Going Commando

This trade is a huge win. Who was the player that was taken at 34?

What gets me is they're just wrong about Daniels's processing. They push that bull**** narrative about some magic VR machine teaching him how to read a defense and that's why he could finally make plays in his fifth year as a starter, and nevermind the fact that he's playing for a great coach now and had clean pockets to throw to a bunch of elite receivers where the reads were easy and he had all day to make them. One of the scouts even recognizes the parallel to Fields, but doesn't seem to recognize that Fields was a bust, and that building an NFL offense around his running ability didn't work. And then the big justification for Daniels over Maye is because he'll be ready to play year one? The kid who took five years of college ball for the lightbulb to come on is a better bet to play well in year one than the kid who was one of the best players in the country his first year as a starter? It's so dumb that it literally makes me angry that these morons have the jobs that they do.

@Skinsinparadise you are right that there is a very real possibility we pick Jayden over Maye. You've made that point clear. What you haven't made, and will never make, is a convincing case that it isn't a completely obvious and damning mistake. There is no equivocation on this, it's a huge mistake. It's taking RGIII over Andrew Luck, or Justin Fields over Trevor Lawrence. I would immediately lose belief in this regime and this rebuild if they make this mistake, and have to spend my time waiting for it to fail and this group to be fired before we can try again. And under no circumstances would I be willing to give Adam Peters another crack at QB. You **** up like this and you are done.

This is a consequence of a loss in perspective. All prospects carry risk, and their career outcomes will depend on staying healthy and ending up in good situations where their teams do the work of building a proper QB nursery. But Williams and Maye are two of the best QB prospects that have come out in the last ten years. They are good bets that any team who needs a QB should be thrilled to have access to. Both of them are better prospects than Young and Stroud were. Far better than Richardson and anyone from 2022. Way better than Wilson, Lance, Fields, and Jones were, and better than Tua and Herbert. They are of the same caliber as prospects that Lawrence and Burrow were. We are lucky to be drafting second in a two blue chip prospect class, in a year when we are QB shopping for a new regime. It's an alignment of the stars scenario where genuine long term turnarounds can take place. The problem for me is we might blow it and take a significantly inferior prospect in Daniels instead of Maye. You'd think that the franchise which already went through the RGIII experience once wouldn't leap to do it again, but I don't have any confidence that we won't. Making that kind of mistake after being gifted such a golden opportunity with Maye would make it feel like we deserve to stay in the gutter.

I kind of cooled on Paul after SB week. I remember thinking that he looked kind of slow and thin legged. Nothing that was a deal breaker, but enough to move me off of drafting him at 36 and 40. He just isn't very twitched up and I want an explosive OL at those high picks. Explosiveness isn't everything, he can clearly win with size and length. He just feels kind of like a rich man's Cornelius Lucas and I was hoping for a more dominant level of upside. I want to trade down from 40 before picking him. The truth is all of the OTs we are looking at in the second are fairly flawed, or else they'd be going in the first. But my gut preference is: 1 - Morgan 2 - Suamataia, but only if the maturity questions aren't true. If they are, put him behind Rosengarten. 3 - Amegadjie 4 - Paul 5 - Fisher 6 - Rosengarten I have a hard time taking these guys over Cooper Beebe. Morgan is the only one who might be better than Beebe, and I'm not 100% on that. I'm not trading down if Darius Robinson is at 36, and maybe not if Chop is there either. And I would stay put and pick Morgan at 36 too. But if they are gone, then I think I want us to trade down from 36 to get into a better range for Paul or Amegadjie and just pick Beebe at 40. Beebe is the BPA OL pick for me at that spot. Anyone know what dropping back from 36 to ~50 is worth?

I think it's mostly about his hands for me. A more accurate punch, better syncing with his feet, and better latching on, and I can see a good player in him. I think the feet are already pretty good with him. His sets and his slide and mirror look really good and his first step is fantastic. I think his hand speed is really good too. He also has a good motor and will battle back after his hands get cleared. And his move blocking in the run game is pretty good. He has such good speed that it should translate. Yeah I guess I can get on board with him at 67. I don't know about in the second round though. Not at 36 or 40.

No way. His arms are longer than Penei Sewell's, who is the best tackle in the NFL. You don't waste an athlete like Rosengarten at guard.

No specifics. That's what I figured would happen. I want to know who offered him all that NIL money to transfer.

Man I just can't get on the Rosengarten bandwagon. His hands looks really bad to me, and when he loses, it's ugly and he looks panicky. Balance seems a little sketchy too. Gonna go back and watch his SB reps again to make sure he wasn't the guy I said "get a load of this ****in stiff" about in my head.

Maye's potential NIL deals and transfer situation was the big story with him back in the winter of '22 and spring of '23. It was a national story that got play on ESPN, and he kind of became emblematic of how NIL was ruining college football. Nothing really came of it because he never transferred. I assume that is what this article is supposed to be about, and presumably it will reveal new information, but the topic is old news and it seems irrelevant to his NFL future. I'd be curious about how that story got legs though. Just as someone with concerns about the future of college football, I'd like to know what happened there. Who was trying to buy him away from UNC, how did it happen, why and how did Drake decide to stay at UNC, etc.

