Fantasy Football Daily - 2023 NFL Draft Prospect Guide Intro with Chris Wecht | On the Clock! NFL Draft Podcast

Episode Date: March 21, 2023

Brett Whitefield (@BGWhitefield) and Chris Wecht (@ChrisWechtFF) introduce his 2023 NFL Draft Prospect Guide and discuss his process of grading and scouting players, with a lot of wide receiver discussion to boot! BRETT WHITEFIELD'S 2023 NFL DRAFT PROSPECT GUIDE IS FREE TO READ WITH A NO-CHARGE LOGIN AT FANTASY POINTS. Interested in playing Best Ball in 2023? There's no better place than Underdog Fantasy. Use our code FANTASYPTS to sign up for a new account at Underdog, and not only will you get a 100% deposit match up to $100... but you'll get a Fantasy Points Standard subscription for only $5! https://www.fantasypoints.com/underdog --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fantasy-points-podcast/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's time to the Fantasy Points podcast brought to you by FantasyPoints.com. Top level fantasy football and NFL betting analysis from every perspective and angle, from numbers to the film room, with a single goal to help you score more fantasy points. We are back with another episode of On the Clock. I'm your host, Brough Whitefield. And today I am joined by my comrade Christopher Wecht. What's going on, Chris? Yeah, what's up? We have the prospect guide on the site. It is live. It is live. And that is what this episode is about is it is the unveiling of the 2023 Fantasy Points Prospect Guide written by yours truly, but also I got a special assist from you, Chris. You ended up helping out quite a bit, actually. Do you want to tell the people what you did for the prospect guide?

the story sections of the prospects are top notch if I have to say myself yeah digging into where these guys went to high school man you there's some juicy takes takes in that stuff no I'm just kidding it wasn't that special but but it was fun to do no it is it is a big deal though I think there's a ton of relevance to a player's you know background his upbringing the college recruiting process you know if he bounced around from certain schools kind of getting into that player's head as a kid. There is a lot of value there. And it's one of my favorite parts about the process is researching that stuff.

But what I found out this year is when you actually have to write up 200 prospects. You don't have time to do that necessarily, especially not when we started as late as we did, Chris. So having you be able to do all that research, I think I probably did what the first 40. And then I was like, Chris, I need help. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. I think you get to a point where you could tell that you were you were like all right I can't find anything interesting about this guy and I don't have quite I want to spend more time

actually telling you the important stuff. Yes. The players. Yeah. So I mean, the the research portion was done by you. All of the measurables and drills. All that data was collected by you as well. So.

But yeah, let's let's get into this prospect guide a little bit and tell the people what they can find. I know that. So this has been basically my life for the last, gosh, since senior bowl week really is when we kind of got started. And even then we got a late start because we switched the format. I was about 30 players deep. And then we switched the actual format. So I had to rewrite a lot of these guys. But I think, man, when you, so just landing on the homepage of the prospect guide, you get, you get two letters.

You get a letter from John Hansen. I strongly encourage everyone that reads the prospect guide to read both of these letters. I think John writes some really interesting things in his letter. And then my letter is more about explaining my process and how I go about scouting players. I talk about my numeric scoring system and how I developed that and how much film I watch, humble brag. And then ultimately what the scores mean, right? Because that's the most important thing. Each player gets a score on a scale of zero to 100.

And then I kind of break down how those scores translate to draft evaluations. Chris, anything did I miss there? No, I think that's it. Yeah, just it's a good primer for all the profiles you're about to read. And hints it, you know, stuff that will be coming in the future from the whole fantasy points data stuff and everything. Yes. Yeah, so then once you get into the actual profiles themselves, you'll see a bunch of data. You'll have the player's score.

You'll have their positional rank. You'll have their day valuation, and that is, do I see this guy as a day one prospect, a day two, day three, or UDFA? And then the overall ranks, that's like a big board ranking. Those are not live currently. We have to add defense, which will come, start trickling in slowly over the next week or so. And once we get about, I would say, 50 to 75 defensive players in the system, then we will get you a big board rank there as well.

defensive players are all watched they're just being written currently so that is why there's none currently on the site but yeah so then as you move down you got measurables and drills so you know all the height weight hands arm length and all their combine measurements or workout numbers

and then from there you have the story which is what we talked about that's all the background information and this stuff is really valuable I know a lot of people probably skip this section unless you're super nerdy, but I do recommend reading it. Some of these stories are really intriguing, especially when a guy was a five-star recruit. Like Justin Shorter's a good one, right?

