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I loved the pick. I had him as a dark horse because of his medical and felt he may slide because of it. Honestly, when it came to #15, he never really entered my mind, as I felt they would pass on him. People asked who they wanted at #15 and in one of my posts, I said a football player. I wanted Mitchell but I also raised the idea of Latua in other posts..  I really praise Ballard for this pick. I said he needed to come away with a play maker and there had to be some amount of pressure on him to do so. Apparently, information is out there that he tried to move up and I also said, I had a feeling this was a year they were going to try and make a move. I give a lot of credit to Ballard for picking the guy who has a lot of production and if he fails, so be it. I also told people on this board that this pass rush was not good enough. Ballard's eagerness to sign Hunter should have been a sign that he felt so as well. I said to watch free agency and it will tell you what their true needs are. He wanted Hunter and Sneed. The rumor is that he wanted to trade up into the 1st and everyone is saying it was probably a receiver. That is shocking to me but once again, I will give Ballard an A+ so far, because he was willing to be aggressive.  I do Steichen is having some influence on Ballard because of his days with the Eagles and how aggressive they are in the draft. I think this shows that he realizes that he needs to have play makers to play with the elite teams and you have to take some risk to get those type of players. I have been hard on Ballard, but he has knocked it out of the park so far. He took a guy with a questionable medical history, addressed a glaring need and a position that is needed to make this defense work. Don't be mislead by last year's sack totals. This team lost a pile of games in the 4th quarter last year because they could not pressure the qb. Now he needs a wr, S and corner. I wouldn't be surprised to see him move up in the 2nd. Way to go Ballard!!! 

It seems most of his pass rush production has been as a standing OLB. He does have reps with his hand on the ground where he's produced as well, but he was asked to rush standing up most of the time. Hopefully that isn't a big transition for him, because it is for some people.

Sold my prediction short