PHLY Philadelphia Eagles Podcast - Fran Duffy: Why Walter Nolen and Xavier Watts will outperform their NFL Draft slots

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

It’s Draft Month! So we’re running through a series of superlatives about the upcoming NFL Draft, from players most likely to outperform their NFL Draft slot to who will get drafted earlier or later than expected and much more. Walter Nolen, Xavier Watts, Nick Emmanwori, Mason Graham, Jaxson Dart, Mykel Williams, Donovan Ezeiruaku and many more factor into the discussion as Fran Duffy sets his sights on the big weekend at the end of the month. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello everybody and welcome to the PHLY Draft Show with Fran Duffy, a beautiful Thursday afternoon. And we are closing in. It's draft month. Friend, how you doing? How's your workload these days? It's the time of the calendar where, I mean, it's been this way for the last few weeks where I'm like, all right, like, do I watch two games of a guy I've never done? Or do I go back and do two more games of Joday Barron, right? Like I'd say, it's those kind of battles.

Because you keep worrying about that one. Right. Or, you know, those kinds of dynamics, but then also, uh, since pro. Pro days have now like come to come to a close. Now I can start having more calls with it. Because the scouts when they're, you know, they're in the pro day circuit. You can only talk to them like middle of the night.

It goes like they're extremely busy. They're on the road, a lot of travel. Or they're coming back to the buildings for 30 visits. They're all over the place. So being able to like catch up with them over these last couple days. Now that, now that the pro day circuits come to a close, you're incorporating that. But also it's like, all right, final mock draft, final big board,

like all that. So you're prepping all of your information for that stuff. So it's, yeah, the clock's ticking. Zach put out the, the tweet for the PHI Eagle show later,

and he was like, oh, yeah, three weeks until draft day. And I was like, oh, my God. I was like, yeah, yeah, Zach, you're right. It's three weeks. So here we are. I feel about the due date for this baby. Yeah,

I mean, you're a little tighter, right? 19 days or something like that. Yeah, crazy. Anyway, if you are a diehard, which I imagine if you're watching the show, you got to be a diehard because if you care at all about about Fran Duffy's NFL draft opinions, you might as well just step on inside his brain

and check, out the Brain Duffy Diehard draft guide. We've also got team-specific 100s, if you are an Eagles fan or a Cowboys fan or whatever it is. But from a content standpoint, even beyond that, Fran, what will we expect from you

over the next couple weeks? Yeah, so we're going to do, I'm thinking I'm going to do another version of the mock draft I did last week, where it's the, basically the aggregated mock number. It's like, all right,

looking just at mocks from your notable draft analysts and insiders, right? So because honestly, what's going to happen is everybody else is putting out their final mok. So this is what I'm hearing kind of thing. And I've done this exercise just for me over the last like two or three years. Huge swings happen in this time. So I'm going to do another one.

I'll put another one out the next few weeks. I'm going to have my final mock draft, which will be a seven round mock draft. And what's that going to be for like Monday of draft week? No, I will probably do that the week before. Actually, probably will be like Monday of draft week. It takes a couple days to do the seven round mock. So yeah, it'll be either Monday or Tuesday of draft week. And then honestly, I'll be working up until the week of for my final big board.

Like I'll just be constantly just be watching and tweaking that. So make sure you're a diehard so you can get access to all of that. All right. Well, let's get into the conversation. We want to do some superlatives on the show today. Now, the last couple weeks, I think we've had good shows, sort of running down some of the red flags that some guys might have. Let's be a little bit. Yeah, we're very negative.

We're going to be. There's going to be some come downs a little bit. in this draft, all that stuff. But let's be a little bit more positive. And so let's start with these are the guys you're going to ban on it to him before. If I tell you this player is going to overperform their draft slot, who are like your guys that you want to focus on? That's what we're going with first.

The guys who you think are going to overperform their draft slot. So I've got two here. Definitely I wanted to bring up. And they're both actually on defense. And we're going to start with a player that I've been high on since the first time I studied him this fall. and that's Walter Nolan, the defensive tackle from Ole Miss. If you are a diehard and you paid attention to that mock draft I posted last week, that the guy that's been most often mocked to the Eagles at 32,

Walter Nolan, the defensive tackle. And now when I watched him back in the fall, I was really big on the skill set. This is a guy that can win with quickness. He can win with power. He can win with technique. He can win with effort. He can just win in so many different ways.

There were flashes of the dominance that Jalen Carter showed at Georgia. I'm not saying that he's Jalen Carter. the prospect. But to me, I think when you're looking at Walter Nolan, he could be a high impact interior disruptor against the run and the pass. I was just a really big fan of his game, went to the senior bowl. I thought he had a good week down there. Didn't work out at the combine. But one of the things I like about diving into the numbers the way that we have over the last few weeks is that I haven't gone through the full analytical profile by the time when I watched these guys for the first time. Like when I watched Walter Nolan, I had a partial profile from when he was a two-year

kind of rotational player at Texas A&M, former five-star recruit. So now we got the final numbers after the season goes through. And I feel even more convicted about the profile with Walter Nolan. We talked about Shamar Stewart last week and that production score that I put on all defensive players for defensive linemen. It takes into account. Tackles, TFLs, sacks, hits, and hurries. It's all weighed together.

It's put into a formula on a per snap basis and it spits out a number. Walter Nolan is in the 90th percentile from a production score standpoint by my Now, when I look at who are the other guys that are in the 90th plus percentile that were drafted on day one and day two over the last decade. So these are talented players, always around the ball. This is the list. Levi-onzerice, good starter, good start, one-year starter, a good player for the Rams last year.

