Rams Set The Pace In First Day Of Nfl Draft Heisman Trophy Winner Wuerffel Still Waiting
Some of college football’s biggest stars had plenty of time to kill at the NFL draft.
Danny Wuerffel and Troy Davis, 1-2 in Heisman Trophy voting, were available through the first two rounds Saturday, and several big campus heroes had to wait until the second round to hear their names called.
That was not the case for Orlando Pace.
Pace - the biggest name and one of the biggest in size at 6-foot-7, 340 pounds - was taken No. 1 by the St. Louis Rams, as expected. He is the first offensive lineman taken No. 1 in 29 years - since Minnesota went for Ron Yary with the top pick in 1968.
The Seattle Seahawks seemed to reap the most from this draft, trading up to get two of the top six picks - cornerback Shawn Springs, Pace’s Ohio State teammate, and offensive tackle Walter Jones of Florida State.
San Francisco, shopping for a young quarterback for the first time after nearly two decades of Joe Montana and Steve Young, took Virginia Tech’s Jim Druckenmiller with the 26th pick of the first round.
But Jake Plummer, the Arizona State quarterback who took the Sun Devils to within a game of the national championship, didn’t go until 42nd overall, staying at home as the second-round pick of the Arizona Cardinals, who play in Sun Devil Stadium.
Plummer was in the middle of a second-round run that included Texas Tech’s Byron Hanspard, a 2,000-yard rusher for Texas Tech, who went to Atlanta; Corey Dillon of Washington, who went to Cincinnati after a series of teen-age arrests hurt his NFL stock; and Joey Kent, Peyton Manning’s favorite receiver at Tennessee, who went to Houston.
Then, with the 52nd overall choice, Buffalo took the draft’s worst kept secret - Marcellus Wiley of Columbia, a 280-pound defensive end who entered college as a 195-pound running back.
Wuerffel was still waiting to be picked after the first three rounds.
Davis, the Iowa State running back, was finally chosen by New Orleans with the second pick of the third round.
George Young, the New York Giants’ general manager, used college achievement to justify his team’s choice of Florida wide receiver Ike Hilliard, Wuerffel’s favorite target, with the seventh overall pick.
“The guy is a real good player on a national championship team, and on national television before 100 million people he had as good a game as a wide receiver has ever had,” Young said, referring to Florida’s win over Florida State in the Sugar Bowl. “Seven catches for 150 yards to win a national championship. You want to say that’s a surprise pick? I beg your pardon.”
Not only was the draft big for the Seahawks, it was a big draft for offensive linemen, cornerbacks, Florida State, Ohio State, the state of Florida, and El Camino High School in Oceanside, Calif., where cornerbacks Bryant Westbrook of Texas and Michael Booker of Nebraska were teammates. Westbrook was chosen fifth overall by Detroit and Booker went 11th to Atlanta.
Four of the top 11 picks were corners and three were offensive linemen.
Pace and Springs gave Ohio State the first and third picks in the draft. Florida State had four of the top 14: Peter Boulware by Baltimore at No. 4; Jones by Seattle at No. 6; Warrick Dunn by Tampa Bay at No. 12; and defensive end Reinard Wilson at No. 14 by Cincinnati, which is expected to make him a linebacker.
Nine of the top 18 picks played at Florida colleges - two at Florida and three at Miami, in addition to the Florida State contingent.
The first round delivered a fitting theme for this era of franchise free agency - step right up, grab some top players and hope they help keep the team from moving.
That’s exactly what the Seahawks did, putting themselves in the spotlight of a draft that produced few surprises.
They even got a little help from Bill Parcells and the New York Jets, whose second trade of the first round helped the Seahawks land the sixth pick overall.
Seattle’s two high picks capped a very productive offseason for the Seahawks, who signed linebacker Chad Brown and cornerback Willie Williams from Pittsburgh.
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: TODAY ON TV 8 a.m.: NFL draft, final four rounds (ESPN)