Geoff Schwartz Is Smarter Than You - 2026 NFL Draft Awards with Mitch Schwartz

Episode Date: April 28, 2026

Geoff Schwartz is back with his brother Mitch to recap the 2026 NFL Draft. The Schwartz Bros are giving out all your classic awards for Favorite Pick, Best Moment, Biggest Surprise (*cough* TY SIMPSON?? AT 13???) plus spicing it up with some new originals, like the PFF Howie, the Prime Cut, and the Act 3 Andy Sachs. Tune in for a full draft breakdown by the smartest brothers in the biz. Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app and use code GEOFF to get $200 in free bonus bets when you bet just $5. #NFL #Podcast #draftkings Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It is Tuesday, April 28th. I am Jeff Schwartz. That is Mitch Schwartz, and we're back. The power of the Schwartz. We're workshopping that, Mitch, as far as the title for this show. We're here for a draft recap. We're going to talk about what we saw on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. We're going to break this down kind of award show style.

We're going to have different categories here as you can try to hit potentially and possibly all your favorite teams, the good, the bad, the indifferent. Mitch, how do you enjoy the draft? How'd you take it in? I love watching the draft. I still watch ESPN. It's a little bit nostalgic, even though some of the analysis is a little bit lacking, and we'll get into the coverage a little bit later.

But it's just, I mean, I grew up watching the draft on ESPN, and there's a familiarity there. So I watched it on TV, like everybody else. I kind of try to stay off social media a little bit. I like to watch it and be surprised by the picks. I first think the first few picks were pretty riveting once you got past Mendoza. But, I mean, I enjoy it. I mean, I watch a little bit a day two.

I can't say I watch any of day three. I was out golfing and driving back from a pretty cool course. But, no, it's the drafts a fun time of year. I mean, there's kind of Hope Springs Eternal and everyone gets excited. And, you know, you kind of dream on what it can do for your team. I tell people, like, I'm pretty well versed in, like, the top 75 picks. Like, I have a general idea of who they are. Round four, I mean, you know, Maquois, obviously, we know who he is.

But, like, you're just, you're stretching in. pick 241. I look every year, pick 241. Reed Adams, a guard from Texas A&M. That's my slot. So congratulations to you, buddy. You have a long career ahead of you. Mitch, your pick this year was what? You were

38 or 39? 37. 37. Colton Hood. Colton Hood to the Giants, a cornerback out of Tennessee. Yeah, why didn't I get like a really cool customized dance with Roger Goodell? And then I should have had a, the power

of the Schwartz some sort of thing to do with Goodell. But no, I was not invited to the draft, as you can imagine. I know. I mean, I feel like, though, you would have, would you have accepted that, though, back then? Probably not, though, right? I mean, me and my exact circumstances, no, I would have thought that I would be embarrassed sitting there until the third round.

So, no, definitely not. I do appreciate. I always say, if I had some of the confidence of these guys, I'd be, like, a Hall of Famer. Like, if I just love myself and trust in myself and new. that I was like really good of football. I would have had such an amazing career because it just would have been like,

yeah, I'm just not worried about anything. My favorite thing during Mitch's career to do, by the way, was, you know, you touched on it there a little bit, like, you know, the sort of anxiety about being perfect, right? The perfectionist.

And I tried to always sort of, you know, just cut a joke here and there for Mitch, but he would text me after like a bad game or something. And again, Mitch's bad game was like, he gave up two pressures, just crestfallen, like a heartbroken. If I get up two pressure in a game, sign me up.

I am signing up for that game. and I'd always text Mitch, I'd ask him if the check cleared. I'm like, did it, can a check clear this week, man? Like, just, just like, I know it's a stressful game, but I always try to keep it a little bit loose. And you're right. I mean, somebody's got the confidence these guys have. And we got guys up on the stage telling, you know,

everyone, they die for their quarterback. I can not imagine you saying that. That was ridiculous. I got to be honest, like, bro, you've got to chill, man. I appreciate the sentiment. I love that you're there to protect your guy. But, sorry, Pat. I'm going to stay. I'm going to keep my life.

Okay. I mean, I would have kept going if I was willing to risk a third back surgery, but I'm not. And, you know, it's just like football is extremely important. Making sure that that guy is upright and healthy is like one of the most important things in your life. I know. The hyperbole was a little bit rampant this year. No third back surgery for you. All right.

Let's get to our best in show. Essentially, we're going to break down a lot of day one, a little bit of day two and three here at the end. Our favorite pick of day one, obviously 32 picks in the first round, Mitch, do you have a favorite pick in day one? I actually really like the Keelan Rutledge pick for the Texans. We've been talking about their offensive line for the last couple years and how it's slowly gone downhill. Now I'm going to shout out my guy, George Warhop. He managed to get Laramie Tunsell to be the highest paid left tackle on football, managed to get Titus Howard to be, I think, if not number one, like top two or three,

highest paid right tackles in football, both play in their best football, and then he was let go, and the O-line's been in steep decline since then. Now, we've talked about C.J. Stroud and the regression since year one, and a lot of that's been tied to the O-line. Does he trust the O-line? Is that, you know, kind of the major defect of the offense was the offensive coordinator. So they've been looking to fix this the last couple years. Last year was a little bit of an interesting way to do it, getting rid of your left tackle. That was more of a, like, a culture play wanting a guy in the room that, you know, maybe a little more team-oriented than some of the things you hear about Tunsell.

But it didn't really work out. I mean, the O-Hen was still an issue for them. And so getting a guy in the interior who's nasty, who's physical, going to help on the run game, going to help on the past game, probably going to be, you know, a leader of the unit within a couple years. You know, when you're on the field and you see a guy finishing and doing these little things, it gets you just to do it. Like you don't want to look kind of like the dofuss on film who's not finishing and who's

just like kind of giving up when there's another guy making a play. So a guy like Rutledge is obviously. good player, going to make your quarterback, you know, happy and healthy and standing upright when he's staring down the barrel on 3rd and 12, but also he's going to raise the play, he's going to raise the finish, raise the nasty of the rest of the guys in the unit as well. Yeah, not quite like Quentin Nelson at number 6, like instant guy who's going to be an all-pro and be the leader of the offensive line, but I think he could have, you know, a similar-ish impact. So that was one of the ones that stood out to me, you know, by a long shot.

just generally speaking about the offensive line in this draft Pheno 9 to the Browns, Maunoga to the Giants at 10, Proctor to the dolphins at 12, Vega, Ione 14 to Penn State. That felt like the most mocked. I think you're 50% on pronunciations. Probably. I won't be good at it in the rest of my life. Blake Miller, Monroe Freeland. There you go, got that one.

Max, we're going to stop there at Arizona State. I don't want to be made fun of again. and then Rutledge, obviously, there we go. Lomu, Lomu, I got that one right, too, 28. I thought it was an interesting offensive line draft, Mitch. I didn't like a ton of the fits, to be honest with you. I'm kind of curious. I think Proctor is good.

I don't like the fit in Miami. I don't really like Blake Miller's fit in Detroit. I think Freeland will start right away for the Panthers. That's probably good, ends up being a good pick. The Steelers, there's a lot of work to be done there. They haven't developed a lot of offense alignment tackle. in years now. I don't know, man.

I didn't really like the fits in this draft for the offensive alignment. Yeah, it was a little bit interesting. I guess the question is for the Browns need a guy at every spot. So wherever you pencil, for no one there. But I don't think you'd take him if he was an interior guy at number nine. You know, again, I think when you're looking at interior

offense alignment, you know, you need a guy who's going to elevate the entire O-line link right away. And that's not necessarily him, especially as being a little bit quicker, a little more mobile, not quite, you know, the physical nasty. I do like what the Giants did there at 10. You know, probably not going to be a right tackle.

