The Missouri Tigers Legends Draft: Round XV

Just jumping in? Here are the previous rounds of the Missouri Tigers Football Draft:

Round XII (this has the halfway point breakdown and links to rounds 1-11)

Round XIII

Round XIV

Welcome, Tiger fans, to #PeakOffseasonContent. Despite a lack of championships, the Missouri Football Tigers have had some excellent players throughout the years, both at the college and professional levels. There have been excellent ambassadors on and off the field, as well as some that changed the program or revolutionized a position. So what better time than now to draft a hypothetical team of these exquisite athletes?

BK and I will build a team of 22 starters (sorry, specialists!) to craft a team to play against the other. For simplicity’s sake, we’re limiting our selections to guys who played on the 2000 team going forward, including the current roster in 2020. Each Round will alternate who goes first and we’ll provide our reasoning/explanations/defense afterwards.

At the end, you all will be able to vote for who you think has the best team! And of course, we’d love to hear your picks for each round as well and why we are dumdums who don’t know what we’re talking about.

Round XV, Pick 29: BK selects WR Emanuel Hall

Photo by M. Anthony Nesmith/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

This is one of the most difficult picks I’ve made thus far. I knew I wanted to finish out my WR unit, but the question was which WR to go with. Jeremy Maclin, Justin Gage, Danario Alexander and Dorial Green-Beckham are off the board. For my money, that leaves five receivers on the board worth consideration: J’Mon Moore, Emanuel Hall, L’Damian Washington, Will Franklin and T.J. Moe.

Maclin gives me some flexibility. He can play inside or out. If I didn’t have that, I would immediately shift my attention to Moe. But I have confidence J-Mac can shift inside, so that’s not necessary.

Let’s go to the numbers, shall we?

J’Mon Moore: 37 games, 158 receptions, 2,477 yards (15.7 YPR) & 21 TD

T.J. Moe: 39 games, 188 receptions, 2,101 yards (11.1 YPR) & 11 TD

Will Franklin: 39 games, 142 receptions, 2,085 yards (14.7 YPR) & 13 TD

Emanuel Hall: 32 games, 97 receptions, 2016 yards (20.8 YPR) & 16 TD

L’Damian Washington: 33 games, 100 receptions, 1,735 yards (17.4 YPR) & 15 TD

The stats are close. The style isn’t. Not for me, at least. I want another deep threat, and the best one available is clearly Hall. There isn’t a power-five player in the last 20 years who averaged more yards per reception (min. 90 receptions) in their career than Hall.

I could go with any of the five WRs named and I would be pretty content. But Hall is the best player available for what I need.

Round XV, Pick 30: Nate selects SS Anthony Sherrils

Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images

I need to flesh out my safety tandem and since BK rudely took Pig Brown, I’ll have to go with my backup, Kansas City’s Anthony Sherrils.

The athleticism of the Hogan Prep product was never in question: even before he arrived on campus coaches were raving about his raw speed and hard hitting abilities. It was enough that even NFL scouts were talking about him after his 2015 season when he had accumulated some decent stats but certainly not anything eye popping.

Sherrils was used as a run-stuffing strong safety, playing the line like a fourth linebacker with the speed of a corner. While playing in the backfield he still racked up 8 tackles for loss and made some fantastic hits on crossing receivers over his career. Pig Brown did in one year what Sherrils did in 4 but I’ll still gladly add him to the team!