Andy & Ari On3 - How 2024 NFL first-round draft picks stacked up as college football recruits

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

Yes, Caleb Williams was always that good. But he wasn’t the top-ranked quarterback in the recruiting class of 2021. (That guy is still in college.) Meanwhile, J.J. McCarthy was as polarizing a college recruit as he is a potential NFL draft pick.(0:00-3:50) Introduction - NFL Draft(3:51-7:52) Charles Power and Cody Bellaire Join, Covid's Impact(7:53-13:29) Caleb Williams, USC(13:30-17:35) Drake Maye, UNC(17:36-19:28) Quinn Ewers Discussion(19:29-24:36) JJ McCarthy, Michigan(24:37-26:49) Jayden Daniels, LSU(26:50-29:25) Overall QB's(29:26-31:31) Jayden Daniels and Innovation in Technology(31:32-34:51) Favorite Prospect - Brock Bowers, Georgia(34:52-36:05) Jonathon Brooks, Texas(36:06-40:36) Can't Miss Recruits: Byron Murphy, Texas(40:37-43:35) Offensive Line Class: Joe Alt, Notre Dame(43:36-46:23) Tyler Guyton, Oklahoma(46:24-49:06) Gary Patterson at TCU(49:07-53:22) Guys Not in the Draft (53:23-56:59) Significance of Age(57:00-1:01:00) Guys Not in the Draft, Re-Visited(1:01:01-1:02:05) ConclusionOn3 director of ranking Charles Power and national scout Cody Bellaire join Andy to share stories about the players who will be drafted beginning this Thursday when they were high schoolers trying to choose where they would play their college ball.Cody, who used to work in the personnel department at LSU, offers a plausible alternate history where Williams winds up in Baton Rouge playing for Ed Orgeron. Charles discusses how low-key Jayden Daniels' recruitment to Arizona State was. Charles also explains how the Joe Alt who came out of high school in Minnesota was not nearly as easy to project as the version of Alt who is leaving Notre Dame and heading to anchor some NFL team’s offensive line for the next 10 years. Plus, the guys pay tribute to the Patron Saint of Projection — former TCU coach Gary Patterson.Want to watch the show instead? Head on over to YouTube and join us LIVE, M-F, at 8 am et!

Welcome to Andy Staples on three. Happy NFL Draft Week. That is going to dominate the conversation pretty much everywhere, but also it's going to dominate a lot of the conversation here as we say goodbye to some of our favorite college football players, wish them well in the NFL, and get mad when NFL teams don't value our favorite college football players as much as we do. But today, we're going to take a trip down memory lane. We're going to talk about these guys that we are now talking about as potential first-rounders, like a lot of the guys whose

names you're going to hear called on Thursday night. We're going to talk about them as recruits and how they got to their schools, how they, well, in certain cases, moved from one school to another. And it's fascinating. It's fascinating to think about young Brock Bowers coming out of Napa, California. J.J. McCarthy, who wanted to go to Ohio State, but they took Kyle McCord and he wound up at Michigan. Jaden Daniels, who started his career at Arizona State, wound up at LSU.

So many stories and so many steps on the path to getting your name called Thursday and going and hugging Roger Goodell. But I thought, let's talk to the guys whose job it is to evaluate these guys coming out of high school because they have an even tougher job than the NFL scouts have. Because the NFL scouts, they're working for a much smaller pool.

Yes, they're investing more money, but they've got a little narrower focus. And so it's a little bit easier. And you're also dealing with people who are 21, 22, 23 years old. You don't have to worry about what's going to happen at the end of puberty. Like, are they going to stop growing? Are they going to keep growing? This is something that college football coaches have to worry about all the time. And so we're going to talk to Charles Power,

who's our director of ranking here at On3, who's been scouting and ranking recruits for years. And also Cody Belair, who worked, as you heard last week, in multiple personnel departments at different colleges and had to be on the ground watching these guys as they came out of high school and be in those beatings where the college coaches were like, okay, this guy, yes, this guy, no. And he's got a ton of stories about, Hey, we liked this guy, but we couldn't get him. Or we weren't quite sure on this guy and look at what he became. It's a fascinating process. We love in the draft.

You're going to get this stat in the draft about how many guys were three stars or two stars or no stars. Well, yeah, because there's 32 five stars a year. Well, guess what? A lot of those five stars are going to be first round draft picks, but yeah, they're going to be guys who come out of the woodwork like Jared verse at Florida state. He was, he started his career at Albany as a tight end. He put on 40 pounds of muscle during COVID working out by himself and became a completely different player. We love those stories at draft time too,

but the intrigue of the recruits at the top and why this guy was ranked higher than this guy, this guy was ranked higher. It's absolutely fascinating. So let's talk NFL draft and the guys who are going to be called in the first round back when they were in high school with Charles Power and Cody Belair. We are going to have a very fun round table here. We're talking NFL draft, but this is on three. So of course we're going to talk about it from a recruiting and evaluation perspective because they're trying to see how we doing here. We're

getting this stuff right. Cody Belair, national scout, Charles Power, director of ranking and scouting. We are a few days away from this NFL draft, trying to figure out where these guys are going to go. But Charles, we were just talking about this before we started recording this is a weird year in terms of evaluations when these guys were coming out of high school these guys were high school senior like your three and out guys the which is a lot of the guys who are going to be drafting this first round three and out guys were seniors in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic yeah yeah it was i think back on that year and it was certainly the most challenging and just different cycle that i've had to evaluate in my in my years of doing this um like if you did if you didn't see a guy before march of 2020 you just did not

see them in person the whole year. And that goes not just for us, but for colleges. Colleges couldn't have any prospects on campus. And they were kind of, you're going strictly off of film. You're trying to track down measurables. And several of those prospects had their senior seasons canceled. So you didn't have not only the in-person evaluation point, but for many of them, you didn't see them play football or any sport for, you know, the better part of eight months plus into them enrolling. So just from my time of doing this is probably the biggest guessing game and just lack of substantive kind of information and data points and just source material that you have to use to evaluate. So it's really kind of fascinating

to see how this is all played out. So Cody, it's interesting though, because I look at the 2021 industry rankings and I see a lot of the names that we're seeing in the mock drafts. Like, so we decided for this exercise, we're gonna use Daniel Jeremiah's mock draft. And I believe there's seven names from the top 50 of the industry rankings in this one. So like JC Latham was number three, the Alabama offensive