It seems like he's going to be a right guard. Maybe he kicks out to right tackle in a year or two after, you know, Illumor's contract's up. Proctor, I mean, we talked about that last week. I'm not the hugest fan of, I just don't see, like, everyone talks about the size and the ability and the athleticism and the explosion. I just don't see it as much on film as we like. And then you got that quote from Saving basically saying,

He's not a self-starter and he's going to come and overweight. But he's a good kid. I mean, Sabin had experience with him as a freshman. So I don't know if that was the 18-year-old version of him. I mean, guys change a ton by 21-22. So I don't want to put that all on him. But it's also not great if Saban feels compelled to give that story right before the draft. Right.

And then, yeah, I mean, you kind of go further down. I think Blake Miller's a good enough fit in Detroit. I think they just wanted a competent football player. I think we just think of them as like, well, you got to be physical and you got to be nasty. Like, he just got to be a good player. And, you know, he's got the pedigree with all the starts there and, you know, done a good job. I actually think, like you said, Freeling is the one that makes a lot of sense and a pretty good fit. Yeah.

You know, you got Icky coming off the injury. So Freeling probably fits into the left tackle right now. If he comes back and he's healthy, then you could potentially move Freeling over to right tackle once Moten, you know, is done. I don't know how many more years he has. But you kind of got an interesting, you know, kind of three. retackle rotation there and taking a guy that I think probably tested a little better freeling than he looks on film I mean just watching him you don't think like he's a I'm not a huge RAS guy but everyone knows that he's like he's not a 9.99 RAS guy on film um you know I mean

not everyone could be a 2.7 a 2.7 a 4 time wall pro I mean that that takes him special skill yeah so you know so so so we'll see I mean again it's a good fit I think that one you know fit perspective I think the giants and the Panthers. And I put the lines up there still and obviously the Texans I led with that. The thing with Fano at 9 is that, and you play with Warhop,

is that I just don't know body style if he's in a vertical set. That's what Warholp's thing, right? I think I'm correct on that. Like, I just don't know how that hit Fonaut's play style matches what the offensive line coach teaches there. Yeah, I mean, Warholp is more of a vertical set guy, but he's not like a Paul Alexander, like, catch guy.

That's to me the difference where Paul Alexander relied on, you know, Andrew Whitworth, Andre Smith, you know, Willie Anderson, just like big, strong mofos, who can not use their hands, you know, you know, low hand, high hand, catch, you know, double under. That was Paul's thing. And it works when you're in 350 plus. Then all of a sudden, at the end of the Paul Alexander era, he's drafting, what was it, Blake Fisher from Oregon, he drafted, Cedric. I'm not going to pronounce that last name. There you go. But he drafted said, you know, 300, 305-pound guys and tried to apply the same technique didn't work. Warhop is a vertical setter, but he's a big puncher. You know, basically all the drills that were my favorites throughout the course of my career came from those first two years in Cleveland with Warhop, punching med balls. Hop puts the gloves on, and he has you do punching against him with padded gloves,

which I absolutely loved. So, yeah, it's a little bit of an interesting fit from a vertical set perspective, but he's got the quickness and the ability to get to the spot. And then if he's good with his hands, at that point, you know, it's the technique that's going to become the point of strength. It's not necessarily a pure size thing because he's not teaching a catch and a double under. So I think that one could make a lot of sense, especially if they kick him inside. Maybe they see him as, you know, a Joel Blotone, a guy who was kind of talked about a little bit. Could he play tackle athletic and up too?

But size-wise, we'd like to slide him into guard. So we'll see how that one plays out. But, yeah, I mean, theoretically, vertical setting, you know, it helps if you're a little hefty or just because. the space to the quarterback is compressed. You know, if you think of how far away you are from the quarterback, you know, the wider you set, the more space, the more wiggle room you have. And so that one, I mean, and then you get to the Arizona State Kid and Pittsburgh, and I absolutely hate when teams don't take into account what side offense alignment play on.

And so Pittsburgh has Broderick-Jeronez at Left Tackle, and they have Fittano at Right Tackle, who had a great year at Right Tackle, like kind of becoming one of the Rising Stars of Right Tackle. And now they draft a right tackle who's barely played any football in his life. And so what are you going to do? Move a guy who's shown that he's better on the right side now to left tackle

or move the kid who's not played much football on his life to left tackle and have him kind of restart. So that's one from the fifth perspective to your point. I don't like that one quite as much. My favorite pick of the entire first, I got two of them, Mitch. They're both guys on defense.

I think the Cowboys did a fantastic job maneuvering to get Caleb Downs. I think he's a really good football player. And he was the best player as a true freshman in Alabama's defense. I mean, he just, it's a football player. He's been like the best player on defense for three straight years in college football.

It's unbelievable. I think if it was, you know, positional value matters, of course, but if you take the best football player in this draft, he's in the top three and they got him at 11. And I think Sonny Stiles at seven for the commander is just a perfect fit

for what the commanders will get out of him and what Dan Quinn wants from a linebacker in that defense. I feel like they hit a home run there at seven with Sunny Stiles. Let's get to our worst. show our least favorite pick of day one. And there's only two options, Mitch.

I'm curious what your least favorite pick of day one was. I didn't even know there were two options. I thought there was just the Ty Simpson one. I went with Ty Simpson. And to me, it's not because of like, well, it's Stafford's last year or two and they got to capitalize on the window. I just don't think he's worthy of the number 13 pick.

Like, I don't necessarily see him as a guy that's that high. He's not like super big. He's already had some injury stuff in college. You know, guys like that. You kind of worry about long-term how they're going to hold up in the NFL. Now, situation-wise, like, a lot of people talked about, is it beneficial for a quarterback to learn under a top two or three offense of mind sitting behind one of the better quarterbacks in the NFL and one of the best guys we've seen over the last couple decades?

Like, yeah, the fit is in, or the fit from that perspective is an A-plus to be able to learn and kind of take your time and not rush into it. But I get that, like, well, we're not going to be at 13, you know, ever again theoretically with Stafford, and we're not going to have the ability to take a quarterback this high. But in an ordinary draft, like, isn't he a guy that you'd find at 29, 30, you know, next year? Like, we have this awesome quarterback draft coming next year. You're not going to get any of those top three or four guys,

but the guy that you're going to pick it, 2930, 31, aren't they going to be comparable to what a Ty Simpson is like this year? And that's where I think, yes, and you have the opportunity to, you know, take a potential, you know, offense to tackle the future or take a, you know, defense alignment. I mean, Bain was still available. Like, there are guys that you know,

you could have taken, I think, to fit your team. And again, not like timeline-wise. I just think taking him at that pick is a massive reach. I don't think he's that good. And this is the entire point that we've made, right? Is that like if you are drafting a player that I think is better and that projects, in my opinion, to come in right, not right away, but next year be good, then sure, make this pick. I heard the argument, Mitch, that maybe they viewed this as we're drafting a backup

quarterback because we want to win now. And if Stafford gets hurt for a month, we need someone to come in and help us win. And Jimmy G. Obviously, he's retiring. So we're drafting Ty Simpson to be our backup quarterback, which again, I'm not sure that's using your resources. That's, that's worse logic. I agree. But someone trying to sell me on that idea that that's, they're just a backup quarterback,

and that's what they're doing for him. But even if the timeline works out to their advantage, and this is why I didn't agree with, like, the Falcons doing the Michael Pennex deal. Well, you know, in two or three years, he'll be our guy. Well, now we're at that point, and Michael Pennix is probably not the guy, right? And now you wasted the eighth pick in the draft on a quarterback that might not be the guy. Make your team better now, in my opinion, and worry about later, later. This is not like a Patrick Mahomes' alksmith situation because he's not as good as Patrick Mahomes come out of college, right?

