You can find a future Hall of Fame player like Jerry Rice or Andre Reed in the late rounds as easily as you can take a Kenny Jackson or a Reidel Anthony with your first pick. Which is why many of the denizens of the press room wouldn't have been surprised at all if the Eagles had picked someone other than a wide receiver. The position is the team's most glaring need, but not its only one. Wide receiver was the obvious pick for Modrak and Eagles coach Andy Reid. But it was hardly the safest one.
All drafts are crap shoots.
Picking wide receivers carries the riskiest odds. He and Modrak's Ouija board said Mitchell was the best of a group of wide receivers who were both available and very evenly matched in talent. Mitchell played in a West Coast-type offense at UCLA and said he went there for that reason. Charles Johnson a No. 1 pick. Then he compounded that felony by making the same Johnson one of his first big free-agent acquisitions with the Eagles.