Doyel: Picking a guard at No. 6 is boring — unless it's Quenton Nelson

INDIANAPOLIS – Boring, some are saying. With the sixth pick of the NFL Draft, the Indianapolis Colts selected Notre Dame left guard Quenton Nelzzzzzzzzz. A pick like this, it’s broccoli: Good for you; not fun at all. That’s what some people are saying, and by some I mean almost everyone I saw on social media late Thursday night.

The Colts used the sixth overall pick to draft an offenzzzzzzzzz.

Do me a favor here, Colts fans. Find video of Quenton Nelson highlights. That’s his name, by the way: Nelson. Quenton Nelson. Find a video, but before you do that, grab a package of throat lozenges. Open the packet. Pop one in your mouth. This is called advance preparation, because your throat will be sore from all that happy screaming you’re about to do.

Oh, most people are right: Drafting an offensive guard early in the first round tends to be boring, which is why almost nobody in the NFL does such a stupid thing. Since the 2000 NFL Draft, just two guards had gone in the Top 10 before Nelson went sixth on Thursday night. Just 15 guards in the 18 NFL drafts since 2000 had gone anywhere in the first round. The first round of the NFL draft is a national holiday, and using your pick on a guard makes a noise that sounds very much like a whoopee cushion.

But this is no ordinary guard. The Colts didn’t draft Quenton Nelson so much as they threw themselves at him, sending in their pick Thursday night with more than half of the allotted 10 minutes remaining on the clock, and with other franchises calling to inquire about a trade, and with Colts highlights of backup quarterback Jacoby Brissett playing on the giant video boards at AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys and the 2018 NFL Draft.

Before the draft began, Colts general manager Chris Ballard had decided: If Nelson is sitting there when it’s time for the Colts to pick sixth, we’re taking him.

Why? Quenton Nelson’s playing style muscles past dominant and settles somewhere closer to cruel. He’s so large (6-5, 325 pounds) and explosive and aggressive, he made a habit at Notre Dame of knocking down his assigned defensive lineman and then stomping onward for someone else to hit, like a scene from Godzilla or something.

And he’s Godzilla.

At Notre Dame, they love the guy. They knew how good Nelson is, even if most of the outside attention this past season – as the Irish were ascending into the Top 10 – was going to running back Josh Adams, or to the left tackle credited for opening so many of Adams’ rushing lanes, Mike McGlinchey.

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At Notre Dame, coach Brian Kelly lets his players determine the team MVP. This past season, the Irish chose … well, you know who they chose. And that doesn’t happen at Notre Dame. In 97 years of handing out team awards, whether chosen by players or coaches, Nelson was just the third offensive lineman to win MVP.

But at Notre Dame, they know what Colts fans are going to find out: Quenton Nelson is the truth. Which brings me to his nickname, one given by Irish assistant Mike Elston, who coaches the players who have to face Nelson every day in practice, the defensive line. This is what he calls Nelson:

The Human Lie Detector.

“If you think you’re pretty good,” Elston told the South Bend Tribune this past fall, “he’ll let you know if you’re right.”

This draft pick is all about $140 million franchise quarterback Andrew Luck, obviously, still recovering from shoulder surgery. For years the team has tried to cobble together an offensive line with the occasional draft pick (Anthony Castonzo, Jack Mewhort) surrounded by cast-offs (everyone else, pretty much). In 2016, former general manager Ryan Grigson finally did something right and picked Alabama center Ryan Kelly in the first round. Grigson is gone for a lot of reasons, but none as obvious or important as his lack of investment in the offensive line.

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Insider: Drafting Nelson proof that Ballard made savvy trade

According to scouts and draft experts, people who should know – people who have no dog in the hunt, not employees of Notre Dame or the Colts, just folks who grade draft prospects – Quenton Nelson is the best offensive lineman in this draft by a large margin, and the best guard to come along in years.

In the last two seasons, according to Notre Dame stats, Nelson has allowed zero sacks. None in two seasons, a stretch that includes more than 700 pass attempts. In all those dropbacks by Notre Dame in 2016 and ’17, Nelson allowed his quarterback to be touched just twice.

New Colts coach Frank Reich was hired just 2½ months before the draft, but it didn’t take him long to be sold on Nelson.

“First impression,” Reich was saying Thursday night of Nelson, “was (that he’s the) best offensive linemen I’ve seen in the draft in a while. In our mutual consensus, this is where we have to go. We have to build the fronts.”

Nelson is a foundational piece. So is Ryan Kelly. Castonzo? He’s still here, and while the shine is off the first-round pick of 2011, the talent is there. Perhaps Reich’s staff can summon it on a consistent basis. And if they can’t do it, well, Quenton Nelson might summon it from Castonzo himself. This is something Ballard said Thursday night:

“He’s demanding,” Ballard said of Nelson. “He’ll be demanding of his teammates to perform, and he’ll be demanding of himself to perform.”

Ballard also said of Nelson: “His football character is off the charts.”

And he said: “He’s nasty, he’s tough, he’s everything we want to stand for as a team.”

And then Ballard said something I find fascinating, even if I’m not sure exactly how to paraphrase it. So I won’t. Ballard was talking about the pre-draft workout he attended in South Bend, where he watched Quenton Nelson.

“After the workout (I was thinking): ‘He’d be a great Colt,’” Ballard said, and no, that’s not the fascinating part. Here it comes:

“You can feel him,” Ballard continued. “I could feel when I watched Adrian Peterson and him running by me. I could feel him. Same thing with Dez Bryant. You can feel Quenton Nelson. ... I get every (college team’s draft) workout on tape. As soon as they work out, within the next two days we have it on tape. Sometimes there’s something about seeing a guy live, though. He’s a guy you could feel. You could feel him.”

What does that mean, exactly? Don’t know, but I know who we’ll be able to ask someday: Opposing defensive linemen. For the next decade, they’ll be the ones who feel Quenton Nelson.

Poor bastards.

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter: @GreggDoyelStar or at facebook.com/gregg.doyel.