Dexter Lawrence, Vita Vea, Jalen Carter, Jeffrey Simmons, Kalaja Kansi, Chris Wormley, one backup. Okay. Kobe Turner, Christian Barmore, Jonathan Allen, Quinn Williams. That's a freaking good list. That's a good company. So this is what... Every time we talk about Walter Nolan,

like, why is he talks about as a back end of the first round guy? In this draft, it feels like to me he's like a, you know, 15th overall kind of guy. And watching him, I was like, yeah, like this is, as soon as I watched him in, it was like October or November, I was like, tweeted out immediately, we tweet out a few clips. And I was like, this guy's a top 20 talent in the draft, easy.

And honestly, in any class, I would look at him and say, like, this is where he should go. why is he only being talked about like in the 30s or in the late 20s? You know, I've seen, I have seen him as high as eight in a mock draft. Okay. You know, we can go through like the range. Actually, yeah, we are, I think we're going to do that later in the show. We're going to go through the range of potential Eagles targets.

But I'll get into that in a little bit. But yeah, I mean, he's, he's all over the board in the first round and a lot of mock drafts. He's falling into the second round. You know, when you talk to scouts about like the off field, because that feels like that's why insiders are in, analysts are dropping him down a little bit. it's nothing crazy. It's nothing like, oh, yeah, like this is a huge red flag. You know, is it perfect?

No, but yeah, I mean, just a little bit raw and unrefined. To me, you know, and then the other one too, like I talked about the Shamar Stewart, the run stop rate. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So like, all right, run stops, meaning like an unsuccessful run for the offense, the guy makes the tackle. Of the day one and day two picks, he's again, he's the 90th percentile and runstop rate of those guys.

It's Ed Oliver, Jeffrey Simmons, Jalen Carter. Chris Jenkins was a second round pick last year. Quinn and Williams, Christian Barmore. It's like, these are all really, really good players that he's in that company with, graded out really well in the run game and the past game. All the efficiency metrics are pretty good. Final season, really good. Senior Bowl, really good.

I don't know. I feel really good about the profile, and I love the tape. And so, I mean, let's say he does go earlier than he's pegged to go right now. Let's say he does go top 20. You would still think that he's going to overperform him. You believe in the player that much. I believe, you know, if he went, you know. Because I'm thinking about, like, who's going to be the second defensive tackle off the board?

I know. After Mason Graham. Yeah. Like, you know, Kenneth Grant, no one's going to take Kenneth Grant over him, right? No, I think that, you know, there's talk about Kenneth Grant, like, Derek Harmon. People love Darius Alexander, but you're going to take a 25-year-old from Toledo over Walter Nolan? That would be surprising. Yeah, I know.

And so then you just think about, like, the position scarcity. Like, maybe he will just get bumped up the board. you would think I don't know yeah you would think it's just you're wearing your old miss blue

I like that yeah it's very very blue today but yeah it's um I think when you're looking at Nolan

the talent speaks for itself the number speaks for themselves uh why he isn't it going as high in mock drafts I don't know but if he were to go

as late as what we're projecting I think he outperforms that slot okay uh you have another player who is probably more of a second round level guy

and that is Notre Dame safety Xavier Watts yeah Xavier Watts you know this is a player that was a two time All-American, one of the leaders in interceptions the last two years, I believe it was seven picks in 2023, came back and had five this past season for the Irish on their way to the national

title game. Everything off the field that you want. The one question that people have, despite the fact that he's got like these ball hawking tendencies, like average athlete, average physical tools, you know, I think you can see some of those limitations when he does come downhill to defend the run. He can have some mistackles. He's one of those tackles, run defenders, bow, that will come down and he breaks down in the hole like we'll try and come to balance and then finishes a tackler in those situations that's

where the misses come up he's not a guy that's just gonna fly downhill and run through a guy but that's a that's the way that they coached it at notre dame is all right we're gonna teach you to break down in the hole some coaches teach it that way some coaches teach it the other way um you know what uh wats was a captain this past year again everything off the field you like i love production right and so when i'm looking to savior watts uh i will look at ball disruptions okay so what i define as ball disruptions That's interceptions and PBOs put together. Lots had 31 of them in his career. That's 90th percentile among safeties drafted in last decade.

There have been 20 safeties that have hit that mark in that span. I don't need to go through the list of all 20, but I will say 12 of those 20 became starters, including a couple of blue players in Minka Fitzpatrick and Kevin Byard. Only two of those 20 completely busted out of the league or bounced around his fringe roster guys. All the rest of them stuck as quality backup. So we talk about safeties that showed that propensity to get their hands on the football. To me,

like I really like what Xavier Watts has put on film. I liked the tape. You look at the production, feel really good about it. Only two safeties hit that number as well, by the way, that did it in as many starts as Watts. He only started 33 games.

So showed that ability. Basically, he got his hands on the ball once per game. I'll take that. I'll take that. I think this brings up another, then this is a bit of an Eagles-tinged conversation, but I don't know that, to me, I'm looking at these profiles.

Safety seems like one of the better, position groups in this class if you're talking about just like top three rounds like the top five safeties you know malachi starks and nick gaman warry both probably first round picks you like both of those guys a lot uh watts is your safety four you got jonas sanker who's safety three and then even kevin winston junior all of all five of those guys to me feel like wherever they go in the first two rounds probably pretty good picks yeah and honestly too like i think when you're looking at sanker like i know i'm high on him but most of the feedback i've gotten is like third fourth round okay uh zavia watch it does feel like he's going to go day two Kevin Winston Jr brought up from Penn State even

though he's coming off the ACL does feel like that's probably like third round uh if he's if he's healthy he's probably going top 50 top 60 do you uh now this was this was a bit of a newsy thing he you know he went and ran his 40 uh despite coming off the ACL is that a thing that's going to move the neal for you at all in your in your grade uh from everything i understand like just he's and this has been not just like talking with people that have been around him now but even like going back at Penn State, he's like A plus off the field. And like, so when I saw like, oh, this guy like got back on the field and was working out this fast off the ACL was not surprising at all to see that.