They're different players. So I just didn't like this. But the other one, Mitch, that I just, the Caleb love, the Jeremiah loved one bother me because I just, I don't think you should draft a quarterback. A running back. If you don't have the other. Are you kidding? The names or the positions, right? I don't think you should draft a running back that early in the draft,

paying $50 million guaranteed. If you don't have the resources in place to use that running back effectively in the first couple of years that they are in your program, right? We've seen this many, many times. If you add a running back to your team that, Sequin Barkley, right, to the Eagles, McAfrican-N-N-Rexing. If you add Gibbs to the Lions, like you have a sort of a ready-made offense and you put the running back in that offense,

it can accelerate the success of his offense. Arizona right now has no quarterback in the future. I'm not sure Carson Beck is that guy. Their offense line, I like their second round pick, but I'm not sure it's going to be great this year, right, Mitch. So, like, when are you going to get the most out of them? Year three? Okay, I mean, so you drafted the third pick overall

and a running back that's going to be useful years from now. I just don't like that process for me. I want to take in Reese, styles, like someone just to come in immediately on your defense to be good. people disagree with me on that one. I just, we have, we have years and years of information on this, man. I think it's a waste of a draft pick for Arizona to take a running back to three. Yeah, and it's like, this is where you kind of get into the positional value and the contracts

and all that stuff. Like, especially comparing with the Thai Simpson thing, you talk about the best asset in football. It's a quarterback and a rookie contract. Well, the Rams are going to waste probably one of those years unless like something catastrophic happens to Stafford. You know, seems like he's year to year. I guess he plays two years if he's healthy enough. So you're all of a sudden looking at like,

well, we're only getting, you know, theoretically like one third or one half of the value of a rookie playing on a rookie contract at the quarterback position. And the flip side, to your point with love, is that you're paying a guy now, you know, top three or four at the position, most guaranteed money for the position in history. And you're not going to be able to maximize him in the first couple years

when you're paying him high value money already because the surroundings aren't necessarily what you're looking at. So, you know, I know these teams like to talk about, well, he's a weapon and we'll use him at receiver. Like, no, no one does that. You know, he's a running back. I understand, you know, LaFlor comes in and coming from the Shanahan-McVey tree there, you know, the run game and everything that's beneficial there. But again, a running back can only overcome his surroundings so much. And I think pretty much everyone's in agreement that the Cardinals, as of right now, it doesn't seem like those surroundings are good enough, you know, for him to be a top.

of the line running back and that's what is going to be required when you take a guy number three. It doesn't matter that he's a fantastic football player. Like this is one of the things kind of want to hit on later, but like it would be great to talk about him being a fantastic football player and all the fun things he's going to bring to the offense, but we're kind of stuck talking about him in a negative light because of how high he was picked. The Cole Strange Award, the biggest surprise of the first round for you was what draft pick? It's still Ty Simpson. And I just, that was just a huge shock to me.

You know, I know there's like the chatter, but you just didn't think the Rams would do that at 13. When the pick is in at 13, I just don't assume that was happening. The trade back, then yeah, all of a sudden, you know, you could think about that. I will say, again, because I try not to be on, like, social media too much. I tried to, like, actually watch the draft and be surprised by it. I did think picks two, three, and four were, like, riveting. I had no idea which direction they were going to go.

I know you said, you got the word on Bailey a month ago, but the, The odds kept flip-flopping seemed like the money was coming in on a Reese at the end. Like, I had no direction which that was going to go. And then you see Love at 3 and you see Tate at 4. Like those were shocks and surprises to me. Even though they had kind of been talked about, you weren't sure what was a smoke stream and what was not. So I still enjoyed watching that. So honestly, you know, picks 2, 3, 4.

I loved watching those. A surprise, a little bit of tension there trying to figure out who it was. And then the later round, or the mid-round shocker was still Ty Simpson. to me. What about you? I mean, it was Tate. When Tate was drafted by four of Tennessee, that was the one I was like, I was just shocked. I was shocked, bitch, because, you know, again, we're going to save our discussion about consensus big boards for a little bit. We're going to keep teasing you guys on that. But, you know, I read the mock drafts. You read the mock drafts. You talk to people. I talk to people. I don't think anyone really thought Tate was going for, right? When you look at the

way. No one. I remember like specifically, I was like, oh my God. And Brooks, like, what happened? I was like, this guy got drafted and no one thought he'd go there. Because, look, you have to weigh a couple things of your solid, right? Like, you're a defensive coach and year one, in my opinion, you fixed your side of the ball as a head coach, right? You fix the offensive defense. Whatever you're good at, you fix that. That's a most, that's a most, I think most do it that way. Most do it, but I'm going to, but is that the way you should do it? Because you're also looking at a, again, quarterback on a rookie deal and I'm one overall pick. You don't want to like ruin him. You don't want to waste his confidence. So like, can we find guys to get open so he can get rid

of the ball? So that's the, that's the rub here, right? Is that is that he has to do this job, also prepare for Cam Ward, right? And so you have to do both those things. I just thought they would go with a defender because the guys, Reese and styles are still there. And presumably at the end of the first round, which they traded back up into, you would get a wide receiver, right?

I mean, Omar Cooper was right before them when they drafted Fulk. I also don't like the Fulk draft pick either. So part of that is I just didn't like that they went back in the first round for a pass rusher that's big and unproductive in college. Maybe Robert Sala fixes him, which is certainly fair. Honestly, so real quick, I think they probably view him as like an Eric Armstead where he's kind of tall, long-rangey. And so this is the solid system is he likes playing a little bit bigger and a little bit better run defense outside and kind of sub-packages on early downs. And then you can kick inside the three tech on pass downs, which is like what Armstead did for so many years there.

So he probably sees that as like, this is my Armstead, you know, kind of situational guy, can play defensive end early downs, provide some run defense, a little bit of pass rush. and then kick him inside on third down, let him rush and, you know, attack these guards. So I see the vision. I just don't necessarily think that, you know, they're going to get the best production out of it. I mean, just, I think just looking at those two guys in college, I mean, you know, Armstead did play inside, right?

Folk did not. So, like, it's just hard to compare, you know, the pro-com. He played kind of Fortec-ish, though, so. Yeah, but when it was time to rust the ball, rust the passer, folk played outside, right? and Eric Armstead played inside for Chip. Yeah. And those two differences. Yeah, I mean, I think I went against Armstead a little bit in college,

but they had Dion Jordan and Eric Armstead and just like, get off the bus, six-six freaks. And they had a Buckner too. Yeah, it was freaky, man. Yeah, they were good those couple of years. All right, let's get to the Linderbaum Award, favorite moment of the draft, Mitch. This is because our boss, Gabe Goodwin,

loves Tyler Linderbaum for some reason. We do a mock draft every year. It's the only name he remembered years ago. He just drafted Linderbaum. He got it right. He drafted him to the Ravens in our mock draft. And so this is our feel-good moment of the draft. Is there a feel-good moment for you of the entire three days?

I'm going to switch that and be negative. My favorite thing was complaining about ESPN. Being so just like, I don't know if it was the time thing. They were so far behind. And I tweeted about it and people were kind of loving it and agreeing with it. But just first off, the draft starts, and I'm not like a pander to the crowd kind of guy, but like Hayward's there and Watts there, let's go Pittsburgh and, you know, wave with the towels. It was so Goodell didn't get booed.

That's the reason. That's why that's my. No, Godel loves getting booed though. He like, he eggs them on and saying that's not loud enough. I actually think he enjoys that. He says, he said he doesn't care about it. So it's like, yeah, I get that like you're doing stuff for Pittsburgh. Like, is Pittsburgh not going to be excited when they're on the clock at 21?

Like, oh, we needed to see Terry Bratron. Jerome Bettis on stage. Those are a little bit less down the line. But the pace of it, like I said a couple times, I like seeing things live as they're happening, but I also like seeing people's reactions on social media. And at times they were like 10 or 12 minutes behind. There were trades, a pick or two ahead being, you know, announced

because picks were in ahead of them. And ESPN still had the teams before on the clock. It wasn't even like pick is in. I don't think anyone cares about seeing a guy take five minutes to walk from the green room to the stage. No one cares about the hat situation. We don't need to film that. The hug, yeah, great. That happens for 15 seconds. Let's, you know, cut down on the interview just a little bit. You know, there's only so many times we can see guys thinking the same people. I just, I, I love watching the draft. I love the spectacle of it. I want to see more of this is the draft.

