http://www.profootballweekly.com/2010/03/1...10-wr-prospects

Third in a nine-part series.

What follows is PFW draft analyst Nolan Nawrocki's exclusive ranking of the top 10 wide receivers in the 2010 NFL draft, with an in-depth scouting report detailing each prospect's positives, negatives, summary and projected draft spot. These reports have been excerpted from PFW's 2010 Draft Preview, scheduled for a March 30 release.

1. WR-PR Dez Bryant
Oklahoma State junior
Ht: 6-2 | Wt: 225 | Sp: 4.5e | Arm: 34 | Hand: 9 3/4

Notes: Parade All-American whose tenuous academic standing scared off some schools until late in the process. Committed to Oklahoma State in large part because of its early interest and assistant coach Gunter Brewer's association with Randy Moss (Brewer coached Moss at Marshall). Bryant was born to a teenage mother who had three children by age 18 and sold drugs to get by (she spent 18 months in jail when Dez was 8). Endured an unstable upbringing and was placed in special education classes as a high school freshman because of a learning disability. It was around that time when he left his mother and moved in with his father (who is nearly 30 years older than his mother) and stepmother. In October of 2008, Bryant's high school coach told the New York Times, "I've taken him to probably six or seven different places he called home. It wasn't an ideal family situation. He was from trailer to trailer and house to house." Combative and stubborn during his high school years, Bryant was kicked out of the house and moved in with his girlfriend at the time before qualifying academically. Played in 12 games (three starts) as a true freshman in '07, catching 43 balls for 622 yards (14.5-yard average) and six touchdowns with two punt returns for 15 yards (7.5) and zero TDs. Was suspended for the Florida Atlantic contest for being late to team meetings. Started all 13 games at the flanker spot in '08, racking up 87-1,480-19 (17.0) receiving (113.9 yards per game) and 17-305-2 (17.9) on punt returns. Also returned four kickoffs for 100 yards (25.0). Took a shot under the chin on the first series against Missouri but returned after being checked for concussion symptoms. Piled up 13-167-1 against Oregon in the Holiday Bowl before incurring a small ligament tear in his left knee and having worn a brace to play through it. Had the knee surgically repaired in January '09 and did not participate in spring practice. In the fall, saw action in three games - managed 17-323-4 (19.0) receiving, 3-111-1 (37.0) returning punts and 2-43 (21.5) returning kickoffs before the NCAA imposed a season-long suspension for lying about his relationship with Deion Sanders, who was under suspicion of courting Bryant as a potential client for agent Eugene Parker.

Positives: Exceptionally competitive gamer. Attacks the ball in the air with very strong hands and very long arms to sky over defensive backs, highpoint the ball and pluck it out of the air. Catches in stride and immediately turns into a running back, sifting through traffic and creating after the catch - very good run vision and instincts. Does not go down easily. Can bend and sink into his routes and adjusts well to the low ball. Can make the acrobatic circus catch and one-handed snags and will lay out parallel to the ground and sacrifice his body to haul it in. Tracks the deep ball extremely well. Outstanding hand-eye coordination and body control. Will cross the middle and has shown he can take a hit. Has a feel for coverage and keeps working to uncover.

Negatives: Is not a crafty route runner. Will make some concentration drops. Not overly elusive after the catch. Too naïve and immature. Many big gains came on improvised, broken plays in a simplified offense, and he may require an adjustment period to an NFL offense. Missed most of his last season after making questionable decisions and is too easily influenced and too much of a follower. Needs to learn what it means to be a pro and become more accountable. Too unreliable and does not show enough respect for the game.

Summary: A terrific game-day competitor with immaturity issues that could sidetrack a brilliant career if he does not learn that he will not be able to get by on his natural talent alone at the pro level. Appeared heavier and less agile as a junior than he did early in his career and showed up at the Combine at a bulked-up 225 pounds and did not work out. Proved he could be a difference maker from Day One in college and has the physical traits to become a dominating, No. 1 receiver if he figures out the meaning of hard work.

NFL projection: Top-15 pick.



2. WR Demaryius Thomas
Georgia Tech junior
Ht: 6-3 1/4 | Wt: 224 | Sp: 4.5e | Arm: 33 | Hand: 10 1/2
Notes: Also ran track and played on a state championship basketball team as a prep. Committed to then-head coach Chan Gailey and redshirted in 2006. Played in all 13 games in '07, starting nine, and recorded 35 receptions for 558 yards (15.9-yard average) and four touchdowns. In '08, was the primary receiver in head coach Paul Johnson's triple-option offense, starting all 12 games in which he played. Totaled 39-627-3 (16.1) with two rushes for 29 yards (14.5). Did not play against Virginia Tech (concussion). Started all 14 games in '09, producing 46-1,154-8 (25.1). Broke his left foot in February and required surgery.

Positives: Looks the part - outstanding size with length and well-proportioned muscle. Large, strong hands. Terrific body control. Adjusts very well to the ball in the air. Understands how to use size to his advantage - posts up defenders and wins in the air. Has soft hands to pluck the ball. Catches in stride and shows run strength to bust through arm and ankle tackles. Brandishes a stiff-arm (see Georgia). Can be a physical blocker.

Negatives: Inconsistent hands and concentration - drops too many balls. Played in a run-oriented offense and was not asked to execute a full route tree. Lacks elite top-end speed, acceleration and agility. Takes long strides and runs upright, limiting his transitional quickness. Is not sudden or elusive with the ball in his hands. Not an exceptional leaper. Feasted on single coverage. Should be a better blocker for his size than he shows - inconsistent effort.

Summary: A big, strong, long-armed, outside-the-numbers "X" receiver who emerged from a triple-option offense featuring a limited route tree and has shown a propensity for drops. Was clocking in the high 4.3s prior to breaking his foot but does not separate consistently, and his ceiling could be as a No. 2 in the pros.

NFL projection: Top-40 pick.


3. WR-RS Golden Tate
Notre Dame junior
Ht: 5-10 1/4 | Wt: 199 | Sp: 4.48 | Arm: 30 1/2 | Hand: 9 1/4

Notes: Father, Golden Tate Jr., was a receiver at Tennessee State and a 1984 Colts draft pick; younger brother, Wesley, is a running back at Vanderbilt. Golden III was a running back (also lined up at receiver), kick returner, punter and occasional cornerback. Also excelled in baseball (was drafted by the Arizona Diamondbacks in the 42nd round of the 2007 MLB draft) and competed in track as a prep. Senior baseball season was cut short by a thumb injury, and he hurt his hamstring at the state track championships. As a true freshman in 2007, played in all 12 games (started against UCLA and USC) and recorded six receptions for 131 yards (21.8-yard average) and one touchdown. Returned 15 kickoffs for 326 yards (21.7). Broke out in '08, playing the "X" receiver opposite Michael Floyd, and led the Irish in all-purpose yards (1,754), receptions, receiving yards, and touchdowns (11). Started 8-of-13 games (yielded to Duval Kamara in non-starts) and hauled in 58-1,080-10 (18.6). Also rushed five times for 37 yards (7.4) and one touchdown and returned kickoffs 26-521 (20.0). Posted the most productive postseason performance by a receiver in school history by piling up 6-177-3 (29.5) against Hawaii in the Hawaii bowl. Won the Biletnikoff Award after having the best receiving season in ND history in '09, amassing 93-1,496-15 (16.1) in 12 games (all starts). Racked up 1,915 all-purpose yards, including 25-186-2 (7.4) rushing, 12-171-1 (14.2) in punt returns and 3-62 (20.7) on kickoffs. Doubled as a center fielder for the baseball team - played a half in the '09 Blue-Gold spring football game, then went 4-for-9 in a baseball doubleheader.

Positives: Very competitive and confident - plays with a swagger. Quick-footed. Fights for the ball in the air and has extremely strong hands to highpoint the football. Outstanding concentration. Superb downfield ball skills - tracks and adjusts to the flight of the ball with good body control. Has a knack for uncovering. Good run balance and tackle-breaking ability. Comes from a pro-style offense. Versatile - returned kicks and punts and took snaps out of the "Wildcat" formation (see Purdue). Outstanding production - 15 career 100-yard games.

Negatives: Lacks ideal size with a bad body and tight hips. Short stepper lacks top-end speed (can be tracked down from behind). Needs to improve his functional strength. Inconsistent initial burst and line release - still learning to use his hands to fend off the jam and is too easily hemmed (see USC). Route running is a work in progress - can do a better job getting in and out of breaks. Lets balls into his chest and drops some catchable passes. Average blocker. Talks too much. Long-term durability could be an issue given his playing style - does not shy away from contact.

Summary: A compactly built, superproductive slot receiver trapped in a running back's body, Tate emerged from a pro-style system and could not be stopped even after facing increased attention as a junior. Still raw, Tate must show he can beat press coverage and could struggle to duplicate his perimeter success in the pros. But he does offer strong hands, competitiveness, versatility and playmaking ability to contribute readily.

NFL projection: Top-50 pick.



