CHICAGO — Second chances were the story of the second night of the NFL draft.
Some prominent first-round talent whose red flags had caused them to fall didn’t have to wait long for a lifeline Friday night. Randy Gregory, Dorial Green-Beckham and P.J. Williams all heard their names called by the end of the third round.
Green-Beckham’s wait was the shortest. The big wide receiver from Missouri was picked by the Titans with the 40th overall pick, obtained from the Giants in a trade earlier in the evening.
Green-Beckham had been booted off the team at Missouri for off-field problems and spent a year at Oklahoma, where he didn’t play, before declaring for the draft.
Without those problems, the 6-foot-5, 237-pound Green-Beckham probably would have been among the first two or three receivers taken. Some scouts even considered him the best wideout available.
The Titans decided Green-Beckham was worth the lessened risk of a second-round pick and used it to give themselves an instant — and, at least on paper, formidable — passing connection when paired with No. 2 overall pick Marcus Mariota.
Gregory’s belated arrival was much more notable, if only because the troubled Nebraska pass rusher’s destination ended up being the Cowboys and an already volatile locker room featuring Dez Bryant and Greg Hardy.
With his long arms and 6-foot-5 frame, Gregory was widely considered the best pure sack artist in the draft. But he scared off teams by testing positive for marijuana at the scouting combine, then showing up late or blowing off predraft interviews with some clubs.
“Me and the Cowboys are going to tear up this league, I can promise you that,” Gregory told the crowd at the Auditorium Theatre in an interview with the NFL’s broadcast arm.
Gregory vowed “payback” for all the teams that passed on him, but even his representatives admitted the off-field concerns were legitimate by requesting the Cowboys and owner Jerry Jones set up a strong support program, much like they did with Bryant over the past four years.
Another top prospect whose lack of maturity caused him to drop, Williams, the Florida State cornerback, had to wait a lot longer thanks to a recent DUI arrest.
Williams ended up going to the Saints in the third round with the 78th overall pick, which was quite a plunge — not to mention a serious hit to the pocketbook — for a player deemed to have first- or early second-round talent without the baggage.
The Seahawks also caused a stir by using their first pick, the 63rd overall in the second round, on Michigan pass rusher Frank Clark, who was kicked off the team last year for an ugly domestic violence incident in 2014. The charges in that incident were reduced last month to disorderly conduct.
Unsurprisingly, there would be no help coming Friday for the biggest character question of the draft, though.
LSU offensive tackle La’el Collins remained toxic, thanks to a still-murky murder investigation in Louisiana that prompted him to take himself out of draft consideration, at least this year.
The agent for Collins announced Friday that, if his client wasn’t drafted in the second round, Collins would withdraw from the draft, not play this fall and re-enter the process in 2016.
All of that was necessary because Collins continues to be embroiled in a situation in Baton Rouge, La., in which police have connected him to the unsolved murder of his pregnant, 29-year-old former girlfriend last Friday. That case took another tragic turn Friday when the baby died.
Police have said Collins is not a suspect and that they only want to talk to him about information. But investigators have put off that interview until next week, leaving Collins in an impossible spot with NFL teams when it comes to this year’s draft.
It was also a rough day Friday for quarterbacks not named Jameis Winston or Mariota.
No passer was taken in the second round, and it took the Saints with the 11th pick of the third round to finally end the drought when they took Colorado State’s Garrett Grayson to back up Drew Brees.
Another quarterback, Oregon State’s Sean Mannion, went 14 spots after Grayson in the third round to the Rams.