Okay. Because Sankar was one of the guys that I was thinking maybe overperform the draft slot as well. And that's mostly just trusting you. Yeah, right. But, but I like the profile. And so yet to me for like for the Eagles, I don't know, maybe maybe safety does make sense at some point in the first two rounds just because of who's going to be on the board. Yeah.

I mean, if to me like if Malachi Starks or Nickyman and Warren, Ari's there at 32 and they're then that's what I mean I would be hard pressed to say like that's they're not the best player available because I have them less Walter Nolan's on the board well I have higher grades on them I think they're they're both in the same bucket like horizontal board like they're both in the same tier and both have higher grades than Walter Nolan and then it just comes down to like all right like would you rather have the interior disruptor at detackle versus the safety my guess is the detackle wins out in that conversation probably so yeah okay uh let's move on to it we'll drop down a little bit here we're going to get a little bit negative

and it doesn't have to be negative as much of just what the value for them is going to be. When you think of a player who you are expecting to underperform their draft slot who comes to mind. Yeah, we talked about it a little bit a couple weeks ago in the offensive show. And that was the thing is that since we just had this conversation about both sides of the ball.

There are a lot of guys that we don't want to redo the conversation on Quinch on Judge Jim, you know, Shamar Stewart, yeah. Different conversations. I touched on it briefly a couple weeks ago, but I wanted to dive in. and just having conversations with people over the last couple days. I think the Jackson Dart conversation is really interesting just because, look, I was talking with somebody a couple days ago.

Flex. A narrow scout. Yeah, I was talking with somebody. After doing guys. My lip driver. But with Jackson Dart, honestly, the film, when I studied them this year, was very similar to the film I watched a year ago. And coming into the season, everybody kind of viewed Jackson Dart, day three pick.

Probably, you know, probably a backup. Yeah. coming out of the season, coming out of the fall, soon as the season end, season's over, football's done. Everyone's like, yeah, like, that's probably what Jackson Dart is. Nothing special trait-wise, highly schemed offense. Lane Kiffin, they do so much to scheme guys open, a lot of like wide-open receivers.

And when you look at that offense, because we'll talk about this a little bit with another player, they are extremely productive, but when you look at the players that have come out of that offense in recent years, not a lot of guys have hit, right? Like, they just really, like, highly, highly-shemed offense. And when I look at DART, I think that there's a lot to like, oh, this guy can be a backup quarterback. But when we're talking about, like, oh, like, he's going to be a starter.

You know, he's going to be a top, he can go number three. He can go number 21. He's going on the first round. Everyone I've talked to, like, and I shouldn't say, I've talked to the couple scouts about it, South East Scouts over the last couple weeks. And they're like, yeah, like, I just don't see it. So where did this come from? It really, it started like after the senior bowl where the guy, again, following up with them,

they were like, yeah, like, I didn't like move the needle. down there. The one stat that I brought up a couple weeks ago, and I'll bring it up again, you know, when you talk about the pressure of sack rate as like a really good indicator, you know, a predictor for future NFL success. You know, and I do think that that is a good one to look at. Another one that I've started

to look at as well is how often a player scrambles when moved off his spot. So basically is he okay, is he going to, when he's pushed off his spot, you know, from the rush, is he looking to throw? Is he keeping his eyes downfield? Yes. Jaden Daniel, had like the worst pressure to scramble ratio of anybody in the last decade.

62.4% of the time he was pressured, he was running. Now, Jaden Danes goes in the NFL, he's got, but that's, but that's not, it's not worst. It's just, it's descriptive. Yes, thank you very much. It's not a, it's not a qualitative thing. That is the right term to use there. Now, what I would say is that's probably an outlier when you look at future NFL success,

the other guys in this list. I'm just going to roll right down the list. Jaden Daniels, Michael Pratt, Matt Corral, Hendon Hooker, Jacobi Percett, it's turning a little backup. Jake Rudok. That's interesting because you would think that, yeah, you want an athlete. Exactly, exactly. Kellen Mon, Trey Lance, Chad Kelly, Justin Fields,

Dorian Thompson Robinson, Tommy Stevens. Like, you just go down the list and it's like, all right, like, these guys haven't really made it in the NFL. And I think when you're looking at Dart, he doesn't have, because we look at Fields, like he's had flashes of being a really good starter. We know obviously Jaden Daniels had an outstanding rookie year. Those guys have elite athletic traits. Jackson Dart's a nice athlete.

he's not that kind of athlete. And so when I look at that, that is one thing that kind of sticks to my mind. You operated a highly schemed offense when he was pushed off his spot and had to operate out of structure. He just kind of won by running around.

I'm not taking that guy in the first round. I just can't. I can't get there. Yeah. And I mean, listen, I think generally, Lamar Jackson is an obvious counterpoint and so is Jalen Hertz.

But generally speaking, when you're talking about quarterbacks who were drafted at the tail end of the first round or in the second round, usually those don't work out. Because if it's a quarterback, you're going to get a pushed up the board. And if you're just sort of trying to have your cake and eat it too and get by with a lesser

quarterback, it doesn't usually work. Agree. And honestly, with both those guys were like just outside the bottom 20th percentile in this number. But again, you're talking about guys that have the traits to like, you know, not necessarily overcome that, but you're like, oh, like, yeah, if Jalen Hertz takes off to run, that's typically a good thing. Lamar Jackson takes off the run. Yeah, exactly.

you know, if Nate Peterman, who was high on that list, well, he takes off to run. That's not a good thing, right? Boy. Well, that's what I mean. Like, it's usually looking at those numbers. And so that's, you have that whole list there.

I'm curious who was at the, who was at the other end of the list, who were the guys who went there, pressure did not scramble. You mentioned that it's a, it's a predictor. Or sorry, that it's a descriptor, not a predictor. Yeah, you don't want to be on the other poll of this either.

