Going Commando

Except for the ones between the numbers.

My fandom has been hanging by a thread for years. This is the best shot we've had at genuinely escaping NFL poverty in a generation. If we blow it, I'm not going to tolerate getting kicked in the nuts by this team any more. Especially if we blow it in a way that I felt was totally predictable and avoidable. I'm not going to give up on the NFL, but I'll stop watching the Commanders.

I hear you. But I don't need my leg pissed on about Daniels. He can work out, I understand his strengths, and I wouldn't second guess picking him if we were at #3 and Maye was gone. But nothing anyone says is going to make it any better if we pick him and he busts and Maye hits. Peters just needs to be right if he picks Daniels.

Yeah. Kingsbury is the quintessential mercenary too, with a talent for latching on to bigger talents and failing upward. I would make zero long term plans for anything concerning him. I also wouldn't spend the second overall pick in the draft with a one year vision. Recapturing 2012 is not the best this franchise can do, I'm not listening to assholes like RGIII telling me I should be happy with that. I want us to tell the league to **** off with this "take Jayden Daniels and be happy and let the good teams get the franchise QB" crap.

No. I think they'll have made the best call they could have pre-draft. Picking Maye is following best practices for drafting a franchise QB, and it's what I would do if I were in charge. Picking Jayden over him is a super speculative prayer based on bad process, and it's a call I would never make. I can't be better at picking players from my couch than the team I root for, and still maintain faith in the organization.

If they pick Jayden and he busts, and Maye goes on to succeed, that's going to be it for me. So they better be right if they do.

I wouldn't pick Daniels over Maye based on tape. Maye's tape is prototype star NFL QB. Jayden's tape is gimmicky college star with a bad body, a mediocre arm, an allergy to throwing before the break, sketchy placement on vertical throws and crossers, and a running style that will get him injured at the next level. I can look at the current best QBs in the NFL and see how players like Maye translate into success. I have to go back to a player from the late 80s to find that kind of example for Daniels.

****ing RGIII. No I do not want another 2012. I want an annual contender for the next 15 years. How pathetic is it that 2012 has become our Glory Days for anyone who didn't grow up in the 80s?

It's not Florio that gave that narrative credibility, it's Schefter.

I'm 100% out on Guyton. I get the appeals to upside. I see the mirror speed and the size. But he doesn't have that dog in him. Motor sucks. Zero nastiness. The softest run blocker in the class by far. Actually looks sulky when he's asked to move block in the run game, when that is what good OLs live for. He's also pretty stiff and has bad grip strength in addition to the effort, awareness, focus, and aggression issues. He's better than Jaelyn Duncan, but he reminds me of Jaelyn Duncan. Duncan was horrendous on film, and was one of the worst players in the NFL as a rookie. He managed to give up 9 sacks in just 364 snaps and had a 32.9 PFF grade. Guyton isn't the absolute trainwreck in pass pro that Duncan was, but he's also a baby **** soft player who put too many flat out bad reps on film to ignore. Guys like this bust. We'd be better off lighting our card on fire and picking nobody than drafting Guyton at 36.

I think his best case scenario is even more than Trent. To me Kinglsey is more like the Trent of the class if he hits his absolute best case scenario. Mims is like Jonathan Ogden in physical stature. Dawand without the sloppy weight, or like a rich man's Jordan Mailata. You're talking about the biggest and longest OT in the NFL, only without any bad weight on him. His spider chart is insane: https://www.mockdraftable.com/player/amarius-mims

I'm having a little trouble sussing out Beebe's draft stock. Mick drafters are super low on him, but he feels like a top 40 player to me. I don't understand the case against him. I would be stoked about the value on Beebe if we trade down from 40 into the mid 50s. I feel like hedge against "reaching" on him in the mid second by getting another player from the exchange. I've been thinking about who I want the most at 36, and I think the final answer for me is Kingsley (provided the work ethic and character checks out). I think his upside is All Pro OT. I think he's smart and he has the best natural strength and hand eye coordination and hand speed in the class. There's a lot reps where he loses the hand battle early and guys get leverage on him and they just can't bench him. He can anchor just by leaning into them, and meanwhile he clears your hands and now he's got his hands on you and he's snatching you down before you can even react. If this kid was efficient and consistently got early wins, I think he would have a case for OT1. His run blocking is meh, but his potential in pass pro is elite. I really hope this isn't a situation where the mock drafters are far lower on this guy than the NFL is. I hope he doesn't end up going in the first round.

