Matt Barkley won't be joining them, but Andrew Luck, David DeCastro, and Jonathan Martin will be playing in the NFL next season, and the trio is poised to make Stanford football history in the process. Stanford has never had three players drafted in the first round, but if the mock drafts are to be believed, that will change in April.
I generally take anything Mel Kiper says (and draft speculation in general) with a grain of salt, but I believe him when he says there's "no chance" that RGIII gets drafted ahead of Luck. If Phil Simms was making personnel decisions for a team still in the running for the No. 1 pick, things might be different. While Luck is considered the prize of the draft, plenty of teams are eying two of the guys that made life in the pocket so comfortable for the Stanford QB over the last few years -- Martin and DeCastro.
This mock draft, which I linked to in today's Card Clicks, projects Luck, Martin, and DeCastro all going in the top 10! Tim Tebow detractor extraordinaire Todd McShay isn't quite as high on the Cardinal linemen, but he pegs both of them as solid first-round picks. McShay projects Luck at No. 1, Martin at No. 12, and DeCastro at No. 18. Draft Countdown has a similar projection.
A Stanford player has been drafted No. 1 overall three times, most recently in 1983, when the Baltimore Colts took John Elway. The next Stanford player off the board that year was tight end Chris Dressel, a third-round pick of Houston. As a rookie for the 2-14 Oilers, Dressel caught 32 passes and four touchdowns, most of them from a second-year quarterback named Oliver Luck. Of Luck's 13 career touchdown passes, three were to Dressel.
The Cardinal has had two players selected in the first round four times. In every one of those drafts, the Stanford players taken in the first round were among the top 10 picks. Check it:
1992
OT Bob Whitfield (Atlanta Falcons, No. 8), FB Tommy Vardell (Cleveland Browns, No. 9)
1978
WR James Lofton (Green Bay Packers, No. 6), OT Gordon King (New York Giants, No. 10)
1972
DT Greg Sampson (Houston Oilers, No. 6), LB Jeff Siemon (Minnesota Vikings, No. 10)
1942
HB Pete Kmetovic (Philadelphia Eagles, No. 3), QB Frankie Albert (Chicago Bears, No. 10)