Going Commando

I've been lower on Alt than the consensus this entire time. I have him in the early 20s. I think he's good but not great. I like his athleticism and balance and size, but what kills him for me is I think he has weak hands. If a guy can't sustain his blocks, then he has a toughness/motor/functional strength issue that will follow him into the NFL and put a low ceiling on his pass protection. And I value pass pro above any other skill for OTs. The guy I'm far lower on than the consensus is Guyton. I've got him OT15 and a third rounder at best. He can't hold blocks for **** and is not even a good college tackle. All of the size and athleticism in the world is worth nothing in an OT that can't perform the basic requirement of blocking. The hardest part of the rankings for me was Olu or Latham for OT2. Latham has so much more power and nasty in him, but Fashanu is so much faster. That call very much comes down to which traits you favor, and I ended up going with speed even though I think Latham's film is better. Normally I try not to put traits over film for OLs, so I don't feel as confident in that ranking. The most functionally powerful OL in the class is Kingsley Suamataia. I've got him as a late teens, early 20s pick on my overall big board (still adjusting it). I think he's the best all around athlete and biggest raw talent of any of the OLs. I liked his film way more than I expected to going in, where I had the preconception that he was this super raw player whose film would be ugly. Nope, his film is actually pretty good. And then it finally clicked for me when I went back through the senior bowl videos and saw his drills in the context of all of the OLs. This kid is dominatingly powerful and he has super heavy and fast hands. He gets easy wins without conventional technique because he resets his hands so well and he is such a tenacious fighter with ridiculous natural strength. I think mock drafters have been sleeping on his upside and that he's gotten lost in the crowd. Getting him at 36 would be about a +15 value pick for me, and I think he should be a first rounder. Fautanu was one of the hardest for me to place. I think his game is ugly, but his tools are elite and his character is supposed to be outstanding. He's going to work out for somebody, and I could see him ending up somewhere like the Rams and becoming a Pro Bowler. There would be some years where he could be OT1 or OT2. The most underrated OT in the class to me is Caedan Wallace. He is better on film than Fashanu, and really doesn't have any weaknesses. He's nasty, he's consistent, and he is a good athlete. I think he is a starter and the last of the second round picks. I thought about putting him at OT10, but decided to shoot for more upside with Paul and Amegadjie and Fisher instead. But I could accept a case for Wallace as OT10. He's good and he's not really going to have to improve a ton to be good in the NFL. I think Ethan Driskell is super underrated too. His profile suggests a big stiff who can't bend or move and gets his ass kicked at the SB when he has to play against the big program guys, but he did well. He's a tenacious pass blocker with elite size and length, and he was nasty. Way tougher and more consistent than Guyton. He's the kind of day three project that interests me.

GMAP is bad enough. Just say Newmark.

This is my OT position ranking. Not all of these guys are going to be on my top 100, but it will only be a couple that get left off. Everyone already knows this, but my position rankings made it clear to me that WR and OT are the two strongest and deepest positions in this year's class. Some of the others won't yield 20 draftable players, much less 20 worthy of going in the top 100. 1 - Taliese Fuaga 2 - Olu Fashanu 3 - JC Latham 4 - Kingsley Suamataia 5 - Joe Alt 6 - Amarius Mims 7 - Graham Barton 8 - Troy Fautanu 9 - Jordan Morgan 10 - Kiran Amegadjie 11 - Patrick Paul 12 - Blake Fisher 13 - Caedan Wallace 14 - Roger Rosengarten 15 - Tyler Guyton 16 - Isaiah Adams 17 - Ethan Driskell 18 - Javon Foster 19 - Dominick Puni 20 - Christian Jones

Kingsley and Legette wouldn't be swings on obtaining depth players. Legette's upside is Terry McLaurin/AJ Brown, and Kingsley's upside is Penei Sewell. I'm also not sure Olu Fashanu's upside is as an elite player. IMO the only OT in this year's class who is a strong bet to become an elite player is Fuaga.

Fashanu is legit, but I think Peters is going to earn his money and find value with those early seconds. Personally, I think I would rather have Kingsley and Legette than just Fashanu, and I think it is realistic to get both at 36 and 40. We can still have a home run draft without both 36 and 40, but it's harder to get a ton of value from our picks without those. Especially when we'd be moving up to the mid teens and picking Fashanu around his slot.

He's talking to Jay Gruden. So he's talking to a high ranking idiot, but an idiot nonetheless. The NFL is largely populated by Jay Grudens. And many times, even when the people in charge are smart and not stupid like Jay, they are toxic and unprofessional nutjobs unfit for any kind of senior management job, like Daboll. Joe Gibbs was one in a million, people like him are not the ones that make up the league. More NFL owners than not are terrible people who build organizations with terrible culture, they manage their teams via whim, and their front offices are riddled with ego and unprofessionalism.

