DCOrange

Agreed. Replacing Gabe is easily a higher priority.

I am still kinda lukewarm on Shakir personally. I think he's a valuable WR for sure and there's plenty of potential for him to become a huge factor, but for now, he's more of a zone specialist. The difference in his production vs. man coverage compared to zone was pretty huge this year. I think someone like Roman Wilson could potentially be a significant upgrade against man coverage. I am admittedly quite low on Worthy, but I would also mention that he played most of his snaps out wide in college. I think he projects as someone that can play the slot but is probably more of a Z WR right now.

I think the NFL should either do something like this to make the kickoff game an actual big deal, or just get rid of kickoffs entirely and have each team start at the 25 (which is essentially what is currently happening in the league). As currently constructed, kickoffs are just a waste of time. The XFL kickoff is cool.

Brian Thomas is one of those guys where I'm kinda hoping he has a disappointing combine so that he slides a little further down the draft board. The ones where I think it's actually an important part of the evaluation would be Legette, Coleman, Mitchell, and McConkey. Like if Coleman were to run a 4.6 (which I do not think he will), he's no longer in consideration in the first round for me. Likewise with McConkey and Mitchell. If Legette can hit the 4.3's or god forbid the 4.2's, I might be a little more interested than I currently am, but my hesitance with him is pretty well known.

Legette was a WR throughout high school until his senior season when the QB got hurt.

Re: the discussion of age and more specifically breakout age, Xavier Legette's breakout age is probably going to end up being 22.6 based on my own math (but PlayerProfiler.com is really the one place that everyone cites for this and they don't have a breakout age for him listed yet). Players that were drafted in the first 3 rounds with a breakout age of 22.0 or older (roughly dating back to 2007 where PlayerProfiler starts not having some of the players in the database): Player Year Pick BO Age Anthony Gonzalez 2007 32 22.0 Greg Jennings 2006 52 22.0 Devin Duvernay 2020 92 22.0 Terrance Williams 2013 74 22.0 Harry Douglas 2008 84 22.0 Van Jefferson 2020 57 22.1 TJ Graham 2012 69 22.1 Danny Gray 2022 105 22.4 Andre Caldwell 2008 97 22.4 Kelvin Benjamin 2014 28 22.6 Jalen Hurd 2019 67 22.6 ArDarius Stewart 2017 79 22.7 Javon Walker 2002 20 22.9 Velus Jones 2022 71 24.3 Henry Ruggs 2020 12 Never Mecole Hardman 2019 56 Never Devin Hester 2006 57 Never Tre Tucker 2023 100 Never Terry McLaurin 2019 76 Never Marquise Goodwin 2013 78 Never It's not exactly a list that inspires confidence. I believe as breakout ages are posted by PlayerProfiler, this will apply to Ricky Pearsall as well who I expect to be around a 22.0.

I've mentioned a few times throughout this thread already...I feel like @GunnerBill and I generally see prospects the same way but Legette is one that we've really diverged on. I know he likes Legette a lot. I don't hate him or anything but I see him as more of a 3rd rounder than a 1st personally. I tend to shy away from older prospects and prospects that took a long time to figure it out in college and Legette checks both of those boxes. Among the 19 WR prospects I've scouted so far this year (which is basically all of the top guys in the class with a couple exceptions), Legette is the 2nd oldest as he's already 23 years old. If you expand it out to all of the guys that PFF considers to be draftable, his age doesn't look as bad because a lot of the late round guys this year are very old, but point being, he's older than I like in an early round pick. On top of that, he almost literally did not do anything at the college level until his 5th season; this is a big no no for me and historically speaking, it's very rare to find a WR with a breakout age as high as Legette's that went on to have any success in the NFL. To me, Legette is a bit of a project in that he's big, strong, and fast but is pretty unpolished right now as a player and I'm just not super interested in that mold of prospect when they're relatively very old. It feels like a very low percentage play and I'd just rather let another team take that chance personally. Having said all that... Even I agree with this lol

I admittedly have not watched him at all, but one thing that feels extremely alarming to me is that even playing at a low competition level, his target rate is extremely low. Feels weird that someone that wasn't even getting targets amongst relatively lackluster peers would be expected to take off in the NFL.