He's like a five-star recruit, goes to Penn State, never really gets an opportunity, transfers to Florida. So you kind of get to see all of that track and how they got to the place they're at right now. Yeah, it sets it up. But when you get into their actual, what you see on film, the strengths, the weaknesses,

and everything, like, is this stuff that, you know, like shorter was expected to be dominant and just wasn't in college or was a guy, you know, maybe a three-star recruit not super special coming out of high school and did he grow into these strengths and weaknesses in college? And yeah, just sets, yeah, just sets the background for everything else in the profile. Yeah, even there's a, there's a lot of guys that have just really wild stories like Evan Hall's another good example. He went to Northwestern. which is an academic school. I wouldn't say they're a football school by any means.

They're an academic school. And he had offers from like seven of eight Ivy League schools, which is crazy. So that guy is obviously brilliant, you know, to get football offers from seven of eight Ivy League schools is actually crazy. And then the fact that he landed at an academic school, albeit a Power 5 one. I mean, it's still,

it just kind of goes to show you his intelligence. And then you can kind of start to see how that, intelligence translates to the field. So background stories are important for that reason. There are nuggets to pick up on, especially like if guys played other sports or were really good at other sports. Like there's a couple guys in this draft that were not just football players or all-state basketball players or there's a couple.

I think there was a receiver that was an all-state baseball player as well. Yeah. Lots of track and field athletes. Yes, tons of track and field. But you see, you see these other skills you pick up from other sports translate to the football field and things start to make sense. You know, basketball players are notoriously good at playing above the rim. You know, they're really good at the catch point.

If they're a receiver or tight end and that stuff just pops off the tape. It's pretty rare you see a guy in his profile. He was an all-state basketball player and then isn't good at contested catch stuff. Those two things almost always overlap. And I think that's why tight ends probably notoriously have like come out of nowhere in the NFL. Like you see this a lot, right? With like Antonio Gates and Jimmy Graham and Tony Gonzalez. Like these guys were elite basketball players as well.

And then all of a sudden they just come out of nowhere to take over the NFL. Well, that's probably why. Yeah, so working down the page, you get a huge strengths write-up section. So it's like a bolted list kind of that has what I would say like a bolded header. It kind of summarizes the talking point. And then there's a written description. of each trait that we're looking for. And then there's a matching weaknesses section.

Now, obviously, the better the player is, the less weaknesses they have, the more strengths they have and so on and so forth. But I try to give you everything I see. You know, I don't hold anything back there. And then we kind of close out the profiles with a final points section. And that mostly talks about, you know, how a guy scored for me, where I think he should go in the draft and kind of what I see his role in the NFL. being. Yeah. If you, you know, you know, maybe you're not super draft crazy, but you just want

some quick summaries on all these guys. You could get a pretty good idea on everybody if you just read the final points. And then if you want to dig deep, maybe maybe something sparks your interest in there. You could scroll back up and read the strengths and weaknesses and get a more deeper dive. But it's super even if, I mean, to me, the strengths and weaknesses are super easy to read through. They're nice, bulleted, quick, get the point across and move on to the next. next thing. Like, this is exactly how I would want a scouting profile basically written up if I was, you know, an NFL team.

And I just, you know, they got to consume tons of information about all these players. And you can just get it quick and easy and move on to the next guy. Yeah, good, like, just a quick example, too, like looking at Bryce Young's profile. In his strength section, the, he's got five bullet points and the, the bolded part. So the headers of these bullet points are excellent ball placement. accuracy can attack all three levels of the field pocket mobility and ability to extend plays fantastic throwing mechanics provide repeatability high football IQ and care for football so without having to read 800 words you get a pretty good snapshot of the things he's good at moving down weaknesses

obscenely slow trigger massive outlier in terms of size arm lacks top end juice cool now it's i think you pretty quickly get a feel for what he's not good at and then we have a final points paragraph that summarizes all that. So you can really get a good idea of where these prospects are without having to read the whole thing if that's not your cup of tea. But I do think, you know, Joe Dolan, our editor and I did a good job of trying to stay as brief as possible while also being as informative as possible. All right. Well, let's let's actually get into some of these. Chris, I know you've dove in pretty good.