Peters went to a bunch of UNC practices. He's known about Drake Maye for a while. NFL personnel people absolutely track players who show NFL potential in future classes. Not finalizing your evaluations on them is different than not scouting them.

Personally, I'm not that high on Chop. Tools are as special as it gets, but he just isn't an impact player. Maybe that changes if you give him a featured role in a Dan Quinn defense, I don't know. But I don't like making those kinds of bets. To me, Jonah Elliss, Bralen Trice, and Austin Booker are all much better players, all in that second tier of edge rusher behind the top four guys (Verse, Turner, Latu, D Robinson), and all likely to be cheaper than Chop. My ideal scenario is to get Kingsley Suamataia and either Xavier Legette or Ladd McConkey or Kool-Aid McKinstry with 36 and 40.

I do not understand what he was thinking. It was a first down scramble, not a short yardage run where you might move the chains by leaping over the pile. Why the **** did he try and hurdle a defender in the middle of the scrum? Well I know why, it's because the guy literally can't see past the man in front of him and he had zero plan beyond making that DT miss. He has terrible vision as a runner. Also that was never going to be a targeting call. Jayden's head is way up in the air because he jumped, like a dummy. No ref is going to bail out a ball carrier for doing something that stupid.

I want to know what MH Jr's 40 time is. Is it in AJ Green/CeeDee Lamb territory? Or is it in Calvin Johnson/Julio Jones territory? Put it this way, if he were running low 4.3s in training, he would have run for scouts this offseason. So assume he runs in the upper 4.4 to 4.5 territory like Green and Lamb. When deciding between Nabers and Harrison Jr, you ask yourself who would you rather have? Jamarr Chase or CeeDee Lamb? You're getting an All Pro either way, but I'd definitely rather have Chase.

I like Nabers over Harrison because I think he's faster and more explosive. I've had him over Harrison for a couple of months, but haven't posted my board in a while. I recognize that Nabers had a big advantage at QB this year compared to Harrison though. McCord sucked, and Harrison looked a lot better when Stroud was running the offense. But Jayden was just erratic enough with his vertical pass placement to let Nabers show off how good his ability to adjust to throws in the he air is. On my overall big board, I have Nabers #4 in the class, between Bowers at 3 and Harrison at 5. I think he's a faster OBJ.

I think the consensus has fallen way too far on XL. I still think he's a first round talent. I see AJ Brown in his film, and I put him over Ladd even though Ladd is more skilled because he is so much more of a beast in his physical traits than Ladd. At the end of the day, Legette is a 6'1 220 pound horse who plays like he is 220. He runs as fast as McLaurin and has a 40 inch vertical. He's a stud on contested catches and Spencer Rattler made life hard on him, and he always answered the bell despite getting the absolute hell beaten out of him all year. He also has a great top gear that he can hit in the open field, and you're just not going to bring down a guy that powerful running that fast once he hits it. The late breakout age is a concern, but the light bulb came on big for him this year. I love his combo of pure toughness and aggression and speed. I would love to get him at 36, and feel that he is just as good a value there as McConkey.

I think they stink, but I can't leave them off my list because of how fast they are. Worthy is a skinny straight line burner with no functional strength and no elusiveness and no ball tracking nor contested catch skill. Mitchell is a diva WR without the aggressiveness that makes you put up with a diva WR. He's the kind of prospect that will fall through the cracks in an NFL receiver room, but he'll get a chance because of his return skills.

The Pats take a massive L on value and would never accept that deal. Those three first round picks are not even remotely close enough in value for the Vikings to jump to three, let alone two. It'd take 3 first round picks AND day two change AND players for Minnesota to get to #2 from 11 in a QB class this strong.