This is the guy's highlights. This is why he's a great fit. Or this is why he's not a great fit. Let's get a little bit more analysis, a little bit less of like all the fluff going on. you know, there were some actual feel-good moments of the draft. I'll let you kind of cover that. But for me, it was like fun to kind of talk about what we wanted to see in the draft. And I don't know, again, I don't know if it was the cut down to eight minutes or like what was going on. It honestly felt like just the walk from the green room was so long that they got so far behind. I really think it was that they just didn't factor in what the eight minutes would feel like, Mitch.

I just think that, I mean, I saw a tweet that, you know, in 2007, the draft was six hours long. And now it's two hours and 45 minutes. It's just so much different now. And they just didn't budget in the time correctly. They were two picks behind the internet in the first round, which is shocking where, you know, Jordan Schultz is tweeting out, here's pick 20, you turn the telekhouse on, and they're just announcing pick 17.

And it just can't be that far. I don't even know how they know it's that far. I don't know how Jordan Schultz knew it that far ahead if they're just announcing it like that. But it was, it was bad. And I just caught some of it on TV because I was, my son of the baseball game, but it was, it wasn't great. So what was your actual, like, Linderbalman Ward feel good moment, though?

I mean, I love the phone calls, but I think are pretty awesome, right? To see how happy everyone is. That is a moment that you'll never have back, right? I think the feel good moment, though, is that Black Lab, who took the seat of Oscar Delper, I think it was after he got drafted, and that dog was living his best life. He could tell he's a little overwhelmed. He just wanted his seat back on the couch. He jumped on that couch and just never he was not getting back up again.

So I give my feel go moment to the dog. It looked like a chocolate lab Mitch who got his seat back after his his his buddy was drafted in the third round. Yeah. I mean, I think we're all kind of suckers for animal content on the internet. But it it has to be organic. It's to me, the Herbstry thing like, dude, we get it. You've got a freaking dog.

Oh, buddy. Oh, buddy. You are singing. We have a band list. and on the band list is Peter the dog because it's it's here's a thing Mitch it's um I saw him at the Super Bowl

it's Radio Row cool dog or yeah the dog both I saw the dog I saw the dog I saw the dog but like it's just sort of the dog just wanders like it just wanders around Radio Row like there's no no training it just be wandering everywhere wherever wherever I want to go

just wandered all the way around but yeah that that dog is definitely force fed to us and And also he moved on from his other dog pretty fast. Yeah, dude, I mean, I didn't really talk about that because I don't know if that's a faux pa. But it was like two days later, he had a new dog. I was like, okay, that was pretty quick there. I promise you, buddy, where's he at my dog's behind me?

I won't, I won't, I won't, I won't, I won't, I won't, I won't, I won't, I won't, I won't, uh, I won't move on after two days. I can't look at him though, so we'll pretend he's not behind me. Um, so again, the phone calls are great. The moments with animals are great. Their organic moments are awesome. Some of the tweets were just like incredible. There was the, was it,

was it when Peter Woods got drafted, he was wearing, was he wearing the green suit. Everyone was wearing white in his family. I think so, yeah. And then white behind him was, like a wedding dress.

Yeah. And the white behind him was the only white guy in the room, which is clearly his agent. It was like, right behind her. It's like those little, like those tweets and those moments to me are fun. And that's part of the fun part of the internet sometimes.

It's like a day like that when you just get some of those funny tweets. throughout the day. So those are our feel-good moments here. The Act 3 Andy Sachs Award, I assume this is because Devereaux's Prada comes out on Friday. I will probably see Devereaux Prada at some point very soon, Mitch. It is a family favorite here in the Schwartz household. Let's get to the, so this is the Andy Sachs Award for the best fit you didn't see coming in the draft. And mine is the Jets. I just thought the Jets had a fantastic first round, Mitch.

I mean, they got David Bailey, who we disagree, I think, a little bit. but on his potential at some point in his career. They got Kenyon Sadiq, who I love at Oregon, a tight end. And they got Cooper Jr., a very good wide receiver. So I think the Jets to me, I didn't see them coming out of the draft with three guys like this. I mean, you could have an option to get, you know, two or three guys that aren't very good. I think they chose the right guy in these situations. What was the fit you didn't see coming?

I was pretty high on Bailey. It was, Bain is the one I was not as big of fan. But I think Bailey and Reese are really high. you mentioned Dallas. I think Dallas, you know, that the downs and Lawrence, I thought Malachi Lawrence has some pretty good juice of the position and wasn't getting talked about, you know, quite as much as some of the other guys.

That's the thing with Bailey, too, is like, you can't coach that. You can't, like, train into, like, juice and athleticism and burst off the edge. So either have it or you don't. But to me, it was the Texans. I mean, I mentioned Rutledge off the bat. Then they get Kaelin McDonald,

the defensive tackle from Ohio State. that's like the kind of defense run stopping clog up the middle. And they're just solidifying the interior of both lines, you know, especially defensively, that's such a good defense. That was, you know, maybe the only position on the defense. You could say had a little bit of weakness. Like, they could come out. And if guys stay healthy, like theoretically have an all-time defense this next year.

You know, they're still, it's going to change a lot in the next couple years as, you know, Daniel Hunter and Anderson and some of the other guys are getting paid and starts hitting the cap. But for right now, like, this is the window for that defense. And being able to get a guy like that in the middle is going to do huge things for him. And then again, I already talked about Rutledge. So that like physicality, toughness, you know, kind of building your team from the core out. You know, I think the Texans could have gone in a lot of different directions. But getting those two guys, you know, within the first 35 or 40 picks, I think was just a fantastic fit for them.

And it really fits their identity. Well, the next award we have was is going to be the prime cut award, the team that out of the most beef to the trenches. I feel like we both agree it's going to Texas. I don't want to belabor the point here in the Texans, but I mean, they did a great job in the trenches. You talked about the reasons why they had to add, especially offensive line, they added another defensive line.

And was there anyone else, Mitch, in the first couple of days that you liked what they did in the trenches? Well, if you want to go prime cut award for the team that added the literal most beef, it's Philly. They take Markell Bell, who's a monster of a dude at, what,

at 6-9, like 350 plus. Also, if you're over 350, Like if you're listed at 345 or 350, that's probably 375. Yes. And then they get Micah Morris, who's listed at 6.5, 335. That's probably a plus on the 335 there. So you're talking about just like massive guys. You know, the left tackle is 365.

You know, Lane's a freak. And, you know, we'll see how much longer land in plays. But he's a pretty big dude as well. And then they draft, you know, Bernard, the defensive tackle from Nigeria, who's a massive project, much like Milotto was. But he's 300 plus and like 6% body. fat, whatever that was, 8%. So if you want to talk about, like, actual beef size,

it's hard not to be impressed just by the sheer physicality of the guys fairly drafted. And, you know, I know Stadlin's not there anymore, but just they've had a pretty good track record on the offensive line of identifying even like a guy like Pryor who's pretty tall, pretty big, I think at a, you know, a solid career, especially for his draft position. So being able to take larger humans and make them work on the offensive line, another guy like Mackay Beckton, you know. know, his only really good year, finding him at the guard spot and whatever, 6-8, 6-9, and 370 plus he was. So he'd like to think that Philly's going to do a good job of developing those guys as well.

Stoughton, by the way, is still a little involved there, I think. Because I know Stoughton loved Bell for a couple days, and I think he's still involved a little bit. He's obviously not coaching him. But I'm curious because, you know, the Eagles developed the offense line with Stowland. He's not there anymore, right? So a guy like Bell who has the potential to be really good if there's some development there and keep his weight down and whatnot, you know, can he do that or can they do that without Stoughtlin there?

It be fun to watch Philly figure it out without Stoughtlin. I'm curious like this is zero inside information, haven't talked to anyone, just pure speculation. But I wonder if in a couple years he comes back for another year or two, kind of like Skarnakia did. You know, Dante had stepped away for a little bit and then kind of came back. I wonder, it's weird that Statlin stepped away. I don't know if it's a fit with the coordinator, a fit with the head coach. Like there was something going on behind the scenes, but in a universe where this keeps going in a certain direction for Philly and they pull the plug on Seriani and they bring in a new head coach, you know, could Stoughtlin come back in a couple years in a couple years in a couple years? And maybe he's able to develop those guys.

