid, Elvis Dumervil, Tim Crowder and Jarvis Moss all took reps at outside linebacker, but none are proven yet in that role.
Good thing, then, that the upcoming draft appears to be well-stocked with pass-rushing linebackers and collegiate defensive ends who are projected as stand-up players in the pros.
Josh McDaniels can bring the Patriots offense to the Rockies and score a lot of points, but until Denver puts a defense on the field that can be explosive in its own right, the Broncos will struggle to win. The only reason last year’s Denver defense was not the worst in the AFC West was the horrible overall performance of the Chiefs. With two first-round picks, the tendency for the Broncos will be to take one on offense, one on defense. If they were smart, they would go defense, defense with the first-round picks.
I agree, Id love for them to deal their picks so that they cant take two outstanding value defensive players at 12 and 18…
Could get a Tyson Jackson then a James Laurenitus….those two players> than anyone you can take at 3-4…value wise.
My dream is that they would trade US those two picks for our #3, so they could take Sanchez. And then WE could take the “two outstanding value defensive players at 12 and 18″.
Yeah, I know…dream on.