Arizona Cardinals add D-line depth in 5th round with Alabama DE Ed Stinson
May 10, 2014, 7:03 PM | Updated: 10:12 pm
The Arizona Cardinals added to their defensive line with their fifth-round pick in the 2014 NFL Draft.
The Cardinals took Alabama defensive end Ed Stinson with the No. 160 overall pick. Stinson, who stands 6-foot-4 and weighs 290 pounds, started 12 of the Crimson Tide’s 13 games as a senior, recording two tackles for loss and a sack.
“This guy is a powerful player,” Cardinals GM Steve Keim said. “He’s explosive through his hips and he does a nice job chasing down the line of scrimmage laterally.”
Stinson said he was hampered by a groin injury that he had surgery on the previous summer, however, and is confident he’ll be a different player for the Cardinals now that he’s healthy than he was last season in college.
“I just played the whole season with it nagging and stuff like that, and it just started to get worse and worse,” he said .”I just fought through it and did what I could do for the team because they didn’t have another end that controlled the edge and stopped the runs. I just went ahead and did it for the team.”
And, his role with the Cardinals may also be a little different, too.
“In the defense at Alabama, I could pass rush, one-on-one pass rush, but when it comes to our defense and how our defense…pretty much our big emphasis was to stop the run,” Stinson said. “We had to make sure we played the blocks right, so that’s what I did; played the blocks right and then convert afterwards.
“(There were) a lot of teams that didn’t really get to see my pass rushing ability.”
Stinson started all 14 games of his junior campaign, when he tallied 8.5 tackles for loss and three sacks.
