In an interview with Redskins.com, ESPN's Louis Riddick talked about potential first-round pick avenues for the Redskins and the possibility of selecting a quarterback.
A former scout for the Washington Redskins, ESPN's Louis Riddick is confident the team will go for a defensive player in the first round of this year's NFL Draft.
Which player that will be remains the biggest question, though.
There's loads of talented defensive line products this year and it's an area Riddick believes is a need for the Redskins.
"I would think really when you look at this and you look at how Scot McCloughan traditionally builds football teams, they're going to build it from front to back and they're going to build it inside out," Riddick told Redskins.com. "So you're going to look at the depth of this draft really being defensive tackle, defensive end. There are some corners that maybe will be down there in the 20s that maybe they could target also. These are all positions that they'll go after."
While the Redskins have pass rushers like Ryan Kerrigan (who has 47.5 sacks in five seasons) who can cause nightmares on the outside and someone like Chris Baker coming of a career year in 2015, it never hurts having additional players capable of bring down the quarterback at any time.
"There are a lot of types of body types you have in pass rusher," Riddick said. "Obviously they play the 3-4. They could use another speed guy to maybe go with a guy like Junior Galette and Ryan Kerrigan. Could you add another one? Sure. Could you get another big guy inside to help the inside pass rushers? Because they don't have a lot of it there."
Riddick also believes the Redskins need secondary help.
While Bashaud Breeland and Chris Culliver will once again compete for starting jobs, and there's confidence DeAngelo Hall can transition over into being a great safety, they need more youthful talent on the backend.
"There will be a number of different guys here who will kind of sort them sort themselves out here at the Combine at the cornerback position that I'm sure they'll look at too," Riddick said. "But yeah, I definitely think they'll concentrate on that side of the football."
On the offensive side of the ball, meanwhile, the Redskins could be in need of a backup quarterback to Kirk Cousins, with whom Washington continues to negotiate for a multi-year contract.
Colt McCoy is scheduled to become a free agent and Robert Griffin III's time with the team appears over in the next few weeks.
"There could be some guys right now really we're talking about as being guys who are bonafide first rounders actually slide in this draft also," Riddick said. "You don't know. The quarterback position I would caution everybody to really slow down as to how these guys come off the board. Who knows where a guy like maybe Paxton Lynch will even go or where Christian Hackenberg will even go. If he gets past Houston, there's all kind of speculation as to how far he can drop. So again, it's going to be very much so determined upon who is left."
Riddick also believes the draft isn't extremely deep in terms of quarterbacks on the surface, but some of the better football personnel will be able to find the better late-round quarterbacks this year.
"That's one of those things where the best GMs will just have to be very fluid with it and kind of roll with it," Riddick said. "And see, 'Hey look, does this guy fit our character profile and physically where we were in a position where we thought long-term we were going to need another long-term answer other than Kirk.' Although I don't ever see it getting that way. One of these guys will fit. We'll see how it goes."
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