The thing with ILBs is this... Unless you have a Ray Lewis or a Patrick Willis, they won't be true impact players. As long as they're not a liability, you're set at that position.
You can spend your first rounder on a guy like McKinney, but you'll draft him on athleticism, mainly. He's finesse against blockers, not taking them head on. I feel like he has Hawk's tools, but also a bit of Hawk's problems.
I don't think Kendricks will be there when we pick. The rest, I wouldn't want to use my first round pick on. We'll see what Dawson does at the combine, I imagine that he'll shoot up the charts, but I don't know if we need a guy who's build like that.
A good NT, on the other side, is what a 3-4 defense relies on to be good. We've got a guy in Daniels who can man the DE position, we have some potential guys like Jones and Thornton hanging around at the other DE spot, but only an average player talentwise in Guion, Pennel and a guy who seemd to be regressing by the year, now coming off an injury in Raji at NT.
Even if we'd keep both Guion and Raji, I'd like to see Guion coming in as a rotational guy, since you can never have too many fresh big guys. Get a bit creative with Raji and move him around. Line him up in some of those 2-linemen packages together with Daniels. Even though he hasn't looked that impressive, he still has that impressive athleticism for a man his size.
Then get the rookie in to play NT.
If necessary, let him back up Guion this year and have him step in when either Guion or Raji leaves.
I'd love to see a guy like Shelton. There's no chance that he's available when we're picking, but nothing would improve this defense quite like an elite 2-gap talent at NT, who can move for a man with his ridiculous size, coupled with an ILB in round 3... Leaving our round 2 pick to get a corner, with a lot of our guys in contract years and none of them having shown that they can replace Williams as a starter.
Jordan Philips is an interesting prospect, as well, but somehow I doubt we'll pick another talented defensive linemen with back problems.
In conclusion... I have to look better at what's available and what our needs are, but I'm just not a big fan of picking up an ILB in the first round, unless he has some ridiculous talent or one heck of a skillset.... I'd love to see a NT, but I don't know if there's one worthy when we're picking.