If we can get one of Thomas, Franklin, and Coleman at 28, I'd probably opt for the first option. I think option #2 could definitely be the better play though but there's obviously risk in terms of who will actually be available. Like if you use PFF's big board for example (just because it's one of the deeper big boards out there at this point), you have something like this: Option A: Rd 1: Thomas, Franklin, Coleman (they also have McConkey and Mitchell up there but I would pass at 28 personally) Rd 5: Tahj Washington, Isaiah Williams, Luke McCaffrey Option B: Rd 2: Roman Wilson, Ja'Lynn Polk, Ricky Pearsall, Xavier Legette (and a few others that aren't as notable to me) Rd 4: Javon Baker, Cornelius Johnson, Malik Washington Option B runs a lot more risk of getting caught either not getting an X WR or reaching for one before you want to take them.

Legette wasn't in his initial top 50 either (from a month ago). The one huge move is that Tez Walker was #26 in his initial top 50 and is no longer in there at all.

Daniel Jeremiah updated his top 50 big board today and ranked the WRs as such (overall ranking in parentheses): Marvin Harrison Jr. (2) Rome Odunze (3) Malik Nabers (4) Brian Thomas Jr. (16) Adonai Mitchell (33) Keon Coleman (36) Troy Franklin (37) Xavier Worthy (41) Ladd McConkey (42) Malachi Corley (44) Ricky Pearsall (48) Roman Wilson (50) https://www.nfl.com/news/daniel-jeremiah-s-top-50-2024-nfl-draft-prospect-rankings-2-0

Supposedly this was fixed by kicking AFK people off the servers. I haven’t played enough to say for sure that it’s fixed but I tried for 3 days to get on unsuccessfully and tried after the patch and was immediately successful. My friends play it a lot and say there’s been no server issues since the patch.

The draft order is determined by optimal points or whatever it's called (meaning if Mahomes is on the bench and outscores Zach Wilson, it's Mahomes' score that factors into the draft order). I just mean they were trading basically any of their players that had a pulse for draft picks to make sure their talent level was low/they had a lot of picks to work with in the rookie draft. We're playing on League Tycoon where you have a limited amount of multi-year contracts to give out on top of the salary cap and stuff and also have a practice squad for rookie draft picks where they don't count as much against the cap. So for example, the guys I have long-term right now are: Kyler Murray - 2 more seasons at $10 and $12 Keenan Allen - 2 more seasons at $13 and $15 Chris Olave - 2 more seasons at $29 and $34 Kirk Cousins - 1 more season at $19 George Pickens - 2 more seasons at $7 and $9 Tyler Lockett - 1 more season at $7 Drake London - 3 more seasons at $11, $13, and $15 And I have $104 to spend in our draft And guys that were only on 1 year deals: David Montgomery (unfortunately the guy that originally got him gave him a 1 year deal but it was a gigantic bargain) Tony Pollard Patrick Mahomes James Conner Deebo Samuel Aaron Jones and a few other less notable guys The guy that ended up with the first pick in the rookie draft has Aaron Rodgers, Bryce Young, Breece Hall, Najee Harris, Garrett Wilson, Rashee Rice, Christian Watson, Marvin Mims, Sky Moore, and $49 in cap space for the draft (and his rookie picks alone will cost $30 if they all go on his active roster, so needless to say, he's going to have some serious maneuvering to do). Another guy has Trevor Lawrence, Jamarr Chase, Davante Adams, Jahmyr Gibbs, Austin Ekeler, and Zach Charbonnet but he can't bid more than $1 for anyone in the auction this offseason lol.

Sounds like the conversation around Bell is more whether or not Autry views him as a culture fit. I really hope we can keep this group together; our talent level isn't high enough to be letting talented kids leave. It would be so big for us to be able to keep our guys here and continue adding on to them for once.