tackle. Caleb Williams was number seven. Dallas Turner was number nine. These are all people we expect to see drafted very high in this draft. So is it just a case of like when you see Caleb Williams in high school, you're like, oh God, that guy is so much better than everybody else. To some degree, yes. To some degree. And I think Charles made a great point a lot with the COVID year. It threw off a lot of teams processes, right? Because so much of the work that goes into these offices and these teams on the evaluation side is seeing the kids in person, right? There's a serious value to that. And ironically, I think what COVID did during this process to teams in programs across the country, it sort of forced them to rely on their evaluation

skills, right? I think a lot of people take for granted the ability to watch tape and say, okay, we see these skills on tape. How do those translate to us at the collegiate level? And I think sometimes in the in-person eval does, it sort of tricks you, right? You have times where you sort of say, oh, maybe this kid's smaller than I actually thought he was on tape. Maybe I'm actually going to discredit all the things I'm seeing on the high school tape. And I don't know if that's going to translate to the next level. Well, during COVID, you sort of had to trust yourself and you had to trust the tape. So I think ironically, it was the inverse effect where more teams had to sort of trust what they saw on film and hope that it translated to the next level. Well, let's start at the top. Let's talk about Caleb Williams, because I got to tell you, for me, I decided Caleb Williams was the number one pick in this draft.

I think probably when he went into the Texas game as a freshman and saved Oklahoma's bacon, but I was positive. Damn sure he was the number one pick in this draft during the Kansas game that remember the play where he throws it to the guy, he runs to like steals the ball back from him and is like, I'll take it. Like nobody has those instincts through that improv like and it i think it ended up being a terrible play he might have fumbled or something but but when he when he did it i was like oh god this guy is so different yeah yeah i um i i think from so that was it was a really interesting quarterback cycle that year a lot of guys committed early.

We can kind of circle back on this when we're talking about like J.J. McCarthy because it's great, man. But I remember watching – we had just finished our 2020 ranking. I was at 24-7 at the time, and we had just finished our 2020 ranking. I was kind of starting to do like a deep dive on the 2021 quarterbacks. It was like a Saturday in February, and it didn't of starting to do with like a deep dive on the 2021 quarterbacks it was like a Saturday and you know February and you didn't have anything to do and so I just watched a bunch of Kayla Williams but I came out I was like this guy's like clearly the best quarterback it was just in terms of this the the the horsepower he had in his arm uh his movement skills I think in like if you just want were to watch his highlights now I was like when I was doing

this I was watching full games and it was like it translates the game as well but like I think in like, if you just want, were to watch his highlights now, but like when I was doing this, I was watching full games and it was like it translates the game as well. But like, I think in like a three and a half minute highlight, he broke like 25 tackles. I mean, he was extremely difficult to tackle. Awesome contact balance. And then just the ability to make throws from every platform. A lot of the throws that we, we saw him make at USC, like the rolling out throws that kind of went viral where he was throwing across his body. He was doing that in high school, like the exact

same throws. So everything he was doing was just highly translatable. And I think there was an inclination for people to look at his stats and kind of deem him a little bit. But when you watch the film, you would see that there were no layups in in their offense in high school he was playing against really good competition and I think when you watched it in the context of a game I just came away every time thinking this guy's like uber talented and it was a deal where you know I just I thought he was clearly the top quarterback talent in the cycle and um even when like Quinn Ewers reclassified like that to me just wasn't a question I still would take Caleb Williams over him uh in terms of especially after i saw quinn physically

um it's just just a different level and uh and just just so much potential and ability and it's interesting like we would always kind of debate on like what what his comp was in high school and it's kind of it's you know a lot of people said mahomes and people said russell wilson and you've kind of seen that come back around on aaron rodgers and i think that's a really good one but he certainly is that level of um of of talent and uh i just think like it's it's there's not a lot of guys that have come through high school football uh the last several cycles that have the combination of like arm talent ability to play inside structure which he really did more in high school than college. He was under center a good bit in high school and did improvisational plays too. Yeah, dude, Charles, I remember when we basically went back

and we kind of do little projects, right, where you go back and watch tape because we haven't watched Caleb, or at least I haven't watched Caleb since I was at Baylor in 21, basically. I haven't watched Caleb Williams. It takes about four plays before you got to pick your jaw back off the floor. I mean, he's got serious wow plays. It's probably four or five clips in. And so when I watched, I went four or five clips in.

And I remember being like, God, I think LSU almost had him at one point. So I called one of my buddies at LSU that was there at the time. And he was like, oh, we were in it. Like we after the the, because you got to remember LSU was coming off a national championship 2019, because most of these quarterbacks, like Charles mentioned, they declare, they commit that season prior before their season year as juniors. And so I called him up and I was like, dude, what happened? Like, how did y'all choke this? Like what happened? And he was like, Joe Brady left. That's the same set,

that same cycle where Joe Brady, the offensive coordinator left January of 2020 to be the OC for the Carolina Panthers and Matt rule. Lincoln Riley swoops in that summer. They get them committed, done deal case closed. And that's how fast things can happen at that level. Brock Vandegrift was at Oklahoma and he,

Oh, that's right. To open up the spot for Caleb Williams. That's so right. Caleb Williams' top three was OU, which he basically, the story is he recruited himself to Lincoln Riley. I think he was maybe talking to Lincoln Riley even while Brock was committed. Crazy. And then LSU and Maryland. So there's just like a bunch of

sliding doors there can you imagine well okay let's ask this question like since cody opened the door the sliding door here apology is ed orgeron still the coach at lsu if caleb williams goes to lsu guys even more important is cody beair still at LSU or is he at on three? No one knows at this point but yeah, I mean, that would be crazy. I mean, I will say at that time, we felt like the writing was on the wall but I mean, to your point, if Caleb Williams there, is that a team that instead of going seven and five goes, I don't know, ten and two and we're