4. WR-RS Arrelious Benn
Illinois junior
Ht: 6-1 | Wt: 219 | Sp: 4.58 | Arm: 32 1/4 | Hand: 9 3/8

Notes: Nicknamed "Rejus." Parade All-American who also won Washington D.C.'s Gatorade Player of the Year Award. In '07, started 12-of-13 games (gave way to a two-TE set against Western Illinois) in the slot despite battling a right shoulder injury all season. Originally dislocated his right shoulder during fall camp and was knocked out of the Wisconsin contest after aggravating the injury. Sustained a concussion against Ohio State. Posted 54 receptions for 676 yards (12.5-yard average) with two touchdowns in '07. Also rushed 32 times for 158 yards (4.9) with zero TDs and returned 10 kickoffs for 280 yards (28.0), including a 90-yard TD against Penn State. Started all 12 games in '08 and caught 67-1,055-3 (15.7) with 23-101-2 (4.4) rushing, 20-398 (19.9) on kickoff returns and 15 punt returns for 114 yards (7.6). Was cited by university police in September for driving on a suspended license. Led the team in receiving for the third straight year in '09 when he started 11-of-12 games and snagged 38-490-2 (12.9) with 7-23-1 (3.3) rushing and 12-318 (26.5) on kickoff returns. Dealt with a sprained ankle most of the season (originally sustained in the season opener against Missouri). Non-start came against Michigan State after suffering a mild concussion on the opening kickoff. Team captain who does not eat red meat or fried food.

Positives: Has an NFL body and looks the part with very good size and musculature and good play strength. Physical. Deceptive speed and acceleration. Can take a hit and maintain possession. Shows vision and burst after the catch - can power through arm tackles and sidestep tacklers. Strong blocker. Shows some burst as a kick returner and can open up his stride in space and go the distance. Tough, confident and competitive. Has a pro mentality and takes care of his body. Works at his craft. Has a 37-inch vertical jump and tied for a WR-best 20 reps in the 225-pound bench-press test at the Combine.

Negatives: Comes off the ball too upright and is not a vertical threat. Shows some tightness in his hips and ankles. Lets too many balls into his body and does not always appear confident in his hands. Still developing as a route runner and lacks polish to get out of his breaks cleanly without gearing down. Breaks stride to catch. Mistimes jumps and does not attack the ball in the air or win jump balls. Lacks the foot speed and agility to beat NFL defensive backs in man coverage.

Summary: Production dropped off considerably and was underutilized as a junior when Illinois struggled through a coordinator change and poor QB play. Is a body catcher and needs refinement as a route runner, but his combination of size, strength and run-after-catch ability should allow him to make an impact as a "Wildcat" runner, kick returner and complementary receiver, with potential to develop into a solid pro in a West Coast offense.

NFL projection: Top-40 pick.



5. WR-PR Damian Williams
USC junior
Ht: 6-0 5/8 | Wt: 197 | Sp: 4.54 | Arm: 31 3/4 | Hand: 9 1/4
Notes: Prepped at Springdale (Ark.) High, where he was part of an undefeated state championship team which finished his senior season ranked No. 2 nationally. Racked up 63 receptions for 1,495 yards (23.7-yard average) and 24 touchdowns with 31 carries for 463 yards (14.9) and 12 touchdowns in head coach Gus Malzahn's spread offense. Also returned kicks and played defensive back. Signed - along with three Springdale teammates, including QB Mitch Mustain, a lifelong friend - with Arkansas, where then-head coach Houston Nutt had hired Malzahn as the team's offensive coordinator. As a true freshman in 2006, Williams started 5-of-13 games at flanker and caught 19-235-2 (12.4). In mid-December, Williams' parents were among a group that arranged a meeting with athletic director Frank Broyles in which concerns were expressed regarding the direction of the Razorbacks' offense. Ultimately, Williams transferred to USC and sat out the '07 season per NCAA rules, though he suffered a torn labrum at the beginning of spring practice and had both shoulders operated on. Was the Trojans' leading receiver in '08, starting 9-of-13 games at flanker and hauling in 58-869-9 (15.0) with 4-43-0 (10.8) on the ground. Started 11-of-12 games played at flanker in '09 and hauled in 70-1,010-6 (14.4). Also returned punts 24-340 (14.2), including TDs against California and Oregon State. Did not start against Oregon (strained glute/hamstring), then sustained a high right ankle sprain against Arizona State and sat out the Stanford contest. Team captain.

Positives: Deceptively fast long-strider with smooth, fluid movement skills. Nice hips. Soft, reliable hands to snatch the ball out of the air (see Ohio State). Good agility to shake free off the line of scrimmage. Shows polish as a route runner. Consistently creates after the catch - shows good run instincts (see Arizona State), elusiveness and surprising balance. Nice stop-and-go quickness. Good concentration - tracks the ball well and plays bigger than his size in traffic. Good field awareness. Confident and competitive. Well respected by teammates and coaches. Very solid punt returner.

Negatives: Has a slim, wiry build with thin legs. Needs more time in the weight room and could stand to improve functional strength. Lacks elite top-end speed to separate vertically. Lets balls into his body. Durability could be an issue - body type might make it difficult to stay healthy.

Summary: Thin-framed, leggy long-strider with reliable hands, advanced route running and slick creativity after the catch and as a punt returner. Played at an elite program and consistently made plays and showed up in big games. Would fit best as a flanker in a West Coast system.

NFL projection: Second- to third-round pick.



6. WR Eric Decker
Minnesota senior
Ht: 6-3 1/8 | Wt: 217 | Sp: 4.55e | Arm: 31 | Hand: 9 1/8

Notes: Also played basketball and baseball as a prep. Redshirted in 2005. Played in all 13 games in '06, starting against Temple and Penn State, and recorded 26 receptions for 378 yards (14.5-yard average) with three touchdowns. Also completed a 22-yard pass. In '07, started all 12 games and totaled 67-909-9 (13.6). Added three rushes for 22 yards (7.3) and zero TDs with four punt returns for 28 yards (7.0). Also tossed a 20-yard TD pass. Reportedly punched opposing CB Jack Ikegwuonu in the groin during the Wisconsin contest. In '08, started all 11 games played and hauled in 84-1,074-7 (12.8) with 11-87-1 (7.9) rushing. Sustained a concussion against Indiana, sprained his left shoulder in the first half at Illinois (finished the game) and sustained a left high ankle sprain against Northwestern that hampered him against Michigan and sidelined him for the Wisconsin contest. Had his left knee scoped prior to the Insight Bowl against Kansas. Started all eight games played in '09 - posted 50-758-5 (15.2) before suffering a Lisfranc sprain (torn ligament) in his left foot against Ohio State and undergoing season-ending surgery. A left-handed outfielder on the diamond, Decker played baseball in '07 and '08 - was drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers in the 39th round of the '08 MLB draft. Was selected by the Minnesota Twins in the 27th round of the '09 draft. Two-time team captain.

Positives: Outstanding size with well-muscled frame. Gets into routes quickly and runs with tempo and balance and knows how to set up defensive backs. Sinks his hips and gets in and out of breaks cleanly. Keeps working to uncover and shows good field awareness. Shows good body control and soft hands - catches naturally and can pluck outside his frame. Great concentration and toughness to catch in traffic and take a hit (see California). Looks athletic and shows run strength after the catch - can shake the first tackler and spin off contact. Confident and competitive - rises to competition. Tough and will play through pain. Competitive downfield stalk blocker - finishes blocks.

Negatives: Has short arms. Is not a blazer and lacks top-end speed to stretch the field or pull away. Short-strider - not explosive. Average hand strength - drops some balls that he should catch. Not a crisp route runner - does not show burst at the top of his routes and can do a better job working back to the ball. Inconsistent blocker. Durability needs to be examined closely with a litany of injuries piling up the past two years and his long-torsoed body showing signs of breaking down.

Summary: Was really emerging as a receiver before a serious foot injury cut short his senior season. Inability to run before the draft could drop his stock, but Decker is a smooth-moving, inside receiver with the size, competitiveness and enough foot quickness to become a dependable No. 3 in a West Coast system.

NFL projection: Second- to third-round pick.


7. WR Riley Cooper
Florida senior
Ht: 6-3 3/8 | Wt: 222 | Sp: 4.52 | Arm: 32 5/8 | Hand: 10 3/8

Notes: Father, Larry, played baseball at Oklahoma State. Riley was rated the 11th-best high school baseball prospect (outfielder) in the country by Baseball America. Considered a first-round baseball talent coming out of Clearwater (Fla.) Central Catholic, Cooper made it known to scouts that his intention was to accept a football scholarship from Florida. The Philadelphia Phillies tabbed him in the 15th round of the 2006 MLB draft, but were unable to dissuade him from attending Florida. Had a decorated prep football career, starring as a receiver, safety and return man. Suffered a separated left shoulder in a playoff loss his junior season and had his senior baseball season cut short by an off-the-field incident. Was charged with criminal mischief in March '06 after punching a car window. According to the report, the car's driver claimed to be leaving a party and attempting a U-turn when a group of people stopped to ask if he knew someone, at which time Cooper's arm went through his passenger window. He drove off, and police found Cooper at the hospital. Cooper's father contended Riley's action was a "defensive move," a reaction to nearly being hit by the driver who failed to see the group in his blind spot. Ultimately charges were dropped, but Cooper came away with a deep cut on his right (throwing) arm that required plastic surgery. As a true freshman in 2006, played in 13 games and tallied four receptions for 92 yards with three touchdowns against Western Carolina. Also made four tackles as a gunner and forced a fumble, despite dealing with sesamoiditis (inflammation of the sesamoid bones) in both feet. In '07, played in 10 games, starting against Tennessee and Auburn, and managed 8-182-3 (22.8-yard average). Sprained his left ankle against the Vols and was limited the next three weeks. Broke his pinky finger early in the Kentucky game, had two screws surgically inserted and missed two contests plus the Capital One Bowl against Michigan. Joined the baseball team in '08. In the fall, started 12-of-14 games, producing 18-261-3 (14.5). Charged with misdemeanor resisting an officer and failure to comply with a police or fire department in February '09 when he was cited by campus police for not getting out of the way of a moving car upon police orders. Case was dismissed. Did not participate in '09 spring practice while with the UF baseball team and played summer ball for the second year in a row. Had fluid drained from his knee in April. Was selected by the Texas Rangers in the 25th round of the '09 MLB draft. In the fall, was the Gators' top receiver, reeling in 51-961-9 (18.8) in 14 games (all starts). Suffered a hip-pointer against Arkansas.

