2010 CSC Community Mock Draft: The NY Giants Select...

Next up in our second annual community mock draft here at Canal Street Chronicles is the New York Giants with the fifteenth overall selection. CSC member Joseph William Stern will be representing the team and making the pick. Check out who he decided would best help the Giants. 

Much appreciation to Joseph William Stern for his participation. 

With the fifteenth pick in the 2010 CSC community mock draft, the New York Giants select...

Trent Williams, OT, Oklahoma

Let me start off by saying I'm probably the absolute worst person in the world to talk to about grading future NFL offensive linemen. I never played anywhere near the Offensive Line in high school (I played Wide Receiver in a triple option offense, so needless to say, I didn't see much action when I did play, either), I've never really had a great idea of what makes a great offensive linemen, and I certainly don't know what makes someone more suited to playing left tackle over right tackle, but that is not to say that I'm not extremely impressed with what I've seen from Trent Williams. 

A lot has been made of Bruce Campbell's performance in the combine, and rightly so; the man is a monster, a big ol' smokescreen-creating-draft-inflating monster. Let's not forget that prior to the combine It was guys like Trent Williams who were getting all the play about having legitimate top ten potential, and there's a reason for that. But first, speaking of the combine, just how much less impressive was the field versus Bruce Campbell?

The answer, shockingly, is not much. In the 40-yard dash, Williams was only three one hundredths of a second behind Campbell. To put that into perspective, the average human eyelid takes 3.5 hundredths of a second to blink. And besides, this measurement may be entirely insignificant in the first place. Linemen rarely run 40 yards on a single play, as this old adage illustrates: "If your lineman is running a forty-yard dash in a game, something is going horribly wrong."

Trent Williams was actually the top performer in the vertical leap, climbing to a height of 34.5 inches, which would have put him in the top ten if he had decided to jump with the tight ends. Williams also tied for second in the broad jump with a mind boggling 9'5'' leap. These two jumping tests speak very highly about Williams' explosive force, an important part of an lineman's repertoire, especially when one considers that a lineman's real power comes from the lower portion of his body.

He has shown an ability to play with great aggressiveness and a pretty decent motor. These characteristics make him a perfect fit for an offensive line that struggled mightily through the second half of the season and could use an injection of young blood. He still has a lot of good real estate on his body to fill out with muscle, which he had better do if he has any plans of being a premier run-blocker in the league. He is a hard hitter with quick, agile feet for a lineman, who has shown an excellent ability to get his feet set in a timely manner in pass-protection.

One of the bigger knocks on him has been his tendency to take a bad angle every once in a while, which in a big game can have some pretty dire consequences, as seen at :48 in this video from OU vs. BYU 2009:

Williams was beaten badly on that play, but now has (basically) a whole extra year's worth of experience to learn from the mistake. And hopefully, for the Giants, it'll be one he won't repeat.