In many recent posts regarding round 1, the mention of Doug Martin as a round 1 prospect for the Bengals to target at #21 has caused a lot of debate from “heck yes” to “hell no” and everything in between.

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To try to bring a little (but by no means definitive) light onto where Doug should probably be drafted, and perhaps clip the whole Doug Martin debate, I’ve turned to an unbiased source (NFL.com) to get a baseline looking at prospect grades. Whether you agree w/their grades or not is not the point. It’s an easy source to get and hey, it is the NFL, after all so it’s what I used :-)

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1) I looked at the grades they gave the RB’s who got drafted in 2010 and 2011

2) I looked at where those RB’s got drafted in their drafts.

3) I looked at the grades of the 2012 RB’s

4) I then placed the 2012 RB’s into their respective slots in the draft based on 2010 and 2011.

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You can disagree w/NFL.com’s grades all you want, but that isn’t the point.

The point is to look at the grades and get a realistic idea for where the RB’s generally should fall.

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Trent is the only RB that has a grade reflective of a round 1 pick.

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Martin, Wilson & Miller all grade comparable to RB’s that would be taken in early round 2 based on the 2010 and 2011 drafts.

So if you want one of these guys, basically you’d have to either drastically reach at #21 or trade up/down into the beginning of round 2 to get 1 of them.

Based on this, I would not want Doug Martin at #21 overall.

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I Pead ends up near the end of round 2

L James ends up at the middle/end of round 3

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Based on this, if you want Pead, you should be looking at the end of round 2, and not round 3.