still there it's a great question Andy I don't know oh my God that is that is wild all right well since we're we've opened the Pandora's box of the quarterbacks and everybody thinks it's going to be one two three and maybe one two three four quarterbacks let's let's let's go because three of these guys were in the same class and none of them were the highest ranked quarterback in the class because of a gentleman that charles mentioned a few minutes earlier quinn ewers when he reclassified he became the number one qb in this class so let's let's move to drake may drake may was committed to alabama initially uh probably best known to a casual college sports fan as the younger brother of Luke May, who was a star at North Carolina. If you're a North Carolina fan,

obviously you know dad played football at North Carolina. But Charles, what was the story on Drake May coming out of high school? Yeah, Drake May was a really interesting prospect. He's probably, of that group of quarterbacks i probably i saw drake may in person the most i actually got to see him at a seven on seven tournament right before the shutdown and i to this day it probably is the best seven seven performance i've seen from quarterback like the ball just didn't hit the ground the whole the whole weekend but um you know multi-sport athlete i think among these quarterbacks uh certainly the the least trained of them i just spent a lot of time playing basketball

i remember seeing him at a camp as a sophomore and he was he was rough around the edges mechanically and i still think that's probably an area where when you hear a lot of the draft discourse with drake may a lot of it is just just mechanics um but you put him on the field he's a baller like there's just no doubt about it he was the most efficient passer in high school football uh as a junior both in you know in including the senior classes including guys like bryce young cj stroud drake may was more efficient than them i think he threw 50 touchdowns and two interceptions um just just really really accurate it has a had a great feel for for just playing uh like just within a live open environment like great spatial awareness um and and i think was certainly a better athlete than you would have thought just walk from

watching his high school football film he didn't run around a ton because he was just didn't have to but but then uh then you watch him play high school basketball and he was the guy who um you know had certainly had college level high school bat like ability and basketball like i i went back and like kind of into the vault. I probably will tweet it out this week. But watching some of his basketball stuff, just really strong, like shooting mechanics. Just there's a lot of things that when you look at quarterbacks tend to translate well, just the ability to replicate his motion and spatial awareness. So he was one that I think, tying it back into the recruiting angle of this, I think if you were probably going to take a poll of college staffs when these 2021 quarterbacks started to come off the board, there was certainly no consensus, I would say.

But I think Drake May probably was held in the highest regard among college staffs. I think he was, thinking back to that time. I think he was at the top of the board and a take for the majority of the schools that he was kind of interested in, like your big national programs. So when he flipped from Alabama,

obviously he's a legacy at UNC. That was not entirely surprising, but now I'm trying to think about, again with the sliding doors, like what if he goes to Alabama? He's the backup to Bryce Young. We probably don't see Drake May starting until this year, or maybe he would have hit the portal and gone somewhere,

but we probably would have seen Drake May start this year instead of Jalen milrow yeah and then who knows like like is does alabama win a national title i i think it's you know nowadays it's it's it's hard to assume a guy's gonna stay that long um yeah but uh but yeah i know it's certainly an interesting thing to think about and he was a guy that you know nick saban definitely loved drake may there's no there's no doubt about it he was a guy that everybody in that program was really excited about cody i want to i want to bring quinn ewers back into discussion because obviously he's a guy we'll talk about a ton on the college side this year he's the starter at texas again they're coming off a playoff berth but this is a guy who when he reclassified and

he reclassified because the state of texas was not going to allow high school athletes to take advantage of nil deals there was some kombucha money on the table so he reclassifies goes to ohio state what was it about quinn ewers that that put him above Caleb Williams Drake May JJ McCarthy in that class yeah I think it goes to the arm talent right there's certain things you can't teach at the quarterback position and it's it's truly in the juice of the arm right like there are certain throws that you have to make at the NFL level and especially in the windows right that's always the thing that I think you hear teams talk about and hear coaches talk about in these meetings in these buildings is you have to be able to make the tight window throws and you have to be

able to drive the ball at every level of the field and I think there's certain things that Quinn Ewers was able to show at his time in high school that even at an early age, right, he is older for that class. So physically he is ready. I mean, he was physically ready and it technically should have been a senior in that class. So that reclassification technically got him lined up with his peers from an age perspective. So it's not like this was a young kid that still needed to really physically grow into his frame and all that stuff. No, he was already there. And from an arm talent perspective, he was as good as anyone in the country. I think Caleb Williams was elite. I think Quinn Ewers is right behind him from an arm talent perspective. And that's just something coaches can't teach. So you have to, you have to value

that. And that's something that I think Quinn Ewers was able to show, especially now as he's getting more comfortable with the offense. I think that's something you simply can't teach. Charles, let's talk JJ McCarthy, because I am fascinated because the JJ McCarthy situation affects multiple potential top 10 picks here and one of the wildest transfer portal stories of this year. So let me recap and then we'll get into what he was as a recruit because J.J. McCarthy really wanted to go to Ohio State. He wanted to be Ohio State's quarterback. They end up taking Kyle McCord instead. And the reason Kyle McCord was the take really, that was the guy they liked, but that the bonus of that is you get his favorite high school receiver, Marvin Harrison jr. Yeah. Um, yeah, yeah. JJ McCarthy.. It's it's so funny thinking back to just he was he was a polarizing guy really from the beginning to right now.

And I think I don't know if I've like struggle with a prospect from like high school to college more than J.J. McCarthy. So just to kind of rewind it back. So we were coming out with our early rankings for this cycle post-sophomore year. And I thought that J.J. McCarthy had the best sophomore year of any quarterback in 2021. Yeah, he led his team to a state title, showed good arm talent, very productive, could run around and make plays, tough. I think he played a state championship game with like a broken hand. So I think I want to say we had him ranked as like maybe the top quarterback in the country as a sophomore. And it was really interesting. Like a lot of the feedback we got was like, I can't believe you'll have this guy this high. He's not at the top of college boards he's small um you know notre dame

thinking back to then notre dame was another program that i think he would have liked to go to or was certainly had a lot of interest in and they took tyler buckner who had not played a varsity snap maybe played one varsity snap so um he's a he's one that i think initially like the recruiting media was higher on him than college coaches um and then you know he had an interesting like kind of the rest of his high school career his really his sophomore year was probably his best season um but played pretty well as a junior and then of course like illinois canceled football uh there uh his what would be his senior year because of covid so he transferred down to img and i I think he was – it was a tougher adjustment.