Okay. The other side of it's not good. Yeah, the other side of this is not a good list. It's a lot of red here. So you have, Mike White. Davis Webb, Brad Kaya, Ryan Finley, Tanner Lee, Josh Rosen, these are guys that can't run. So it's like, you have to find that line in between.

And that's why it's, but I'm also, you go a little bit further down. And that's when you get to Dak and C.J. Stroud, Trevor Lawrence, Justin Herbert, Patrick Mahomes. And that's like in the above average number, not in like the, that side of the poll. Interesting. So my one for a guy who's going to underperform their draft slot is not about the player. And it's really more about this draft in particular. And that's Ashton Genty. Yes.

Okay. And so... Interesting. Ashton Jente is awesome. Love it. And I think the reason he's going to go in the top 10, most likely it seems like, or, you know, call it from 6 to 14. I would be shocked if he's not the Raiders pick at 6. Really? Yeah.

I think he's, I think that's the picket 6. Interesting. Yeah. I just lived through the Sequin Barclay season. Right. A guy who was taking second overall and completely changed the course of an entire franchise. But let's keep in mind that that was his second team. Yep.

Okay. And I just think that, uh, it's, I understand taking Ashen Genty in the top 10 in this draft because maybe there's nobody else who you think deserves that pick and you're going to take the, you're hitting a single or maybe a double as opposed to swinging for a home run because there's so much volatility in what these guys could be.

But when we look back on this in two or three years, there are going to be players who were drafted 10 spots after him who turned out to be very good players at more important positions. And I also think part of the lesson from Sequin season was an elite running back can't do it on his own. And so if you're putting an elite running back, you know, you're putting this great engine into the bad car body. I don't know if that's the right amount of enough of a car guy.

I'm with it. Or maybe it's vice versa. Yeah. It's not going to look as good as it would if Fashion Gentile goes to a team that already has pieces that has a really good offensive line or other weapons to throw to. And so he's not going to look like an elite, elite running back, probably until he gets into a better position. Yep.

And so that's why, that's why it's more of a big picture conversation about using that pick. And I don't necessarily think it's that bad of a pick because if there's nobody else that you're sure of. Yep. That's fine. But I do think that looking back, it's going to look a little bit underwhelming. You know, it's not unlike Bejohn Robinson, right? Who's been a good player. Yep.

But not worthy of a top 10 pick, right? Not moving the needle for the 11th happens. Yeah. I think that that's to me, and I mentioned, like, I would be surprised if he's not a Las Vegas Raider in three weeks. I wouldn't be doing that, right? I feel like that, you know, I would feel a little bit better if I were the Chicago Bears, you know, and even still, like, I've had that conversation with our CHGO crew because there are a lot of Bears fans that want Ashton Genti. It's like, yeah, I think you're still a year away, a year away from making that pick. Like, I know they've added to the offensive line.

I would still be trying to add another lineman, like offense or defense, like another impact. I think you still need to kind of eat your vegetables a little bit. I think the Raiders even more so it's like the Raiders are trying to just uh you know shotgun to 500 and you know they're bringing in you know pre-caro let's let's let's just be competitive yeah i think that they're they're looking at it and he said it in his opening presser he was like essentially like i'm old i want to win right now um you know like i'm not we all the other places i've been uh it took you know we took took took our time and did it the right way like that's not what it's going to be we're here to win right now he said that in the opening presser

I'm like, okay, like, he's probably going to come in and try and run that. They've made all these other additions at different positions. I mean, he took Kenneth Walker in the second round. They took, and then they came back the very next year and spent another round two pick on a running back. Like, I don't think positional value matters to beat Carol. I think they're going to take Ashton Genti. And then the other one I was going to talk about, we've talked about a bunch of these players over the past couple of weeks. Darius Alexander, it's hard for me to believe a 25-year-old with that little production is going to be an impact player in the top 50 picks wherever he's getting selected.

But Matthew Golden is the other one who comes to mind for me. Just because I think he's going to get pushed up the board. It's possible he's wide receiver two because of that speed. Are you counting Travis Hunter in there? Yes. It's possible he goes over McMillan, right? Yes. Right.

That's why I wanted to make sure. Yes. And so just the, you know, my wide receiver buckets, you know, young and fast, but not that productive. Right. It's not a great bucket to be in for those first and second round picks. And everybody needs receivers. Those guys get pushed up the board. I don't see

you know, I don't see Brian Thomas in in Matthew Golden. So that's one that I have on mine. Yeah, I think the next time you show me a clip of Matthew Golden on film running 429 will be the first time. He did not look like that on tape.

I was very surprised by that time when we were out in Indianapolis because that was one where I'm like, all right, like, you know, if he gets like high 440, That's probably a win. He goes 429. That's just not what I saw on tape.

To your point, so they have the, basically it's the target share, the percentage of targets per receiving snap. Matthew Golden had 18, it was 18.5. That is an extremely low number for a wide receiver in their final season. I'm just going to pull this up

since I'm doing it on the fly. Love this. But that is... I want these numbers, man. Yeah, it's a lot of numbers. All right, so 185. Yeah, that is actually the... yeah that is 22 so that's the 15th worst of any receiver drafted in the last decade

the only one day one or did here the day one and day two picks that were that had a worst number henry rugs um who was on his way to uh to you'll be an underwhelming for the career yes ad and i mitchell went the second round last year um so you know still juries out there and terry mcclaren who hit okay and there are you don't want to be chasing the terry mcclorn profile that was a very yes And especially with where we're talking about Golden Going, potentially as early as 12s, the Dallas Cowboys, that's a tricky situation. Okay. Let's play a little bit more prognostication as opposed to prediction here. Okay.

