Without the stats, without the incident, without the work ethic rumors going around, he’s a sure-shot pick worthy of being selected anywhere from 1-3…1-5….he wouldn’t last long.
He may be worth the risk. If PC and JS take him, I’ll assume he is as they’ve surely done their homework.
But……where there’s smoke, there’s fire. I imagine that we are one of a handful of teams that have been bit recently by selecting a guy, particularly D-linemen, that had “attachments” pre-draft.
Personally, just based off conjecture, I’m passing and grabbing Richardson at 5. Huge risk…bigger reward and the only questions he has attached to him are mechanics and fundamentals. I know I can work on those with the amount of time I’d have before him seeing the field.
But if you take a guy that doesn’t love the game or is having work ethic issues, it doesn’t matter how dominant they are when they’re on the field. It will come back to haunt you.
I say conjecture….but even with the incident he was involved in, I don’t see how a top tier pick doesn’t want to tear up the combine and/or comes in heavier and out of shape at his own Pro-Day. Most of those kids work their asses off for those events…even more so than what they did in school.
I have sympathy for the situation he was in and can’t imagine loosing friends in something where I was a participant doing dumb stuff.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t flags though…