I wouldn't put that out of the equation either. And if he's there in a consulting role and maybe there's a little bit of like, hey, it might come back in a couple years when I'm refreshed, then I could really see that being a positive drafting guys that he likes that they're large as well. Well, he just went on the New Heights podcast and basically said the offense sucked in Philly. I saw that. You got to call the right place at the right times. Which is a good way to say that the OCD and ODI was doing. You know, I did find interesting when they announced he wasn't coming back. It was like, well, he can't learn the Shanahan scheme.

I'm like, well, I'm sure he could. I think he could figure it out, guys. I thought that was kind of a poor excuse that was given for why he couldn't be retained. Yeah, it seems like he probably. probably had some disagreements behind the scenes and was just like, I'm out. Like, yeah, like, yeah, why bother? I've won my championships. I've done what I had to do.

I do agree with you, though, the scar thing makes sense for him to come back. All right, Mitch, we're going to take a quick break and we'll come back with a few more award to talk about consensus, big board and some other news and notes. We'll do that next. Be right back. All right, Mitch, back of a few more awards. I like this one here. The PFF Howie Award, the GM who will get the best PR from this draft.

And it's, again, Harry Roseman. I look, I give him credit, Mitch, because that trade. he pulled off is really embarrassing to Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh's on the phone with Mikai Lemon going to draft him, okay? Now, they thought, and rightfully said that Dallas at 20 was not going to draft a wide receiver. So they called Lemon and said, hey, man, we're going to draft you 21. All of a sudden, the Eagles trade with the Cowboys, Interdivision Trade, and they then

draft McCoy Lemon. There's video. He's on the phone with Pittsburgh and says, oh, why is Philly calling me right now? And his agent goes, you're being drafted by the Eagles. He hangs up the phone and, like that to me is a masterclass. from Hallie Roseman, he wins the PFF Award named after him. Yeah, I'm going to go off script here and not name him. You know, I've talked about the Texans a bunch.

I think they had a great draft. I think the Raiders had a pretty solid draft, you know, top to bottom. We can kind of debate the Mendoza and where he'd slot in and, you know, quote unquote, more traditional quarterback class. But I still think they had a good draft and picked up some guys at all sorts of positions. I mean, they're filling the roster out pretty good. They signed a bunch of dudes in free agency. obviously Crosby's still going to be there.

You get in the quarterback, you know, running an offensive scheme that's going to be beneficial and does well in the NFL. I think the Giants, we kind of hit on them, especially the first couple picks. You know, we talked about Dallas. So there are a bunch of teams. I mean, even Cleveland, I think, you know, I'm going to bring them up a little bit later.

I think they overall had a really solid draft and being able to trade from six to nine, pick them an extra third and fifth in the process. And everyone says we got the guy that we were targeting anyway, but, you know, being able to do what they're doing. So, yeah, there are, It seemed like there were a lot of candidates, but I guess, you know, how he did it again.

So he gets his own award. Where would you put the performance of Brett Veach in this one? The draft made more sense after the next two picks. I wasn't a huge fan of going from nine to six and giving up an early third rounder, which, you know, Kansas City typically doesn't have from their own pick. It's usually, you know, end of the round in the 90s. Yeah.

A third and a fifth to get the corner. it made sense when they got Woods and then they got, you know, Armason Thomas. Because my thing was like, the corner doesn't matter if you can't get to the quarterback. He can't cover for eight seconds.

Like, I don't care how good he is. Right. But once you get a defensive tackle that, you know, theoretically it's going to look more like the 2024 version, once you get a defensive end that, you know, actually has burst and potentially could threaten an offensive tackle

off the corner and maybe even win a one-on-one. We'll see. You know, you start combining those guys and then, you know, the other, you know, kind of fringe rushers get a little bit of a boost because you got more attention to being played, not just against Chris. The Delane pick made a little bit more sense, but if you stay at nine and you take Caleb Downs, if you roll the dice on Delane is, you know, Tyson potentially at nine could have been an option. And then we talked about that, not fitting the chiefs and an injury risk guy.

But I don't know, it made more sense and then you get, you know, the other corner and some of the quotes coming out of Kansas City are that Delane is a little bit more maybe versatile than McDuffie was. I hate the comparison of the two. Like, you didn't trade McDuffie to draft Elaine, no, you know,

per se. You traded a corner that you didn't think was worth a market resetting contract. Um, because again, like one single corner, we've seen this,

it doesn't really matter how good they are. It needs to be a good secondary. Having great corners in a good secondary is really nice. Um, but that also doesn't matter if the pass rush isn't there. Like the best defenses we've seen, you know, over the last 10 years,

it's the 49ers, you know, eight defense alignment that can rush the passer. You know, that Jets defense, yeah, they had sauce and Reed and a couple other guys, but it was, again, the defensive line could get out their quarterback. The Chief's, you know, best years defensively a couple years ago, yeah, it was great, but Chris was a beast, you know, a man who was healthy, that one little stretch, you know, in the playoffs like Frank Clark turning it on.

So just being able to rush the passer, I still think is more important than one singular corner than giving up extra draft capital to take him. So once the rest of the draft, you know, kind of shook out and made more sense. Would you rather have like downs at nine and a wide receiver in the early third? Or would you rather have Delane? I think that's maybe the question that we should be asking. But I think the Woods and Thomas Picks made sense. And then they picked up some guys later in the draft and some of these free agent signings that do make, you know, some sense of the roster.

It seems like speed was kind of at the forefront. This was a team that's, you know, progressively gotten slower over the last few years. So not worrying as much about arm length and worrying more about how fast the guy can run, I think is a really good direction for the team. I think that a lot of the information we get about these players is really good, right? You mentioned the relative athletic scores, which is a good tool to have, right?

But I think sometimes fans get really caught up in that type of thing. You know, the – well, these guys have short arms. Like, do they play good football? Like, do they play – are they good football players? And, of course, the arms do matter. And this is Mitch, I'm not dismissing all that. But, like, I feel like the Chiefs just drafted. guys that are fast and good football.

Like they're slow. Their defense is slow. Like they drafted faster football players. They drafted faster guys. Well, not draft like he said. Undrafted free. Now the undrafted for agents are all like 9.8 RAS scores. Like they went out of got all those all those athletic guys.

So it kind of mixed in here and there. Some athletic guys who are upside also guys that can sort of fit right now for Kansas City. So I thought it ended up being fine in the end. The James Claxton Award for biggest head scratcher the draft. Look, this is the time to have this discussion here. So a consensus big board is essentially, you know, a way to take all the big boards of the trusted people in the draft industry, put them together, and you understand sort of where everyone is ranked, okay? And is it the same board the NFL teams use? No, but, but Mitch, the people that put the boards together that we trust talk to teams.

Like, they're not putting together these boards without sort of an understanding of where these guys shake out. out in the grand scheme of things. So when a player is drafted at Pick 50, who is Consensus Big Board 187, we sort of have an idea of where the general consensus is on said player. And General Manager Manor will tell you, they sort of pay attention to that, right? Like, is there a buzz about a certain player? And if I'm drafting that player in the second round, why is no one talking about him? Am I just wrong on this guy?

It makes you go re-evaluate. And we have data, by the way, especially early in the rounds. if you over draft guys, they tend to stink in the NFL. There's data with that, like the 49ers. And we'll get you in a second, but I'll just do this now. Warren Trump put out a tweet. They have ranked, he's ranked their draft like 29 to 32, the last four years. Go look at their drafts.

They fucking suck. They're not good football players, right? Like, so you can mock the consensus bigger all you want, but it is a valuable tool for us to sort of understand, are you drafting guys where you relatively should draft those guys. I know you put out like a seven point bulletin, so please add on to what I've said. Yeah, I mean, I'm a fan of the consensus big board.

