Ohio State cornerback Gareon Conley insists that sexual assault allegations against him are “completely false,” but they’re still going to have a negative effect on his draft stock. Conley, perhaps a top 10 pick-to-be before the allegations came to light Tuesday, now looks unlikely to come off the board before the third round, a league source told Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk.
Drafting Conley in the third would be a major coup for a team if his name is cleared, which he is “completely confident” will happen. But there will be risk associated with him until that occurs (if it even does), as Florio notes. In the event Conley is ultimately convicted of a first-degree felony, the club that selects him will have wasted a valuable pick on a player who shouldn’t have been drafted at all.
Judging solely on talent, Conley should be a first-round lock. The two-year starter with the Buckeyes is a safe bet on the field, leading PFR to regard him as a top five pick in its latest mock draft (though that was before this off-field incident came to the fore). Now, on the eve of the draft, he’s perhaps the riskiest player in this year’s class.
Patriots have a need at corner, and no first rounder. He could be their guy at the back of the second round or somewhere in the third.
Sad this kid got sucked up in some gold diggers money grab.. He’s obviously dumb enough to put himself in hairy situations though which should be the real concern for teams going forward
Cowgirls grab him at a reduced rate.
Pats don’t have a second round either
Yeah but if they think he’ll get out they might package their thirds.
Possible they don’t make trades to move up too often but with the way this off season has gone I wouldn’t be surprised
And riskiest player? Tunstil was last year considering the weird turn of events on draft day, and he worked out ok so far.
Tunsil’s situation was a lot less serious than this could be.
Easy to say that now, but when that happened right when the teams went on the clock the panic set in and teams really took a risk there wasn’t more than that video.
Came out OK but lo$t a ton of dough with his fall from #1 over all
This is on par with La’el Collins, but he requested not to be drafted.
Teams with 2 2nd round picks – Browns and Panthers. Browns are closest to the situation by geography and least capable of handling this situation. Panthers have a solid HC and a lot of strong veterans that could handle this situation until it is resolved one way or another. The Browns have 11 draft picks though and the Panthers only have 8. So if the Browns were to risk the 20th pick in the 2nd round it wouldn’t be as bad, since they’ll also pick 1st in the 3rd.
The Panthers cut Greg Hardy with no second thoughts. Not sure Richardson would be okay with Gettelman taking a risk on a potential felon (even if it seems likely Conley is cleared of wrongdoing.)
NFL needs to do something about this kind of stuff though in the grand scheme you have 3 years in a row something damning coming out the week of the draft on 3 top-10 players. MLB gives the team back their pick in roughly the same position the following year if the draftee doesn’t sign with them. So say someone in the 1st wanted to draft La’el Collins with the 20th overall, and he ended up going to jail never to play, they’d get 21st in addition to their pick based on where they landed in the standings. And you put a provision in there that it’ can’t be traded like comp picks. For small sentences – team can either keep the player or get a new pick, and they can’t be the 1st team to re-sign him if he ends up in the league. So you can draft guys – innocent until proven guilty, versus guilty until proven innocent.
Collins did not ask to not get drafted and be forced to be locked in at league minimum for a free agent.
The NFL rejected agent Deryk Gilmore’s request to pull LSU offensive lineman La’el Collins from the 2015 NFL Draft in favor of the supplemental draft, NFL Media Insider Ian Rapoport reported Thursday.
Gimore, Collins’ agent, petitioned the league earlier Thursday as his client efforts to clear his name.
link to nfl.com
Get some facts, and come back and see me.
This is absolutely ridiculous. Do some damn research, watch the videos, and read the police reports. The story is obvious BS and the videos out there back it up. It’s disgusting how these people get to slander a man’s name and character but nothing happens to them when they are deliberately lying. If he really does fall out of the first round, every team will regret it besides the team who gets him later on. I don’t see him falling far and this is beyond ridiculous.
Even if the rape didn’t happen it’s obvious there are other things that went down that night that make you question his character.
Would be a steal for Brown’s in top of third. They know more about him and his character than anyone