Any particular guys you want to ask me about, put me on blast about? Let's start with a guy that really doesn't have a lot of film. And I think it would be interesting to hear how he ended up pretty highly ranked for you at his position. And that's Texas running back, Roshan Johnson. He ends up at your number four running back, but played obviously behind Bejohn Robinson. So there's not a lot of film out there from him. How did you come to the traits for him that you ended up and ended up scoring him as high as you did? Yeah.

So there's when I score running backs, Chris, you know, we have, I talk about the weighted buckets in the scoring system. So in the traits in film bucket, you have each player and each archetype has certain traits I'm looking for. Well, every running back, regardless of what their archetype is, there's three premium traits that's that if they score well in these traits, their scores get boosted immensely because they are the premium traits. In fact, I don't care if you do everything else badly. If you do these three things well, you're going to score high in my system. That is vision, so running back vision, ability to create beyond your blockers, and burst. But typically for a running back to score well, he has to check two of those boxes. But if you check all three, you're going to score pretty well and he checks all three.

So these are his three main bullet points in the scouting profile. prototype size and athleticism to be a high volume player. He's a downhill runner who punishes defenders. I talk about how many tackles he breaks and how many yards after context he generated. So that's your creating beyond your blockers. High IQ runner with good vision. There's your vision. So his three main strengths I highlight are those three premium traits.

So that's how he ends up scoring really well for me. Now, I don't think Rochon's some elite athlete by any means. I think he's actually a pretty good athlete for his size, though. Regardless, I don't think he tested overly good either, right? Yeah, he didn't. No. But that 10-yard split, that 1-5-2 at 220 pounds, that's pretty darn good. That's actually really, really good.

And so when we're talking about burst, like I care about burst way more than I care about top gear for running backs. I need to know you can hit that hole with authority, get to the second level. And once you get to the second level and you can make guys miss, anything goes. You know, it's pretty rare you see runs in the NFL where it's just a guy getting untouched for 80 yards where that top gear matters a lot. A lot of times it's a guy who breaks three or four tackles and then he finds, you know, open field. So that's how he scores super high for me. His weaknesses aren't that, I mean, they're not that big of an issue. Lateral quickness isn't great.

I noted past capability is a question mark at this point. He didn't catch the football a lot, Chris. but when you do you see good reps and the fact that he played behind Bijan just tells me that maybe they've valued Bejohn's touches in the past game more than hits which would make complete sense can't really fault him for that

yeah in pass pro he does have he's got a really large frame with long arms and he's really really aggressive like he likes to lay a hit he wins one on ones pretty routinely but the lack of experience you know it sometimes it trickles into how well he diagnoses stunts and blitzes.

But again, the sample size is small, so I don't even, you know, I'm not even too sure that those things will translate to the next level. He might be perfectly fine there over a bigger sample. Yeah, I've always liked Roshan and was glad that you liked watching what film he does have out there and thinks he has a chance to actually be something in the NFL. What about another guy, Tank Bigsby is a guy I've been starting to like. more and more. You have one of his strengths as creates beyond his blockers,

which is one of the premium trace you just mentioned is important. Your first sentence says you would be hard pressed to find a back in this class so he's responsible for creating more of his own yards than Bigsby. That's a pretty big statement for considering we have like Beijon Robinson in this class. Yeah, Bigsby, I really, really liked his, his high, his good games, his high level tape. really unbelievable stuff. But yeah, he had atrocious blocking at Auburn. But he, I mean, this guy, he plays with really good power and physicality, I writes,

and forces and mistackles and bunches. He combines his power and physical running style with just ridiculous cutting ability and lateral quickness. It's an insane combination. I'm trying to even, did I give him a comp in this? I'm trying to, trying to come up with a comp. on the fly of somebody here reminds me of I don't even know there is a guy like that right now yeah maybe kamara that's a good one yeah like people think of kamara as like this past game weapon I'm not talking about that I'm talking about his running style like camara is in it's just

really really slippery he runs but he runs pretty hard he's only like 215 pounds but he runs insanely hard he'll deliver blows as a runner a finish runs really tough but he's also got this just ridiculous cutting ability lateral quickness to put guys in a blender um i i i love that about tank yeah he's good the only he actually would have scored higher chris like i i thought about manually adjusting him above both taj spears and rochon but the the reason i ended up not doing that is because consistency was a big time issue like he'd have these blow-up games against good teams and all of a sudden he'd have a game with you know 20 carries for 15 yards or something i'm probably exaggerating a bit. But just games he just completely disappears from. Do you think that is a, because

Auburn was not a great team last year, and since he's been there, not really been an awesome team, is that an effort thing? Or do you think it's a, he just, he just, he just loses it sometime, loses the focus, he loses the vision. I think he loses that feel. Yeah, I don't, I don't know. It's, you want to give him benefit of the doubt because Auburn was not a good team. His supporting cast was bad. But, when you compare to other running backs in similar situations, like Evan Hall in Northwestern. Shout out to Derek Brown. He loves Evan Hall, and we've already mentioned him twice on this podcast.

