DCOrange

To be fair, we haven't gotten measurements on Coleman yet lol. But I do expect him to be among the biggest WRs in the class.

I knew Worthy and Franklin were going to come in light, but those weights are kinda eye popping. I agree on Mitchell though; not like 6'2" is short by any means but he looks taller than that to my eye and part of the allure with him was that 6'4" guys don't usually have the flexibility/loose hips that he does.

The wind in Buffalo might be enough to snap Xavier Worthy or Troy Franklin in half.

Updating my spreadsheet as WR measurements come in: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12pCgsJPa9X-jjNMOZ_exJTAEfxmZOeETzEm8SNkuXec/edit#gid=1244172747 Differences compared to how some of the guys we might be targeting were listed: AD Mitchell came in at 6'2.25" and 205 vs. listed 6'4" and 196 Xavier Worthy came in at 5'11.25" and 165 vs. listed 6'1" and 172 Troy Franklin came in at 6'1.88" and 176 vs. listed 6'3" and 187 Brian Thomas came in at 6'2.88" and 209 vs. listed 6'4" and 205

One of the best offenses in the league is silly, but with their cap space and the amount of offensive talent available this offseason, they could be a playoff contender next season if they play their cards right.

It depends on how much patience Robert Kraft is willing to have with building the team up. Ideally, I'd probably take a similar approach to what Beane did early on here; a lot of short-term contracts so you aren't committing to a lot before you get your QB. Take a flier on a short-term QB; Drew Lock if you're willing to go more high-risk. Maybe Tannehill if you just want some competence at QB while you survey the rest of the roster. I would definitely put a lot of the cap space towards receivers and O-Line; guys like Gabe and Calvin Ridley would probably be near the top of my list at WR. I won't pretend to know who the best choices are for O-Line but it seems like there's a pretty decent amount of talent out there this offseason. Main point is to bring in solid players on short-term deals (might make an exception for the WRs). As for the draft, it seems like there's starting to be some real talk about Drake Maye sliding out of the top 2. If he falls to 3, it's an easy choice. If Caleb and Maye go in the first two picks, I'd see what kind of offers people make for the #3 pick and probably move down if possible. If none of the offers feel great, take Marvin Harrison Jr. and keep it moving. If you can slide down and still end up with Nabers/Odunze, that would be excellent. O-Line would be good too. Maybe consider QB in the 2nd round depending on who is still there. I think I'd definitely consider Bo Nix if he's there and I'd kinda consider Penix, but in all likelihood, I'd probably end up going in another direction and just take a flier or two on Day 3. I haven't finished scouting the guys outside the top 6 QBs yet though; I know Spencer Rattler and Michael Pratt in particular have some fans but I can't say where I'd consider taking them right now. The overarching point here though is that Caleb and Maye are the only two QBs I would take in the 1st round this year, so if they end up not being available, I would just slow play it for the season and see what happens next year.

It could change after the Combine, but I don't think anyone is really projecting Mitchell to go in the first 27 picks. The highest I've seen him so far is like 30-32. I do think he and Coleman are two guys where people have relatively low expectations for the Combine so they could surprise people and move up the boards. Could definitely go the other way too though.

Not sure if this really fits for this thread, but it was said at the Combine. I'm cracking up; this makes me believe people will actually say this every season. There's no way anyone could have watched film of next year's class and actually think it's better than this year's.

I’m not knocking him over stuff like his father personally. I just don’t think he’s a can’t miss QB prospect the way Burrow and Lawrence for example were. Caleb has incredible physical gifts, but I don’t think his accuracy is anything to write home about right now; he particularly struggled with placement on intermediate passes. His reads pre-snap and immediately post-snap are atrocious IMO. He created so many places for USC but if he could simply read a defense, his life would have been a lot easier. And he has a lot of the same mechanical flaws that Maye has (which to be fair, I think are very fixable). But the main thing is I simply think Maye is a better passer right now and much better reading the defense.

I only have Caleb as my QB2 and a mid-1st round grade rather than the consensus opinion that he's a generational prospect. Having said that, I think if Caleb had a credible team around him in college, they would have won a lot of games. They still went 8-5 but their defense was literally one of the worst in the entire country; not even just talking about the power conferences. And the OLine and receivers weren't particularly good either.

Yeah, I think with Williams it really boils down to if you think you can develop him and if you have the appetite to do it for a guy that will almost surely be exclusively out of the slot. He doesn't have much experience at WR but he was pretty productive especially considering the team around him and he does have some athletic gifts. He's my WR16 or 17 so not exactly who I'm hoping we get.