Either New England and New York and Minnesota have all been waging an incredibly effective of campaign to get Maye to drop, or the kid has major skeletons in his closet. Like serial arsonist or a having a compulsion to torture animals level skeletons. I hope this has all been a bunch of nonsense and we pick Maye.

Agreed. I go back and forth on Walker more than any other receiver in the class. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt because he missed a lot of time early and had to play catch up all year, and that UNC offense was so dysfunctional. But the moments where he ****ed up big and lost games for his team really bother me because they typically showed a genuine lack of competitiveness and toughness. I can stomach lapses in focus, but not being soft and quitting on plays. And then all of the drops at the SB and even during Drake Maye's throwing session at the UNC Pro Day... these are not in game situations where the pressure is ramped up. He is too risky to draft before the fifth round IMO. I'd pass on him and let someone else take the big swing.

I don't like Daniels and would never pick him over Maye. But I would never pick McCarthy over Daniels either. Valuing McCarthy over Daniels requires a complete abandonment of a film based evaluation. It's banking everything on this nebulous, Q-Rating based assessment of intangibles. There is no way in Hell I would ever do that if I were in charge. A GM can make a weak case for Daniels at 2 and still have some claim to competence, but not with McCarthy. That would be proof of incompetence for me. His tape sucks and he wouldn't sniff the first round if his team hadn't won the NC. Maybe he ends up on a loaded NFL team and plays in a training wheels offense again, and continues winning while having zero individual playmaking burden. But valuing this kid over Maye is tantamount to valuing Jimmie Garappalo and Alex Smith over Josh Allen. It's something only an incompetent GM would do. John Keim reversing course and floating this kid week of the draft proves he doesn't have **** this year. He's blowing with the winds and getting played by the last person he talked to. Maye is the only good choice. We have beaten this dead horse into dust, and he has been the only good choice the entire time. He is the one a competent FO would draft at 2, and I hope we do.

Yeah 67 feels like the right range for Sainristil. I think he gets picked some where between there and 78. Guys like him don't really star in the NFL, unless featured in a D like KC does with their zone slot defenders, but they also don't really bust. But 67 is the pick I'm eyeballing guys like Corum, Cooper Beebe, and Bralen Trice at. I'm dreaming big there. Probably none of them will still be on the board, but maybe. I'm also trying to guess where T'Vondre Sweat will go. Might still be able to get him at 100, but if he's got a serious drinking problem, I'll pass until 139. On sheer talent, he's huge value at 67 though. Maybe Austin Booker or Jonah Elliss are in play around 67 too. Elliss was an All American like Sainristil too, and Booker is a true home run swing. Zierlein's comp on him is freaking Maxx Crosby, and I don't think he's way off base. The guy is shockingly skilled and creative for a late comer to football with almost no starting experience. His basketball background is a big plus for pass rushing because he has such good CoD and hand eye foot coordination. But he's strong and tough enough for football. Point being, I'm still hunting for potential stars at 67, and Sainristil would be down my list for favorite outcomes at that spot. I also think we can snag good corner value in the fourth round.

I can see it. It looks like teams are going to pay a Michigan player premium this year, on everyone except for the actual best player on the team, Blake Corum, who is being mocked a round and a half below where he should be going. It's happened with Georgia players the past couple of years. I will never understand Travon Walker going #1 overall, he was one of the worst reaches I've ever seen. Nobody really does post mortems on these horrendous draft failures, and the draft media never seems to learn from them. Just going to reiterate that Corum's film is amazing. If we pick Corum and Drake Maye, we will have one of the best offenses in the NFL in like two years. We should pick them.

I'm a Kenny Moore fan, and I always get suckered into these kinds of players. I was a big Clark Phillips fan too, and he was actually pretty good for a surprisingly excellent Atlanta secondary last year. But note the places where Moore and Phillips were drafted. Even if Sainristil is a richer version of those guys, that's still not top 50 value for me. Add Elijah Molden into the pile too. And Honey Badger was like the Bill Gates version of this kind of player, and he's had a feast or famine NFL career where his scheme/situation has been the determinant for whether he is good or downright bad. He's either an All Pro or a journeyman cap cut with like 5 AV, and many more bad seasons than great ones. Guys like this can't hold up in man coverage, and a lot of teams don't want to feature/build their schemes around limited players like them. Sainristil has special intangibles and some of the best ball skills you could want. He is probably closer to Honey Badger than he is to Phillips. But that would still put him in the third round.