But, you know, Evan, he was in a bad, like Northwestern's not a good football team, really. Their offensive line other than Skoronsky's terrible. They don't have a single NFL player at pass catcher. Evan Hall was the offense. He couldn't afford to disappear from games. And he didn't. Hall was insanely consistent. You know, if he wasn't contributing in the run game, he was contributing in the past game.

So, and I think Bigsby's a better player than him, but it's like, well, if Evan Hall can do that at Northwestern in a season where he's got to play Michigan and, you know, Ohio State and Iowa and Penn State, like, well, then why can't Tank do that, you know, in the SEC? Right. So that's my only real concern with him. And that's why I didn't do the manual adjustment. But I love his game, man. And I think the right coach is going to get a ton on him. I think he fits like every scheme too because of his running style. Yeah.

Yeah, there's not too many bad fits, it seems like, in terms of where he could land. Yeah. All right, let's jump over to a receiver that scored out higher than, I knew you liked him, but I was a little surprised how high he did end up. And that is Wake Forest A.T. Perry, bigger receiver, which is unique to this draft, Did that factor in at all to where he ended up scoring? Yeah, yep. He got a little bit of a manual bump because of that.

I think he all, yeah, he passed, he passed up Josh Downs because of that, basically. Yeah, yeah, Downs is a little bit lower than, I think Downs has been pretty much, almost always like the fifth wide receiver on people's boards right now. Yeah, fifth or six for sure, depending on where you have Hyatt, usually. Yeah, right, because it will Hyatt be. Quinton Johnson. Jackson, Smith, and Jigba, Addison. Addison, Flowers, and then high, yeah. So six, usually, yeah.

Yeah, I gave him a little bump because the size thing over, and he only passed one receiver because of that. But, yeah, A.T. Perry can freak and ball. If you haven't checked out my episode of Danny Kelly from Friday, I would strongly recommend going and listening to that because we talk about A.T. Perry in depth. But if you like what, DJ Chark brings to the table as far as body control and deep tracking ability and vertical skill

set, you'll love A.T. Perry. Now, A.T. Perry is probably not that juiced up of a athlete is, is Chark. But he's a really, really good athlete. Actually, at this point, Charc's career, he might be a better athlete than Charkis right now because Charkis had some, some injuries over the years. He had a really bad ankle injury as a rookie and then the ACL two years ago that he's kind of still recovering from. So, yeah, at this point, apparently might actually have more juice, but he gives you all of that. He's just an absolute monster on the boundary. He can attack three levels of the field.

He's got the built-in free yards because he's going to see a lot of cushion. Exceptional vertical player. Ball tracking skills are great. The thing that stood out most with him too is he's a very technical and nuanced routerunner, which is actually one of the bullets of his strengths. For a guy, he's got insanely long legs. he's kind of a high cut six foot three and a half receiver. So he's got longer legs and even a normal six three guy.

So you don't expect him to be able to bend. You don't expect those ankles to be super flexible, those hips to be super flexible, but they are. He really does a good job of accelerating through his brakes, exploding out of them. He makes really harsh cuts. He really, I think he can dominate out on the boundary out there as a true X receiver. So yeah, he's a player.

