On Manti:
1]. he was a truly great college football player who earned every award he got; and he was a truly great person despite being painfully socially naive and sheltered [paradoxically] by his culture, religion, introspective personality;
2]. college accolades mean exactly ZERO to NFL GMs. They are not emotional fools but football-savvy businessmen; Te'os future election to the college football Hall-of-Fame [anyone doubt it?] means nothing to them [and shouldn't];
3]. the soap opera which stuff people, even on this board [weirdly], continue to mention, also means nothing to the GMs. It has been thoroughly vetted by the best NFL insider commenters that the GMs have NO issues with Manti Te'o's "character". Why even IE members continue to ignore this frequently stated fact is puzzling;
4]. It is well-known that ILBs rarely are drafted in the first round, just like TEs are rarely so. Tyler Eifert broke the mold just because he is a total stud who is riding the wave of an NFL offensive philosophy revolution. I'm not sure if any other TE did. Te'o did not break the mold and we were warned many times as to why.
Despite all our love for Manti, the more realistic among us knew for quite some time that his coverage skills [though improved somewhat --- don't throw the number of intercepts out there as a contrary; closely evaluate each of those and you will see that, though good plays, almost none were because of NFL speed] were deficient on the elite scale.
Commentators going into the draft were divided into two almost equal groups --- those who deeply liked Manti as a person and were rooting for him [Kiper, Gruden, Mayock], and those who didn't who would irritate us by saying that he was not a three-down linebacker "and you don't draft those in the first round".
5]. Manti has fallen victim to the same problem that Kelly is trying to address at the elite college level: The defenses will be spread by the offenses and every position on the defense will have to cover more space [except Big Lou, who "covers significant space" just as he is]. Kuechley is the "new" middle linebacker. Te'o is the old. They are both the best of their breed.
Manti will be drafted and he will play a lot of NFL ball. Unless he can prove that his instincts can make up for his deficiency in speed-into-space coverage, he will "only" be a great run-stopping ILB [and blitzer; and "intuitive" screen blower-upper], but not an intermediate distance pass-deflector. This is why he is in the second round, not Lannae Kekua or some other baloney.