He didn't throw any interceptions, and he kind of managed the game. But there were certainly times just from me watching those games where he was swimming a little bit. And just from a rankings perspective, I think looking back, I mean, I definitely regret I probably banged him a little too hard for that. But there still, I think, were some signs of questions that he has going into just the draft process. I mean, he's just a relative unknown with the amount of passing attempts and just how little he was kind of leaned on at Michigan.

But I just think back of the total arc of the J.J. McCarthy experience. And he was a guy who really from sophomore year, opinions were split. So I think he's a guy that if you like him you can certainly find a reason to like him and uh and if he's not your your flavor you can certainly find reasons uh uh for pause well that's when we're so on monday i'm looking and seeing that there's odds now that he's going to be the second person off the board on Thursday night. And it's like, Cody, I don't know where it came from on the NFL side, but hearing Charles talk about it, it makes more sense. I kind of wonder if our NFL front office is having these same debates that college ones did.

Absolutely. I mean, 100%. And I think to Charles's point, he lays it out perfectly in the sense that it's a flavors deal, right? Different offices want to do different things. And I think the debate, right? I think, Andy, to your point, I think it was Jaden Daniels was sort of the favorite at two. And now it's sort of slid back to J.J. McCarthy. And Jaden Daniels brings a totally different flavor with his game compared to J.J. McCarthy and Jaden Daniels brings a totally different flavor with his game compared to J.J. McCarthy. It's just simply to your point, Andy, it's about what teams want to do.

And when you go through this whole process and I think off field wise, I think Jaden is going to give you a lot of good answers and do something. Excuse me. He's going to give you a lot of the answers that you want to hear. I think J.J. is going to do a lot of the same things. But when you turn that tape on, it's completely different players. And you're talking about Jane Daniels, whose offense was throwing the ball, however many times a game, he carried the ball, however many times a game to Charles's point, JJ still sort of an unknown. So I think what teams are doing, they're looking at the tools that JJ McCarthy brings with his arm and his ability to process. And think they're comparing that to jayden daniels and for some people they're projecting jj ceiling to be higher than maybe jayden

daniels ceiling and those are conversations that are happening amongst all 32 teams yeah and jayden daniels is a fifth year guy and we're not used to that with the Burrow was a fifth-year guy who winds up being a number one overall pick, but we don't see it all that often. But Charles, I remember Jaden Daniel cycle was this is a, an awful year at quarterback. That's just what that was like being written about nationally. These teams are like, you know, maybe like outside of Spencer Rattler, there's no real national types of quarterbacks. And the longer that cycle went on, I just became a really big fan of Jayden Daniels. He was by far the most productive quarterback in that cycle. And I think when you just look at it, if you just wrote out the Jayden Daniels case on paper, he really probably should have been the top quarterback in that cycle. And I think that's kind of the way it's shaken out. Just super, super elite production. He had over 4,500 passing yards, 60 touchdowns as a senior four interceptions ran for 1500 yards 16 touchdowns so uh I think I I compared him to Sean Watson out of high school and there was very similar types of profiles and I think kind of overall skill sets there

um just with them being such high usage and so productive um and also just real I mean a very good athlete I think the biggest concern with him was just that he was thin um and it kind of had like a low-key recruitment like he was mainly dealing kind of with the west coast schools i think his final three or kind of the the main finalists were arizona state utah and ucla and he waited a little longer so he just wasn't really kind of viewed as like this big national like headline recruit when when you looked at it from a talent perspective uh he really was so I thought there were so many great signs with him as a as a high school player um just just given the the kind of gaudy numbers he was putting up and I thought like back then he probably should have been like the the Gatorade national player of the year and I'm not even sure

he was the player of the year in California he was just a guy who probably did he just didn't get the headlines he deserved I thought so you you were working at 24 7 at the time and it's interesting because these are the rankings you guys had for the quarterbacks for that year spencer rattler was number one which i think was was kind of the consensus across the industry yeah jane jane daniels two bo nicks three sam howell fouruggan five. So your top five Spencer Rattler is going to get drafted at sneaky arm talent mate. You're not sneaky. Everybody knows his arm town but but may end up being a good NFL quarterback. We'll see

Jaden Daniels is going to be a first round pick Bo Nix. You know maybe a second round pick Sam Howell's been a starter in the NFL for a year. He's been in the NFL for two years and Max Duggan took his team to a national title game like that's a pretty damn good group yeah and honestly too I yeah I felt good I felt better about that group but it's one thing it kind of it's a good lesson when people say a cycle's down it rarely is as bad as it seems you just kind of got to go like find the guys but I remember back then as well, Andy, I think four of those, everybody but Rattler in that top group was starting as freshmen. So pretty instant kind of feedback on them.

And we didn't have that many quarterbacks starting as freshmen last year. It was fairly rare in college football. I think it's just kind of the programs that those guys ended up going to but um you know with with with Jane Daniels I mean this is all pre-transfer portal as well right so I think that's one benefit of the portal um is you kind of have you kind of give these guys like avenues to to kind of find success you think about Bo Nix and kind of like what he did to turn around his career transferring to oregon um and then of course jayden daniels but uh but yeah i i think it's uh it turned out not to be as bad as as as as once feared in the 20 29 2019 well another thing like

so bo nix michael pennix jr who michael pennix j. is a class of 2018, like was originally committed to Butch Jones at Tennessee. And when that staff got fired, the Pruitt staff cut him loose. But, you know, without the COVID year, Jaden Daniels finishes his college eligibility after 2022. And we don't ever see that Heisman season. Bo Nix has a pretty good year as the first year started at Oregon, but we don't ever see that Heisman season. Bo Nix has a pretty good year as the first year started at Oregon, but we don't see that second year. We don't see Michael Penix take his team

to the national title game. So I do wonder if that extra year, Spencer Rattler, you know, doesn't get another year at South Carolina. I wonder how much that changed these guys fortunes in terms of what they can be in the NFL. Yeah, and to that point andy the innovation right because like you said especially when michael pennix like in 2018 the college landscape is completely different but so is the technology and there's things that's

going into we talked about programs last week andy in terms of programs that sort of change how these personnel offices operate and stuff you fast forward now I talked to some of my guys at LSU the what was the big switch right like what what happened with Jaden after the transfer that sort of turned him into this guy that we know or talking about now as a potential top five pick and this is somebody whose first season as the starter was solid you know what I mean he threw for nearly 3 000 yards they. But then I will do that for you. Right. No doubt. We're talking about at LSU. Yeah, exactly.