love doesn't have a lot of weaknesses to his game actually yeah it seems like he can do everything well and some things really well um but maybe not as high you know as the quitting johnson's of the class type thing yeah johnson's a ceiling play like i think he's a more refined player right now i think he does like the route running elements of his game stuff like that i think parry's better than johnston but johnson just has the the crazy ceiling because you you know similar size johnson's a lot heavier but definitely more of a freaky athlete and you see the magic happen when he has the ball on his hands all right i have to ask about this this bullet point because it's jumped off the page to me stanford wide receiver michael wilson he ends up as

your 14th best receiver you have a strength in here calling him arguably the best route runner in this class yes that's there's some pretty big name receivers in this class. Yes. Wilson is a phenomenal route runner. I don't even know where to start. So first of all, people are going to be like,

how can you say the guy's the best route runner in the class and have them at 14th? I'll say right off the top, this is a dude I've battled with in my mind. I had to stand on the score. And the score is as low as it is because of the lack of film, Chris. When I actually look at the guys ahead of him,

what do we got? Jaden Reed, Tank Dell, Tyler Scott, I like Tyler Scott, so I'm not going to say that. Cedric Tillman, great example. I personally like Michael Wilson better than those guys. Yeah, I wouldn't have, if they were, if he was above them, I wouldn't have said that you're crazy. Yeah, I personally like Wilson better than all of those guys from what we've seen from him. The problem is just we haven't seen a lot.

But going back to your route running point, yeah, I mean, he, the dude. is he's massive he's rocked up his frame is like he looks like a old school Tio that's actually his build he's a little shorter than Tio I think he's like 6-2-215-ish but he doesn't have an ounce of body fat on him and he's just a monster with that big frame you're getting insane flexibility like Chris we saw like down in Mobile remember him working those ladder drills and his he's working on his release game I think we talked about him for three days straight and I missed I miss talking about him for because i feel like we have he's been like so quiet since senior

bull yeah his hype around him foot speed and flexibility is unfreaking believable for a guy his size it's it's it's truly remarkable and you see all of those reps pop on tape um explosive route running he generates separation pretty pretty easily especially in short and intermediate routes i don't know that he'll ever be like a great deep threat in the other NFL. If you're throwing him deep balls, it's because you're just assuming he can go out athleticism, somebody at the catch point, which his broad and vertical suggests he could probably do that. Also, 6-2-215-10-yard split. Only a handful of guys in this entire receiver class had a better 10-yard split. I think Rashi Rice was one. Tank Del may have been another. I mean,

that's ridiculous. So he's exploding off the line and getting quick separation for sure. Yeah, so that's another good point too about his vertical route tree. He might be effective downfield because his explosiveness off the line is so extreme. He's going to eat up cushions fast and he's going to be able to alter his tempo to keep defensive backs like really off balance. If you put him in a slot as like a big slot and then run them down the seam or, you know, on a two-way go post corner. Like he's going to put safeties in a blender if he's seeing cover four or cover two. it's going to be pretty. Yeah, I was going to ask, do you see him more as a big slot type guy?

I'm trying to think of. I mean, this guy didn't work for sure. But if you draft him and you're like, we want to make him the next, I don't know, Juju Smith-Schuster. That's a good one, yeah. Yeah, like he's a better version of that because he's ridiculous after the catch too. All right. Is there any anyone you want to highlight from this that you were surprised?

by where you your score. Because you try to keep it, I mean, it's biased in that you're scoring everybody, but you pretty much stick to where your score says they're supposed to be. You don't do too many manual bumps. And if you're doing them, it's usually for a reasons like you kind of mentioned earlier, where a guy just doesn't have a certain amount of film to give him a high enough score or maybe he's got an injury history that you got to bump him for, stuff like that. Yeah, most of the time I'll bump a guy either up or down.

it's because there's some background information that is troubling. Right. I have an intangible score that kind of accounts for that, but sometimes we'll learn more as we get closer to the draft. Or if I'm in this situation where I don't want to be a fence sitter. So a good example is Xavier Hutchinson. I think he initially scored at like a 74.9 or 75.0 for me, which is right on the day two, day three break.

I didn't want to fence it and just. say, eh, whatever. If you want to draft them in the third round, go ahead. If you want to draft him on day three, that's also fine. I manually adjusted him to a flat 74. And this is a guy I like a lot, too. He's probably one of the better day three receivers you'll find in most drafts. But I do think his athletic limitations greatly cap his upside.

Now, I know he ran a decent 40 or whatever and was okay at the combine. I just don't know that that, I don't think he played. plays that fast at all. So, but yeah, that's a guy. I was kind of surprised and I felt like I had to make a manual adjustment because I just wanted to plan a flag. I didn't want them to be right on that barrier. Now, 74 is not much further down, but that's not a, that's clearly not a day two pick

to me. I don't think, I don't think we actually mentioned what your, how your scores basically get the day. What are the, what's the breakdown for what score means what day that you would rank them on? Yep. So 95 and above is what I would call a blue chip talent. You have to be really, really, really good at football to get a 95 in my system. Who was the last 95 off the top of your head?