Tell me someone who you think is going to be drafted earlier than what is currently their expectation. Oh, okay. All right. So I mentioned I did the mock draft exercise a week ago. And one of the things that I really, there are a few things that I feel like you take away from that exercise. You can do, if you want to like individually, like look at one team, you can say like, okay, like, most analysts feel that they're going to address edge rusher or defensive line or, you know, however you want to kind of look at it that way. Or you can look at it on a pure like prospect standpoint. And this is how teams do it.

As what the teams are doing it, you know, a similar kind of exercise. But teams are looking at it. All right, what is the range for this player? Where do people think that this player is going to go? So when I'm looking at Michael Williams, the pass rusher from Georgia, this was the range that was, you know, again, it was. There's a 36 mock draft sample. You know, this is from the Daniel Jeremiah's, the Melkipers, the Dane Brugler's, like it's all their mock drafts over the last three months.

The highest was Michael Williams at seven overall. He went there three times to the New York Jets. He went eight times to the Carolina Panthers at number eight overall, nine times to the New Orleans Saints. That's where he ended up going in the mock draft. So most of these mocks had him over there. Now that said, there were a lot of mocks where it was. So I've got one, three, four, nine, ten.

12, 13, 14 of them where he's in the second half of the mock draft where he's past pick 14. So when I'm looking at this, I'm like, okay, there's a wide variance here for this player where you've got a decent amount where he's in the top 10, but almost half of these mock drafts where he is falling to the back end of round one. None of them had him falling out of the first round. So everybody said, all right, first round pick, but it's 50-50 on whether he's going to be a front half of the first round player or a back end of the first round. I personally feel like he's going to go in the top 10.

I think he is a player. to me when I'm looking at this edge rush class, I think that you can excuse away some of the lack of production there with him. He's been more productive than a lot of the pass rushers and defensive line we've seen from Georgia in recent years because that was a knock on. Yeah, of course.

Carter and Jordan Davis and Nolan Smith, you go right down the line, all those guys. I think when you're looking at Michael Williams, he had a pretty big ankle injury that he suffered in week one last year against Clemson, missed some time, came back, fought through it. Clearly it was not 100% when he got back into the lineup. but it was kind of a part-time player for them

through a chunk of the season. It really wasn't fully healthy until he got towards the back end. So I think when you're looking at Williams, you're going to kind of explain away some of the production there. On top of the normal usage, he still had four and a half sacks last year,

which is more than Shamar Stewart had in his entire career. So I think when you're looking at Michael Williams, I feel good about this profile. We don't have a full athletic profile there on him. But I think when you're looking at statistically, traits-wise, in this class, I think he's going top 10. Well, and also if you just think about it

from a statistical standpoint, if there's a player who some people think is a top 10 player and some people think is number 40, and then there's a player who everybody agrees is like 25, well, chances are, it just takes one team. Exactly. And so as long as one of the teams who sees him as a top 15 player is on the board,

then it is likely that he goes higher than whatever his average would be. Yeah, and that's one of the things I like about doing that exercise too is that because when I'm cataloging it, it's like, all right, like you can see the date of the mock draft. So you can start to see what are the trends with this player as well. You know, we're starting to say, all right, well, you know, eight of these mock drafts that had them going in the back end of round one.

And we can get into that a little bit later with some of these other players. But, you know, they were all pre-combined. So really, like, since the combine or since free agency started, pretty much every mock draft has them in the top 15, that kind of deal. I will give you mind in a second, but we do have a super chat from Joe Rockhead, who has a bit of a newsy question for your friend. He says, wonder what your feelings were on Joe Milton?

and have they changed from his draft night? Of course, Joe Milton today traded from the New England Patriots to the Dallas Cowboys, I believe, Milton and a seventh for a fifth. The Patriots get a Milton, so they had to get a million. You can't have two Milton's. Yeah, they're not enough staplers to go around. So really quickly, I'll pull up my notes on Joe Milton. He was a developmental play.

I mean, the traits were outrageous. Outstanding athlete, one of the biggest arms I've ever evaluated. and I know he started this year. I didn't watch like all the dropbacks and something. I didn't go through the Joe Milton tape from New England this year. But everything you heard was like, yeah, there were times in training camp

where you're like, which of these guys was the number three pitch? An erratic player though. And this guy that also came from a highly schemed offense at Tennessee where it's a lot of like vertical throws and downfield type of plays. Yeah, like tools are there. It was a fine trade, I guess, for, for balance. How would you compare him?

rules wise to Jalen Milro? I liked Milrose film more. Milro is bigger, or sorry, Milro is more straight line fast. Milton is just a bigger, sturdy, right? Like,

Joe Milton is built like Camp Newton. Like he's like, he's built like Josh Allen. Like, he's like six foot five, you know, big, strong,

you know, kind of athlete. He's still explosive. Whereas when you look at Jalen Milrow, he's also pretty rocked up. Like he's built like Justin Fields where he is a little bit thicker. He's not as lean as like Jaden Daniels is,

but he's lightning fast. He's like a 4-3, low-4-4-4 type of athlete, whereas Milton, not quite that explosive. But Milton, a bigger arm. Milton, I mean, Milton has got a rare, rare arm, like crazy, crazy, like easy flick of the wrist, 80-yard, like, crazy arm. Okay.

My player who I think is going to be drafted earlier than the current, you know, if you do like the grinding-the-box stuff. I'm also going with an edge rusher, and I'm just thinking about in this draft, if a team is on the board in the second or third round, and it's like, let's take a swing at a position that really matters for a guy who,

if he hits his 80th percentile outcome is going to really be a difference maker for us. And that's Oloafemi, Ola Deja, from UCLA, who you have talked about, the late transition to the edge, showed up at the Senior Bowl, but the profile is good athletically. He's got what you want at the position.