The people that are detractors would say, well, one, it doesn't matter. It only matters that, you know, teams evaluate guys in their own. Like, two, the only people that can evaluate, you know, properly are in the NFL. If you're good enough to be in the NFL, you'd be scouting for a team. That's not true. I hate that.

Sorry, sorry. I hate that so much because there are so many people that we like and we talked to that, dude, they're really good at evaluating football that have not played football. Like, the idea that you can only be good, and of course goes the other way around, too, but there are a lot of guys that we like that never, like Robert Mays did not play football past high school, I think. Very good at talking about football. Like, you don't, you spend your entire life immersed in it.

And those, a lot of those people, too, by the way, Mitch, that we like are very curious, right? They talk about football. They try to learn from us. And like, and I don't know why people are so against those types of. of people having opinions about the NFL. Yeah, they didn't play in the NFL. So what?

They're guys that are playing the NFL that have terrible opinions. Yeah. And the other thing is like, well, you know, our sport had 130, you know, big boards on it or whatever. It's like some of those people are idiots or we don't trust them. It's like the whole point of a consensus big board

is that people are theoretically doing their own work to figure out who the best players are. They're not necessarily looking at others. you know, we, I feel like Chris Sims maybe is a little bit, does it on purpose. But like, when guys have these kind of outlandish takes, they get crushed for it. So it's like, do we want them to think on their own or do we not want them to think on their own? But there's a wisdom of the crowd's theory and there's some other theories that are out there.

Like, if you have a jar of marbles and you're asked how many marbles are in this, if you ask like a hundred people, the average of all those answers is actually really close to the actual answer. It's just like there's weird phenomenons that like a bunch of people that just have opinions tend to kind of find the right answer if you take all their data combined. And so that's the idea of the consensus forward is you take all these people that are not really doing it all together. There are some probably mock drafts that are in there that maybe have some team filters. But for the most part, it's big boards.

It's guys that are evaluating football independently. This is how I see them. And so you get a hundred plus of those together and all of a sudden things start to crystallize. and a lot of people think that these are the top 10, and these are the top 30, and these are the top 60. And so to your point, when you deviate in a huge direction from that, it turns out that's not really great. Now, there's also data they've looked into this,

like PFF has looked into it, some other guys have looked into it. There is data that shows that the correlation of the consensus big board to where guys are drafted in the NFL, their production level, second contracts, all those things. It's actually really good. It's like almost like perfectly correlated to how good the NFL is the drafting guys, despite the fact that none of the people theoretically doing their own big boards know about the degenerative nature of McCoy's knee or this guy's got a bad back or this guy's a terrible person and he's not going to work hard. Despite not knowing all the things, you know, mentally physically that the NFL knows, the consensus big boards actually historically been really close to the NFL in predicting outcomes. Now, where it kind of breaks off the chart is, you know, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh round.

A little bit, it's still pretty close. But that's because, again, you've got less people that are probably caring about being Dame Brugler and scouting 550 people. So you're not going to get quite as good information. But, like, again, it's a tool. It's not the tool. It's not, you need to take this guy because he's next up on the consensus board. It's, you drafted a guy at 50 that was 174.

Would it be better to wait until 1.30 and draft a guy who's, 130 on the big board than it is to take a guy at 50 who's 174 yeah history has shown that yes that is better to do that and potentially lose out on the guy because one other team has them graded higher so that's where the big board's come into play it's not gospel it's not the only thing you need to be looking at but it's a data point it's been fact-checked you know these years um against itself against some other metrics and it turns out it's a pretty good tool and there are articles that show that teams look at mock drafts. They have data analysts.

They compile mock drafts. They try to figure out where guys are going to be drafted. To your point, Philly, you know, jumping Pittsburgh at 21 because they had some intel that Fields would, or that Lemon would potentially get taken there. The Chiefs kept saying New Orleans was going to take the lane at 8. We had that info. We couldn't trade up to 7, so we needed to trade up to 6th,

and Cleveland wanted to come down. Like, getting information from big boards, from intel, from all those things, is good. Like, you don't have to use it. Obviously, the James Gladstone Award is going to, he's probably going to win it. But, like, you don't have to use it. You can deviate from it. But we've seen huge deviations from that board being pretty negative.

If he had taken a guy who was 68th on the big board of 50, yeah, it's a little bit of a reach, but it's not a big deal. It's when you take a guy that's four rounds different when you're drafting in the second round, and most people have a late fifth grade on him. So, yeah, I'm assuming he's your winner for this award. Yeah, so he's the James Glaston is the Jacksonville, Jack, I'm General Manager. He's super young at his mid-30s. Lasser was his first draft. He traded up, remember, to get Travis Hunter and then decide to play him at two positions

and then decide this off-season. I think we're playing him at one, but then Travis Hunter said he disagreed with that assessment, so who knows where that stands at right now. But according to Warren Sharp here, some of the draft picks by James Gladstone, according to Contestis Pickport, so he picked a tight end from Texas A&M, a pick 56. His expected pick was 1.63. He picked a defensive lineman in the third round,

expected to be taken at 150, but taking it pick 81. A safety in the third round as well. His expected pick was 187, taking a pick 100. An edge russter in the fourth round, expected to be picked 236, taking a pick 119. And there's like four more of these in this draft. Mitch, is there another GM or another team you had that they might fit this award.

I mean, can I go back to the Ty Simpson pick? But I kind of thought that pick and I thought Seattle taking a running back at the end of round one was, you know, a little bit much, especially when we kind of talked about, you know, the right guard potentially needing replaced. I mean, detackle, McDonald was still available. Some of the D-Ns. We saw this like run of defensive ends going from, you know, picks 33 to 45 that's still some good players.

Or at like 32, not finding someone to. you know, trade back with potentially. I mean, you never know what those conversations are. I just, as much as we talked about love at three and, like, he's a good player and his backup ended up being the second running back taking, which is kind of funny. I just didn't love, you know, taking that guy at 32, you know, when I feel like you could have really solidified some of the other core positions on your team and they were still guys available to do that.

You know what this, this pick felt like when the chiefs drafted quite over Tiller at 32, just because, like, when we're a Super Bowl, like, I don't know, let's just take a an X-X pick of running back. I mean, just like one of those where it's like, well, we don't really have anyone we might like. We really need a running back and we just want a Super Bowl. So sort of let's just do it. We might be right this time. And the Chiefs were wrong. I think that to your point, there are other players available that probably would help Seattle in a much different way. And I get, the running back room is not great right now because Walker left and Charmeda. Would you rather have like Basantis to replace Anthony Bradford?

Like, would you rather have McDonald to solidify again, that the defense of tackle spot for this amazing defense? Would you rather have like, R. Mason Thomas, to like replace the Marcus Lord and Hood or one of the or one of the cornerbacks like Hood or Terrell like yes I'd rather have those guys absolutely yeah so that that was the one that

now it was only one pick I think Seattle did pretty good the rest of their draft but in terms of like the singular head scratcher that was one that stuck out for me you're stuck out for me as as me and you we mentioned earlier we are avid watchers of day two and three of the NFL draft is there a favorite pick or two

you had of day two or three, obviously, rounds two through seven. I don't expect you to have a favorite pick of round seven. I mean, maybe you do, but who's your favorite sort of pick of the second or third day? I talked about McDonald with the Texans. I think that's just a fantastic fit for them, a really good football player. I really did like the Browns taking Denzo Boston in the second round. I like when teams kind of double up on a position in a draft.

I love Concepcion, and I thought, I wish the chiefs had gotten him. Just a burst guy, a separator, you can get open. Chiefs are used to guys not catching the ball, so he would have fitting great. But the Brown's getting him and then taking Boston. And when you're able to pair two guys at a position, who again also play stylistically a little different, I think that's fantastic. And from the kind of receiver, I thought Ted Hurst and Tampa,

you know, I thought that was a pretty good pick, I think, in the third round towards the end of day two there. Even though they've got a lot of receivers, like everyone was like, why, they drafted Bukka last year? Well, it turned out to have a pretty damn good year. So getting a size speed guy, some downfield ability, I thought that was a pretty good combination of picks there from the receiver perspective.

