That's right: It's time for 2012 NFL Mock Draft makers to play their yearly game of attempting to value pretty-good quarterbacks and wide receivers along the same continuum as great cornerbacks. Last year Patrick Peterson, the consensus best-player-in-the-draft, went fifth overall to the Arizona Cardinals; this year Morris Claiborne, fresh off LSU football's unpleasant finish to the season, will go anywhere after the top two spots in the draft, if recent mocks are any indication.
SB Nation's mid-January mock draft has him going third, to a Minnesota Vikings team that needs a cornerback way more than it needs a quarterback; the week before he went fifth to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
As for Claiborne himself, who intercepted six passes as a junior after picking five his sophomore year, mock drafters haven't seemed quite as high on him as they were on Peterson—but he also has Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III to deal with, who have successfully sucked even more air out of the room than Cam Newton managed a year ago.