With the traits, it's like, I just think in this draft, someone's going to think, you know what, that is a swing worth taking as opposed to trying to hit a single with a backup tight end. And by the way, an Eagles visit that was reported last week, a family of Oladio. So, you know, could he, what's the earliest you could see that profile going off the board? Late second. I think that's not crazy, right? I've heard it could be earlier. Really?

Yeah. I've heard it could be earlier. There was a... Because right now, it's like, pick 100 or whatever. right that. And so I think he goes sooner. Yeah, if there were, and I think it's early for the draft like overrunners from like like betting sites. My guess is that that would be, that's like pound the over

or like earlier in the draft there. Yeah. That would be my guess. So I would agree with you. Okay. Well, that makes me feel smart. Yeah, it's a good one. Idiot Sandwich with a Super Chat says any notable player with a unique path like Jalix Hunt in this draft? Oh. I mean, Jalix had a very...

Yeah, that's incredibly, well, some people say you can't modify unique. I disagree with that. Right. Bear with me here. I'm just kind of buzzing through. As far as like a unique path like J-Lex, I mean, he was an Ivy League safety moves to, you know, it's a little bit different. Yeah.

Hmm. I mean, I feel like we don't have any good, how come there aren't any good college basketball players being worked on his tight ends this draft season? That's a good question. I mean, I feel like we've kind of reached that point where guys just know they're going to, you either know or you don't, that you're going to make that move. Unique profile. Okay, well, think about it.

Yeah, let me think about that. That's a good one, 80th sandwich. I'm going to keep pondering that. All right, let's go with the inverse now. Let's do a player who you think is likely to get drafted later than their current expectation. Okay. Later than expectation. I'm going to go back to the defensive line.

and I don't feel like super convicted on this one. And this is, I think partially because this draft is just crazy, man. It's going to be very fun. It's going to be very unpredictable. And honestly, like, it's going to be, to me, it makes this one fun. I'm excited to cover this draft for the first time, this being my first draft because of how unpredictable is going to be draft night. And I think, Kenneth Grant, the defensive tackle from Michigan is a good example of why.

because, you know, there are that 36 mock draft sample. The highest I've seen him, one time he goes to 11 to San Francisco. He falls out of the, out of the first round altogether three times, but you're seeing him Philadelphia at 32, Kansas City at 31, seven times to Buffalo at 30, but then also six times to Arizona at 16. So we're all over the spectrum here, sometime between 11 and 32. So when I look at Kenneth Grant, though, a lot of traits. The traits are there.

He's a 330-pound nose tackle that you're kind of dreaming on. To me, like, it's not quite Jordan Davis because Jordan Davis went and he blew up the combine. Right. And Kenneth Grant, like, while he's known for the, he didn't do that. You know, it was a good showing. Like, don't get me wrong. It was, there were good numbers, but not to the level that we saw from Jordan Davis where he vaulted himself into that discussion. I don't know that we've necessarily seen that.

from Kenneth Grant. Now he's been a little bit more of a touch more productive than Jordan Davis was. So there's a give and take. If you're looking for like refined step in day one, he's definitely going to make an impact. Kenneth Grant's probably not for you. But I think when you're looking at this class and you say, all right, well, who's a guy that you could swing on for upside? Kenneth Grant's going to be more in that conversation. I just feel like in such a deep defensive tackle group, a team was going to look at him and say, okay, what are the chances he's going to hit? if we're going to take him here, would we rather just wait and take

Tyleek Williams in the middle of the second round? Can't take Cam Jackson in the third? That's what I mean. So there are so many players that you can kind of look at and say, would we rather have that here than take that swing? So that's why with him, I said, okay, if we're talking about him 16, 17,

I might take the under or later in the draft and anticipate that he goes a little bit later. I mean, this goes back to the Jordan Davis conversation. And I think if you're going to take a guy who was a run-first defensive tackle in the first round, he better have unique traits because otherwise I think you can get a similar player later in the draft.

I do think that he has... So like I mentioned that Jordan Davis tested better. Yeah. I think that Grant has shown a little bit more past rush savvy than what Davis did at Georgia. But again, like if you're just looking at athletic profile, I don't think that what Grant has put out has been quite as impressive as what Davis did.

Super chat from Fresh Prince. He says, what are your thoughts, Fran on Jihad Campbell, the Alabama lifestyle? I like him at the end of round one or a slight tradeback, but is that too much redundancy with Zach Bond? Could that be a positive for Vic Vanjia? I feel like that would be surprising, right? I think it would be pretty surprising. Yeah. I think when you're looking at Campbell, I do like the player. I don't know that I'm not 100% convicted on him. I do think there are a lot of paths to success. He's got good size. I do think that in terms of reading things out from a

stacked position. He's still a little bit of a work in progress there, a relatively new player to the linebacker spot. He was an outside, like, edge rusher for Alabama early in his career, then moved to the stacked role for them a couple years ago. So I think when you're looking at Campbell, still a little bit unrefined, but doesn't miss tackles. It's been one of the best tacklers that I've seen coming out of college at that position. I think when you're looking at him, the coverage chops are pretty good. He can match up with tight ends and play with them in space. He's got good zone eyes. He can play the middle of the field. I think he would be a fit for Fangio and he also brings a lot of past rush juice like this is a guy that can blitz from depth.