I revisited Jalen McMillan in light of the fairly promising metrics and some hype from some of the Bills Twitter folks that are excited we met with him at the combine. Also watched film on Isaiah Williams and Jacob Cowing. I'm sticking to my guns on McMillan; I don't see anything particularly interesting personally. He seems like just a guy out there to me. I didn't hate his film the way I did Tez Walker and Xavier Worthy, but I have to give those guys higher grades because they at least have some tantalizing physical tools. McMillan just doesn't seem to offer anything exciting to me. I ended up with a late 4th round grade on Isaiah Williams' film. He mostly lines up in the slot and he's pretty decent there. Ran some nice crossers, nice job of changing tempos in his routes to keep DBs off balance and he seems to be a guy that has the foot quickness and general athleticism to be a good separator but just doesn't sell his routes well enough for me. One thing I do like about him; he was a QB in high school and viewed as a 5 star athlete prospect. All the blue bloods wanted him on their teams but wanted him to play WR. He ended up going to Illinois for the opportunity to play QB and he stuck it out as a QB for a couple years. His first year playing WR, he led the team in receiving (granted it was only 500-600 yards). So while his breakout age is going to be a little high (but not alarmingly high), he's also just now learning the position and is pretty productive already. Combine the note about him having the athleticism to separate but not selling his routes well enough and the fact that he's new to the position, maybe there's some real hope he figures it out in the next few years and you end up with a steal on Day 3 as a result. He shined in the metrics too; on metrics alone he was graded as a late 1st round pick, bringing his overall grade up to a late 3rd. Purely on the metrics, Jacob Cowing earned a late 2nd round grade, so I was fairly excited to check him out on film. I came away very impressed. At a listed 5'11" and 175 lbs, he's probably looking at a slot role and to be fair, that is where he played most of his snaps in college (around 70% of his snaps were in the slot). Having said that, he showed a good ability to beat press coverage despite his small build. PFF charted him as the best in the entire class in terms of getting open and I can definitely see where that could be the case. He does a great job of getting on top of the DB's toes and then getting them leaning or committing the wrong direction before he cuts away for easy separation. He particularly likes to use a hesitation move both at the LOS and at the route stem to freeze the DB and then accelerate away. I can very easily picture him thriving with the option routes we like to run on offense here. Beyond being tough to cover in man coverage, he shows a nice ability to squat down in the soft spots against zone defenses. The last positive for me, he has a strong motor. Unlike some of this year's class (both Texas WRs are probably the worst with this), Cowing plays hard even when he's not the primary read/even when he's the decoy. Arizona would run fake screens where the "blocker" slips downfield for a deep shot and Cowing did a nice job of selling himself as the screen guy. He runs hard when he's motioned across the formation for fake jet sweeps, he runs hard and leverages his DB to help open up parts of the field for his teammates, etc. All in all, I ended up with a late 1st round grade on his film, and factoring in the late 2nd round metrics grade, he ends up with a combined grade of a late 1st (barely). It seems like he's viewed as more of a 3rd rounder around the league, so between that and his likely role in the slot, I probably wouldn't take him at 28 personally, but he's definitely someone I would consider anywhere in the 2nd round. I have him as my WR7 in terms of film grade and WR5 in terms of combined grade.

And at least as far as short term impact goes, he almost literally didn't run routes in college so there would be a significant learning curve even if a team thinks he has the physical tools to play outside (which as you said, he probably doesn't). I think around 45% of his targets in his college career were screen passes and around 70-80% were targets under 9 yards down the field.

The full quote includes something along the lines of "I think flat earthers make some good points too"

I think as evidenced by the fact that he skipped the previous weigh in, there was fear he was going to weigh in significantly heavier than this lol

Dude had to skip the Senior Bowl weigh in to make sure he could get down to 366 lol. I fear for his health.

I feel like he may have misspoke? He literally talks about how there's a ton of depth at WR beyond the first round and then says it's a bad draft if you don't take one in the first?

This is true, but he barely played 2 seasons ago (17 targets that year). He played a lot more in 2021 when he had 6 drops on 52 targets. I do think in general he has good hands though and he showed the ability to extend away from his body, reaching behind, etc. to pluck the ball out of the air. If your main priority is limiting drops, he's one of the best options in the class (I may lean towards Ricky Pearsall for best hands in the class). I don't really think Mitchell is someone I would take if I'm looking for someone that will win 50/50 balls though (though he certainly has the height and length to potentially become good at it).

