DCOrange

Seems like Washington is basically down to Dan Quinn unless they suddenly pivot to Belichick/Vrabel, but to this point they've shown no interest in those guys.

Ohio State DT Michael Hall has looked really nice. Currently viewed as a Day 3 pick I think; might be one to keep an eye on. This rep between Roman Wilson and Quinyon Mitchell (Toledo DB that's been dominating everyone). Mitchell slips and allows Wilson to get open easily as a result. Wilson also slips but makes a crazy catch.

One thing I've made note of, Ricky Pearsall won people over on Day 1 and has looked decent so far today, but the real noteworthy thing is after playing out of the slot on the vast majority of his snaps in college, they have him almost exclusively out wide here. Edit: And he's looked good lined up out wide. Interesting development.

Watching today's 1 on 1's: Tez Walker REALLY struggling. Dropping almost literally every pass so far, telegraphing routes, struggling with press, etc. Javon Baker continuing to do a great job with his releases and created a ton of separation on one of his crossing routes against Kalen King (who was once viewed as a 1st round prospect but I believe he's slid down a lot this season). Brenden Rice doing a much better job off the release today than yesterday but just doesn't have the burst to pull away/maintain separation. Roman Wilson's footwork is really great. Non-WR related: Quinyon Mitchell looks like such a stud covering these guys.

He just doesn't really move like Deebo at all. If we're looking for a Deebo type in this draft, it would probably be Malachi Corley from Western Kentucky, who is also at the Senior Bowl.

Not sure how he did after the first day, but Puka Nacua was considered one of the big winners of Day 1 of practices last year just like Ladd McConkey and Roman Wilson this year.

I felt similarly about Rice. That one clip complimenting his physicality for example I feel like was mostly just showing his inability to get open.

I was admittedly low on AJ due to the fact that he didn't really run any routes in college. I don't think there's really a comparison between Legette and DK though. DK was an absolute god in terms of beating press coverage in college; the whole projection with him was the idea that you couldn't jam him at the line but also couldn't keep up with him if you gave him a free release. Legette struggles with press coverage and just isn't as explosive as DK. He's more Kenny Britt than DK IMO. Could still be good but I just don't think DK is the right comparison.

One of them he just dropped. Another was underthrown and the DB was able to outmuscle him for it. Other two were overthrows. He didn't look particularly explosive; he was able to get a step on the DB but wasn't really able to stack him. One of the overthrows I feel like he maybe should have been able to get to but was too busy trying to hold the DB and just didn't run hard enough. He had a drop in the 7 on 7's as well but also made a couple catches there.

Seems like Roman Wilson, Ladd McConkey, and Jamari Thrash were the 3 WRs to stand out today. Xavier Legette reportedly struggled; he failed to make any catches in the 1 on 1 drills. He tried to go deep on all 4 of the routes that we saw; 1 drop, 1 where he just got outmuscled for the ball, and 2 overthrows. Thrash similarly tried to go deep every opportunity he had and just looked like the better vertical separator.

I believe he's currently viewed as a Day 3 pick. PFF for example has him at 148 on their big board right now.

Probably doesn't have the speed you're looking for, but might be worth keeping an eye on Ed McCaffrey's son/Christian McCaffrey's brother, Luke. He's at the Senior Bowl this week. Played QB for Nebraska before transferring to Rice to play WR where he kinda blew up the last couple years. I also believe he's statistically the best in the class in terms of making contested catches. Needs to learn how to strap his helmet though lol; never seen someone lose their helmet so much.

The tricky thing with him is that he's shown some of the physical skills to be a guy that you can win because of rather than winning with, but he hasn't really been given the opportunity to prove he can actually do it. Comparing him to guys like McCarron and McElroy for example, he throws with a velocity that those guys could only dream of and he's a far better athlete than them too. He checks a lot of the boxes physically while also showing an ability to get through reads fairly well (especially for his age; he's the youngest QB in the class). And on top of all that, teams will like the fact that he's considered a guy that teammates rally around, a near perfect record as a starting QB, etc. Having said that, his accuracy comes and goes and he's shown almost literally no ability to put touch on his throws; the latter in particular is very concerning to me. I think he's more a Baker Mayfield type of QB than the Alabama QBs you're comparing him to.