I've seen him line up on the line of scrimmage and beat tackles and win with a bull rush. Like he's got some flexibility there. Some teams view him as an edge rusher. That's why he was asked to do edge rush drills at the combine for that reason. So I do think there's a lot to like there. Had shoulder surgery. Apparently it's like a six six month recovery. Yeah, like you just got it. So we're kicking into like. Yeah, that's tough. Now they did say his his representation did say like we expect to be ready for camp that might it's gonna be close it's gonna be pushing it because he got it like around

combine time so that's gonna that's gonna be tight my answer here for likely to go later than currently projected mine's Mike Green from Marshall let's you know Vinnie don't pay attention to this one but putting the off field stuff aside which you hear is potentially serious

if it's that's yes I just you know it's great production but I've I think you know Jeremiah had him like top 25 And to me, there are other edge rushers who I would probably rather take, roll the dice on. You know, we talked about some of the length stuff,

you know, short arms. He didn't give a full athletic testing. And so there's some questions there. I just, I think the teams will be a little bit skittish when it comes to the middle portion of round one on a player like Mike Green, who, you know, you're still, you're still guessing because the level of competition

wasn't quite as high. Yeah, I saw him as high as number eight to Carolina. which only happened one time in that sample one time to the Saints at nine but he the picture he was most often nine times the Atlanta Falcons at 15 yeah that that's rich for me on film and then not they know not even counting that the off-field thing which Atlanta by the way like they have not that's not an area where they have budged like at all under this regime with Harry Fontno so my guess is is that he would not end up in Atlanta all right give me a like prospect profile, whether it's statistical or something else that has caught your eye,

a player who was interesting to you. Yeah, so I wanted to do a guy that I haven't done yet. Okay, that's fine. Because I was like, all right, like, just looking at numbers, like who's a player that I know I definitely want to, I want to make sure I watch him. Alabama pass rusher, Q Robinson. So Red Shirt Senior, he's got five starts in his career. All came this season.

He's only played 370 snaps on defense. that's lower than any edge rush are drafted in the last decade. So this guy has barely played. He was a late addition to the Shrine Bowl. Okay. Did not do anything at the Combine. I was invited to the Combine,

but didn't do it, didn't work out. That's, I mean, I know. Hugh, what are we doing? All right. He didn't play. We got to show me something.

Seven TFLs and four sacks this year in those five starts, you know, in those, in the 300-ser snaps, extremely high production score in an obviously, extremely small sample. his pass rush win rate was 23.8%. That's 90th percentile amongst edge rushers drafted in the last decade. When you're looking at pass rush win rate, that is, when you're looking at that group, who else is in the 90th percentile?

It was a lot of early round picks. So you comb those guys out because he's not going to be a day one or day two pick at this profile. Who were the day three picks that had a win rate that high in their final season? Okay. Here's the list. Carl Lawson. Great. Anthony Nelson.

Great. Kerbig. Okay. Three good players right now. You have been, Anthony Nelson, clearly the best of the three for the actual PhDO

Eagles listeners. Jordan Smith, who I believe was out of UAB, didn't have a great year or didn't have a great career. Kingsenadeh. Yeah, a nice player for green.

That's a hit for Green Bay. That was it. That's all the day three guys. Interesting. So I'm like, okay, like that's a day three profile that you can get that you can sell me on.

And also only 151 run defense snaps. So it's not just all, all right, well, that's what he does is a pass rush. He had a 9.9% run stop rate, also 90th percent.

Well, couldn't my guy get on the field? I think it was like there was a lot of injuries there. Okay. Now, the thing with the runstop rate, that's a little bit less predictive of a number for the day three guys. Like the guys that hit that at day three was not as, not as impressive. But Q Robinson wasn't anywhere.

I'm like, okay. Like body type wise as well, let me pull up his exact measurable so that didn't write those down on my notes. So it was a bad job by me last night. Not a long. Um, but, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, bear with me. Here it is.

So, yeah, he came in six four, two hundred forty three and a half inch arms. He played six hundred and seventy four snaps on special teams in his career. So a lot of three time core four starter. So like, all right, you know, he's going to participate there. Yeah, he had a season ending elbow injury in October. So that's why he missed a large chunk of this past season. But again, came back and practiced the Shrine Bowl, missed most of his high school senior year, with a torn ligament in his ankle.

So he's had a little bit of an injury history. So yeah, we go, Q Robinson. That's one that hopefully by draft day, I've had a chance to go through Robinson's film. Okay, I'm going to follow up with you. Maybe on next week's show. It won't be by next week. Two weeks show.

All right, deal. Mine is less about a statistical profile and just a profile himself. A player, we haven't talked about a lot, and I just want to get your thoughts on him. Because to me, it looks like a guy who maybe makes sense in the second round. However, when you're talking about centers, you do want, there is something to a guy who has played a lot of football.

That's a good one, yeah. But Jared Wilson from Georgia, athletically, everything you want from a center. And, you know, based on your write-up, the tape looked good in his one year as a starter for Georgia. But are you concerned about why couldn't he get on the field earlier? Well, so they had, and the memory is escaped, or the name is escaping right now, but they had a veteran center the last three years that they low team captain like was beloved in that program he was a center only and Wilson with his bill is center only

3.10 it would be a stretch to go to guard but and especially putting him next to another smaller center. So I you know that's why he was kind of held to backup duties but that's why I was a little bit surprised that he came out. The the I'm looking through really quickly. All right. So these are the I mean there is a pathway for guys that come out with low number of starts.

But here's the thing. He's got what? Do you have the number on how many games he started in his career? I don't know what I will get it. I got actually right here. Yeah. So he started 12 games. So he started 12 games.

That's the tough at center, right? That is the fewest of any interior linemen drafted in the last decade. The only. Oh, there's go. Go Deeks. Yeah. Well, maybe not. But the only, actually, the only other guy that's, that had fewer starts than him

an interior offensive line was Reggie McKenzie when he was coming out of Tennessee. He was a defensive tackle that Rayor's GM who's the son. Yeah. That's right. So Andy Reid drafted him, but he was a defensive tackle at Tennessee and they said, oh, we're going to move him. We're moving them to your offensive line. It didn't work out. Everybody else had more starts. Yeah. So that's that is very difficult. That's the position center and linebacker in safety. Those up the middle positions where I got to read everything. Those are the positions where I like to look at. Yeah. How much did you play? How much of the coaches trust you to get on the field early? And so with Wilson,

like I'm intrigued. Yeah. But I am, you got to answer that question. And in this, in this, I had this conversation with somebody pre-combine.