Positives: Outstanding size with a tall, well-proportioned build and among the largest hands of receivers at the Combine. Shows strength at the line to fend off the jam. Naturally athletic with deceptive top-end speed - threatens DBs with long strides. Good hands and body control to adjust to the ball. Tracks the ball very well over his shoulder and can snag it out of the air. Is tough and willing to work the middle of the field. Shows awareness throttling down in throwing windows. Willing, aggressive blocker - latches on and sustains. Intense, tough, competitive tone setter. Has experience as a "gunner." Caught the ball very well at the Combine.

Negatives: Not sudden getting into routes and lacks top-end acceleration. Drifts into his routes. Is a bit straight-linish. Not elusive after the catch or very strong on contact. Could use more time in the weight room. Did not play in a pro-style offense and was not asked to run a full route tree. Just a one-year producer. Only recently committed to football full time and will have to answer some maturity questions.

Summary: A dual-sport standout who waited his turn in a talented offense, Cooper possesses the hands, competitiveness and blocking ability highly valued by coaches. A faster-than-quick, West Coast receiving prospect with an intriguing size-speed ratio. Has upside and special-teams ability.

NFL projection: Second- to third-round pick.



8. WR-RS Andre Roberts
The Citadel senior
Ht: 5-10 7/8 | Wt: 195 | Sp: 4.46 | Arm: 31 1/2 | Hand: 9 1/2

Notes: Also excelled in track as a prep. As a true freshman in 2006, played in all 11 games, starting two (Furman, Virginia Military Institute) at the "X" receiver, and recorded 35 receptions for 557 yards (15.9-yard average) with five touchdowns. Also rushed four times for 43 yards (10.8) with zero touchdowns and returned 18 punts for 193 yards (10.7). Started all 11 games at the "X" receiver in '07, hauling in 78-1,060-10 (13.6) and returning punts 26-288 (11.1). Also ran track for the Bulldogs in '07. Started all 12 games in '08 at the "X" receiver and racked up 95-1,334-14 (14.0) receiving, 24-94-1 (3.9) rushing and was Football Championship Series' top punt returner with 24-461 (19.2), including three TDs. Also completed a pass for 15 yards. In '09, started all 11 games at the "X" and totaled 77-792-8 (10.3) receiving and 12-77-0 (6.4) on the ground. Added 14-217 (15.5) on punt returns and 3-66 (22.0) on kickoffs. Two-time elected team captain.

Positives: Very good short-area acceleration. Shows savvy as a route runner - creates separation with double moves. Recognizes coverages and works to the quarterback when plays break down. Good concentration - goes over the middle to catch in traffic areas and tracks the deep ball well. Plays bigger than his size. Confident - plays with a swagger. Coachable. Has a passion for the game. Elusive punt returner with good vision and traffic burst. Has shown well against top competition (Clemson '08, North Carolina '09) and shined at the Senior Bowl. Durable. Clocked very well in the shuttle and three-cone drills at the Combine, showing terrific agility.

Negatives: Did not consistently face top competition. Is not exceptionally explosive off the line and lacks elite, top-end vertical speed to consistently separate deep. Can be late adjusting to poorly thrown balls and struggles catching on contact. Not a physical blocker.

Summary: Bulked up nearly 20 pounds since last spring without losing much agility and shows good strength for his size. Is not an elite athlete but takes pride in his craft, will work to get better and has a skill set to succeed as a slot receiver and punt returner. Solid performance against better competition at the Senior Bowl and a strong Combine showing could elevate his draft stock. Has a lot of upside.

NFL projection: Third- to fourth-round pick.



9. WR-KR Mardy Gilyard
Cincinnati senior
Ht: 5-11 7/8 | Wt: 187 | Sp: 4.61 | Arm: 32 1/4 | Hand: 9 1/8

Notes: High school running back who also competed in basketball and track and field as a prep, though he was academically ineligible as a sophomore. Was recruited to Cincinnati as a cornerback by then-head coach Mark Dantonio's staff. As a true freshman in 2005, appeared in eight games and recorded seven tackles with eight kickoff returns for 176 yards (22.0-yard average). After the season, he was accused of plagiarism, failed a class and lost his scholarship. Gilyard denies cheating. Unable to afford tuition and housing, he worked four jobs and slept in a car for four months. Ineligible in '06, he played semi-professional ball with the Kings (Ohio) Comets during the summer of '07, though he did not accept money and was not punished because he was not enrolled in school at the time. Head coach Brian Kelly restored his scholarship, and Gilyard returned to play 12 games in '07, starting the first seven contests (eight total) and tallying 36 receptions for 536 yards (14.9) with three touchdowns. Also returned kickoffs 7-206 (29.4) and punts 6-57 (9.5). Added two blocked punts. Missed the Syracuse contest with an undisclosed injury. Underwent Lasik eye surgery in the offseason. Started 11-of-14 games in '08, hauling in 81-1,276-11 (15.8) with 36-994-2 (27.6) on kickoff returns. Started all 13 games in '09, catching 87-1,191-11 (13.7) and rushing 5-16-1 (3.2). Returned kickoffs 42-1,281-2 (30.5) and punts 16-202-1 (12.6).

Positives: Naturally athletic with fluid movement skills. Quick-footed and agile. Makes plays and racks up yards after the catch. Can extend outside his frame and is not afraid to expose his body to make a play. Good concentration to track the deep ball. Shows natural run-after-catch skills and is dangerous in the open field - can stop and start, string moves together and make defenders miss one-on-one. Slippery. Excellent run vision - sees the cutback. Very good quickness, burst and vision as a returner. Gives effort as a stalk blocker. Showed up in big games. Confident.

Negatives: Slender, wiry build with thin ankles. Needs more time in the weight room - lacks functional strength to fend off the jam and can be subdued by physical press coverage. Lacks elite top-end speed. Is still developing as a route runner. Inconsistent hands - body-catches too often and drops more balls than he should. Did not play in a pro-style offense. Character needs to be scrutinized.

Summary: A former high school running back who overcame considerable personal adversity to reach this point, Gilyard lacks desirable speed to threaten off the line, but is a smooth-moving slot receiver with run-after-catch skills and return ability that adds to his value. Plays faster than he times and is still learning the nuances of the position.

NFL projection: Second- to third-round pick.



10. WR Brandon LaFell
LSU senior
Ht: 6-2 1/2 | Wt: 211 | Sp: 4.63 | Arm: 32 3/4 | Hand: 8 3/4

Notes: High school receiver and defensive back who also returned punts and played point guard for the basketball team. Redshirted in 2005. Saw action in 11 games (started against Alabama when the Tigers opened in a four-receiver set) in '06 and caught five passes for 140 yards (28.0-yard average) with two touchdowns. Hurt his ribs against Florida and sat out the next two contests (Kentucky, Fresno State). Played in all 14 games for the national-champion Tigers and started nine times while playing the "X" receiver in '07. Recorded 50-656-4 (13.1) and added an 18-yard rushing TD. In '08, started 11-of-13 games at the "X" receiver and tallied 63-929-8 (14.7). Played the "Z" receiver in '09, starting all 13 games and hauling in 57-792-11 (13.9). Rushed 5-13-0 (2.6).

Positives: Looks the part - good size, strength and body length. Is loose-hipped and moves smoothly with a fluid stride. Can power off the line. Good balance and body control. Demonstrates nice posture as a route runner - uses deft nods to set up defensive backs and gets in and out of breaks cleanly. Can snatch balls outside his frame. Nice boundary awareness. Factors in the run game as a physical, stalk blocker and will seek kill shots on unsuspecting defenders - good finisher. Durable.

Negatives: Has very small hands and has been too inconsistent catching the ball throughout his career with concentration lapses showing too frequently. Drops too many balls. Is not a blazer - lacks ideal top-end speed to create separation vertically. Has a diva attitude that could rub veterans the wrong way. Does not hide frustration when the ball doesn't come his way and has a prima donna attitude. Was contained by Florida and Alabama, and he will struggle to separate vs. physical bump-and-run coverage. Had a marginal Combine workout and interviews, dropping several balls in the gauntlet drills.

