Going Commando

Yeah it could make sense to do that. But might not have to if the Bills draft a WR. Next pick is probably either Suamataia or McConkey, and then it's just one slot to go before our pick.

DeJean is a better player period. Kool-Aid is pretty good, but DeJean is one of the special players of the class.

Man, DeJean would be such an astonishingly good value pick at 36, that if he is there, I would take him over any available option. Even over Kingsley and Beebe. And no way I'd trade out of the pick. I am not going to get my hopes up for him though. Every year we get excited about juicy value pick fallers in the second and third round, and every year they either get picked right before our slot or we end up passing them over for the Phidarian Mathis, Ryan Anderson, or Jarvis Jenkins monster reach. Only time we have ever gotten it right was Cosmi.

To me, trading for Aiyuk is a no-brainer, depending on the asking price. But I'd be surprised about getting that kind of deal done during the draft, given how late it came onto the radar. You've got to sort out compensation and an extension before you can pull the trigger, and that'll take a while. Frankly, I don't think SF will trade him. I think they'll end up trading Deebo instead, and that's a deal that interests me too. He would need to be a lot cheaper than Aiyuk though.

They already got Quinyon though. Would they still trade so much to get another corner? If Kingsley is off the board, then I definitely explore those trade down scenarios though. Kool-Aid is good, but I'd rather have two mid seconds for freaking sure.

I'm in the camp of calling Buffalo to try and get to 33 for Kingsley Suamataia. I do not want the Patriots to grab him. 36 and mid-round change isn't too big a price to pay for the last first round caliber OT on the board. We can recoup the value by moving down from 40. If you get to ~55, that's Cooper Beebe or Blake Corum range.

It wouldn't be a reach for me. I posted my board yesterday, and this group are still available: After them, I've got: 25 - Johnny Newton 31 - Ladd McConkey 32 - Kool-Aid McKinstry All of them constitute value picks for me, but Dejean and Beebe are the biggest ones. I accept that Corum will never be the pick, I just think the league is sleeping on him. Beebe is the best IOL in the class, and I think he's a legitimately dominant player that is getting overlooked because he's a little short and wide-bodied and has no neck. Anyone who can snatch T'Vondre Sweat down has ridiculous functional strength, and he virtually never misses move blocks. It's incredible. He's just uniquely good at football, and underrating him for not being body beautiful is a classic mistake IMO. So I think we'd be getting a first round player in Beebe. DeJean is a special player too, but I really think he's going to Buffalo because he's just so conspicuously valuable at this point, and teams have had a night to sleep on him. So that leaves me hoping New England has Johnny Newton over Kingsley Suamataia on their board. If he goes there, then I think we can get Kingsley at 36 and Beebe at 40 and completely transform the long term quality of the line. It'd be like getting two first round pick OLs in the same year, pushed down by the unusual depth of the class.

To me, the analytics guys are hubristic in thinking they can use out of context metrics to fully explain and understand players and the game, and avoid doing all of the work of watching film. Those guys aren't all the same. You don't know why some of them took forever to break out, but it could have absolutely no bearing on their NFL careers. Or it could be that they are lazy and give no effort on plays where they aren't the initial read, and it will have a bearing. That's what you have to suss out via actual scouting.

DeJean is probably going to be pick #33 and Suamataia is probably going to be #34. If the Cardinals go pure BPA at 35, the. It'll be Johnny Newton. Corum and Beebe would be my BPAs, but no one has them as high as me. I think Kool-Aid will be the clear consensus BPA candidate at 36. Either him or Jackson Powers Johnson. My favorite play is to take Kool-Aid or trade back.

This is exactly the part of the roster building phase that you overpay for a star WR. Your cheapest QB cap hit + your most fragile point in their career, where they need the help of stud receivers. Contract #2 is when you let your expensive wide outs walk and you draft cheap ones to continuously cost control the position group.