Sounds like Roman Wilson is the big winner of Day 1 at the Senior Bowl amongst the WRs.

Pretty much everyone expects JJ to be a 1st round pick. I don't have him that high personally, but the same goes for most of this QB class to be honest. Maye and Caleb are the only two I'd really want to take in the first round.

I mean more for his pro prospects than his college play, but he was mostly a first-read, screen pass/RPO type of QB at Oregon. Definitely seemed like he did a little more playmaking this season but he's still doing more basic stuff than most of the class IMO. He does it very, very well though. I currently have him as my #4 QB in the class after studying the projected top 6 guys.

Yeah, I don't think the age is a concern from a contract perspective. It's more about how much room to grow Nix (and Penix for that matter) have after 6 years in college. I think Nix is relatively pro-ready, though probably in the mold of a game manager/Shanahan type of QB but I'm fairly skeptical he'll improve in the areas that he needs to in order to become an upper echelon player. Likewise with Penix, whose issues are a bit bigger IMO. I ultimately landed on a 3rd round grade for both of them, but if I had to take one, it would definitely be Nix.

I am officially through the projected top 6 QBs in the draft. Still planning to do a few others as well, but as it currently sits, my grades are as follows: 91 - Drake Maye - Top 5 pick caliber 86 - Caleb Williams - Top 10 pick caliber 79 - J.J. McCarthy - Early 2nd round 76 - Bo Nix - 3rd round 75 - Michael Penix Jr. - Late 3rd round 73 - Jayden Daniels - Late 4th round https://draftqbs.wordpress.com/2024-draft/overall-grades/

The 4th and 3 would have been a 48 yarder I believe. The other one was 45. Regardless, I do agree that 48 is different from 48+. But even just looking at his career stats without diving too deep, he's at 78% for his career in the 40-49 range and 38% from 50+. I reckon it's probably around a 50-60% chance of him making the 48 yarder in normal conditions, which is probably slightly worse than their chances of converting on 4th down (I'm not going to pretend the 75% number that everyone is citing is a large enough sample size to really be informative). Of course even after converting, they still had to continue moving the ball to score, which is probably why all those "Should they go for it?" calculators had it as a pretty negligible difference.

Apparently re: the kicker, their kicker is literally the worst in NFL history from that range and he hadn't made a kick outside of a dome all season lol. Seems they didn't really take the position seriously because they always intended to go for it a ton this year and therefore didn't have faith when the time came where they might want a good kicker.

He's on his 2nd or 3rd offensive scheme since entering the NFL and is about to win two MVPs under two different systems.

I don't think size is really necessary for this kind of thing. This is precisely the type of stuff Kincaid was consistently successful doing. If anything, you probably want to prioritize quickness over size for this kind of thing IMO so that the WR can start/stop and create good separation and then Allen can throw it low and away from the defender.

San Fran was near dead last defensively in similar situations this season. Detroit was near the best offensively. One, the play worked and the WR just dropped it. The other, Goff had multiple guys he could have delivered the pass to and just missed it. Sucks but it seems like it was a fine decision in the moment and a fine play choice too. Kicking the field goal would have been a fine decision too.

The theory is if you can't create separation against college athletes, it probably won't go very well for you against NFL athletes. Having said that, you can only learn so much from metrics. It's possible that Keon is creating separation but the passes allow DBs to recover and turn it into contested situations. And if you're simply awesome at winning those contested balls, the QB is probably more likely to give you more contested opportunities because he trusts you to go up and get it. Having said that, if you add up the numbers from the last two years, Keon's catch % on contested targets is pretty mediocre too, so at least based on the metrics, you're left with a guy that relies on contested opportunities to make an impact and also isn't particularly great at catching them.