Summary: Was hampered by inconsistent QB play in college, but has the size and run strength to create matchup problems working as a flanker if he can overcome a case of the drops. Boom-or-bust candidate with concerning personality traits and frustrating on-field inconsistency coming from a program whose recent WR products have tended to disappoint in the pros.

NFL projection: Second- to third-round pick

Tuesday, and it's Even Bayh day in punditland.

Eugene Robinson:

Anyone who wonders why there is such anti-incumbent fervor in the land ought to have a chat with Evan Bayh. I didn’t agree with him on every issue, but on the dysfunction in Washington he’s absolutely right. This city is broken because too many of our leaders confuse politics with service. Americans know the difference.

Charles Lane:

And don’t get him started on the Republicans! I think we have to take Bayh at his word when he quite justifiably expressed disgust not only with the jobs bill fiasco, but also when he lashed out at the Senate Republicans who opportunistically voted down a bipartisan budget-balancing commission they had previously endorsed.

Quitting the Senate was a no-lose move for the presidentially ambitious Bayh, since he can now crawl away from the political wreckage for a couple of years, plausibly alleging that he tried to steer the party in a different direction -- and then be perfectly positioned to mount a centrist primary challenge to Obama in 2012, depending on circumstances.

EJ Dionne:

Why did Bayh do this? He spoke in his statement of his frustration over ideological and partisan polarization in the Senate. The truth is that Bayh has not seemed very happy in his work for quite a while. I think he believed (and with some reason) that he had a good chance of being picked as Barack Obama's running mate in 2008. I can't help but think that this disappointment has played a role in his mood and in his thinking about his long-term political prospects. More generally, I think he liked being governor much more than he liked being a senator. As for what else is going on here, we'll need more reporting. The timing of his decision, so close to the filing deadline, does seem odd, and will require some explanation.

Steve Kornacki:

Good riddance to Evan Bayh, who set out to be every Republican's favorite Democrat -- and mostly succeeded

NY Times on Tea Parties:

These people are part of a significant undercurrent within the Tea Party movement that has less in common with the Republican Party than with the Patriot movement, a brand of politics historically associated with libertarians, militia groups, anti-immigration advocates and those who argue for the abolition of the Federal Reserve.

Urged on by conservative commentators, waves of newly minted activists are turning to once-obscure books and Web sites and discovering a set of ideas long dismissed as the preserve of conspiracy theorists, interviews conducted across the country over several months show. In this view, Mr. Obama and many of his predecessors (including George W. Bush) have deliberately undermined the Constitution and free enterprise for the benefit of a shadowy international network of wealthy elites.

And yes, some of them are complete loony toons and conspiracy mongers (or both.) And proud of it.

Politico:

This week, progressive groups that ran ads pushing Democratic moderates to embrace sweeping reform efforts are expected to launch a new round of ads that are likely to target the party’s already vulnerable incumbents.

They won’t disclose many details such as who the targets will be, or the size of the buys, but they do say they will release new polling that shows support for including a government-run insurance plan, the so-called public option, in health care reform — an idea left for dead in Congress some months ago.

Wow. Not everyone accepts conventional wisdom, as distilled by the pundits. Fancy that.

Bob Herbert:

Ignoring the nation’s infrastructure problems imperils public safety, diminishes our competitiveness and results in missed opportunities to create jobs.

Henry M. Paulson Jr.: Reform the banksters! Heck of a job, Henry.

As sure as Saturday follows Friday, the weekly reminder to check the Forthcoming Events list in the IPKat's sidebar follows the point at which intellectual creativity among the Kats' community gives way to end-of-week fatigue ... But do take a good look at what's on offer. You won't be disappointed!


The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has now gone live with its new World Intellectual Property Day (WIPD 2010) web pages, which you can contemplate at your leisure here. The day itself is 26 April which, this time round, is a Monday. The theme for 2010 is "Innovation -- Linking the World" [Linking the world? That must be something to do with file-sharing, speculated Merpel]. Please remember to celebrate this date. If you're organising any fun events, let the IPKat know and he'll help to publicise them. Famous creators of IP who were born on that date include Tonoyuki Tanaka (creator of Godzilla), Spanish Nobel laureate author Vicente Aleixandre and French artist Eugene Delacroix. Those dying on that date include Last Exit to Brooklyn author Hubert Selby Jr, comic actress Lucille Ball and karate king Ōyama Masutatsu.


Around the blogs. A blog recently drawn to the Kats' attention, with the unpromisingly cumbersome but horridly surreal title Trademark Blog of the Trademark Lawyer's Mind, is piloted by Beverly Hills trademark attorney Michael Cohen. TM fans will surely want to check it out. Meanwhile, congratulations are due to the IP Finance weblog on the occasion of its reaching the 700 mark for its email subscribers. Data protection weblog Datonomy has also got something to celebrate, having just hit the 200 email subscriber mark. Well done! Finally, the MARQUES-based Class 46 weblog is conducting a poll to see what readers think of some proposed new names for that organisation's newsletter. If you want to vote, or just want to see what the proposals are, you can find them on that blog's sidebar.
If you've not yet had a chance to explore the delights of the February issue of Oxford University Press's monthly Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice (JIPLP), you can at least see the contents -- plus the February 2010 Editorial on climate change and the IP community -- by visiting that journal's weblog here. Incidentally, the journal is very interested in receiving submissions of articles on IP and climate change. If you'd like more information about submitting articles, you can find guidance for authors if you visit the journal's website here. If you want some writing tips of the "what you should avoid" variety, click here.

(In honor of Martin Luther King Day, we thought it would appropriate to repost this rememberance by Fr. Neuhaus. This article originally appeared in the October 2002 issue of First Things.)

I know it is a fact, but it is nonetheless hard to picture: Had he lived, Martin Luther King, Jr. would now be seventy-three years old. Everybody of a certain age has memories, if only of television images; many were there when he spoke, others marched with him in Selma or Montgomery, and some of us were, albeit intermittently, drawn into his personal orbit. The last I count as one of the many graces of my life, and it no doubt explains why I read, almost compulsively, just about everything published about the man and the time. Now we have Marshall Frady's Martin Luther King, Jr., the latest volume in the “Penguin Lives” series. It is a valuable addition to the many accounts we have of the man and the movement he led.

I am in the minority with my admiration for Ralph Abernathy's 1989 autobiographical account of the movement, And the Walls Came Tumbling Down. Abernathy was beyond doubt closer to King than anyone else. After the assassination, he took King's place as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), although he knew as well as anyone that he was no Martin Luther King. His book was harshly criticized for its candor about King's sexual vagaries, but other published accounts had been more explicit on that score. What I think got to many reviewers is that Abernathy refused to toe the line on the leftist ideology of the movement and even, in the early eighties, took a conservative turn, offering some favorable words on, of all people, Ronald Reagan.

His gravest violation of conventional tellings is that he declined to see black Americans as a victim class oppressed by white racism, or to depict the movement as a response of revolutionary rage. As he told the story, King was a privileged son of the black bourgeoisie of Atlanta and he, Abernathy, was the heir of a tradition of black dignity in a rural Alabama he describes in almost idyllic terms. Abernathy was daringly “incorrect,” and he paid a steep price for it. “Though slavery as an institution was wicked and foreign to the will of our Lord,” he wrote, “it was not uniformly cruel and abusive. Some slaves, in the midst of their degradation, were treated with a measure of Christian charity, just as some prisoners of war have always been treated better than others. In the worst of circumstances, the human heart is still a mysterious variable.”

His grandparents were slaves, but did not understand themselves to be victims. “In Marengo County during the first half of the twentieth century, the name ‘Abernathy' meant integrity, responsibility, generosity, and religious commitment—and it came to mean that largely through the life and testimony of the black Abernathys. . . . So I feel no shame in going by a last name to which my father and mother brought such character and dignity. It was their name. They didn't just borrow it from a long-dead white man. They paid for it with their exemplary lives and therefore owned it outright when they passed it along to me.”

Abernathy says that as a boy he was aware of racial segregation, but to him and other blacks in Alabama it was no big deal if the white folks wanted to have their own drinking fountains and a separate entrance at the post office. What did rankle is that white folk wouldn't call his father “Mister.” The demand for white courtesy, and respect for the dignity that black folk knew they possessed—that was the issue in what came to be called the civil rights movement. That was the issue when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, a refusal that sparked the Montgomery bus boycott to which Abernathy recruited Martin Luther King, Jr., thus launching them both on a tumultuous course that they could neither anticipate nor control.

A Legacy Not Well Served

That is in largest part the story of And the Walls Came Tumbling Down: how a modest campaign for basic human decency somehow exploded into an out-of-control movement that, picking up a curious mix of causes and characters along the way, was perceived as a revolutionary challenge to the fundamental institutions and beliefs of the country and the world. Oddly enough, Marshall Frady's Martin Luther King, Jr. tells much of the story in the same way, although Frady tends to be condescending, at best, toward Ralph David Abernathy. Abernathy is described as “a stocky, slow badger of a man with a drowsy-eyed, drooping face but a droll and rollicking earthiness, who in their special comradeship over the years was to serve as something like King's Falstaff.” At another point: “There was already, of course, the dutiful Abernathy, [King's] baggy, dolorous-faced, waggish Sancho Panza [who was] totally steadfast.” It was easy to underestimate Abernathy, as I too learned. He did play the clown at times, but at times of crisis there was no one whose intuitive judgment King trusted more.