This is my WR ranking: 1 - Malik Nabers 2 - Marvin Harrison 3 - Rome Odunze 4 - Brian Thomas 5 - Xavier Legette 6 - Ladd McConkey 7 - Troy Franklin 8 - Keon Coleman 9 - Ricky Pearsall 10 - Jamari Thrash 11 - Roman Wilson 12 - Malachi Corley 13 - Ja'Lynn Polk 14 - Malik Washington 15 - Johnnie Wilson 16 - Tez Walker 17 - Jacob Cowing 18 - Xavier Worthy 19 - Jalen McMillan 20 - Adonai Mitchell

One thing that Top Golf-gate revealed is that this team has a first round grade on Michael Penix and not on Bo Nix. He's peer to McCarthy, Maye, and Daniels, and Nix is not. Penix is the also-ran who feels like he could end up winning the race. Something about that dude worries me. Like he's going to drop, end up on a good team, and then be the best QB of the bunch, and we're going to get an endless narrative about how dumb we were to pass over him for the duration of his career. Anyway, I'm glad we're getting a QB this year instead of next, or not having to try and make it work with a mid rounder like Travis or Rattler. The five first rounders in this year's class are all head and shoulders better than those two, as well as any of the top guys for next year. Ewers and Beck's film isn't even on the same planet as Maye's sophomore film, and Milroe's film is downright painful. He is terrible. And Kyle McCord was almost as bad. Shedeur Sanders comes with a three ring circus, but he already has a massive lead for QB1 next year. He is going to be over hyped to death. JJ McCarthy was ready to go pro, and he'll end up in a better situation as QB4 this uear, but if he'd gone back to school for another year I think he easily would have been QB1 in 2025.

I know what you mean. ESPN likes to sell themselves as having the professionalism and prestige of a traditional news media even though they have a massive conflict of interest in their reporting because they are broadcasters. They absolutely have a huge SEC bias, and I'm sure that promoting the conference has nothing to do with wooing them and finally getting them to leave CBS for ESPN. It's going to get worse when CFB realignment coalesces D1 into a two league system where ESPN controls the TV rights to one of them (SEC-ACC), and CBS, NBC, FOX control the rights to the other (B1G-BIG 12).

There is no way MIT has a football team.

I don't want Daniels here at all, I am 100% a Maye guy, but stuff like this happening is part of why I don't like it when we go off the beaten path. We gain nothing by alienating players and agents. Maybe Jayden has never been our guy. I certainly have never even remotely believed he was our best choice. But what if this had happened, and he actually was our only good choice? We should have picked our guy by now, and we should be spending our time developing a partnership and rapport between him and our FO and coaching staff, like KC did with Mahomes. And they didn't even have a high draft pick at the time all of that happened. QB-HC-GM relationship is not an adversarial relationship where the QB must pass all sorts of tests and succeed in spite of what his franchise puts him through. It's a true partnership, and QB prospects do need a lot of support and commitment from their teams.

Yeah I'm curious too. I actually liked what I saw from his cut ups. It wasn't love, but I was definitely intrigued.

Worthy isn't a deep threat. It's weird because of how fast he is, but he doesn't generate wins against man coverage on the outside, his ball tracking isn't very good, and his ability to win contested catches is pretty bad. I think he also lacks elusiveness as a YAC weapon. On screens, if he can actually make the first man miss, then he gets 0-60 in a heartbeat and can get up field, but it's 50-50 if he can make the first guy miss, and corners play downhill on him in that scenario with zero fear. That shouldn't really happen with a guy who runs 4.21. I don't think he's anything special. He's a slant catcher and WR3 type that is a rail thin straight line runner with no strength. Legette and Franklin are the two best deep threats left in the class after Brian Thomas comes off the board. Tez Walker is also a very good deep threat too, but it's the only thing he's good at. Johnny Wilson is also pretty dangerous as a deep threat. His build up speed is very threatening to DBs paired with that incredible size. Look at how soft DBs play him. Everything opens up underneath for him because of how scared they are of him getting behind them.

He's not Lamar. Set aside that they are at the opposite ends of the spectrum of precocious early career stardom vs late blooming. Lamar spent the first five years of his career making a living throwing to tight ends in the middle of the field. The first and second levels in the middle zones are where he is comfortable. If you call a shallow cross for Jayden, he is going to wait until Brian Thomas is well clear of the NFL hashes before throwing it. You better be able to pass protect for a long time with him behind center.

I think this is for two reasons: 1 - Jayden doesn't have an NFL body, and you have to reach all of the way back to rookie year Randall Cunningham to find someone with a similar physical profile at the NFL level. 2 - The most obvious modern comps for him are guys who didn't end up being successful for the teams that drafted them: Fields and RGIII. Nobody wants to compare prospects to guys that didn't work out. His build and the soft traits like vision/playmaking instincts frustrate comps to other one year wonder type QBs who were more successful, like Burrow. Comps are nice for conveying a lot of information in shorthand, but they always break down on some point of analysis.

Not really. It wasn't very impactful either way. This QB pick is an entirely different matter.

They are. And it makes me uncomfortable. We always try and do everything our own way, and it never works. Why can't we ever just copy what the successful teams do? Why do we always have to take a dump on conventional wisdom?