I went to the IMDB page for Varsity Blues to check if James Van Der Beek's character was literally named "Moxie" before I made a comparison to Taylor Heinicke, and this is the actor that played Mox's little brother: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0681665/?ref_=tt_cl_t_12 That has to be a picture of Eli Manning in 1996.

No way! I view it as the entire NFL who got it wrong.

Well so much for my freaking first round pick of Laiatu Latu. The Jags just extended Josh Allen on a five year, 30 million per year deal. Third biggest contract for a defensive player in the league. I'm guessing between him and former #1 overall pick Travon Walker, they won't be drafting edge this year.

You sure you want to go out on a limb like that after the Monday we had?

We just want to get one last look at Penix to get a good grip on him. Unrelated: I believe Penix would be a top five pick if he had changed his last name to something cool like McQueen or Saracen.

We've been sniffing around Christian Jones. I could see drafting him in the mid rounds, and he has some good tools. Good arm length and hand size, good 40 times. Might be a little bit of Charles Leno potential with him, but he's a long way off from being that kind of technician. He's a raw project and I'm definitely concerned about our OL coach being able to develop players like him. The hope with him would be to red shirt and then eventually replace Wylie at RT

I think his running is overrated as an NFL weapon in two respects, 1 - all QB running is overrated as an NFL weapon. Justin Fields ran for 1100 yards and it wasn't actually very valuable. 2 - the big middle field runs where Jayden made a ton of hay last season will not translate to the NFL for him. He does not have the stature for it. Remember how back in '22 I argued that Sam Howell's running wouldn't translate to the NFL because he was just too slow to run for 800 yards gingerly picking his way up field on RPOs like he did over and over again at UNC. I was right about that, and it's the same deal for Jayden. He's not slow like Howell, but he's not strong and he can't read defenses well enough to run through the middle of an NFL field over and over again. I don't think I soured on Jayden that much, just seems that way because he became so wildly overrated over the past four months. He is still my QB3 but there is a massive cliff between him and Drake Maye. Maye is a bet I'd be comfortable making in any year. Jayden is a bet I would never even contemplate making when I can draft Maye. The situation reminds me a lot of 2021. A lot of people had Fields over Lawrence during parts of that draft process, and they were dead ass wrong about that. And then later too many people had Mac Jones over Fields and they were dead ass wrong about that too. Jayden is better than McCarthy. Maye is better than Jayden. I like McCarthy better than I liked Mac Jones though. McCarthy is sharper and has more physical talent than Jones did, he's just got way less than Jayden. McCarthy is clean, if he can go to a situation like Minnesota with an easy mode offense where all of the creation is being handled by the coach and his playmakers, he'll be good.

My hardest decision of the draft was between Kendall Milton and Schrader. Brian said Milton, guy said Schrader, and brain ended up winning. I picked Milton because of size, age, mileage, and measurables. Kind of hard not to fixate the disparity in RAS between the two. Schrader's film is so good though, that it made up the gap. I was also collecting All Americans. I got three on defense and wanted to get one on offense, so almost picked Schrader because of that. A lot of places have like a ~fifth round ranking or better on Schrader, including PFF and Zierlein, so I'm confident he gets drafted. But I suspect it'll be in the seventh round, maybe someone like San Francisco or a Shanny tree offense where one cut decisiveness and vision are the premium skills. I could see him being someone's Alfred Morris. But he won't have a long career and might not get to a second contract. The league does running backs dirty. I think Nelson Caesar did get drafted SIP. It was way later than expected, but someone grabbed him in major bargain range. If we score our drafts by value relative to where these guys actually get taken, that person is probably getting like 50+ points off of that one pick alone.