On the other hand, Frady has a high estimate of Jesse Jackson. In 1996 he published Jesse: The Life and Pilgrimage of Jesse Jackson, and in the present book he writes: “Jesse Jackson, after founding his own movement organization in Chicago, would eventually convert what was perhaps the largest victory of King's apostleship—the claiming of the vote for all blacks—into two surprisingly impressive guerrilla presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988: As it turned out, this aide who came latest to King, and was perhaps most mistrusted by him, would come closest to developing into his heir as the single most eloquent symbol of pride and hope for masses of black Americans.” All the worse for masses of black Americans, in the judgment of many. Frady attempts to excuse even Jackson's smearing of his shirt with King's blood on April 4, 1968 and then going on television to present himself as the anointed heir.

King mistrusted Jackson with good reason, and the following decades have vindicated that mistrust as Jackson has time and again acted as an opportunist, an ambulance chaser, and a publicity hound, who has skillfully exploited the memory of the movement by turning it into a lucrative extortion racket for shaking down corporate America. With a few honorable exceptions, such as Andrew Young, King's legacy has not been well served by those closest to him. While excusing Jackson, Frady is appropriately critical of Coretta and the children for their continuing efforts to tightly control and financially milk the relics of the martyr.

Days of Delirium

Frady captures well the exhilaration of the time. “The civil rights movement became the nation's latest attempt to perform in the South an exorcising of its original sin, and it turned out our most epic moral drama since the Civil War itself.” All of us at the time had a dream of possibilities hitherto unimagined. For this young inner-city pastor in black Brooklyn, as for so many others, a new world was aborning. John XXIII was Pope, John F. Kennedy was President, and Dr. King had sighted the promised land of “the beloved community.” As Wordsworth said of an earlier moment of tragically disappointed hope, “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, / But to be young was very heaven!” Frady puts it nicely: “They were days delirious with belief.” I do not want to exaggerate my own delirium. After all, I was a Lutheran, attuned to “two-kingdom” skepticism about social change and steeped in Reinhold Niebuhr's understanding of the ironies of history. But, as much as a Niebuhrian Lutheran could be, I too was caught up in the epic moral drama.

The story line of the drama was challenged early on by young blacks high on the delirium of their own radicalism who derided King as “de Lawd” and had little patience with his devotion to nonviolence. SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, at first worked closely with King, but soon fell into the hands of violence-prone nonstudents incapable of coordinating anything, but masterful in generating rage. The cry of “Black Power” was heard in the land, and later would come the murderous Black Panthers. Stokely Carmichael, whom Frady describes as “the long lean black Robespierre,” hijacked SNCC, declaring, “I'm not gonna beg the white man for anything I deserve. I'm gonna take it!” Frady writes: “Romanticism about the movement in the liberal salons of the North had begun shifting to its incendiaries like Carmichael, with their terminal cynicism about the efficacy of the ethic of nonviolence, their Malcolm [Malcom X] mentality of a final, bitter acceptance of the human condition as one of hopeless racial antagonism. What seemed to be happening everywhere around King, in fact, was something like the tidal ebbing of faith in Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach: a withdrawal to naked shingles of anger.” In his devastating depiction of the liberal salons of the North, Tom Wolfe would write of the “radical chic” that has not yet disappeared entirely, and may never disappear, from what are deemed to be the commanding heights of the culture.

In an early (1970) book, King: A Critical Biography, David Lewis argued that King was much more of a radical than was generally believed. Lewis writes, and Frady quotes him approvingly, that in “the nation's canonization of Martin King . . . we have sought to remember him by forgetting him.” Frady says that King's message “inexorably evolved into an evangelism against what he saw as the moral coma of the country's whole corporate, technological order: its loud and vicious void of materialism . . . and the measureless vandalism this new kind of high-tech barbarism was visiting not only on the life of America, but elsewhere in the world, most luridly at that time in Vietnam. In effect, he came to pit himself against his entire age.” I am not persuaded that King ever came to a systematic endorsement of the kind of ideological radicalism that Lewis and Frady attribute to him.

Not So Radical

King was an exuberant rhetorician, and rhetoric has a way of getting out of hand. Frady gives due attention to King's dependence on Stanley Levison, a wealthy New York lawyer and wheeler-dealer, who dropped his membership in the Communist Party lest it become an embarrassment to King. The Old Left with its ties to communism was an integral part of much of what was viewed as mainstream liberalism in the 1960s. Even the more established liberal organizations that maintained an “exclusionary clause” against Communists did not take seriously the claim that communism posed a domestic threat. The great threat of the time was thought to be anticommunism, as evident in the rambunctiously reckless attacks of Senator Joe McCarthy and the catchall term of opprobrium, “McCarthyism.” King's refusal to break with Levison, despite pressures from the FBI and others, indicates not that he was a Communist puppet or had embraced Marxist ideology but simply that he was a good liberal, although less scrupulous about—probably because less knowledgeable about—the Old Left with which more establishment liberals were so unhappily familiar.

King, writes Frady, “was to arrive in the end at a kind of Christian socialism of conscience, once professing to a friend, ‘If we are to achieve real equality, the United States will have to adopt a modified form of socialism.'” But of course. Almost everybody in the left-liberal orbit of the time professed to be a socialist of one kind or another. King is quoted as saying at a private retreat of movement leaders that “something is wrong with the economic system of our nation . . . something is wrong with capitalism.” The liberals at the time who did not claim to be socialist had no inhibitions in declaring themselves strongly opposed to capitalism. They were typically for a “third way” between socialism and capitalism. In those days, in those circles, actually affirming capitalism was simply beyond the pale. Frady quotes King telling David Halberstam, “You have got to have a reconstruction of the entire society, a revolution of values.” Of course. What liberal preacher or politician has not said the same, and said it many times? Depending on what unhappy aspect of society is being deplored, conservatives frequently say the same.

In my movement days, I would, when feeling mischievous, observe that I was not and never had been a socialist. This would predictably meet with startled incredulity, and the discussion would inevitably turn to what is meant by socialism. I would usually end up by saying something like this: “If by socialism, you mean reforms in the political economy that help the poor to be more fully included in the opportunities and responsibilities of society, then I admit to being a socialist.” This almost always met with great relief, my faux pas was forgiven, and I was restored to ideological communion. If the above formula is accepted as the definition of socialism, I'm very much a socialist today.

I do not for a moment deny that there were hard-core socialists, ideological Marxists, and, probably, even active collaborators with communism in the leadership of the movement. There is every reason to believe Dr. King knew that and he should have been more concerned about it than he apparently was. He thought he could use them, and he was probably at times used by them. But I am confident that he and his closest associates, such as Abernathy and Young, were not among them. His most radical program for change was the Poor People's Campaign launched in 1968. It was supposed to bring many thousands of people to encamp on the Washington Mall until the government agreed to expend an annual $30

billion in expunging poverty, committed itself to full employment, a guaranteed annual income, and the building of 300,000 low-income housing units each year. After his assassination in April, a bedraggled and dispirited SCLC tried to go ahead with the plan, ending up a few weeks later with a handful of supporters holding out in mud-besotted tents before federal rangers moved in to clear them out and clean up the mess. It was an inglorious ending to a misbegotten plan.

King's occasional rhetoric of “revolutionary” change and the proposals of the Poor People's Campaign do not, I think, support the claims of Lewis, Frady, and others that he was an ideological socialist, never mind a revolutionary in the Marxist vein. That was a time when radical talk seemed to be the mainstream. A few years later, George McGovern's presidential campaign would embrace most of the proposals of the Poor People's Campaign. McGovern was wrong, and he may have been dumb, but he was not a revolutionary bent upon overthrowing the constitutional or economic order. He was what was then de rigueur among most liberals—a “radicalized” liberal. So also with Martin Luther King.

By his own admission, Dr. King was by 1968 frustrated, tired, and confused. I recall conversations at the time when some were urging him to launch a presidential “peace campaign,” or to join with Senator Eugene McCarthy in the challenge to Lyndon Johnson. He spoke about his uneasiness with the ambiguities of electoral politics in all its forms, and the need to recapture the uncomplicated moral drama of Birmingham and earlier campaigns in the South. In New York, a few months before his death, we had lunch, together with Young and Al Lowenstein, an activist who would later be murdered by one of his protégés, and King turned philosophical about the limits of political change. It was a leisurely and convivial lunch. The restaurant had been alerted that “the famous Dr. King” was coming, and the waiter assumed that the white man in the clerical collar must be he, and so throughout the lunch addressed me as “Dr. King.” It both astonished and amused that one of the most famous people in the world was not recognized, and King enjoyed it immensely, taking the opportunity to smoke cigarettes throughout lunch, a regular habit that he usually indulged only in private. Among many other things, we talked about the abiding wisdom of Reinhold Niebuhr and the need to recognize the distinction between the morally imperative and the historically possible, agreeing also on the moral imperative to press the historically possible. It was the last time I saw him.