My friends and I started our own dynasty league this past season. Everyone thought I was going to waltz to the championship after our inaugural draft and I ended up not even making the playoffs so that was a tough pill to swallow lol. Think I was #2 in the league in points by a wide margin but that was mostly because I was doubling everyone's scores the first 5 weeks or so before it all came crashing down. A few teams tanked to embarrassing degrees to try to secure the top picks in the draft. I'm excited to see how the first offseason plays out.

Hard to take anything to the bank anymore long-term with the transfer portal and NIL being what it is. I've already heard buzz that Judah is likely gone; if not to the NBA then to Georgetown. Been some buzz that Maliq and Bell will be hard to keep too. Hopefully the rumors end up not being true so we can basically run it back with this group plus Donnie and get back into the NCAA Tournament but we'll see. Losing either Maliq or Judah would be pretty catastrophic for our hopes IMO. I would say at least for now, the Maliq/Bell stuff is just a little murmur; nothing concrete. I'm sure Judah will try to go to the NBA Draft again this offseason...hopefully he returns if he doesn't get good news there like he did last year. I know Georgetown is pretty confident they're getting him though.

Metrics that I factored in include: Age, % of pass plays they were targeted, yards per route run, % of targets categorized as open, catch % when open, avoided tackles rate and PFF grade, and I was particularly focused on their success rates against man coverage. With the 4 WRs you mentioned specifically: Thomas would have been an Early or Mid 3rd if we just looked at 2023's stats (weighed down by his low target %), but his numbers from 2022 brought him down another round. Coleman's relatively low score basically boiled down to low YPRR and low % of targets as open. Beyond those two areas, he wasn't good enough to earn positive points but wasn't bad enough to earn negative points either. Mitchell was mostly bad across the board. He wasn't targeted nearly as much as most of the class, YPRR was very low, and his numbers against man coverage were dreadful. Polk is really due to 2022 being horrific. Based solely on 2023, he would have come out to be a late 3rd rounder on the metrics, but he was nearly the lowest rated WR in the sample in 2022. The only WRs that were worse were Marcus Rosemy-Jacksaint and Robert Lewis (small school kid from Georgia State).

I haven't studied him on film but he was dead last of the 43 WRs I looked at on the metrics.

Just for fun, I decided to score WR prospects on some of the metrics that I find to be important and create a prospect score that I then translated to a projected draft range. I took both 2022 and 2023 into account for these scores but weighted it more off of 2023 (with the exception of one player who missed almost the entire season). Then I took the draft grades that I have from watching film and decided to combine them into one all-inclusive draft grade (slightly favoring film over metrics). The prospects that I've watched film on graded out this way (combined grade first, then film, then metrics): Player Combined Film Metrics Malik Nabers Early 1st Early 1st Early 1st Marvin Harrison Jr. Early 1st Early 1st Mid 1st Troy Franklin Mid 1st Late 1st Mid 1st Rome Odunze Mid 1st Early 1st Mid 2nd Ladd McConkey Early 2nd Early 2nd Early 2nd Brian Thomas Jr. Mid 2nd Mid 1st Mid 4th Keon Coleman Late 2nd Late 1st Late 4th Malachi Corley Late 2nd Late 3rd Early 1st Ricky Pearsall Early 3rd Early 2nd Late 4th Roman Wilson Early 3rd Mid 2nd Early 4th Brenden Rice Early 3rd Late 2nd Late 4th Ja'Lynn Polk Mid 3rd Mid 2nd Mid 5th Xavier Legette Late 3rd Late 3rd Late 3rd Adonai Mitchell Early 4th Late 2nd Late 6th Jamari Thrash Early 4th Mid 5th Early 2nd Xavier Worthy Early 5th Late 6th Late 2nd Tez Walker Late 5th Mid 5th Early 6th Jalen McMillan Early 6th Late 7th Early 3rd Some major differences between my film vs. metrics as well as some of the players I haven't studied on film that stood out on metrics: Metrics are lower on Odunze than I am and ever so slightly lower on Harrison. Metrics definitely do not like Brian Thomas and Keon Coleman as much as I do. On metrics alone, Malachi Corley was pretty clearly the 2nd best WR in the class after Malik Nabers. Ricky Pearsall ranked 28th out of the 43 WRs I scored, so metrics are a bit lower on him than I was on film. Adonai Mitchell was the 5th worst in the metrics. Ja'Lynn Polk was 33rd out of 43 so he didn't fare well either. Metrics had Jamari Thrash 10th out of 43. I admittedly liked his film at the Senior Bowl but he didn't stand out that much in the actual games I watched. I know he's a favorite of the Cover1 guys too. Metrics liked Xavier Worthy and Jalen McMillan much more than I did. Guys that I haven't scouted that stood out: Malik Washington (3rd highest), Isaiah Williams (6th), Dominic Lovett (7th), Joshua Cephus (8th, small school kid), and Hayden Hatten (11th, another small school kid). Washington and Lovett were almost exclusively used in the slot. Cephus was out wide 38% this year but was very low the year prior and Hatten was 68% this year. No idea if this sort of combined ranking will fare better than just pure film or pure metrics, but it was a fun exercise to throw it together.

