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Will Mariota be gone before Eagles pick, or will he slide?

Packers' Aaron Rodgers is an example of a top QB who fell in the draft, but experts aren't sure lightning will strike again.

Marcus Mariota. (Brian Spurlock/USA Today Sports file photo)
Marcus Mariota. (Brian Spurlock/USA Today Sports file photo)Read more

THERE IS ONE thing we think we know for sure about the Eagles and their possible pursuit of Marcus Mariota: Chip Kelly said last month he would "never mortgage our future to go all the way up to get somebody like that, because we have too many other holes."

Kelly's scenario assumes his former Oregon quarterback will be chosen at or near the top of the draft, which seems quite likely; both NFL Network analyst Mike Mayock and ESPN analyst Ron Jaworski said recently they would take Mariota over the widely presumed No. 1 overall pick, Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston. Even if Tampa does draft Winston first, only yesterday, former NFL general manager and current ESPN analyst Bill Polian said on a conference call with reporters, "If you want to be sure to get [Mariota], you have to go up to 2 or 3."

But for argument's sake - and because we still have a couple weeks of hip-deep speculation to wade through before the April 30 start of the draft - let's look into the possibility that Mariota won't go first, second, third, or even fifth or sixth, that he could somehow either fall to the Eagles at 20 (which NFL Network analyst Brian Baldinger predicted in a mock draft), or drift close enough that the Birds wouldn't have to engage in any future-mortgaging to acquire him.

It happened 10 years ago - a man who would become the best quarterback of his generation, who was widely tabbed to go at the top of the draft, slid and slid and slid until the Green Bay Packers finally ended Aaron Rodgers' nationally televised misery, taking the California QB with the 24th overall pick, much to the surprise and dismay of a still fully functional Brett Favre.

Yes, plenty of other quarterbacks have gone off the board lower than predicted since then - including Johnny Manziel to Cleveland with the 22nd pick last year - but they generally have been less heralded picks than Rodgers, who was part of a Winston/Mariota-type debate that year with Utah's Alex Smith, drafted first overall by the 49ers.

Some teams apparently thought Rodgers was only a product of then-Cal coach Jeff Tedford's system (as is the case this year with Mariota and Kelly), but, more than that, once San Francisco took Smith, it seemed there was a long run of teams who "didn't need" a quarterback.

That's an odd concept, actually; over the past decade-plus, just about the only thing every Super Bowl winner has in common is that all employed Pro Bowl-level, top-echelon QBs, so if you don't have one of those half-dozen or so guys, you actually do need a quarterback. But for some reason, the Washington Redskins, for example, figured they were just fine with Mark Brunell and took cornerback Carlos Rogers ninth overall. Dallas, quarterbacked at the time by Drew Bledsoe, with Tony Romo riding the bench, drafted both DeMarcus Ware and Marcus Spears before Green Bay's turn at the lectern.

Andrew Brandt was a Packers vice president then, and he recalled this week that the Pack wasn't all that prescient - Brandt said Green Bay wanted defense, would have loved to have taken Ware if he'd remained on the board, and was willing to trade the pick when none of its targeted players made it to 24.

"But the phone never rang," said Brandt, who later consulted with the Eagles and now works for ESPN.

Brandt recalls calling Rodgers to establish contact, before the final decision was made: "I watched him talk to me on TV." The Packers had 20 players with first-round grades, Brandt said. When 24 rolled around, Rodgers' was the only remaining name on the list.

"It just came to that point," he said, but not without some intense debate generated by the coaching staff about spending a first-round pick on a player who almost certainly wouldn't play a down as a rookie, behind the most durable NFL QB of all time. (In fact, the 2005 Packers went 4-12 with Rodgers standing on the sideline.)

The Packers' draft headquarters was just above the team's draft party that day, Brandt said.

"Packer fans are as friendly as any, yet when we made that pick, I heard a lot of boos down there," Brandt said.

The "help right now" dynamic is a powerful one, especially with coaches, who tend to get fired more often than general managers. It could become a factor with Mariota, who some observers think will need time, especially if he's drafted by a team with a traditional pro-style attack. The recent trend has been for impact QBs to start right away.

NFL Network analyst Charles Davis told a conference call this week he can't see Mariota getting past the Rams at 10th overall. Should Mariota drift that far, that would be a more reasonable neighborhood for the Eagles to trade into from 20, but, of course, they would need a trade partner who didn't see Mariota as a slam-dunk franchise QB and was willing to deal him. (Who's the Rams' QB again? Nick something?) Davis then added that 10 might be too much of a slide.

"I'm more and more convinced as we go along he's not going to get that far, for whatever reason. Quarterbacking has such a premium on it, even if you don't think he's flat-out ready, I think he will be irresistible for someone to do that," Davis said.

On the same conference call, fellow analyst Daniel Jeremiah - who once worked in scouting for the Eagles - said, "I get to talk to a lot of people around the NFL and different personnel departments, and everybody I've talked to, they like Marcus, but I can't get them to commit to the fact that they love him, and then they can't wait to tell me the three or four other teams that they know that love him that will pick him."

Jeremiah said that when he then goes to those teams he's been told "love" Mariota, "They like him, but they don't love him, but they will point me right back to the team I just talked to, and [say] 'but I know they love him.'

"There's so much information out there, it's just awful hard to predict where he's going to go. I don't put him at over 50 percent to any of the teams in the top 10, but [given] the fact that there's a handful of teams that could potentially do it, I just think the odds are, he's going to go in there."

Of course, there are teams not in the top 10 but closer to it than 20, or teams that maybe don't think they have as many needs to fill as the Eagles, who could trade up into Mariota territory - if he doesn't go first to Tampa or second to Tennessee, which still seems more likely than anything else.

Blog: ph.ly/Eagletarian