Disenchantments

I am surprised that the editors of the Penguin Lives chose Marshall Frady to do the book on Dr. King, or maybe it is they who are surprised by the book he wrote. Had this been the received picture of King in the years following his death, it is almost certain that his birthday would not be a national holiday. “The fact is,” writes Frady, “King was always to fail more often than he would succeed.” He rightly notes that the Montgomery bus boycott launched in 1956 did not prevail but was rescued by a federal court order. Six years later, “Birmingham had become the first clear, authentic victory, actually won in popular confrontation and struggle, for King's movement of nonviolent mass protest.” After his emergence from obscurity in Montgomery, King had only twelve years to live, and it is fair to say that Birmingham was the only such victory. The effort to take the movement to the North, to Richard Daley the Elder's Chicago, was a disaster. King's courtly Southern ways did not resonate with the slum dwellers of the North. He was not angry enough. As he said, “You just can't communicate with the ghetto dweller and at the same time not frighten many whites to death.” At that time, Malcolm X was exulting in frightening whites to death, and King looked moderate—i.e., weak—by comparison.

He led marches for housing desegregation through white neighborhoods of Chicago, meeting with outraged anger. At one point he said, “I have never seen so much hatred and hostility on the faces of so many people as I've seen here today.” Frady writes, “He had in fact come up against the innermost reality of racism in America.” The larger fact is that King had no plan for the racial integration of Chicago, nor did anyone else. Nor, except for a few mainly upper-income neighborhoods, has anybody come up with a successful plan for integrating housing to this very day. After Montgomery, King had said, “I'm worried to death that people will be expecting me to pull rabbits out of a hat for the rest of my life.” A problem with Frady's account, it seems to me, is that he is among those who judge King by whether he succeeded in pulling rabbits out of a hat.

In his calculation of success and failure, Frady tends to be dismissive of the inherent worth of King's preaching, exhortation, inspiration. Every preacher who has been around a while finds consolation in the promise of Isaiah that “the word shall not return void.” To preach well is success. I recall rallies when, in the course of his preaching, King would hold forth on the theological and moral foundations of the movement. The klieg lights and cameras shut down, only to be turned on again when he returned to specifically political or programmatic themes. “Watch the lights,” he commented. “They're not interested in the most important parts.” But as for the judgment that King finally achieved very little, Mr. Frady might recall his own statement that the chief consequence of King's legacy was securing the vote for all blacks. No little achievement, that.

Death in Mid-Passage

Frady tends to agree with those who say that King died at the right time and in the right way. “Some have since suggested that it was just at the point where King seemed passing irretrievably into decline that he came by the terrible exaltation of violent martyrdom—a kind of historical editing, before the disillusionment could become total, that spared him from what could well have become a progressive marginality and tiresomeness and bankruptcy of his image. . . . If King had lived, most likely he would, with his increasingly radical gospel, have departed steadily further from the temper and received liberal sophistication of his times, drifting to the outermost fringes of apparent relevancy.”

I am inclined to the view that Dr. King was taken in mid-passage; he was not yet forty and nobody knows what he might have become and might have done. He might have departed further “from the temper and received liberal sophistication of his times,” not because of the radicalism that Frady attributes to him but because of a deeper radicalism grounded in the Christian gospel. I have entertained the hope that King would have confronted the epoch-defining moral crisis posed by what then was called, long before Roe v. Wade, “liberalized abortion law.” That is no more than a hope. I have no idea what he would have done with respect to this crisis of all crises in our time. But recall that Jesse Jackson, to his credit, was a powerful defender of the unborn for several years after 1968. About abortion he declared, “The war on poverty has been replaced by the war on the poor and the most defenseless.” To his great shame, he promptly switched sides when he was bitten by national political ambitions. Had King lived and continued in his aversion to politics, it is reasonable to hope that he would have made the obvious connections between the civil rights struggle and abortion, both being the cause of expanding and defending the community of human dignity. That is, of course, no more than a hope, and we will never know.

Abernathy was severely castigated for writing about King's deep moral flaws, but he tended to treat them as somehow incidental to his character and work. In Frady's portrait, they are more central to understanding what he depicts as the tragedy of Martin Luther King. That King plagiarized a large part of his doctoral dissertation at Boston University is now well known. Frady describes this as “an inclination to casual textual appropriation that was to become an unhappy habit of King's.” That the books that were published under his name were, for the most part, written by others is not so well known. There is no doubt, however, that he really is the author of the classic “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Yet plagiarism is not the chief sin.

“The Pelvic Issues”

Dr. King was, for all that was great about him, an adulterer, sexual libertine, lecher, and wanton womanizer. In this he set the moral tone for others. Of the movement leaders Frady writes, “They were . . . a raunchy troupe for the most part, some roistering outrageously at times among whatever likely young ladies were at hand—the movement generally, for that matter, was hardly ‘a sour-faced, pietistic' adventure, one veteran has since attested; ‘everybody was out getting laid.'” King was a celebrity always surrounded by likely young ladies. On his last night on earth—the night of the unforgettable declaration, “I have seen the promised land” —King returned to the motel and “flung himself into a final, all-night release into carnal carousal” with no fewer than three women in succession. For years the FBI and, through the FBI, political opponents had tapes of King's nocturnal debauches and attempted to use them for purposes very much like blackmail. Coretta knew, and put on a brave public face of not knowing. The major reporters from newspapers and television networks knew but, Frady writes, “none of this material found its way into their reportage, a restraint virtually inconceivable in these times, meaning, of course, that King would very likely never have survived now as the figure he was then.” It is not possible to disagree.

I did disagree once. When, shortly after his death, the first book appeared detailing this shadowed side of King's life, The King God Didn't Save by John A. Williams, I reviewed it very critically in the New York Review of Books. The evidence, I wrote, was hearsay, third-and fourth-hand, circumstantial, unsubstantiated, and highly improbable. I could not write that review today. The book was shoddy and sensationalistic, but thirty years later most of its substantive claims appear to be supported by more reliable witnesses. I had no personal knowledge of Dr. King's sexual wanderings, and I suppose it is possible that I did not see what others saw because I did not want to see it. To be forced to acknowledge that the stories are probably true—no, almost certainly true—still makes me sick. For the fact is that I admired and loved King, and still do. Then and now, I think it possible and necessary to make a crucial, albeit not unambiguous, distinction between the very broken earthen vessel and the treasure of truth that vessel contained and so powerfully communicated.

This must also be said: From very early on, the rhetoric and habits of the movement evinced a recklessly casual attitude toward sexual morality. It became a cliché in activist circles that there were many more Bible passages condemning inequality of wealth and other injustices than there were condemning sexual misconduct. Conventional religion was routinely assailed for being inordinately preoccupied with “morality from the belly button down.” Among liberals to this day these are derided as “the pelvic issues.” The movement at its best, by which I mean the civil rights movement through the mid-sixties, contained moral ingredients that would later become the libertine “counterculture” of drugs and sexual license. That was the turn, joined most decisively by the agitation for the abortion license, that resulted in my breaking ranks with the left. That turn among left-liberal activists, extending through the 1970s, also has a strong bearing on today's scandals about miscreant sexual conduct by clergy, Protestant and Catholic, who were formed by, and conformed to, the aberrations of the time.

What Jesus Promised

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Christian. Despite all. As we are all, in the final analysis, Christians despite all. Many of his biographers, and the public school texts, tend to downplay that. Much is made of his having been enlightened by reading Gandhi, and he is frequently depicted as a forerunner of New Ageish spirituality. But King was emphatic in asserting, “This business of passive resistance and nonviolence is the gospel of Jesus. I went to Gandhi through Jesus.” Frady and others have recounted his telling of the time in Montgomery when he was first receiving death threats and wanted out. Frady tells it this way:

He was overwhelmed with woe over his own unworthiness, his life of bourgeois privilege even during this ordeal into which he had led the city's black community, and finally about the superficiality of his “inherited” call into the ministry, although he “had never felt an experience with God in the way that you must . . . if you're going to walk the lonely paths of this life.” As he later recalled that late night hour of desolation, “I couldn't take it any longer” and “tried to think of a way to move out of the picture without appearing a coward.” Dropping his head into his hands, he suddenly realized he was praying aloud in the midnight hush of the kitchen: “Lord, I'm down here trying to do what's right. . . . But Lord, I'm faltering, I'm losing my courage. And I can't let the people see me like this. . . . But I've come to the point where I can't face it alone.” And at that moment, as King would tell it, he seemed to hear “an inner voice . . . the voice of Jesus,” answering him: “Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness, stand up for justice, stand up for truth. And lo, I will be with you, even until the end of the world.” That voice of Jesus, King recounted, “promised never to leave me, no, never to leave me alone.”

A few days after the assassination, I took part in a huge memorial service in Harlem. The service was reported on the evening news. The reporter, microphone in hand, stood in front of St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church and said, as I recall his words, “And so today there was a memorial service for the slain civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King. It was a religious service, and appropriately so, for, after all, he was the son of a minister.” That rather totally missed the point, as the point has been missed so often in the years since then.