What did you have for day two? I love Jacob Rodriguez, the linebacker from Texas Tech. I bet him 25 to 1 to win a rookie of the year already. I think he'll come into Miami and solidify that group immediately. He's a good football player, man. Maybe I'm a little biased. I watch a ton of Texas Tech film heading into Orange Bowl, Oregon played them, but I tried to find a weakness to any of those guys' games.

And that whole defense, like, was... Well, he might get, like, 250 tackles, so I don't think the team has anybody else. Correct. So, like, it's great, it's great for that. I mean, I love the Lee Hunter pick the Panthers had, the Texas Tech team for the tackle as well. And look, this is a little crossover here,

but I love the, uh, the pick that the, the Chiefs made. I think it was a fourth round, was it was, was, uh, was, Jaden Kennedy, the cornerback, the slot. the Chiefs did use my film I posted on the internet on their own video so you didn't give me credit but it's okay I appreciate that anyways I'm sure you'll get the 4 cents I'm sure I will he's dude he's a good football player man he's a perfect spags guy he can do a lot of different things he playing the slot for Oregon he can tackle he was kind of our unsung hero on

that defense a guy that no one thought would play this year a transfer portal player came in was fantastic for us I did post the clip fourth and one took on a lead blocker forced the run outside tackle the guy like it's just a good, a perfect fit for Spags, in my opinion, for that defense. Real quick, just brief, brief interlude. I think when we say Spags guys, we can only refer to defensive backs now. I don't think we can talk about Spag's guys at defensive line and linebackers because they're not necessarily seeing the return on value there.

I know. They have a good plan for secondary guys, but they do. Again, they change at this draft. They went, you know, anti-quote Spaggs guys on the defensive line, but I'm getting a little bit tired of hearing like which guys. he prefers when the defense has devolved into the manor because they can't get to the quarterback. I think that the R. Mason-Thom was definitely not a Spags drag. That's not a Spags guy, which is nice.

So maybe they decide to do different things. The Dave Merritt news is not great. I wonder if that affects that. That's awful. That at all. Unfortunate news there was arrested. Multiple-time champion as a coach for the Giants, for the Chiefs. A really good coach, but obviously a bad situation there.

For day three pick, I will say I love the McCoy pick for the Raiders, Jerome McCoy, the baller of the draft. So my thing with that is once you get like even the back end of the second round, the third round, the chances of getting a quality starter are really low. So you're not really like drafting franchise players or you're not saying, oh, well, we got to get this guy that we're going to give a second contract to down the road. Like you're just hoping that a guy's a quality starter and can, you know, play on a rookie deal. So once a guy like that gets into, you know, end of the second, third round, what does it matter if he might be out of the league in three or four years? Unless you think he's out of the league in a year, isn't like the, I'm not going to say perfect because it's bad to say that like for the actual player, but like isn't a good outcome drafting a guy who probably would have been cornerback one if he stayed healthy. Could be, you know, corner one or two if he's able to be healthy for a couple years. And then he's just, he flames out, which sucks for him in the knee situation. But like if you get two, you know,

years of starting out of that guy, and he's the top end corner, and you picked him in round three. I just don't get why the league is, like, so against that. I know there were, I feel like the 49ers did this, you know, 15 years ago. They started taking these kind of injured flyer guys in the first and second round, and they didn't really pan out. But like, I just can't imagine why you wouldn't take him in the third round when he shows that kind of potential. And no one has reported that this is a knee injury that's going to be he can't play this year. He's not going to come back from it. It's just like, we're doubtful that if it gets hurt again, he'd be able to sustain a career.

Okay, well, that's still worth the draft pick on day two in the third round to get two to three years of what could be a top end corner. And maybe there's a 20% chance that he's able to play six or seven years. So I love that pick for the Raiders. It's a great point on sort of the value of those players. One thing that I think that NFL fans miss a little bit in the draft is they think that you're going to hit home runs in the later rounds every time. And you certainly do need those to win championships.

We've seen that throughout the years. we saw Seattle do that right when the Chiefs were winning championships they hit the later rounds but those guys are are again like what's a success rate of that 5% 10% I mean you just I think once you get into the fifth round I think it's like an 8 to 10% of like a quality starter yeah so and that again a fifth rounder is probably not going to start right away so like years you know one and a half two three and four you've got under 10% chance of being a quality starter McCoy's a guy that could start for two years and be a high-end starter at a pretty premium position and you're waiting until the fourth round to take him.

I just, I don't know. I just don't get that. Unless, again, the medicals are just that scary that it's not even worth it. But we talk about the best assets in football being rookie contracts. We'll have in a corner that's got, you know, all pro talent on a rookie contract for, you know, three years is a tremendous asset. So maybe it would have been different if he had gotten hurt in 24, played in 25. and just had this issue, but like he had shown that he can play on it for a year. Maybe that had been different for him.

But again, I just, from a value perspective, I feel like he should have gone earlier. Do you have a least favorite pick of the second day, third day, or sort of least favorite team what they did? Because I think there's one that pretty much stands out. Is it Jacksonville? No, we did them right. I think the quarterbacks, I just so uninspired by Carson Beck and Drew Aller. So to me, those two guys, those two picks on, you know, round three, I don't know.

It's just, it's the Travis Kelsey at the refs meme. I just, again, we talked about the Cardinals. Like, could you have found a quality interior offense alignment at the top of the third round? Pittsburgh, what does Drew Aller offer you that Will Howard and these other guys don't already offer you? Like, just keep trying to find quality players in round three. So to me, those two quarterbacks Those were the least inspiring.

We already talked about the Gladstone Award. There is news today that Aaron Rogers is being offered like, I don't even know what the wording is for the contract by Pittsburgh, but he gets like a 10% pay raise. Oh, the rare undrafted for agent tender. Right of refusal or something? Yeah, the rare undrafted for agent tender

and Aaron Rogers meaning he can accept a 10% raise off last year's salary, which of him about $15 million this season. He only can sign with the Steelers once training. camp begins. One thing that I got to argue with my radio host in the weekend about this, and he said, did Drew Aller pick he quote, like, because he can be developed. And my argument was mostly that when? Like, the thing, Mitch, I think one myth of the sport now, just in my opinion, is the

idea of development. I just think it's nearly impossible at that position, especially quarterback to develop a guy because there's less practice reps. There's less time. Like when is Drew Aller going to be developed? He's going to get the second team reps immediately? Is he going to get first team? That's the point.

You also have Will Howard that needs to be developed. Now McCarthy is like known as a guy who seems to actually be pretty good at developing quarterbacks has this whole like program and rubric thing and does a pretty good job with it. But yeah, the reps are so limited. I mean, maybe a guy like Rogers doesn't practice quite as much and, you know, not going to be there for OTAs it seems. so you have some time to do it there. But this is a two to three year project. I mean, I don't know.

Is he going to be developed enough in one year trading reps with Will Howard to then like be a franchise guy next year? No. I'm pro quarterback. I think like chiefs wise, people are like, well, why do they take Nussmeyer? I'm like, okay, I took him at 249. Yeah.

Can you tell me who picked 250 was from the chief last year? No. Can you tell me who picked 248 was two years ago? No. So yeah, drafting quarterbacks and like having them sit and learn behind guys, like, that is valuable. But drafting an Aller or Beck in the third round, or, you know, talking about bad picks,

the Jets trading up, spending a couple fours to take Clubnik in the fourth round. Like, I just don't necessarily see it for guys like that. And to your point, unless you're coming in as, like, the definitive number two, you're not going to get enough reps and there's not enough time to be truly developed. And we've all seen that, like, preseason games are pretty meaningless

from, like, a let's learn a playbook and apply it against the defense perspective. So I do think guys can learn. It just seems like that's a five-year process. And, you know, that's not the goal of drafting him in the third round. Yeah, I'm with you on that. I just have development so hard now across the sport, especially that particular, like, think about quarterback.

