INDIANAPOLIS - I mentioned to my buddy Paul Perillo of Patriots Football Weekly that defensive ends and linebackers were coming through for interviews this morning.
To which he replied, "Great. The day we get to talk to all the guys the Patriots won't draft."
I spent the runup to the 2011 draft stalking Cam Jordan. At 6-4, 287 pounds with a 4.7 40, an NFL pedigree and a brain useful enough to get him to Cal-Berkeley, this was the guy the Patriots needed coming off the edge.
And the Patriots desperately needed that guy because their 2010 pass rush was atrocious. So it was either Jordan, Ryan Kerrigan, J.J. Watt, Brooks Reed, Jabal Sheard. But it had to be somebody early.
Turned out to be none of the above. The Patriots didn't make a move on an edge rusher until the sixth round when they spent the 195th overall pick on Markell Carter, a 6-4, 252-pounder out of Central Arkansas.
Carter spent the 2011 season on the Patriots practice squad. But they like him. When the San Francisco 49ers tried to sign him off their practice squad they bumped Carter's salary up to 390,000.
The pass rush eventually got solved to a degree when the team signed free agents Andre Carter and Mark Anderson and got 20 combined sacks out of them.
But both of them are free agents and the Patriots are still somewhat in search of the long-term answer Jermaine Cunningham and Shawn Crable and others couldn't be.
So we're back at it. And, we present to you Melvin Ingram.
At 6-1, 264 he's a little on the short side for the Patriots needs but he's got outstanding flexibility in terms of scheme and says he feels equally comfortable in either setup.
Here's some tape of Melvin.The fact he's the last guy off the ball on every snap seems a little weird but this was 2010. He had nine sacks in the SEC that year and 10 this past season. He's dropped a dozen pounds in the runup to this draft and has been working out with Von Miller in California.
The Broncos linebacker was the second overall pick and wound up the NFL's Defensive Rookie of the Year. They've hit it off well and Miller's got Ingram doing backflips. Literally.
Miller challenged Ingram to do one because he didn't believe Ingram could. He did.
Ingram's projected as a top-20 guy in this draft so the Patriots - holding picks 27 and 31 - will have to buck convention to go up and get him.
For a team that often pulls surprise moves during the draft, maybe that would be the biggest surprise of all.