KJR Interviews

by: William P. Tomisser

Here's a few more KJR interviews that were conducted during the latter part of last week, along with a few pearls I gleaned from them.

Both John Clayton and Clare Farnsworth think that Bobby Engram won't resign with Seattle now even if they offered him the best deal. More and more, Houshmandzadeh is being touted as a bigger, taller, and younger Engram.

Peter King said that he would be concerned with the Albert Haynesworth signing because he's been playing in his contract year for two years in a row now. Will he let down now that he got his check?

Jim Mora kept T.J. Houshmandzadeh's expensive watch when he went to Minnesota. Mora jokingly told T.J. that he wanted to keep his watch as security so he knew that T.J. would return and he slipped it off his wrist and gave it to Mora for safekeeping. It sat on Mora's desk until Housh came back and signed his contract with Seattle.

Apparently, Houshmandzadeh will be playing with a bit of a chip on his shoulder this season and gave a hint about one reason he might not have wanted to go back to Cincinnati. According to John Clayton, in a couple of interviews Housh has alluded to the fact that Ocho Cinco got a lot of his catches because he was double teamed and was taking the pressure off him. T.J. seemed miffed that he wasn't given as much credit for the duo's success as Ocho was and is eager to come out in the limelight and show what he can do. I love when a guy plays with a chip on his shoulder because its a burning motivator that will drive a player to excel week after week.

Lots of prognosticators are now saying Seattle will choose one of the available left tackles or trade down. Clayton also says that if Curry drops to them the Seahawks should grab him as the best player available. There was some speculation that Seattle could trade down to somewhere in the 8^th - 12^th pick range to pick up an extra 2^nd round player and still be able to grab Crabtree. I'm not sure Crabtree will fall that far. It's hard to imagine he will get by Al Davis at number seven, frankly. Seattle could probably trade down to the same area and get one of the four top left tackles if they could live with either Andre Smith or Michael Oher.

The consensus from the guys who follow West Coast football (Sando, Clayton, and Rang) is that Detroit will take Matt Stafford, The Rams will take Justin Smith, Kansas City will take Aaron Curry, and Seattle will take Eugene Monroe. My best guess right now is also Eugene Monroe at number four. The logic behind it is that Seattle most likely won't find themselves in position to get a top left tackle again for some time, and with Walter Jones approaching his due date this is their chance to replace him with another quality player. You just don't get a chance to draft a quality left tackle very often, and when it coincides with an oncoming need it makes too much sense not to strongly consider it.

That said, Ruskell did just re-sign Willis so he truly is without a pressing need in April. I'll say one thing for Ruskell, he's worked himself into exactly the position he wanted to be in where no one has a clue what he's going to do or what the team's plan is for the draft. Just like the total surprise that Colin Cole was their number one priority in free agency, it's hard to imagine what he's got in mind for April. Be ready for anything.

Here's the interview links:

Mitch with Peter King


Mitch with Clare Farnsworth


Softy with Nate Burleson


Softy with Rob Rang


Ian with Mike Sando


Ian with Leroy Hill


Groz with Gas and John Clayton

These interviews are all good listening and there are lots of tidbits about free agency and the draft. If you don't feel like listening to them online, you can also right click on any of the links and choose "Save Target As" to save the file as an MP3 file that you can load into your iPod or play on your PC at your leisure. I love loading my iPod and then listening to these in my car while I'm driving around. Enjoy!

Hasta,

Bill T

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