Clark Judge has a fascinating interview with Chiefs GM Scott Pioli over at CBSSports.com. Pioli had a nice rundown of all the Chiefs draft picks giving his thoughts on the pick and the strategy behind it.
Instead of writing a few thousand words here, I'm going to break the interview up into a few stories. I love this sort of talk about draft strategy.
Up first is the selection of Eric Berry.
The most interesting part of Pioli's words, in my mind at least, is that the Chiefs were considering two players with the fifth pick.
They felt they knew how the first three picks were going to go down but the Redskins were the wildcard. Pioli said after the Redskins pick, they knew one of their top-rated players would be there. That would insinuate OT Trent Williams, picked fourth by the Redskins, wasn't in the mix.
Ultimately, they decided on Berry. Todd Haley previously indicated that the Chiefs had known for some time that Berry was going to be their guy.
We think he's a dynamic player at a position where, as a staff, we felt that during different times of the year having more speed and tackling at that position would've helped our defense. The coaches had done a study about the number of big plays we had given up and how that position was responsible for it.
And of course he touched on Berry being an upstanding individual. The Chiefs seemingly focused on character this draft and Berry fits the mold.
So, who do you think is the other player the Chiefs were considering?