The biggest question for me is about speeding up his decision making and getting the ball out faster. Everyone misses throws. Mahomes dirts a bunch of ugly passes every game. What matters is making big plays and keeping you team alive even when you're not sharp that day. But being late on throws is a chronic issue for Jayden that can lead to a dysfunctional passing game, and I don't think evaluators really acknowledged how long he stood in clean pockets waiting to throw last year, and how playing like that doesn't translate to the NFL. He is going to have to play with so much more urgency and decisiveness in the NFL. Especially behind a lower tier pass pro line. My fear is that it's deeply ingrained habit for him, because he was even late on throws at his Pro Day throwing session. He's also got to get a lot better at playmaking under pressure. He has to be able to deal with free rushers because we don't have the weapons to keep seven in coverage, and our OLs lose. We aren't going to be able to build a wall in front of him next year, here are going to be a lot of bad pockets, and he can't become a 1-2 run QB.

He's going to need a lot more than that. He also needs a great OL to make plays from the pocket. Tyler Biadasz and a back up guard aren't going to get it done. I don't understand how we can have gone through another whole regime and Terry McLaurin is still our only serious weapon on offense. And our line got way worse. We should have lucked into more than just Sam Cosmi in five years of trying to build the offense.

Aiyuk is one of the best receivers in the NFL and he broke Jayden in at AZ St. We have **** tons of money and no elite players to spend it on. I think a trade for Aiyuk makes sense, but no way I'd give up next year's first.

I think the Patriots are going to draft Kingsley. They had him in for visits.

I'm suspicious that we heard so much about them because the Giants desperately want Drake Maye and have fed a mountain of bull**** groupthink to a draft media that is incompetent and unable to see through it.

I think we're in the Wild West phase of NIL spending, and that it will normalize and deals for QBs won't grow exponentially. First off, NIL earnings will never really be able to compete with NFL contracts because CFB just doesn't generate more money than the NFL. The NFL is the most profitable entertainment business in the world, and generates and splits revenue between 32 strong brands. I think I remember reading that CFB generated just under 6 billion in revenue two years ago, compared to the 18 billion for the NFL. And CFB's revenues aren't going to explode if the sport travels further down the path of uncompetitiveness. Six name brand programs can't out-earn the NFL. I think boosters are also going to stop being so liberal with NIL money once they see how little return they're getting for their investment. If I'm a Texas booster, I'm not going to keep paying Arch Manning 5 million a year to sit the bench, and no NC to show for all of the money spent. Lastly, I think CFB is going to eventually come up with a roster spending cap and revenue sharing system that will have the ultimate effect of limiting QB NIL deals. Nobody wants to see the sport become a contest between UT, A&M, Ohio State, and Michigan outspending each other to determine championships.

