There are a few ways, when reading the 2011 NFL Mock Draft tea leaves, to tell if your team has stumbled upon a particularly bad run of draft luck. One is when your GM has made so many bad decisions that mock drafters have begun picking as though they had the same fetish—even now, with Matt Millen banished for good from the front office, I'm surprised when mockers don't saddle the Detroit Lions with a malcontent wide receiver with great physical tools. Jonathan Baldwin is still on the board! Another is when one of your picks becomes a negative comparison of first resort. Enter the St. Louis Rams—Wisconsin workout star J.J. Watt is being compared to none other than Adam Carriker.
It's almost flattering that the Rams come up so quickly. Carriker still has a lot of career left, and a change of scenery typically entitles a former bust to at least a year-and-a-half without being labeled, well, a bust. So maybe Wes Bunting isn't suggesting that Watt is the kind of player who's especially likely to be played out of position and then get hurt.