Among the 84 NFL WRs to receive at least 50 targets this year, the average YPRR was 1.69. Davis was at 1.34, which was 58th among that group. Among the 43 college WRs that I pulled into my Excel chart, the average YPRR was 2.39. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12pCgsJPa9X-jjNMOZ_exJTAEfxmZOeETzEm8SNkuXec/edit#gid=1244172747 Should also mention you have to consider context with YPRR. It will heavily favor WRs that are the #1 target on their team (for example, it'll be biased towards a guy like Xavier Legette or Malik Washington for example who were by far the #1 target on their team vs. someone like Brian Thomas or Keon Coleman who played in offenses where the ball was spread out more/they weren't featured as much). On the flipside, if you're playing with a poor passer, your YPRR will suffer since you can't rack up yards if they don't get you the ball, so guys like Tahj Washington (Caleb Williams), Nabers/Thomas (Jayden Daniels), and Tez Walker (Drake Maye) are probably at an advantage from that perspective. If you happen to be a WR that played in more of a balanced passing attack and also didn't have a good QB, you're probably screwed in terms of YPRR. I believe those drop rates are probably for their entire careers so it isn't a perfect match to my table which shows the last two seasons, but feel free to check the link above for drop rates on all of the guys you're asking about.

I like Pearsall more than the consensus; think he ended up as like my WR8 or something after watching pretty much all of the main WRs in the class. I never love taking WRs that are as old as he is, but his film was a lot better than I expected. I think McConkey is more athletic/explosive though, so I disagree there. That's not to say Pearsall is a bad athlete by any means, but I do think it holds him back a little bit. Re: taking a slot WR, it definitely isn't ideal. The X WR is clearly our biggest need, but it may ultimately boil down to how the draft plays out. There's only a handful of X WRs in this class that I really love early in the draft and almost all of them are likely to be off the board by the time it gets to #28. I also think that despite Shakir really coming on down the stretch this season, we could still use someone that's better against man coverage in the slot. Shakir racked up almost all of his production against zone, which is still helpful obviously but if you want guys that can get open quickly against man coverage for Josh, we could use an upgrade in the slot too and this draft is filled with guys that can potentially do that. I wouldn't do it at #28, but it might be a consideration on Day 2.

This is one of the big disconnects between Kiper and some of you guys. Kiper expects McConkey to run in the 4.4's or possibly 4.3's if he has a better than expected day.

I have an early 2nd round grade on him personally so I don't agree with the top 5-10 talk at all. I don't really care about his stats all that much though/within context they're actually quite good. I think the people that are very high on him are really glossing over his complete lack of touch throws though.

Seems like there's a lot of buzz right now that he'll end up going top 15 and could even go top 3 by the time the draft process plays out.

I wouldn't be surprised if Vegas trades up. I definitely think they'll gauge Washington and New England's interest in moving down. Antonio Pierce is the guy that brought Jayden Daniels to Arizona State. But even if that doesn't work out, I could see them moving up for JJ McCarthy.