I haven't watched his Adonai Mitchell deep dive, but I think someone here said he took that back in regards to Mitchell, which makes sense.

https://archive.ph/ is your friend

He made approximately $10 million in total over the last two years, meaning $5 million per year. I would bet anything that number is being rounded up so he probably made about half in college what he'll be making in the NFL on his rookie contract. I think between the NIL, the Covid eligibility stuff, and being able to transfer without sitting out, the college landscape has changed pretty dramatically. You used to see a good amount of kids that would just opt for the NFL Draft because they knew they were being replaced on their college team and didn't want to ride the bench or transfer and sit out a year. Now that kids can transfer and start immediately elsewhere, there aren't as many kids being "forced" to declare for the draft.

I revisited Adonai Mitchell and Brian Thomas today as well. I don't think anything in particular jumped out to make me change my grade on either. So I remain with a mid-1st grade on Thomas' film and factoring in metrics, a mid-2nd round grade. I remain with a late-2nd grade on Mitchell's film and factoring in metrics, he gets moved down to an early 4th. I would tend to stick with the film grades for where I would draft these guys; the metrics is more just for fun to see if it ends up being more accurate that way. One thing in particular I looked for with Mitchell was the way he catches the ball after Steve Smith said that he body catches it 90% of the time. I did not see that at all personally. I do think Mitchell struggles in contested/high pointing situations more than you'd think given his build, but he's absolutely a hands catcher and his hands are quite good.

I don't think Thomas is as good in contested catch situations as DK was, but he is quite good at it statistically and there's plenty of it on film as well. I think he's pretty good after the catch too; he's not as stiff a runner as DK was but obviously not as strong either. He's not like Adonai Mitchell and Harrison Jr. and guys like that where you can be pretty certain they're going down once they come up against tacklers but he's also not Malik Nabers. I wouldn't consider either of those areas to be weaknesses. I would say contested catches are more of an issue with Franklin, Mitchell, and Worthy if we're comparing guys that may be considered at 28. Franklin and Worthy are better after the catch, though I think Worthy is worse than you'd expect him to be given his physical gifts. Edit: I also think Thomas can probably run more routes than he showed in college. There's no reason he shouldn't be dynamic on crossers and slants; I kinda think a part of why you didn't see much of it is because Jaylen Daniels struggles on those throws. Daniels was mostly a curl route/vertical route thrower and as a result, that's the vast majority of what Thomas got to do. Not to mention Nabers is understandably better in terms of acceleration so when they did try to target the middle of the field, it was generally Nabers getting to do it. This is obviously me projecting a bit though.

I decided to revisit a few WRs (and am planning to take a look at Isaiah Williams and Jacob Cowing, but they both seem to be slot guys) as more All 22 film was added to the catalog. Only through Xavier Worthy so far. I really wanted to take another look at him because I was a ton lower than consensus on him. On my revisit, I do think I was probably a bit harsh/not giving him enough credit for his speed and deceleration. While I think he needs refinement, he is physically capable of running a more varied route tree than most of the class. Having said that, I still think between how physically weak he is, how susceptible he is to being pushed around, and how poor his effort level is, there's a lot of red flags. I also don't think he's as dynamic after the catch as I hoped given his athleticism; his contact balance and elusiveness don't stand out. Lastly, if Buffalo wants to replace Gabe with another WR that can be on the field at all times due to his blocking ability, Worthy simply shouldn't be a consideration. He's more likely to help the defense tackle the RB than to actually deter them in any way. As I said, I do think I shortchanged the physical traits. I've bumped his film grade up to a late 4th round grade, which combined with his metrics results in an early 4th round grade. While this is definitely an improvement, it feels like he'll still be drafted far earlier than I'd personally be comfortable with.

Guys that played at least 40% of their snaps out wide this season and ranked above average in terms of both avoided tackle rate and YAC per reception (listed from highest avoided tackle rate to lowest): Malik Nabers (also met these thresholds in 2022) Ladd McConkey (also met these thresholds in 2022) Jamari Thrash (also met these thresholds in 2022) Zakhari Franklin (using 2022 numbers because he barely played this season) Keon Coleman Xavier Worthy Troy Franklin Would also throw out that Johnny Wilson hit these thresholds in 2022 but not in 2023.