Marshall Frady depicts a man desperately riven and driven. “In King's lapses into that ‘lower self' he so often decried, one sensed an extraordinarily harrowed man—caught in the almost insupportable strain of having to sustain the high spirituality of his mass moral struggle, while living increasingly in a daily expectation of death—intermittently resorting to releases into sweetly obliterating riots of the flesh. He seemed thus to move through some endlessly recycling alternation between the transcendently spiritual and the convulsively carnal.” At a later point he writes: “In the widening beleaguerment of his latter years, it would sometimes seem as if he were, as in the Keats ode, ‘half in love with easeful death,' almost wishful for its surcease from all travail, proposing once that he just might withdraw into a fast ‘unto death.'”

I have no doubt there were times when that was the case. He was, after all, for twelve years and almost daily on the receiving end of death threats, thought he had come close to being killed several times, and was finally gunned down. Of course he thought about death more than most people have occasion to think about death. But it was in those latter years, especially the last two years, that I came to know him personally. Not on a day by day basis, to be sure, but enough to form a firm judgment of the man. From the first day I met him, I was impressed not by any morbid preoccupation with failure and mortality but by what appeared to be his inner peace, an almost triumphant tranquillity. Surrounded as world-class celebrities are by groupies and sycophants, he seemed not to be taken in by it all. I most clearly remember thinking, “Here is a man who has his ego under control. He knows who he is, and who he is not.” I admired, and I envied, that. And that, despite all, is the way I remember him to this day.

Marshall Frady and others are right: If everything was known then that is known now, Dr. King would early have been brought to public ruin, and there would almost certainly be no national holiday in his honor. But God writes straight with crooked lines, and he used his most unworthy servant Martin to create in our public life a luminous moment of moral truth about what Gunnar Myrdal rightly called “the America dilemma,” racial justice. It seems a long time ago now, but there is no decline in the frequency of my thanking God for his witness and for having been touched, however briefly, by his friendship, praying that he may rest in peace, and that his cause may yet be vindicated.

Don Banks of SI did a 2009 Draft Redo.

The Lions future looks bright!


Draft redux

Re-projecting the 2009 first round based on season-to-date performances
It's 20-20 hindsight time, when I get to re-pick the first round of the 2009 NFL Draft with the benefit of 14 weeks of regular season results to guide by. Our sixth annual December NFL re-draft attempts to detail the way things should have unfolded in New York on April 26th, based on how things have gone so far this season. As always, rookie-season production, for the most part, wins out over potential and projection in our re-draft. (React to the re-draft here.)

Don Banks' 2009 Revised NFL Draft
1
Detroit Lions (Original pick: Matthew Stafford, QB, Georgia)
RE-DO PICK: MICHAEL OHER, OT, OLE MISS
I'm not making the case that Stafford was a mistake, only that playing a franchise quarterback before you have an offensive line to protect him is putting the cart before the horse. Stafford has gotten killed this season (24 sacks in 10 games), and it makes more sense for Detroit to have gone for Oher, the draft's top-performing tackle, to protect someone's, uh, Blind Side. Oher has played well at both right and left tackle for Baltimore this season, and scouts say he'd be a consensus top 5 pick if the draft were re-held today.

2
St. Louis Rams (Original pick: Jason Smith, OT, Baylor)
RE-DO PICK: MATTHEW STAFFORD, QB, GEORGIA
The Rams have passed on at least four first-round quarterbacks in the past two drafts -- Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco in 2008, Mark Sanchez and Josh Freeman in 2009 -- and there's no team in more obvious need of a new starting quarterback for 2010. With that in mind, and Smith having underperformed as a rookie, I'd select Stafford here, with the knowledge that St. Louis could have given him a redshirt season of sorts while Marc Bulger and Kyle Boller served out this long and trying season for the Rams.

3
Kansas City Chiefs (Original pick: Tyson Jackson, DE, LSU)
RE-DO PICK: PERCY HARVIN, WR-KR, FLORIDA
With six receiving touchdowns, two kick return touchdowns, and 13 plays from scrimmage of at least 20 yards, Harvin has been the league's most electrifying rookie play-maker. The Chiefs could sure have used a jolt of offense from their rookie class. They've scored 16 points or fewer in nine of 13 games this season, and their offense ranks 30th overall in yards (272.4), and 28th in points (15.8).

4
Seattle Seahawks (Original pick: Aaron Curry, LB, Wake Forest)
RE-DO PICK: BRIAN CUSHING, LB, USC
Curry has been very solid for the Seahawks, but Cushing has been downright spectacular for the Texans and is already one of the league's most effective outside linebackers. He finds the ball consistently, and can rush the passer, play the run, and shows up strong in pass coverage. What else is there? As much as Seattle could have made use of an offensive tackle this year, Cushing has been too good to pass on.

5
New York Jets (Original pick: Mark Sanchez, QB, USC)
RE-DO PICK: SANCHEZ
Sure, it has been a rollercoaster first season for "the Sanchise" in New York, but that's a fairly typical rookie experience for a quarterback, at least before Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco blew the curve for everyone last year. The Jets needed a quarterback, and they took a quarterback. Now it's time to grow with him. Sanchez showed flashes of brilliance early, but his limited collegiate playing experience eventually caught up with him.

6
Cincinnati Bengals (Original pick: Andre Smith, OT, Alabama)
RE-DO PICK: PHIL LOADHOLT, OT, OKLAHOMA
The juxtaposition must have been a bit obvious Sunday in Minneapolis. The Bengals gave Smith his long-awaited first start at right tackle, and he fared OK against the Vikings defensive line. But Minnesota selected Loadholt toward the end of the second round (54th) and he has excelled at right tackle, starting 12 of 13 games and handling most everything thrown at him.

7
Oakland Raiders (Original pick: Darrius Heyward-Bey, WR, Maryland)
RE-DO PICK: MICHAEL CRABTREE, WR, TEXAS TECH
C'mon, we couldn't resist. Crabtree was right. He should have never gotten past the Raiders in April's first round and we're here to right the wrong. Despite the belated start to his rookie season, his half-year of work is pretty impressive. He has 37 catches for 473 yards and a pair of touchdowns in eight games, and if you doubled those numbers, his 16-game production would be the stuff of an Offensive Rookie of the Year winner.

8
Jacksonville Jaguars (Original pick: Eugene Monroe, OT, Virginia)
RE-DO PICK: SEBASTIAN VOLLMER, OT, HOUSTON
The Jaguars have started their two rookie offensive tackles, Monroe and second-rounder Eben Britton, for most of the season, and both have had their highs and lows. But Vollmer, the 58th overall pick, has been one of the draft's bigger surprises, starting 11 games and playing well enough at left tackle to probably end Matt Light's tenure in New England in the near future. All you really need to know is that Bill Belichick clearly trusts Vollmer to protect Tom Brady's blind side.

9
Green Bay Packers (Original pick: B.J. Raji, DT, Boston College)
RE-DO PICK: CLAY MATTHEWS JR., LB, USC
The Packers sure could have used a young offensive tackle to help protect Aaron Rodgers earlier this season, but with the three best ones (Oher, Loadholt and Vollmer) already gone, it's logical to bump the play-making Matthews up to this slot. Because there's no way he'll last until Green Bay's No. 26 pick this time around. Matthews' eight sacks rank second among league rookies, and he continues to improve as the season unfolds.

10
San Francisco 49ers (Original pick: Michael Crabtree, WR, Texas Tech)
RE-DO PICK: JEREMY MACLIN, WR, MISSOURI
With Crabtree already in Oakland according to our re-draft, the 49ers would be fortunate to find Maclin still available. The Eagles receiver has been among the leading rookie play-makers all season, and before suffering a foot injury Sunday night against the Giants, he had 46 catches for 623 yards and four touchdowns in Philly's explosive offense.

11
Buffalo Bills (Original pick: Aaron Maybin, DE-OLB, Penn State)
RE-DO PICK: BRIAN ORAKPO, LB-DE, TEXAS
Orakpo has a whopping 11 sacks to lead all rookie pass rushers, and that's exactly 11 more than the Bills have gotten from Maybin, one of the first round's biggest disappointments. Orakpo dropped Raiders quarterbacks four times on Sunday in Oakland, vaulting himself into strong contention for Defensive Rookie of the Year.

12
Denver Broncos (Original pick: Knowshon Moreno, RB, Georgia)
RE-DO PICK: MORENO
With the possible exception of having Moreno hold on to the ball as he crossed the goal line a few weeks back against San Diego, I wouldn't change a thing about his rookie season for the Broncos. He leads all rookie rushers with 837 yards and five touchdowns, and has been the picture of consistency, with seven games of at least 75 yards.

13
Washington Redskins (Original pick: Brian Orakpo, OLB-DE, Texas)
RE-DO PICK: LESEAN MCCOY, RB, PITT
With the Redskins' struggles on offense and their lack of healthy running backs (see Clinton Portis and Ladell Betts), they sure could have used McCoy this season. The Eagles rookie has produced 814 yards of combined rushing and receiving, giving Philadelphia yet another play-making weapon in its arsenal.

14
New Orleans Saints (Original pick: Malcolm Jenkins, CB, Ohio State)
RE-DO PICK: AARON CURRY, LB, WAKE FOREST
The Saints love Jenkins and he has contributed significantly to their storybook season, but Curry's too good to pass on given New Orleans' need for some youth at outside linebacker. Before getting hurt in Houston on Sunday, Curry was putting together a quality rookie season, with 60 tackles, two sacks and two forced fumbles.