I'm talking about his first season at Arizona State. Sure, sure. So what happens when, you know, that off season between year one and year two at LSU, and they said it was his preparation and his commitment to learning that offense and connecting with his teammates that allowed him to reach that new level right first player in the building last guy to leave any chance he could get to throw to those guys he would but he really committed to learning that offense backwards and forwards and i'll give a hat tip to the performance innovation department at lsu that's headed by jack marucci yes that marucci that makes the bats and mario macaluso over there their long-time trainer who moved into the innovation department yeah correct when i was there that's where he was

at and so when now that he's doing this they brought in a team from germany that had a vr flight simulator and essentially they brought it in they're like hey can we make this like a football thing where he can like run through virtual reps that let him feel the speed of plays and they made it happen and he said and he I believe it was quoted that like it basically changed the game for him and it allowed him to see the game faster and essentially I guess you could say it worked out end up winning the Heisman and and now he's going to be a top five pick in the draft so it's amazing that like you said if he doesn't even get to lsu right who knows where his career could be so let's let's move away from the quarterbacks for for a bit charles i i want you you know go into the memory banks of the guys in this year's draft when you were watching these

guys in high school who was your favorite just when you popped on that tape you're like oh my god I love I just love this guy oh man that's tough um dude man that's a loaded one Charles you gotta dig deep in there strictly going off tape like Brock Bowers was one for sure um You know, I think anytime you go with a tight end being a five star and you don't really know for sure, like how big he is, like there's certain, there's like always questions there, but he was one that when, when we just put him at the back of the five stars, I was like, I'm willing to bet on this guy's athleticism and just his ability to be a

mismatch. So he was one for sure um like i i just was really really high on him and i think when you go back and look at like the testing numbers he was putting up i think he ran a 455 and had a 40 inch vertical as a like rising junior um a thousand yard receiver played all over the field kind of like what you see from like a modern tight end prospect when they're coming out of high school um basketball player so he was one um man there's there there's there's there's so many um well can i can i ask a question about bowers because i'm curious because one of the things i i'm always fascinated with in terms of evaluating guys out of high school is is determining their level of competition so brock Bowers is from Napa, California,

like wine country. That's not where we expect to find a lot of football players. So how do you gauge what you're watching on the video with, you know, when you've got like a guy who plays in Houston or a guy who plays in Miami or Atlanta, where you have a lot better idea of what they're playing against? Yeah, no, that's, that's a great question. And so I think start starting off, you want to see a guy who you're kind of projecting as a blue chip national type of prospect to dominate the competition kind of that you would, that would be like requisite to where he's playing. So he's not playing top competition in Napa. But I also think it's important to you, like Napa high school, when he got there, it was terrible. Like I think they didn't win a single game his sophomore year so he kind of helped them

so i think relative to who they were playing they probably were on the lower end uh but also too i think that's the that's the the use of like the neutral settings right so that's seeing them in camps verifying athleticism uh seeing them in these like all-star type of situations uh and brock powers was a guy that we didn't get to see um like anybody else in this cycle we there were no National All-Star games so I remember going back and trying to find like I was watching like a workout video of him just to see like okay how's he moving around he was like running against guys in one-on-ones just in a random field um so the 2021 cycle was one where you were looking for anything you could find on these guys

uh hopefully we wanted to do that again but um but yeah i i think you just came away knowing like this guy's kind of freaky uh athletically and and just the fact that he was playing he was lining up playing receivers playing running back kind of everything he was doing at georgia he was doing in high school um so like thankfully there wasn't like a ton of like a like a crazy projection there um but he was one definitely that that we liked uh you know i think one i has a shot of being the first running back in this draft i really like jonathan brooks coming out of high school um i think we were the only ones that had him you know in their ranking. I think he was like 105 for us. But I remember his senior – so he was a Tom Herman commit, which I'll say Tom Herman, his staff did a great job with running backs.

They signed Bijan Robinson. Everybody has a five-star, but Jonathan Brooks had like a similar profile to Bijan coming out of high school. Just kind of a smaller school, but just dominant high school running back. I think he ran for like over 60 touchdowns, 14 yards a carry his senior year. I remember watching that state championship game and like he, he broke so many tackles. It was like, it was maybe like the gutsiest performance I've ever seen from like a high

school player. They lost like at the last second, I think on a goal line stand, but he was like, literally, I tweeted out a video of this, but he was like carrying defenders on his back. I think he was played both ways, never came off the field. So he was one that, um, that I just felt like really good about just being like a very good college football player. And he got his opportunity this year. And I think he has a good shot of being the first running back taken. And if he doesn't tear his ACL, we'll probably be, uh, would have been a higher pick so cody during this time when these guys are in high school you're either working at texas a&m or baylor

and in the personnel departments what were some of the guys that we're talking about in this draft that the coaching staffs you were working for like we have to get this like we cannot miss on this guy yeah the the one that it's borderline triggering andy it's it's byron murphy and so it's borderline the exact opposite of kind of what charles was talking about right where brock bowers from napa you know you kind of know he's playing hey byron murphy's playing a bunch of ass kickers i promise in dallas he's playing a bunch of dudes so when we were at baylor this is one we're super in it for. Like we had him committed to us during the summer prior to his senior season.

And, you know, we make it through summer. We make it through the majority of the season. And there was one school that if we know if Austin, if that Austin area code came up, we were screwed because we felt that Austin was one of those with Bo Davis, right? Bo Davis is there. He's got a great track record, University of Texas, right? It's a blue blood. And it was a matter of if Bo Davis wanted that guy, it was over. And sure enough, in late November, we get a phone call from Byron and he calls us to say, hey guys, really respect what you guys are doing, what you guys are building here. I'm going to go ahead and decommit. And I'm going to say, hey, guys, really respect what you guys are doing, what you guys are building here.

