Draft Talk: 3/31

As players finish their Pro Days at their colleges, private workouts with teams begin. The Ravens have reportedly had 4 players this week come to visit or work out at their facilities, and at least one more is probably coming.

Arizona linebacker

Vuna Tuihalamaka

“visited” the team on Monday.

According to Aaron Wilson

, the 6’2″, 230 pound linebacker from Arizona ran a 4.65 40-yard dash at his Pro Day. If the Ravens drafted him, we’d definitely need some nickname so that we wouldn’t copy and paste his name every time.

In his same article, Wilson mentions that Syracuse receiver Mike Williams visited the team on Monday as well. This is the guy who randomly quit the team, most likely because they had a Dookie playing quarterback. He’s extremely talented and in his 7 games last season (before quitting), the former Orangeman had 49 catches for 746 yards and 6 TDs. He was suspended for all of 2008, and as a sophomore, he had 60 catches for 837 yards and 10 TDs.

In an article written just after midnight, Wilson touched on two more guys that visited the team ‘this week’.

Danny Batten is a 6’2″, 244 pound outside linebacker out of South Dakota State. Coming from a small school, he didn’t have a lot of pre-draft hype, but has been rising up draft boards. His stats are very impressive: 85 tackles, 9 sacks and 17 TFL this past season for the SDSU Jackrabbits.
Jeff Linkenbach is an 2nd team All-Big East offensive tackle from Cincinnati. 6’6″ and 312 pounds, he’s big, but was not even invited to the Combine. If drafted at all, it would be a late-round pick to give any team some depth at the OT position.
On Twitter, Wilson told me that the team might get a visit/workout set up with South Florida cornerback Jerome Murphy. This, I’m actually pretty excited about. The Ravens attended the USF Pro Day (George Selvie speculation, anyone?) and were hopefully impressed by Murphy’s performance. The 6’0″, 196 pounder runs a 40 in around 4.5 or 4.6 seconds and is projected as a third round pick. In my opinion, he can really grow as a football player if given the right coaching.

Notes:
-Either later today or tomorrow, I’ll post about Dez Bryant. Forgetting your shoes to a workout is never good, is it bad enough for him to fall to the Ravens? Should they take him?
-I promised, and now I will deliver. The rest of this week will be mock draft themed. I will definitely get a 1st round mock up, hopefully a Ravens 7-round, and hopefully look at the rest of the mocks on the internet.
-For all of you soccer fans out there, be sure to check out the Arsenal v. Barcelona match today at 2:30 on Fox Soccer. If you’re not a fan now, you will be after this game.

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