49ers and Raiders draft report By David Zizmor April 21, 2010     OAKLAND--With the Niners and Raiders it's tough to guess, the Raiders their first round pick let's preference this were talking about the Raiders and the Niners here were talking about their first round picks. I think we can look at them as a whole and look at the overall picture of what they might try to do with all of their picks but let’s take a look at those first picks because those are the big guys, those are the players who have the most likely impact in the upcoming season and they have guys who everybody has heard of. So we look at the Raiders and we look at the Niners and the first thing we notice is the Raiders again as every losing team does has a very high pick they pick number eight and the 49ers they have two first round picks, they have picked 13th and 17th. One of those picks was a result of a trade with the Carolina Panthers in last year's draft where the Niners were able to get the Panthers first round pick. They both have some very interesting options. The thing is both of these teams and the Raiders they pick just late enough and it's really tough to predict what they’re going to do. What the Raiders and Niners do with their picks really depends upon what every team ahead of them does. Each team has enough need that they can go in a number of different direction but who they would really like to get depends on who’s taken. The consensus is that the top five guys are going to be gone, the number of the top five guys everybody seems to be in agreement on who those people are, Sam Bradford quarterback from Oklahoma who is going to the Rams, then there is going to be some combination of defensive tackles like Nebraska's Ndamukong Suh the defensive player of the year. Then there's Gerald McCoy out of Oklahoma, Eric Berry safety from Tennessee and Russell Okung offensive tackle from Oklahoma all five of these guys are fantastic players. They're going to be in the top five, six, seven guys in the draft. You won't see much slip past the seventh slot. That’s where it gets interesting because there are four or five offensive tackles primarily guys who everyone thinks might be left tackles in the premiere spot on the offensive line. Nobody knows exactly where they’re going to go. The Raiders could use offensive line help and the Niners could use some offensive line help. Where these guys go is anybody's guess, so I'm not going to guess who goes where, it's pretty tough. If you look at the Niners and the Raiders let's just kind of map out what they really need to get. Looking at the Raiders picking very high the eighth slot there are a number of different directions they could go. In fact there are so many different directions that they could go it's really tough to figure out where they will. If you read mock draft and everybody seems to these days the guys that the Raiders are supposedly going to be taking are all over the map. Their looking to draft a quarterback and looking for another defensive lineman, even linebacker and running back it's ridiculous. Nobody seems to have any idea what the Raiders are going to do. You have a lot of people who like to predict that the Raiders are going to take the fastest guy on the board no matter what the quality of player is. That's largely based on the bad pick last year of Darrius Heyward-Bey who wowed everyone with fantastic 40 time at the NFL combine but hadn't done anything that special in college. Yet Raider owner Al Davis fell in love with Bey's speed and picked him at number seven ahead of Michael Crabtree of the 49ers who everyone could read that he was a much better wide receiver than Heyward-Bey. Then of course in half a season after holding out Crabtree went out and proved that he was better than Heyward-Bey. While Heyward-Bey was out trying to prove everyone was right that he was a lousy receiver and should have been taken in the first round. So everybody likes to look at the Raiders and look at no matter how fast this guy is that's who the Raiders are going to take. The Raiders are looking at this guy from Maryland offensive tackle Bruce Campbell just like Heyward-Bey. Campbell went into the NFL combine not a guy most people have heard of he hadn't really done anything in college but he's a physical specimen. He's one of these guys if you look at him people will say, "holy cow that guy is ripped, he should be an offensive lineman, he is big and muscular, he looks like he's strong." The only problem is he wasn't even good enough to make the all-conference team in his conference and he plays in the ACC which is not a power football conference. So this is guy who looks fantastic but don't judge a book by its cover. Look at all the games he's played over the course of his college career there's nothing special. David Zizmor will have more discussion on the Raiders-49ers picks this week on Sportstalk Radio

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