I'm going to go ahead and decommit and I'm going to go on a visit to Texas because I want to be respectful to you. And kudos to the kid. Right. There's a lot of ways prospects go about this business. Right. And he handled it perfectly. He gives us a call. He showed respect. He let us know that he believed in what we were doing, all that good stuff. But he told us he goes,, hey, I'm decommitting. And just so you know, I'm going on a visit to Texas. And we're like, all right, guys, what are we, what's the timer? 24 hours, 48 hours until this pops. And sure enough, it was the same day Byron flipped the tackle. And that was the one that we knew. And it's tough, right? Because Byron, you even look at it from a measurables perspective. Byron doesn't fit the prototypical mold for a first round

defensive tackle, right? This is a guy that's sniffing six one. He's 300 pounds, but he's strong as an ox. Like he's a fire hydrant and you will not move him. He plays low to the ground. He plays with crazy leverage. It was one of those at Baylor where we felt like, oh, we can get away with this one, right? Like this is someone that maybe the big boys aren't necessarily going after. And when Texas made the call, we had to give them a tip at the cap, right? Because they felt that this was someone that they could plug in and have a role for. And sure enough, he was dominant at every year he played at the college level and it's looking like he's going to be a day one pick. Well, and that's the thing.

It's interesting you mention that because you're seeing him projected to be, in some cases, a top 10 pick, but definitely a top 20 pick. And you mentioned he doesn't necessarily have the measurables. He does have the twitchiness, like an unusual amount of twitchiness for a big guy. And maybe the NFL is coming around on these things like this may be more important than this. Right. It's tough. Me and Charles, and for us,

Charles and I have a really tough gig in that perspective because I mentioned to you before we even started, Andy, I think Louis Riddick put out a tweet or something a couple months ago where he's talking about it's becoming tougher and tougher for NFL teams and departments to project how these college athletes are actually going to look in three or four years or five years because the NFL is changing. Well, it's even tougher for us as we project for the NFL draft. We have to do it four or five years prior to NFL teams doing it. And so for us, it's something that we talk about all the time. Charles and I are on the phone constantly basically saying, hey, what's the next thing that's happening? What's the next thing that's going to change? And right now, to your point, Andy, the defensive tackles are maybe getting a little shorter, right? You're seeing a like six, one, six, two guys get drafted. However, arm length is still King, right? Because if even if you are shorter,

you still have to win the battle of leverage. And that's about getting your hands on guys first, right? But to your point, Andy, it's the twitch. It's the athleticism that is mattering more and more to these NFL teams. And that's always going to win out at the college level and the NFL level. So Charles, I want to ask you about this, this offensive tackle class in this draft, because you you've written about how the crop, the crop of 2025 guys that this is

potentially shaping up to be a historic recruiting class for the offensive line from the high school to college level they're saying the same thing about that at the nfl level for this offensive line class in this draft like joe alt when you see joe alt in high school is it the same thing as these nfl guys when they see him? They're like, all right, that's everything we want. We'll take him. No, no, it was not. No.

We had Joe Alt. I think we ended up having Joe Alt rank the highest, but Joe Alt was a projection. I mean, there's no doubt about it. This is a guy who, as a junior, he was 230 pounds. So you're looking at the frame. He was a blocking tight end. He played limited reps of offensive line in high school. So he was a big projection. Now, when I was watching the film with him, like I remember thinking at the time, you know, Notre Dame signed a really good offensive line class that year,

like very highly rated. It was like Joe Alt, Blake Fisher, Rocco Spindler was considered a national recruit um and i was thinking like if joe alt pans out he's got the highest upside of all these guys and i think what was the most surprising thing about it wasn't surprising to me that he ended up becoming a first round pick just because you knew the pedigree uh you knew the the upside like i think that upside was always apparent what was surprising to me is that joe alt got on the field as a freshman and just like was the guy uh like blake blake fisher got hurt they put joe alton like mid-season and he was just like by it's like a freshman all-american and and it became like the best offensive tackle in college football the next few years so how

quickly he picked it up was what was surprising to me. But no, I mean, I would, I would be lying if I said that, that Joe Walt did not require a bunch of projection out of high school, but, but like Cody and I talk about this all the time, like we're in a game of projection and you have like, there is an inclination with, with, you know, often like college coaches to take the ready-made guy. But, but I think unless, unless you're projecting a offensive lineman to get on the field, like day one, these guys catch up real fast. And I think Joe Alt's a great example of that. I mean, he was 300 pounds, you know, very quickly and was able to, to adapt, you know, really having not played

offensive line before. So if you want to have fun, go back and look up pictures of Joe Alt as a recruit, and you will be stunned that this is a top 10 pick as an offensive tackle because he is all of 230, 240 pounds. But the thing is, if you look at Joe Alt now, like if you watch him walking towards you, if he's not standing next to somebody else, you don't realize how big he is because he looks he has the the dimensions of a smaller person but in that massive frame so it feels like you take the best athlete who has the frame that looks like they carry the weight which

brings me to a question for Cody because there's another offensive tackle that is his name is being kicked around as a potential first rounder could be early second round we'll see but he's viewed as more of a project in the NFL because he hasn't played offensive line that long Tyler Guyton now he's from Manor Texas so he was he was a guy that I'm sure crossed your desk a few times when he was in high school he's considered like an absolute athletic freak show as an offensive tackle but when when he was in high school did you guys imagine that you know him being that in five years no uh no the short answer is no right but there are certain guys where you're sort of playing the game right charles nailed it correctly it's a game of projection, right? So for us, the projection was okay. The athlete was there, right? The athleticism's there.

The size is there, but the traits and the rawness at the position, you're sort of playing the game. And to Charles point, you're basically playing the game of, of boom or bust. And for us, when I was at, I believe he was a 21 cycle guy. Was he a 21 cycle? He was 2020. He was 2020. So I was at Texas A&M at the time. And for us, the bar for us was a little higher than compared to Baylor in terms of guys that you're willing to take a risk on. So for a guy like Tyler Guyton, for us on the high school film,

for us, it was a matter of, okay, athletically and physically, we believe he's there. How long positionally wise, right? We have to clean him up. We have to polish him. We felt he was a little too raw for our taste in order to see him see the field early enough for us, right? So for us at A&M,

it was a matter of, okay, how many years before this guy sees the field. And for what we had in our room, we felt like it was a matter of this guy won't see the field for us until year three, maybe year four. And for us,

that's too long to bet on a player to come in and hopefully shine. And basically it was a matter of stacking the board and for us a texas a m he wasn't necessarily high enough but that's the game these teams are playing they're saying okay when can i get this guy on the field when is he gonna reach that ceiling that we do believe he has right because like you said size wise and athletic wise he's there but positionally it was a matter of when can this guy step on the field for us and for some programs that's three years down the line for some programs that's year one you don't know until that guy steps on campus but for us it was a matter of

projecting and saying okay when is this guy on the field for us at a m it was too long for our taste well and and so i want to ask both you guys this is another example of this but was gary patterson the best projector in the history of the world yeah we and charles literally had this call yesterday 2024 we still have gary patterson fines getting taken in the first round but it's like a jerry miller i mean kendray miller was a a guy who I think had – they beat out UTSA for him. But Tyler Guyton, I remember when they signed Tyler Guyton and you say, okay, this guy is like 6'7". He's played football for like two years. Defensive linemen that they're projecting probably going to grow him into an offensive tackle.