I don't buy this at all. And the example you gave about Gruden sending them the playbook in advance to see how much they'd learn from it is a test of work ethic much more so than processing. The aspect of information processing that is most relevant to QB success is what happens on the field. Being able to read coverages and pressures and make decisions. You can see how a quarterback does this. You can tell when he's not reading pressure well. You can tell when he's getting lost on the coverages. You can tell when he's seeing things too narrow and too slow. You can tell when he's late. You can tell when he's not anticipating his windows. I didn't think these issues were even hard to pick up on. I am an idiot layman and I can see them in Jayden. I could see them with Fields and Howell too and mentioned the vision and processing being issues with them over and over again during their draft threads. I don't understand how supposed experts keep missing this, it is there in the film, and it is so important that it's what everyone should be looking for. Reading and instincts/anticipation are basically one half of the equation (the other being able to manage adversity and create) that separates the great players from the regular ones at all positions, but especially at QB where they make reads every play. But instead apparently all of these pros are stuck looking at a player's ****ing feet and never get past that. Nevermind that Allen and Mahomes back foot 40% of their passes and dirt a bunch of throws every game in the middle of genius playmaking that constitutes the most valuable individual play in the league every season. I've been meaning to respond to one of your points about Daniels's vision as a runner where you said he has good vision because he has no trouble seeing the first guy and making him miss. That's not really a demonstration of NFL level vision as a runner. Everyone can see the first guy almost every play. Not everyone can make them miss, but that's not about vision. Vision is about being able to see beyond the first guy and read your run lanes deeper. This is where Jayden struggles, and it's why he does stupid stuff like cut runs back upfield into traffic with no momentum and gets destroyed. He's target locked on the first guy and focusing solely on making him miss. And you can actually force Jayden from the pocket with backside pressure and keep him from running when he scrambles by having a flat defender spy him and just break down and wait for him at the LoS, and play coverage directly behind him. Jayden drops his eyes and stares that flat defender down, and then panics when he has to try and find something back field side. And he doesn't have the arm to navigate those middle zone windows after being so late. Those were the situations where he turned it over or put it in harm's way, and if I--an idiot layman--can see this from my couch, bet on NFL defensive coaches seeing it. These are tape based issues that seem to be widely understood with Jayden and yet widely ignored. Everyone has talked about the inability to throw with anticipation and the lack of comfort throwing in the middle zones. Everyone has talked about how he stood in the pocket for an eternity before making decisions. Everyone has talked about the inability to read pressure and manage it. Everyone has talked about his issue with running in traffic. But it's like people aren't connecting the dots and recognizing that these issues are the product of slow processing and a constricted view of the field.

Barrett is probably going to be like a round five pick. I thought about taking him but liked Jalen Green and Kendall Milton better. I also thought about drafting Cody Schrader and was hoping someone would pick him so I could talk about him. I passed him over a couple times, and finally picked Milton instead of him. But Schrader has productive Shanny scheme rookie year written all over him. We're going to regret not drafting him when he's on his rookie deal. After that? Maybe not. The strange thing about this running back class is the players in it are way better than most of the players at other positions. The problem is that almost all of them are so old. The COVID year hurt the stock of their position group more than any other, and these dudes are going to be discounted by like two rounds or more. This will be a uniquely good year to add a dirt cheap back to the top of your rotation.

Not me. I think we do it too, but it's a **** up and I'm going into this eyes open. If we do this and Jayden is skinny Justin Fields and Drake Maye becomes Josh Allen part 2 in New England, Adam Peters's career is over.

I watched it. I like McElroy, he's a fantastic broadcaster. But I don't think he's taking this analysis that seriously and doesn't really have skin in the game. He contradicts himself in a pretty glaring way too about the point about playing with elite talent, kind of recognizes it after he's done it, and then just ignores the contradiction. He also doesn't seem to realize his point about playing hero ball applies to Maye just as much, if not more than it does with the other two kids, who played for great coaches on rosters loaded with NFL talent. My sense is that he doesn't have as good a read on Maye as the other two. I also think he kind of buried the lede about Drake having special leadership traits and huddle presence. How does he not realize how special that is when he's experienced it up close? That special sauce is why Dak Prescott took over the Cowboys as a freaking fourth round comp pick. That is the stuff franchise QBs are made of.

This part is 100% dead wrong and the exact opposite is true. If a dude is a slow processor who can't see the whole field, he is never going to fix that at the NFL level. It's going to get worse. Meanwhile it's very common for QB prospects to improve their mechanics when they get to the NFL. Sam Howell greatly improved his footwork by the end of his first season in the NFL. What didn't get better? His ability to see the field and make quick, efficient decisions. That doesn't even consider the fact that Drake Maye is superior to Jayden Daniels in the physical traits that don't change. You either have elite arm talent or you don't, Drake Maye does and Jayden Daniels doesn't. You either have an NFL body or you don't, Drake Maye does and Jayden Daniels doesn't.

A little? We have buried this no-brainer under a mountain of BS. It's still a no-brainer for the exact same reasons that it has been for two years, it just turns out that a bunch of the people crapping out draft takes have no ****ing brain.

I picked for Jacksonville in the ES mock and the two most common picks I saw for them in mock drafts were Wiggins or Thomas. I think there is a really good chance Thomas is their pick. I took Latu FWIW, because I have him higher on my board. They also have a budding issue at edge because Travon Walker kind of sucks and Josh Allen is playing on the franchise tag. I think their pick is 55% chance of Wiggins, 45% chance of Thomas. If Wiggins is gone, then this is where I think Thomas gets drafted. If not here, then I think the Bengals would take him. No matter what, he'll be gone by Buffalo's pick. If we want Thomas, we're going to have to pay for him IMO. I don't see him dropping into discount territory because he doesn't have any holes in his resume. 100 percentile measurables, ridiculous film, and a significant cliff at WR immediately following him. I still think I would only package the two seconds together for Bowers or Verse, but Thomas is tempting. If he can make it past Jacksonville and Cincy, then we would be able to get him with 36 and one of the thirds most likely.