15
Houston Texans (Original pick: Brian Cushing, LB, USC)
RE-DO PICK: JAIRUS BYRD, S, OREGON
Cushing, Matthews and Curry are gone, and James Laurinaitis plays middle linebacker, where the Texans already have DeMeco Ryans. But having to face Peyton Manning and the Colts twice a year, Houston could really use a ball-hawking free safety like Byrd, whose nine interceptions lead the entire NFL, rookies and veterans alike.

16
San Diego Chargers (Original pick: Larry English, OLB, Northern Illinois)
RE-DO PICK: REY MAUALUGA, LB, USC
We're just subbing in the hyperactive Maualuga for English, because if the Chargers are looking for Shawne Merriman's eventual replacement, they could do worse than the former Trojans linebacker who has been a steady performer this season in starting all 13 games for the Bengals.

17
Tampa Bay Buccaneers (Original pick: Josh Freeman, QB, Kansas State)
RE-DO PICK: FREEMAN
It's a tough call, because the Bucs need help everywhere. But Freeman showed enough promise in the first few games after being inserted into the lineup at midseason to pique our interest, and given the draft slot Tampa Bay is going to own in 2010, you don't want to take a QB at No. 1 or 2 if you can avoid it. Linebacker, safety and receiver all make sense, too, but quarterback is always the top priority if the need is great.

18
Denver Broncos (Original pick: Robert Ayers, DE, Tennessee)
RE-DO PICK: LOUIS DELMAS, S, WESTERN MICHIGAN
Given the age and wealth of experience the Broncos have in their secondary, a young, play-making presence like Delmas would be a great fit for the future. Delmas has been one of the bright spots in Detroit this season, and the undersized hard hitter is reportedly the first rookie in NFL history to notch a safety, a fumble return for a touchdown and an interception in the same season. Works for me.

19
Philadelphia Eagles (Original pick: Jeremy Maclin, WR, Missouri)
RE-DO PICK: JAMES LAURINAITIS, LB, OHIO STATE
The Eagles have enough offense to win with these days, but where they need help is in the center of their defense, namely the middle linebacker spot that has been a black hole on the injury front. If the Eagles had Laurinaitis, who has been solid as a starter from day one of camp for the Rams, they wouldn't have had to go out and re-sign the likes of Jeremiah Trotter.

20
Detroit Lions (Original pick: Brandon Pettigrew, TE, Oklahoma State)
RE-DO PICK: PETTIGREW
The former Oklahoma State standout was on his way to an impressive rookie season when he suffered a year-ending knee injury on Thanksgiving against Green Bay. Pettigrew had 30 catches for 346 yards and a pair of touchdowns in his 11 games, and had lived up to Detroit's expectations in almost every way. A cornerback like Malcolm Jenkins or Vontae Davis would be the temptation if our choice wasn't Pettigrew.

21
Cleveland Browns (Original pick: Alex Mack, C, California)
RE-DO PICK: CHRIS "BEANIE" WELLS, RB, OHIO STATE
Have you seen the Browns running game this season? Me neither. And now, with Jamal Lewis retiring at year's end, Cleveland could use a boost on the ground more than ever. At least with Wells, the popular former Buckeyes star, you'd be throwing the Browns fans a (dog) bone.

22
Minnesota Vikings (Percy Harvin, WR/KR, Florida)
RE-DO PICK: B.J. RAJI, DT, BOSTON COLLEGE
Let's face it: This year's Vikings don't have a lot of glaring needs. But sometime in the near future they could use some youth at defensive tackle, where the Williams Wall can't play forever. Raji hasn't looked like a top 10 pick this season, but lately he's starting to show flashes of why Green Bay took him at No. 9.

23
Baltimore Ravens (Original pick: Michael Oher, OT, Mississippi)
RE-DO PICK: VONTAE DAVIS, CB, ILLINOIS
The Ravens haven't gotten the play at cornerback they expected all season, and we have to address that in our re-draft. Baltimore would have plenty of good choices here, including Malcolm Jenkins, Sean Smith and the surprising Jerraud Powers. But Davis has been a big-play maker for Miami, with a team-best three interceptions, including one touchdown return and one pickoff of Tom Brady in the end zone.

24
Atlanta Falcons (Original pick: Jeria Perry, DT, Mississippi)
RE-DO PICK: MALCOLM JENKINS, CB, OHIO STATE
Between injuries and ineffectiveness, the secondary has been the Falcons' Achilles heel all season, and Atlanta would have many of the same good cornerback choices that Baltimore had just before them. Jenkins has found different ways to contribute to the success in New Orleans, including some strong early season special teams play.

25
Miami Dolphins (Original pick: Vontae Davis, CB, Illinois)
RE-DO PICK: SEAN SMITH, CB, UTAH
The Dolphins took Smith 61st overall, in the second round, and he's started all season for them and played well. He'd never linger on the board past the top 30 these days. In a strong year for rookie corners, two more names to know are Jacksonville's Derek Cox and Indy's undrafted find, Jacob Lacey.

26
Green Bay Packers (Original pick: Clay Matthews Jr., LB, USC)
RE-DO PICK: AUSTIN COLLIE, WR, BYU
The Packers offensive line still needs help, but I'm not giving Green Bay Jason Smith, Andre Smith or Eugene Monroe just because they wore a first-round grade last April. The Packers would be lucky to have Collie fall to them, and he'd make a fine replacement for Donald Driver whenever the veteran calls it a career. Collie leads all rookie receivers with 50 catches, with 540 yards and six touchdowns.

27
Indianapolis Colts (Original pick: Donald Brown, RB, Connecticut)
RE-DO PICK: HAKEEM NICKS, WR, NORTH CAROLINA
The Colts probably would take Brown all over again, but I'm giving them Nicks, the Giants receiver who has worked his way into New York's starting lineup this month. Nicks' 685 yards leads all rookie receivers, and six of his 38 grabs have gone for touchdowns. With 11 catches of at least 20 yards, only Percy Harvin (12) has more among rookie receivers.

28
Buffalo Bills (Original pick: Eric Wood, G, Louisville)
RE-DO PICK: KENNY BRITT, WR, RUTGERS
The Bills had offensive line issues they never solved this season, but we can't overlook Britt, who has been right there in an almost unprecedented group of productive first-year receivers. With Britt filling the big-receiver role in the future, Buffalo can make its Terrell Owens era just the one-year experiment it looked to be all along.

29
New York Giants (Original pick: Hakeem Nicks, WR, North Carolina)
RE-DO PICK: LOUIS MURPHY, WR, FLORIDA
Without Hicks to nab at No. 29, the G-Men would have some good choices between Murphy, the fourth-round pick of the Raiders, Mike Wallace, who went in the third round to Pittsburgh, and Johnny Knox, the speedster who Chicago took in the fifth round. We opted for Murphy, because he's a big receiver who seems to have a knack for coming up with the clutch catch. Just ask the Steelers.

30
Tennessee Titans (Original pick: Kenny Britt, WR, Rutgers)
RE-DO PICK: DEANDRE LEVY, LB, WISCONSIN
Having missed out on Britt, the Titans could have easily continued the late-round run on receivers by taking either Wallace or Knox (Nashville could have been Knox-ville in that case). But if Keith Bulluck's days in Tennessee are nearing an end, Levy would be a good replacement. Detroit's third-round pick has been a solid, steady contributor this season, starting eight games for a Detroit defense that has nowhere to go but up.

31
Arizona Cardinals (Original pick: Chris "Beanie'' Wells, RB, Ohio State)
RE-DO PICK: SHONN GREENE, RB, IOWA
The Jets have relied quite a bit on Greene in the season's second half, after Leon Washington's injury, and the former Hawkeye has responded with a 5.0 average carry, a couple of touchdowns, and one huge 144-yard rushing day in a win at Oakland. The third-rounder is a decent substitute for Wells, who didn't last until the bottom of the first round in our draft redux.

32
Pittsburgh Steelers (Original pick: (Evander Hood, DT, Missouri)
RE-DO PICK: MIKE WALLACE, WR, OLE MISS
The Steelers took Wallace in the middle of the third round in April, but they'd have no such luxury at this point. As disappointing as Pittsburgh's title defense season has been, Wallace is an exception to the rule. He has more than replaced third receiver Nate Washington, and his 16.6-yard average catch highlights a rookie season that so far has produced 32 receptions for 530 yards and three touchdowns.
* First-round picks who did not make the cut this time: No. 2 Jason Smith, Rams, OT; No. 3 Tyson Jackson, Chiefs, DE; No. 6 Andre Smith, Bengals, OT; No. 7 Darrius Heyward-Bey, Raiders, WR; No. 8 Eugene Monroe, Jaguars, OT; No. 11 Aaron Maybin, Bills, DE; No. 16 Larry English, Chargers, LB; No. 18 Robert Ayers, Broncos, DE-LB; No. 21 Alex Mack, Browns, C; No. 24 Peria Jerry, Falcons, DT; No. 27 Donald Brown, Colts, RB; No. 28 Eric Wood, Bills, G-C; No. 32 Evander Hood, Steelers, DT.