Turf Show Times‘s 2011 NFL Mock Draft coverage moves on today to Mel Kiper’s latest mock draft, which offers a tough scenario for the St. Louis Rams. A.J. Green and Julio Jones are gone, in this scenario, and TST favorites Mark Ingram and Aldon Smith aren’t his choice—it’s Illinois DT Corey Liuget.
Offensive-minded Mock Draft watchers—Kiper “suspects” that the Rams would target Julio Jones in any scenario in which he’s still on the board. With that in mind, he offers them a chance to pick up some depth on the defensive line with Fred Robbins and James Hall not getting any younger.
TST’s 3k, for his part, can understand the coiffed one’s reasoning, but with Smith and other defensive ends on the board he can’t quite justify going after an interior lineman. In any case, it looks like the consensus pick if Jones leaves the board early is a youth-infusion for the defensive line, be it a matched bookend for Chris Long or a youthful rotation partner at DT.