Chase maybe? No. Sauce Gardner. Okay. Even more recent. Sauce Gardner, yeah. So that's the type of player you're looking at when you say a blue chip player. Yep. Saus Gardner, the

Chase year we had Chase, Trevor Lawrence was above a 95 for me. Waddle was really close as well. Pinae was up there. I think Penae might not have been quite a 95, but he was like a 94-9. But that just shows you the level of prospect you need to hit that.

And then, yeah, so anything above 95 is a blue chip. A day one grade is 87.5 or higher. So 87.5 to 100 is considered a round grade. In most classes I have anywhere between 18 and 25, 26 first round grades. I don't know how many I'll have this year, but I'm guessing it's going to be between 22 and 23. 75.0 to 87.4 is a day 2 grade. And then 62.5 to 74.9 is a day 3 grade. And then anything under 62.5 is a UDFA. So going back to Hutchinson, yeah, he was right.

at that 74.9 range and I just didn't want to, didn't want to fence it. So I bumped him down a little bit to a 74. I don't think he lost rank position because of that, but I definitely wanted to let the people know that I didn't see him as a day two prospect. Yeah, which is definitely where I've heard plenty of people talk about him being a day two prospect. So definitely a guy you're much lower on than consensus. Yeah. And it's, it's another awkward one where, I'm just trusting my, my system because, like I said, I like his tape. Like, if you were like, you have a choice between Andre Lachavas from Princeton, Kisham Boutte, and Hutchinson, I would pick Hutchinson over those three guys,

yet he ranked lower than them. So I don't know. This is the interesting part about trying to be objective and stay out of your bias, you know? Yep, yeah. So you know. you know blue chip qubies this year but you do have six that scores first round grades for you which if anyone read your latest yeah right hooker levis young stroud should be five wow i can't count today um you do have five qbs that have day one grades for you you if anyone read your latest mock

draft you had hooker go in the very back of the first round yep so you you your scores reflect that. You didn't give Hooker any kind of bump that he needed to make him a first round grade. Like he's a legit first round prospect for you. Yeah. And in fact, I think the manual bump I gave him was down. I guess it was not a bump.

I bumped him down a little bit. He was flirting with Levice's score 88.7. And I think Levis's deficiencies on tape are clear to me than hookers. but the system hooker comes from is really scary. And in fact, I'm probably the highest on him in the entire industry. Yep. And I'm excited about it because if he hits,

it's going to do well for me. But if he misses, then I'm going to know why. If Henan Hooker doesn't pan out as a prospect, it's because of the system he played at in college. But yeah, when you talk about a skill summary, I mean,

I mean, just shoot, just read these. bullet points tell me this is not a great quarterback prospect arm talent concise and consistent throwing mechanics lends to accuracy decision making is incredible i wrote hooker never puts the ball in harm's way and the crazy part about that chris is that tennessee offense does what they attack vertically on every snap so for him to never put the ball in harm's way while he's also throwing 40 50 60 balls that naturally get into harm's way yeah it is unbelievable um and then a big to extend plays with his legs and threaten the run.

He is a legitimate runner. Now, he's not Richardson level runner, but he's a good runner with football. You could actually design a run game around him. I probably wouldn't, but you could. Maturity and leadership qualities. And this is probably one of the most underrated aspects of being a quarterback in the NFL, is you have to be able to lead people. It's also the thing we can't quantify as onlookers, right?

It's like I I'm decently connected in the NFL I can ask as many people as I want about Hendon Hooker But I still will never truly know unless I was with the guy all day every day Yeah like this is the stuff that the teams find out in those combine meetings Pre pre-draft visits whatever you know senior bowl meetings if they were there and even still you can you can train how to fake it until you make it For sure you can dupe teams so like but everybody I've talked to has basically said that this kid is unbelievable between the years. Just super mature kid, you know,

natural leadership ability, mental toughness. You know, he played through some injuries. He's had a rough track getting to where he's at. He was he a six year quarterback this year? I think so. Yep.

Started his career at Virginia Tech. Get basically picked, the tech picks Braxton Burmeister over him. and he decides to transfer to Tennessee, and then obviously things work out from there. Yeah, so when you list those strengths off, though, you're like, wow, this guy sounds like a top five pick. And he was playing that way until he tore his ACL this year.

