Chargers select Jerry Tillery with No. 28 overall pick in draft
By Travis Wakeman
The Los Angeles Chargers addressed the defensive tackle position with emphasis on Thursday night.
The team used the No. 28 overall pick in the NFL draft on Notre Dame defensive tackle Jerry Tillery. The team chose not to re-sign many of its own free agents, leaving the depth chart quite thin at the defensive tackle spot.
The selection of Tillery changes that.
If you were watching the coverage of the draft on NFL Network, all you needed to hear was the analysis of Stanford head coach David Shaw, who relived the chaos Tillery caused against his team.
Tillery is a powerful, disruptive defensive lineman who should compete for a starting job right off the bat, so long as he is healthy. He did have shoulder surgery done last month but all signs point to him being ready around the time training camp starts.
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Prior to this pick, Brandon Mebane, Justin Jones and T.Y. McGill were the only listed defensive tackles on the roster. Tillery will come in and push all of those guys for playing time.
He brings a quick first step to Los Angeles and he will attack running backs in the backfield. For a defensive tackle, he was a better pass rusher than most would have expected at Notre Dame, racking up 12.5 career sacks.
I mocked Tillery to the Chargers in my seven-round mock draft, I was just a round off. The Chargers obviously placed a high value on him and knew he wouldn’t be available when they came back up in the second round.