Reworked a few position rankings to better match up with my gut takes. WR and S specifically. Then I came up with this tier ranking for the QBs: Tier 1: 1 - Williams 2 - Maye Tier 2: 3 - Daniels Tier 3: 4 - Penix Jr 5 - McCarthy Tier 4: 6 - Nix Tier 5: 7 - Rattler Tier 6: 8 - Pratt 9 - Milton Those tiers are based on how speculative I think the QB prospect is, and I made breaks in my Big Board where cliffs in prospect quality happen, and the speculative QB tiers become appropriate to draft. This is my final, no-hindsight top 100 Big Board: 1 - Caleb Williams 2 - Drake Maye 3 - Brock Bowers 4 - Malik Nabers 5 - Marvin Harrison Jr 6 - Jared Verse 7 - Rome Odunze 8 - Taliese Fuaga --- (Tier 2) --- 9 - Jayden Daniels 10 - Dallas Turner 11 - Laiatu Latu 12 - Quinyon Mitchell 13 - Nate Wiggins 14 - Brian Thomas Jr 15 - Olu Fashanu 16 - JC Latham 17 - Cooper DeJean 18 - Blake Corum 19 - Cooper Beebe 20 - Kingsley Suamataia 21 - Byron Murphy 22 - Joe Alt 23 - Darius Robinson 24 - Amarius Mims 25 - Johnny Newton 26 - Terrion Arnold --- (Tier 3) --- 27 - Michael Penix Jr 28 - JJ McCarthy 29 - Xavier Legette 30 - Graham Barton 31 - Ladd McConkey 32 - Kool-Aid McKinstry 33 - Troy Fautanu 34 - Jackson Powers-Johnson 35 - Chop Robinson 36 - Jordan Morgan 36 - Payton Wilson 37 - Tyler Nubin 38 - T'Vondre Sweat 39 - Kamari Lassiter 40 - Edgerrin Cooper 41 - Kris Jenkins 42 - Troy Franklin 43 - Bralen Trice 44 - Sedrick Van Pran 45 - Austin Booker 46 - Jonathan Brooks 47 - TJ Tampa 48 - Braden Fiske 49 - Kiran Amegadjie 50 - Jonah Elliss 51 - Zak Zinter 52 - Christian Haynes 53 - Keon COleman 54 - Audric Estime 55 - Trey Benson --- (Tier 4) --- 56 - Bo Nix 57 - Ricky Pearsall 58 - Ben Sinnott 59 - Mike Sainristil 60 - Cole Bishop 61 - Max Melton 62 - Junior Colson 63 - Patrick Paul 64 - Jeremiah Trotter Jr 65 - Blake Fisher 66 - Mason McCormick 67 - Jamari Thrash 68 - Roman Wilson 69 - Cedric Gray 70 - Malachi Corley 71 - Chris Braswell 72 - Renardo Green 73 - JaTavion Sanders 74 - Tyler Guyton 75 - Dadrion Taylor-Demerson 76 - Caedan Wallace 77 - Roger Rosengarten 78 - JaLynn Polk 79 - Jarrian Jones 80 - Sione Vaki 81 - Ennis Rakestraw Jr 82 - Tykee Smith 83 - Marshawn Kneeland 84 - Michael Hall Jr 85 - Beaux Limmer 86 - Cade Stover 87 - Zach Frazier 88 - Jacob Cowing 89 - Malik Washington 90 - Isaiah Adams 91 - Johnny Wilson 92 - Kam Kinchens 93 - Tez Walker 94 - Khyree Jackson 95 - Elijah Jones 96 - Brandon Dorlus 97 - Xavier Worthy 98 - Jalen McMillan 99 - Javon Bullard 100 - Kendall Milton

I'll chime in too and say Suamataia for me. He's the highest one on my board of the three.

That was more of a list where i noticed I was a lot higher on X player than the mock draft consensus, more so than guys I would definitely bang the table for. Most of them are the ones I either drafted in the Mock Draft, or would have if they'd been there. That's the only dibs I call on players. If I were to simplify my list to just a few of my absolute favorite players in the class, the ones I literally hope the Commanders draft, no question that this would be it for me: - Drake Maye - Blake Corum - Jared Verse (I'd trade both seconds if he fell into range) - Cooper Beebe - Jamari Thrash - Kingsley Suamataia - Sione Vaki Taking Tykee Smith over Vaki in the mock draft is one of my early regrets. I didn't realize how good he was until after the picks were in. Georgia players are much higher on my radar because I live in Georgia and football season is nothing but UGA here.

My bang the table list: QB - Drake Maye RB - Blake Corum, Audric Estime, Kendall Milton, Tyrone Tracy WR - Jamari Thrash, Jacob Cowing TE - Brock Bowers OT - Taliese Fuaga, Kingsley Suamataia, Caedan Wallace, Ethan Driskell IOL - Cooper Beebe, Sedrick Van Pran, Zak Zinter, Mason McCormick Edge - Jared Verse, Bralen Trice, Laiatu Latu IDL - T'Vondre Sweat, Brandon Dorlus LB - none CB - Jarrian Jones, Chau Smith-Wade S - Sione Vaki, Tykee Smith These are players that I am meaningfully higher on than the consensus. The variance gets finer and more meaningful earlier in the draft. For instance everyone likes Maye, Bowers, Verse, Fuaga, and Latu in the first round, but very few are putting them as high as they deserve IMO. I've got Maye #2 in the class, Bowers #3, Verse #6, Fuaga #8, and Latu #10.