Gary Patterson was ahead of the curve just with projecting. Andy, you think back to those defenses that he had in the mid-2000s. The Jerry Hughes, I think, is the classic. It's like high school running back. They grow him into a defensive end. He was always bulking guys up and moving them down. His teams were super fast. They started doing that at every position. That was one where I think Gary Patterson had the reputation where Cody, I guess you can speak to this a lot

better than me. But when he would offer a guy like in Texas, everyone, everyone is going to check to make sure we need to like look at here. I kid you not, I was going to say when you're when you're against TCU in the recruiting world, if they offer a guy, you watch it again. Like that's just how it goes. What am I missing here? Yeah. What is he seeing that we're not in? It was something about that defense,

especially on the defensive side, right? Where you would say, okay, like this is just a Gary Patterson player. It's that tweener edge that now you see across college football at every level. It's Harold Perkins at LSU. It's Will Anderson at Alabama. It's all these guys that you're like, oh, he's not big enough to play a hand in the dirt end, but is he athletic enough to play off-ball linebacker? Gary Patterson says, why not both? Just let him do both and he ends up those guys end up being phenomenal players but he does that to charles's point he does that at every level of the field and he does it on both sides of the ball d winters is another guy that played

safety and receiver and he bulks him up and he goes well he's the best athlete on the field just put a little weight on him and let him play linebacker and boom he goes he goes and has like, I don't know, multiple on-conference seasons and becomes an all-American. Like the thing that Gary Patterson was able to do is exactly what we're doing now. And it was his ability to project athleticism and how guys can maintain that athletic ability while putting weight on. And Tyler Guyton is a textbook example of that. So I'm going to ask both of you guys this question, and it can be somebody who's playing in college football now or someone who may be washed out, but we'll start with Charles. Who did you think would be getting drafted probably first round this year who isn't in the draft at all? Either they're still playing or they're not playing football anymore.

Oh, that's okay. That is a, thank you for asking Charles to work first. Cause I get time to sit on it. Um, so I think if you look at, if you look at the kind of industry rankings for for 21 um you know I think I think you look at guys like you know like Tommy brockermire um I think offensive lineman from Texas went to Alabama yeah so that this cycle this cycle nationally um the the 2021 the three and out cycle we're talking about, was heavy offensive line. I think if we're going to compare the current cycle, 2025, which I think is probably the best I've seen to this point, to a recent one, 2021 would be the best parallel. Most of these guys we've kind of seen in this draft but i would say like tommy brockemeyer is one who i think he's like a backup at tcu he's one that was kind of in that group with your um you know with your amarius mims kingly kingsley sumataya jc latham

he was considered a peer of those guys and so i would say him um you know i think some of the ohio state guys who came back for a fourth year, I would have expected them to go in. Yeah. JT2 and Malau, Jack Sawyer. Yeah. Other than Jackson was another one who was like a five-star offensive lineman, you know, so I wasn't quite as high on like a JT2 and Malau, but certainly a five-star prospect. You know, Jack Sawyer for sure. Corey Fore Foreman I think when you look back at that cycle was one who was just really I he's probably the answer I would say um yeah there were there were some signs of Corey Foreman you know in high school he wasn't super productive didn't play

senior year so um you know it I think there's certainly extenuating circumstances with with that cycle that that one made it difficult for guys maybe not ideal for them developing but also difficult to evaluate so it's kind of both where it neither circumstance were favorable I would say and Corey Foreman was at USC for three seasons he's gonna play at Fresno State this year so uh he's not done yet but he's not obviously lived up to the to the hype uh surrounding his recruitment but Cody who do you who do you have yeah there's two for me one one is Xavier and Saray I remember when Xavier and Saray was coming out I think it was at LSU at the time even as like a student when he really popped up on the recruiting scene because he was a younger guy that was always built he was like 6'1

215 played running back played safety played receiver did everything and was physical and violent and then you know I I went to my next stop at A&M oh cool he's 6-1 215 runs well violent all right cool next season still 6-1 215 runs well violent he was a he was like really like my first example of okay you got to understand guys growth potential and their ability to project and like add on weight and be able to move at the next level because xavian surrey has looked like the exact same guy since he was like a sophomore in high school and he was one of my first real lessons of like, okay, you really got to understand how size and athleticism works in relation to age and when these guys get to the next level,

how can they stack weight and maintain athletic ability? Because Xavier Suray has not panned out to the degree that I thought he was. I think – Charles, y'all might have had him. He played three years at Georgia. He'll probably start at Arkansas this year. Sure. And you're like, okay.

But he was never – I think he was, what, top 40 for you, for you guys, whenever you're ranking, maybe Charles, but that was always a guy where I was like, oh my gosh, I remember him coming out. And I was like, man, I remember when he got like that first offer and everybody was like, this guy's going to be a freak. He's going to be the next guy. He was kind of in the five-star track. And for us, he dropped a little bit, but Cody, I think you bring up a great point. And that one of the the larger trends that i i think that i've noticed in this draft in particular but i think it applies for everything and that's one thing where you know when cody and i are working on these these high school rankings you know like we look at age and i i think when when you when you are and i think

it's really important when you're looking at we we're starting to evaluate these guys when they're getting offers as like 15-year-olds. A six-month difference, or in some cases, a year difference when you're looking at a 10th grader is pretty significant. And what we found from looking at the draft, these guys with younger, kind of like later birthdays for the cycle they catch up and they catch up senior year freshman year of college and I think when you look at this draft there is an inordinate amount of late birthday guys and there's very very few guys who were held back like very few and it a number of late birth there's I would say there's more guys who are in the wrong class on the young side significantly more than ones who are held back. I've got an idea of why that might have happened.

