By: Dinner
Year of the Sauce 4/28
Of all the prospects in this year’s draft no one stands out quite like University of Cincinnati cornerback Ahmad “Sauce” Gardner. In fact I’ll go on the record and say that ALL 32 teams could use Gardner in their secondary. The man has it all; he’s a tall, long cornerback that has the ability to guard top wide receivers one-on-one. This guy could very easily be the first Bearcat to be selected in the top five of the NFL Draft. The only thing stopping that from happening is the fact that both the Giants & the Jets have 2 top 10 picks and could snag someone else before Sauce, but he is definitely not falling past 10.
Gardner is without a question the best press-man defender in the class and it’s not even close. The stats back it up too, he finished his college career with 99 tackles, 18 pass breakups, 9 interceptions and didn’t allow a single touch down his entire college career. I watched every Bearcat game this year and it’s honestly impressive watching this dude play. He makes it tough for receivers to get off the line and just smothers them underneath. He reads receivers’ routes like a book, and shows good pattern recognition when playing in zone.
It’s not often that a draft prospect has current NFL wide receivers just itching to go up against. Now some of you will say “He played in the American Athletic Conference there’s no competition”. Which sure he didn’t play in the BIG10 or SEC. But Cincinnati did play Notre Dame & Alabama this past season and lemme tell you what Sauce had those receivers locked the fuck up. I had the absolute pleasure of attending the Cotton Bowl this past year and before the game all these bama fans were saying “Jameson Williams is going to dust Sauce” and “Get ready for Sauces first allowed TD” but once the ball was snapped the talking stopped. Even after the bearcats lost those bama fans had nothing but good things to say about Sauce.
I can not wait to see where Sauce lands tonight and I will be buying his jersey from whichever team ends up drafting him. Personally speaking an icy white Giants jersey would be clean. But I’m not too pressed about it. All I know is whichever team gets him will have its secondary instantly improved. Now the question is how long can Sauce last in the pros without having a touchdown scored on him, and who’s gonna be the first to do it.