I placed him high because he showed out at the SB. It's a pure upside projection because his film is garbage, even as a sixth year senior. The edge class gets really speculative after that Elliss/Trice/Booker tier in the third round, and even Booker is a pretty speculative prospect. The SB weighed pretty heavily for me this year. It's the reason I placed Kneeland so high on my board, because I thought his film sucked too, which was surprising and disappointing because his PFF score was so good. It's also the reason I left Adisa Isaac off. His film was meh, but he spent SB week getting destroyed on every rep. Couldn't match up with anybody, so that plus his Achilles injury puts him in UDFA territory for me.

I left the Murphy brothers off my list because I didn't watch them. I only watched Latu and they didn't go the to SB, so I never developed a take on them. There were a couple of guys who would probably have made the list if I'd had time to watch them. Gabe Hall, Ainias Smith, Edefuan Ulofoshio, etc. I leave off players who I don't form takes on, because I'd rather not shoot in the dark. I usually only focus on top 100 players because I find it difficult to go deeper than that, but this year I went 20 deep on the positions I spent the most time on.

Let someone reach for him. I've been going back through the the tackles, rewatched the SB practices, and he just isn't as good as Fuaga, Morgan, and Suamataia. Fuaga absolutely shut it down, he's a top ten pick and the OT1. Even Guyton had better reps, although he still had some turd reps that were in character. That guy either dominates his rep or gets utterly destroyed in the first two steps. Paul looked like a JAG and spent a bunch of the week holding. He's traitsy and his in game film is better than his practice week, but he's absolutely not a first round caliber player. He's in that late second, early third round mix with Blake Fisher and Roger Rosengarten and Caedan Wallace. I think he'll be there at 40 but I don't think he'll be anywhere close to BPA. Not even sure he would be at 67.

I've got him sixth overall on my board. I think he and Turner are the two elite defensive players of the class. I'm almost there on Quinyon and Latu, but not quite.

Here are my defensive position rankings. I keep moving people around, so I'm just going to post them and be done with it: Edge: 1 - Jared Verse 2 - Dallas Turner 3 - Laiatu Latu 4 - Darius Robinson 5 - Chop Robinson 6 - Bralen Trice 7 - Austin Booker 8 - Jonah Elliss 9 - Chris Braswell 10 - Marshawn Kneeland 11 - Myles Cole 12 - Nelson Caesar 13 - Javon Solomon 14 - Jalen Green 15 - Mohamed Kamara 16 - Eric Watts 17 - Brennan Jackson 18 - Jalyx Hunt 19 - Xavier Thomas 20 - Braiden McGreggor IDL: 1 - Byron Murphy 2 - Johnny Newton 3 - T'Vondre Sweat 4 - Kris Jenkins 5 - Braden Fiske 6 - Michael Hall 7 - Brandon Dorlus 8 - DeWayne Carter 9 - McKinley Jackson 10 - Marcus Harris 11 - Ruke Orhorhoro 12 - Jordan Jefferson 13 - Justin Eboigbe LB: 1 - Payton Wilson 2 - Edgerrin Cooper 3 - Junior Colson 4 - Jeremiah Trotter Jr 5 - Cedric Gray 6 - Marist Liufu 7 - Nathaniel Watson 8 - Tommy Eichenberg 9 - Trevin Wallace 10 - Kalen Deloach CB: 1 - Quinyon Mitchell 2 - Nate Wiggins 3 - Cooper Dejean 4 - Terrion Arnold 5 - Kool-Aid McKinstry 6 - Kamari Lassiter 7 - TJ Tampa 8 - Mike Sainristil 9 - Max Melton 10 - Renardo Green 11 - Jarrian Jones 12 - Ennis Rakestraw 13 - Khyree Jackson 14 - Elijah Jones 15 - Caelen Carson 16 - Cam Hart 17 - Kris Abrams-Draine 18 - Andrew Phillips 19 - Chau Smith-Wade 20 - Nehemiah Pritchett S: 1 - Tyler Nubin 2 - Cole Bishop 3 - Dadrion Taylor-Demerson 4 - Tykee Smith 5 - Kam Kinchens 6 - Sione Vaki 7 - Javon Bullard 8 - Kitan Oladapo 9 - Jaylinn Simpson 10 - Jaden Hicks 11 - Calen Bullock