Jets rookie defensive back Don Warren called out the NFL’s Draft Advisory Board yesterday for leading him on.
Warren, a first-team All-Big Ten pick from Michigan who surprisingly went undrafted, said a tin-eared recommendation from the league panel goaded him into the fateful mistake to turn pro after his junior season.
The advisory board — made up of NFL GMs, personnel directors and scouts — was way off when it told Warren he could expect to be taken in the first three rounds. Instead, a whopping 33 cornerbacks and 11 free safeties ended up being drafted while Warren’s phone stayed silent.
“I definitely felt [the advisory board misled him] because they told me I would be drafted — and drafted pretty high,” Warren said yesterday after the first workout of the Jets’ three-day rookie minicamp. “It was definitely shocking and eye-opening when I didn’t get drafted after that.”
Though Warren refused to say if he would have stayed in school had the advisory board been less upbeat, he tried to take the high road by saying he had no regrets.
Of course, Warren didn’t exactly help his draft stock by running a very slow 4.65-second 40 at the scouting combine in early March, a time he blames partially on surgery last year on his right ankle.
But Warren never expected all seven rounds to pass last week without his name being mentioned.
“That wasn’t a good feeling at all,” he said.
Yet the 5-foot-11, 195-pound Warren said he realizes he has no recourse other than to express his dismay at the advisory board, so the converted cornerback is determined to make the best of his plight.
The Jets pounced on Warren after the draft, beating out several teams to sign him as an undrafted free agent in part because new defensive line coach Mark Carrier is his godfather.
The Jets plan to give Warren every chance to make a run at the free-safety vacancy created by Kerry Rhodes’ exit. Though Warren played just two games at safety in college, coach Rex Ryan sees the position as his destination if Warren hopes to stick with Gang Green.
The position doesn’t matter to Warren as much as the opportunity.
“Being undrafted, I feel like I have a chip on my shoulder,” he said. “Every day I go out there, I’ve got something to prove. That’s motivation for me to keep pushing.”