John, who was 17 years old, he should have been a 2021 prospect. There's countless, but it's very interesting when you look at that. It catches up for sure. NIL was coming, and it when you look at that. And it catches up for sure. NIL was coming. And it got you in there faster. It got you in that pipeline faster. Yeah. And I don't like it's a lot of the situations are kind of different.

And like I'm personally not a huge proponent of reclassifying. I think when you look at the hit rate there it's probably once the dust settles on that um it's probably not going to be great um but i i do think just there is something to be said for just like physical maturation happening later just because you're you're a little behind as you know a uh like a 10th grader like i've been like reading up on these guys like i was reading dane brugler scouting reports and in the beast and he had like lad mcconkey was five six like 120 or 130 as like a sophomore um you know it's it's

like these guys come in every shape and size but eventually you know once they get to college it's all gonna kind of even out especially once you get in that that college strength program and you're eating you know three meals a day and eating at the training table and trying to put weight on um you can always kind of catch up if you have the frame to hold it well just to add on to charles thing it's funny projecting these guys to the next level too right because there's some people like joe alt for instance charles smokes that right this is somebody that you're saying hey i i've seen him i know the way he moves around if you throw 50 60 pounds on this guy i know what he's going to look like because the movement

skills are too good whatever then you have guys likere Sweat, who I want to say nobody, confidently no one, was like, oh yeah, he's going to throw 100 pounds on. He's going to be a dominant nose tackle. There's opposite ends of the spectrum. There's no way. You usually don't expect anyone to play at 360 and be effective. Correct. Exactly. That kid was 260 playing defensive end in high school so there's nobody that looked at that frame and said oh let's throw a hundred pounds on this and see what happens like there's that just doesn't happen um so i just wanted to add on to that but my my second player is to this day the freakiest athlete i have ever seen with my own

eyeballs and it was Daman Demas. That was my other one, right? Daman Demas. He has off-field stuff that, you know, obviously inhibits his career, but it's one of my favorite stories that I have from my times with teams. So we're at Texas A&M summer camp and he was committed to Texas A&M at this point. So he's committed and he shows up to summer camp, but he doesn't compete, right? He's riding around with Jimbo Fisher in the golf cart. he's watching all these guys do one-on-ones and

all this good stuff and there's a kid who ends up is teddy knox who is at smu i think um and teddy is a burner like this guy can run run so he comes and jimbo fisher does things differently at camp when you go to jimbo fisher summer camp you do all your testing after the workout's over. So you go through one-on-ones and it's like, all right, cool. Let's go do the vertical. Let's go do the broad jump. Let's go do all the 40s and testing. So Teddy Knox goes and runs 4-4-4 on his first run after camp.

And everybody's like, ooh, and an ah, and like, oh my gosh, this is crazy. And then on his second run he touches 440 and everybody like loses it right everybody's losing their minds demand's there everybody sees it and everybody goes oh my gosh teddy knox might be the fastest kid at camp there's no way anybody's running faster than that and demand says let me go grab my cleats and so he goes to his car grabs his spikes and is putting them on like out like next to the track and everybody's like damon you don't have to run dude like you haven't done anything all day you're cold like what are you doing and he tells the coach that goes and talks to him he goes when i see the field

i'm warm and we're like what the hell and so he goes runs watches, all of them under four, four, the fastest at four, three, seven. And then he leaves, he goes home, runs four, three, seven cold. And everybody's like, okay, well that's not normal at all. So that's by far the freakiest cat I've ever seen off field stuff to turn. And I remember all the videos that would come when he was in high school of him hatching while flipping and doing all this crazy backflip stuff. Yep. And yeah, he, he washed out at A&M. He was a Juco guy in Kansas.

I think was supposed to visit Nebraska at one point this off season, but never did. So yeah, that's, that happens sometimes. Exactly. And that's just, that's the game you're playing. Sometimes the guys that you feel are surefire don't pan out. And then guys at the end of the cycle, like I remember we took, when I was at LSU, we took DJ Chark. And DJ Chark was the last take in that LSU class.

Like literally the last guy we took. And I remember talking to DJ. He was always a super nice kid. And so he kind of came into our office and we're like, DJ, what is, I hope I'm not getting DJ in trouble. But we were like, DJ, what made you come to LSU? And he was like, well, I was going to go to Oklahoma State. And then LSU called my mom and my mom was like, hey, son, you're going to LSU.

And DJ was like, why am I going to LSU? And she goes, well, they said they'll pay for your braces. So that's why he ended up going to LSU because his mom was like, hey, they said to go take care of your braces. You're gonna stay home and play for LSU. Listen, done deal. One of the greatest Simpsons episodes ever when Homer becomes the union chief. Yes, I don't plan Lisa needs braces. Dental plan. Lisa needs. So listen, I just I just got done paying the orthodontist for two kids. Sure. God bless Ms. Shark.

No doubt. I know where she's at. Oh, well, that's probably a great place to end it, guys. This was awesome. I think if you're a recruiting nerd, you had a lot of fun today. We're going to make this an annual tradition. I can tell you that right now. But I can't wait to, to watch the draft and wait,

maybe, maybe we'll come back next week after the draft and, and see how we feel about how everybody did and where some of these guys went. But thank you so much, gentlemen. Of course. Thanks,

Andy. Appreciate you, man. As always. Charles power and Cody Belair. That was so much fun. And yeah, we're definitely going to make it an annual tradition. But we got a lot more to talk about this week with the draft.

My mock draft is coming out later today. We're going to discuss it on the show tomorrow with on three national writer, Jesse Simonson. We're also going to discuss his top 25 college coaches list, which I'm sure will not produce any arguments whatsoever in the chat. Oh, wait, no, no. You guys are going to go crazy arguing in the chat over that. And Jesse and I may argue a little bit. That's the thing. He can yell at me about my mock draft. I can yell at him about his coach rankings. That's how you make a show, ladies and gentlemen. Got to have a little friction there.

We can't agree on everything, but it'll be fun. We'll be talking about all of that tomorrow. Cannot wait. We'll talk to you in the morning.