North Dakota Preps

Sixth round and no one has picked Eslinger yet :shock:. 

Picked at 198 in the 6th for the Denver Broncos. Great pick for them! He fits well in their offensive scheme.

Also Broncos took UND's Chris Kuper, suprising he went to them before Eslinger.

Crazy, also Cavalier and NDSU grad Rob Hunt is on the Denver Bronco's practice squad so they could be competing for a job against each other at some point.

Congrats to Esslinger and Kuper on being drafted and hopefully will represent North Dakota to the best on and off the field.

Just a neat stat i saw, Eslinger became the lowest-picked Outland Trophy Award Winner since 1980.  Which brings up the question "Was he overated in college or is he underated as an NFL prospect?"  I'd like to think it's the latter.

as far as i'm concerned, the center from new mexico that the vikings drafted had better be starting at some point in the near future...the vikings have made a mockery with taking some u of m players that had no business being in the pros. yet here is a guy (eslinger) who was a four-year starter in the big 10, by no means a pushover conference. i can't wrap my mind around why they didn't take a flyer on him.

i watched a couple of new mexico games this season because i heard a lot of good things about one of their running backs. at no point was there any mention of any of their center, or any of their offensive lineman.

i was pretty happy with the first couple of vikings picks in the draft, but taking the new mexico kid over a guy like eslinger really gave me a headache because i just couldn't figure out the logic behind it.

I think a lot of teams were concerned with his size which is why some teams passed on him and took another center over him.

Weight-wise though, Eslinger is only 10-15 pounds lighter than the average center in the draft

ndplayer wrote:Just a neat stat i saw, Eslinger became the lowest-picked Outland Trophy Award Winner since 1980.  Which brings up the question "Was he overated in college or is he underated as an NFL prospect?"  I'd like to think it's the latter.

I have a good feeling we will be finding out soon i also think a lot of teams will end up being disappointed in the long run by not taking him

rep wrote:as far as i'm concerned, the center from new mexico that the vikings drafted had better be starting at some point in the near future...the vikings have made a mockery with taking some u of m players that had no business being in the pros. yet here is a guy (eslinger) who was a four-year starter in the big 10, by no means a pushover conference. i can't wrap my mind around why they didn't take a flyer on him.

i watched a couple of new mexico games this season because i heard a lot of good things about one of their running backs. at no point was there any mention of any of their center, or any of their offensive lineman.

i was pretty happy with the first couple of vikings picks in the draft, but taking the new mexico kid over a guy like eslinger really gave me a headache because i just couldn't figure out the logic behind it.

Childress said that since you can only dress about 7 or so lineman for games, they decided to go with Cook because his size made him more versatile.  He said they thought that Eslinger would be unable to play tackle if needed and that was their reasoning behind it.  I think Eslinger will do just fine in Denver, hopefully the guys with North Dakota connections can get the experience and coaching that will allow them to play for many years in the league.

College to the NFL is a whole different game, you have to be crazy to play in the NFL. You've got heisman trophy winners that can't even make an NFL team like Eric Crouch and Jason White. In college your not always playing against the best talent, but you get to the NFL your playing the best week in and week out. A lot of teams such as the Vikings draft guys like Cook who isn't as good as Eslinger but they see he's 6'6 300 some pounds and they see POTENTIAL. Thats what a lot of the draft is based on POTENTIAL. If I'm Eslinger I'm happy right now anyway playing for the Bronco's who have a much better chance of winning a Super Bowl in the future then them Vikings :).

What do the Broncos find so appealing about ND.  Not only did they take Eslinger, they took that lineman from NDSU (Kuper i think his name is).  Nice to see, because we all know how good the linemen from Denver are.  If i were to chose anywhere to learn how to play lineman, it would be Denver.  Can u name the last time they didn't have a great line?

[user=512]ndplayer[/user] wrote:

What do the Broncos find so appealing about ND.  Not only did they take Eslinger, they took that lineman from NDSU (Kuper i think his name is).  Nice to see, because we all know how good the linemen from Denver are.  If i were to chose anywhere to learn how to play lineman, it would be Denver.  Can u name the last time they didn't have a great line?

Kuper played at UND, Rob Hunt was the one who played for NDSU that also plays in Denver.

Actually, it was Chris Kuper that did go the the Broncos.  I meant UND.  But thank you for giving the names