I would probably put him in the top 30 if he didn't have the knee injury history. The shoulder stuff isn't as worrisome to me because of the success of Allen here. I would take Wilson in the 50s, as I think there is a shelf in quality there where he's so much better than typical 50s ranked guys like Braden Fiske, that I can live with the risk. I suspect he'll go before that though. If he goes much later than that, then we can safely assume the knee issues are worse than we thought.

You can really get a feel for the magic of JJ McCarthy when you watch the cut ups of just his runs and throws. The magic is that the Michigan score keeps going up and the other team's score doesn't change at all, all while JJ makes zero plays. JFC the lengths people will go to in order to pretend like Drake Maye isn't the obvious choice. At least with Daniels, he had a dominant year where he carried an offense and made a ****load of plays. He is obviously better than McCarthy. I don't want to even say McCarthy in the top five is Mac Jones at 3 all over again, because Mac Jones carried his offense too for the one year he played. McCarthy ran a training wheels offense where he did absolutely zero individual playmaking outside of a few runs per game, and his elite defense and run game won all of his games for him. There is nothing in his film that suggests first rounder, much less top five pick.

I'm not sure how valuable this kind of mentorship really is. Guys can either play or can't, and being around greatness won't eventually turn a mediocre player into a good one.

I like the player, but he's different than Branch and Pitre. They weren't undersized. Tiny zone corners are bad value in the first round. There is a much bigger chance he's Clark Phillips than he's Branch/Pitre. We're looking at a player whose best case scenario is someone like Kenny Moore--which is good, but that is the best case scenario, and it's not that valuable.

I think he's going to go in the second round, and then hindsight will set in pretty quickly with him that he should have been a first rounder, like with Jonathan Taylor. But if he makes it to round three, I want us to draft him. Don't care that we've got Ekeler and BRob, he's better than both of them today, and probably far better over a window of the next four years. I honestly don't think I've ever seen someone with better vision, instincts, and elusiveness at the college level. I'm way too young for OK St Barry, but that's what he feels like. I do remember MJD at UCLA, and Corum was way better. Definitely never seen anyone reverse field and string together moves as efficiently as him. And his big play finishing is as special as it ever gets. His toolkit is massive and I think he can star in either gap or zone heavy schemes. It's kind of incredible that he's going under the radar. He's one of the faces of the sport, and was a historic player on a National Champion with tons of fans in the football media.

Yep. And that Alabama defense was terrible in that LSU game. They got beaten at the LoS and couldn't get any pressure, and the coverages got lost on very basic presnap motions. They tried playing man all day and left Jayden free to pick up huge yardage on the ground. One play where Terrion Arnold had his back to the LoS the entire snap, 20 yards down field, totally unaware that Jayden is running by him stands out. That game is why I'm lower on Arnold than the room. Dallas Turner hit Jayden hard twice in that game. The first was a preview of what will happen to him in the NFL when he scrambles up the middle of a defense and tries to string those runs out long enough for pursuit to reach him. The second one that came in the pocket took him out of the game, and that is a preview of life in the NFL when he doesn't have tackles getting easy wins all day, and he has to stand tall in the pocket to deliver the throw.

Blake Corum is the best zone runner I've ever seen at the college level. His vision and creativity are as elite as elite gets, and I don't care how old he is. He's going to be in my top 25, and I think he's going to be one of the best players in the NFL early in his career. He's also the best RB that Michigan has ever had, and was far and away the best player on Michigan's stacked team. JJ McCarthy got to play in a backfield with prime Barry Sanders. Here's my RB rankings: 1 - Blake Corum 2 - Jonathan Brooks 3 - Audric Estime 4 - Trey Benson 5 - Kendall Milton 6 - Cody Schrader 7 - Tyrone Tracy 8 - Jaylen Wright 9 - Bucky Irving 10 - Marhsawn Lloyd 11 - Ray Davis