So that's the other bump he got, or a negative bump he got Chris, was the ACL. Because he's 25 years old, torn ACL. You know, there's a chance he's not even in rookie mini camps and, you know, OTAs. And then if training camp gets in question, and now you're talking about him not getting meaningful reps until what, 26 years old. Right.

Not ideal way to start a career as a quarterback. Yeah. Not when you can draft 21, 22 year old QVs that also have a lot of talent. Yes. So the skill set is there for me to love him, but there are definitely question marks that are scary, to say the least. And people are inevitably going to ask, what's wrong with the Tennessee offense? If you've listened to this pot before, we talked about it with high. and Cedric Tillman, this Tennessee offense is the most extreme ultra-tempo spread offense we see in college football.

It's similar to what Baylor was running back when Baylor was at their peak, what, probably close to a decade ago now under Art Bryles. They do these really crazy stack bunch formations outside the numbers, and the numbers in college are insanely wide. And so the line two, three receivers up outside the numbers, pinned to the sideline. and they all run switch releases. And those switch releases create chaos for defensive backfields in college football. They have no idea how to lock and level. It just creates absolute mayhem. And inevitably, you'll get one or two guys running wide open down the field.

And so that is the progression in that system. Hooker doesn't, there's no second read. You know, he's got, you know, concept one and checkdown. and he barely hit the checkdown even. Concept one, checkdown, scramble. Like, that's what it is. And Hooker pretty much was throw to my first concept or scramble. There was no in between.

He didn't get to a second read almost ever, never had to either. He pretty much maximized what the offense led him to do. Yeah, to extreme levels. Like, I'm convinced he was going to win the Heisman if he didn't tear his ACL. If you want to watch an exciting Hendon Hooker game, go watch the Alabama game on Primetime Football from the, this past fall. One of the best college football games I've watched in years.

He led them to victory and upset, I think the number one ranked Alabama Crimson Tide at the time, and did so on a game-winning drive that was unbelievable. March them down the field, threw like that 30-yard dig route over the middle of the field. Beautiful pass to get them in field-go range to kick the field-go win the game. That's the type of stuff you're looking for with Henden Hooker. So I love him.

I'm a big big hooker guy. Yeah. I like hooker for all those reasons. You just said. All right. Well, I think we gave a pretty good detail about the type of stuff you can find in the draft file. It is free. So it's not even like you have to, there's no paywall.

As long as you have a fantasy points account, you can read all of this. And there will be much more coming to it as well. Which is free to make, by the way. Yes. Yeah. The account. Yes. The account is free to make.

Yep. So you just have to give them your email, create a little login. It takes two seconds and you get access to the prospect guide, which will be over 150 prospects when it's all said and done. I'm going to do my best to try to get the 200. It's looking less and less likely as the days go on. But we will do our best. I've watched over 180 guys at this point.

So who knows, who knows what can happen. But, well, awesome. Thank you so much for listening. Chris, thanks for joining me to unveil. the prospect guide. I will be back tomorrow. I've got a fun guest for you guys lined up. And is anything else, Chris, we should talk about before we go?

No, I think that, yeah, just go read the draft guide. Yo, I do know what it is. I knew I was forgetting something. Gosh, dang it. Chris, you have a stream tomorrow night, correct? Oh, yes, yes. Scott Barrett and I started last week. week on with our best ball live stream every wednesday 730 p.m. Eastern. We're just,

you know, we're getting into these drafts the same way you are, I'm sure, around this time, because people draft year-round now. We're just figuring it out as we go, dealing with all, this week will be fun because I'm sure there'll be all kinds of ADP shakeups with free agency and draft getting closer. I mean, who knows where guys are going to get taken. So it's fun. It's, you can draft with us, hop in the same room as us. It'll be a good time. Come watch it and we'll have some fun. I highly recommend watching it. Even if you're not into baseball, it's entertaining,

especially because Scott Barrett inevitably gets roasted over and over, which is great. So definitely stop in, say what's up in the chat if you're watching that live stream and check Chris out at... Fantasy Points YouTube. At Fantasy Points YouTube. And what's your Twitter? Oh, Chris Wecht, FF.

At Chris Wecht, FF. All right. cool we are out thanks for tuning in to this edition of the fantasy points podcast remember to subscribe rate and review on your favorite platform and come join the roster at fantasy points.com