If you think about franchise quarterbacks, right, they're mostly all first round picks or mid to early second round picks, right? There's obviously, DAC is an outlier in that. But remember, Dak came in and had the best offensive line of football and wasn't supposed to play, but then Romo got hurt. Brock Purdy, right, starting quarterback, that's a very rare situation to be the last pick of the draft and be that good.

And the other guys that are not, that don't fit that boat, there's one other that's not a... I mean, Russell Wilson was, I don't know if he's still against his way. Yeah, but, yeah, they'll talk about like current franchise quarterbacks. Like, I think that's, there's one other guy, I think, they can't, I can't name it on my head,

who's not a mid-second round pick or better, who's a current franchise guy. And it's just, It's just not the sport is mostly quarterback by those players. And so the idea that like a fourth round round quarterback's going to come in and be good, it's just not what the NFL is anymore.

Yeah, I mean, even guys like Lamar or Jordan Love like still drafted towards the end of the round. And then you've kind of got like the reclamation projects, the Darno's, the bakers that were, you know, kind of seen as guys that were outcasts and did take time to develop. But yeah. It's also interesting.

Like, they don't, right, first round, there aren't a ton of second round picks either. Like, you're either good enough to go late one and get that fifth year option, or they wait until the third round. Correct. Because if you were good enough to be like a high second. So it's a good point. It's interesting. The quarterback development thing, you don't see it unless there are kind of extenuating circumstances. There are more quarterbacks being developed later in their career, but that's more like the flame out, find the right spot, have learned from five to eight years of failure and different coaches and bouncing around.

and then they finally find a good role. All right, Mitch. Any last words for our draft? Any football opinions on your mind today? Anything else you want to share? I just love the draft. I mean, it's a lot of fun. I love watching it.

Still get a little bit tired of kind of the consumption of it after the fact. You know, that consensus big board idea that like we just kind of draid graphs. We grade drafts based on kind of what reaches happened and what steals happened. and if you trade down, that's a good thing. If you trade up, that's a bad thing. You can't draft the running back number three overall. Like, these are the right ideas. They're better than just kind of the seat of our pants that we used to go off of.

But it's also getting a little bit repetitive that a lot of the coverage is kind of based upon that. But yeah, it was, it was, you know, a fun few days. And every team is really excited for all the guys they got in. And good luck to all these guys on the rookie mini camps. it can be as stressful as you make it, but it's nice to get there. It's nice to kind of get acclimated. You know, get to your city.

You start meeting all the guys that are going to be your friends for the next few years. So it's a fun time. And all the scouts and all these other guys can take a little bit of a breather. They've been grinding for the last few months. And they're probably going to want to watch their favorite guys

over these rookie minicams. But after that, they're able to take a breather, enjoy some time on the back into OTAs and into the summer. So good on all them. I mean, again, guys in football buildings that work the most and get paid the least and don't get any recognition. It's scouting staffs. It's equipment staffs as training staffs.

And it's all the kind of people in the building that are making sure that things are operating and janitorial staffs, all those guys. So, you know, kudos to the scouting. People for being on the road as long as they have for doing all the work. And hopefully they can take a little time to themselves and get away with their families as summer comes. How much golf you got for this week? What's on tap? Good question. Definitely going to go to later today.

It rained a lot here, and my course tends to get pretty wet and soggy. So I'll go practice a little bit today. I got round coming tomorrow. We got, it seems like, a bit better of a nanny situation, so I got some more free time in the afternoon. Oh, it's hard to find a nanny. That is a, that's much harder you think. Like, you go into the process, oh, you can't be that hard, and you're like, oh, wow, it's, it's difficult to find a nanny. Yeah, I mean, Brooke is great with Scotty.

It's just, she's going to be due in less than two months now. Oh, yeah. So chasing a two-year-old, an active two-year-old around is not the easiest thing. And I feel bad if I'm gone too long golfing. So it frees me up a little bit to see how good I can get this year. Just pay someone so you can golf. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. Are you going to get on the Justin Rose-McClaren golf set pretty soon?

You're going to hop on that? I mean, the bags open if they want to send me instead. Okay, I know we're football puckers. I want to ask you about this. So, like, because I think it would be odd if a football player just, decided to sign with a shoe company that like doesn't produce NFL cleats and all of a sudden you're wearing NFL cleats. So Justin Rose signs with McLaren and they gave him, like he produces, he created a new, new golf, right, new golf irons, new golf set. Like, out of nowhere. Like,

how do you just start using new clubs like that in the middle of a season when you're playing well? Yeah. So, I mean, I guess it's been a two-year process. So they took a guy he worked with, I think at Hanma, he had this like Justin Rose proto set at Hanma and he worked with one of the guys there. and then McLaren hired him. They also hired another couple kind of R&D and club maker guys. So behind the scenes, these companies tend to hire, like, other people in the industry who know what they're doing, and then they work with the players for a really long time. I mean, if you look at, like, Titleist, I think they probably got the most guys on staff.

And you look at, you know, Cam Young has these, you know, kind of proto versions of his irons. J.T. has his specific version. They all get, like, different things done to them. there's this huge kind of buzzword term that's called turf interaction, but it's basically how the club reacts with the grass that you're playing on. And the leading edge, the grind, the soul, like the beveling of it, that's very different player to player based on how you deliver the club. And so that's usually the fine tuning of like how does it feel through the ground.

And then you get into like different elements of I want higher flight, I want lower flight, I want more spin, I want less spin. Like this year, Worry for like a week or two went to like slightly bigger, thicker clubs because the bigger and thicker club is theoretically the more forgiveness you have when you don't hit the middle of the face. And so even a guy like Rory is like, I'm moving away from blades, I'm going to these other ones. But then the ball was turning over a little bit more because these larger clubs make it easier

to draw the ball. And he didn't like that feeling. He's so used to his blades and like his specific release pattern. So once you go down the rabbit hole of golf gear, it is crazy deep. So to make this into not the longest answer of all time, you know, Rose is been working on this for two years. He would not release them or put them in the play if they did not meet his specific needs perfectly. They were

built in a way that's going to fit everything. He needs to see out of a club from a look perspective when he sets it down. Performance, the way it gets through the turf. I think Ian Polter put them in the back too. He's been tight with McLaren of the last few years, just going to F1 event. So these guys aren't dumb enough, like, Rose to ruin the rest of his career chasing this thing. So there's definitely been some

good research and product development. I'm sure they've been through a ton of iterations of these. And so it's just like now they're ready to come to market and now he's ready to play them. But guys are always testing clubs. And these companies come out with new drivers every year, new irons every couple years. They want to get you in them as quick as they can so that you can be playing the things that are most relevant so they can make money off new items. So guys are constantly kind of searching for something new, something perfect.

And it seems like Rose maybe found it. Well, we are going to play golf in about a month from now, I think, a month from now, so we're going to play golf. And so maybe we'll bring out like a camera for the podcast. We'll see. We'll film myself. I'm so bad. I haven't played around it a year.

It's going to be, I've got a decent practice, man. I know. Sometimes it's better to just show up because you have no bad habits. You have no expectations. You're just like, go out there, hit balls. Let's bring a camera. Let's see how many times you just drop an extra ball and play it as yours. I don't do that.

I don't do that. I definitely don't do that. I'm not good enough to do that. I definitely will just not search for a ball, though. I'm not wasting my time. I will do that. You're a big, like, hit a bad shot, put down another ball and hit it. Oh, yeah, yeah.

I don't think you're like counter to your score, but like, you've got a lot of balls in your pockets and you take a lot of extra shots on the course. Yeah, yeah. Like, if I take a bad shot, I will take a second shot. I won't play that ball, but just like the second shot typically just makes me feel better because it's typically better. I'm like, oh, okay, that's a better shot. I don't play that ball, though.

I'm also, I shoot a 97 if it's a good day. So it's not that important. I like having fun out there. We'll find, of course, to play in a couple of weeks here. I hope you guys enjoy these episodes. Please rate review, subscribe on YouTube. It's free to do that. It really helps out this podcast.

We'll be back next week. Talk on more ball. Take care, everyone. Have a good week.