It was right after I went through the film because the center class in free agency was not great. The center class in the draft is not great. So I'm like, this kid's film is really good. But if you are a team that needs a center, I don't know that this is the answer.

I don't know that you want to just plug him in right now. Right. Yeah, that's a tough one to swallow. That's a good call out by you. Shout out to Idiot Sandwich. Sedrick Van Brand-Grain, That's it. That's it.

That's it. All right. Now tell me about a guy whose profile doesn't look so great, but you believe in the player anyway. The film overweighs the profile. Yeah, there are a lot of these guys. And I'm going to go with one that we talked about last week, so I don't need to go too deep on it. But the one that stands out like a sore thumb for me when I was just like looking at the list. Who are the guys where I'm like, oh, this should scare me off.

But I just really like the tape is Chavon Revel, the corner from ECU. And it's another small sample size, only 15 starts, at a group of five school, less than 900 snaps played. But you're talking about a player that's got height weight speed for days, all the traits. By the way, coming off an ACL, so he tore his ACL in September. So limited experience this past year. But again, like the production is really good.

The traits are all there. We get an incomplete athletic profile and just a very small sample size and a lower level of competition. That's the scary part of the profile. For sure. Now on the PHLY Eagles show this afternoon at 2 o'clock, we're going to be talking tight ends. Yeah.

And so my one here for Like the Player, despite the profile, I got to give you a little bit of a nod here because the profile to me is undrafted and not even like talk to him as an undrafted free agent. And now I watch him, and he was kind of fun to watch. Maybe in the sixth round I would think about it, your boy Jackson Hawes. Oh. I mean, he's old and doesn't catch the ball, but I watched him and I liked him. I know.

He moves like a big old man. Well, did you watch any block it or you just watched the catching stuff? I'll probably watch some of the blocking. So the blocking is what moves the needle for me. That's what gets me going. But the, yeah, the receiving numbers. I actually updated. I went through all the tight ends just to make sure like all my numbers were updated

before our conversation today. Yeah, like the receiving stuff's not good. It's so bad. Yeah, I'd say it's not. He's caught like nine passes. 0.77 yards per route run in his career. Now he had a career high this year moving from Yale to Georgia Tech. So it's like, okay.

Like, you know, he was featured more in the offense there than he was previously in the Ivy league, but the last two years was not targeted once, 20 plus yards down the field. You know, everything is underneath, get the ball in his hands, let the big man roll. To me, like, his value is as a blocker. Like, he's coming in and he's that that's, that's what he's going to be. And I do think, given the film and given the size profile, like, I think that he could be, like, one of the dominant blocking tight ends in football, which, like, those guys get paid $4 to $5 million a year.

Like, I think that he can come out and he can beat that kind of a backup player. All right. Last one before we get to the conversation about the range for some possible Eagles targets. And that is just a guy who you don't know what to make of. You're sort of shrugging your shoulders, throwing your hands up. What do I make of this guy and who is that for you? Yeah. I alluded to it earlier, but it's Ole Miss wide receiver, Trey Harris.

I like the film with Trey Harris. I don't love it, but I do like the film. So Trey Harris is a, so he is a red shirt senior. He's going to be 23 years old for his first training. camp, 6-2 and change, 205 pounds, pretty good length. 40 starts in his career, over 2,200 snaps played in his career. So he's played a lot of ball, started his career at Louisiana Tech, transferred to Ole Miss after the 2022 season.

So he's been the last two years for Lane Kiffin in that offense. I'd say that I like the film, I don't love it. It's a very unrefined route tree. It's one of those guys where it's like, all right, he runs, you know, hitches, double moves, posts. it's a very limited route tree there and I would say like the the route running is unspectacular like it's not terrible

I've definitely seen worse from guys with that role but I'd like to see a little bit more he's good at the catch point his numbers are stupid like crazy crazy three yards per route run in his career insane this past season 5.12 yards per route run which that that's like that blows the

like blows away the record. Insane. He got hurt. It was like a soft tissue. I think it was a hamstring that cost him a lot. Maybe it might have been a groin, whatever it was, down the stretch, the second half of the year.

But for the first half of the season, he was bonkers. They could not stop and they could not defend him. I kind of think that he's like a wide receiver three, four. I compared him to a Josh Reynolds. Some people love him. Some people are like round two. This guy is like a big body, vertical threat.

Like not D.K. Metcalfe, but like that, you know, that body type. I'm not quite there. Again, I have a Josh Reynolds where that's like wide receiver three, wide receiver four. Again, it just goes back to like that old miss offense. I was just going to say, it goes back to the Jackson Dart conversation, right? Where you look at the guys that have come out of that offense.

Can you actually riff for a second? Yeah. I can pull. Now I just want to see it because I actually haven't looked it up since I had this conversation. All right. I will tease that coming up in a few minutes, we're going to talk about the rain to expect for some possible Eagles targets at the back end of the first round.

We've talked about Malachi Stark. We've talked about Nickyman Worry, Walter Nolan we've talked about, but what about Donovan Azaraku? Raqu and James Pierce, Jr. So we'll go through those guys. Are you ready? All right, I'm ready.

All right. So Lane Kiffin's first year at Ole Miss was 2020. So since 2020, here are the offensive playmakers that have been drafted from that offense. Everyone loves, including me, Everyone loved Elijah Moore. Goes in the second round.

Did not hit. Matt Corral, third round pick, did not hit. Snoop Connor, running back. Fifth round pick, did not hit. You got a couple defensive players. Actually, none of them hit either. Go, 2023. Jonathan Mingo, second round, doesn't hit.

Running back, Zach Evans, doesn't hit. And then 2024 was all defensive players. So none of those guys. And then even like there were undrafted players. There was the kid Drummond, who was like a big slot a couple years ago. Yeah. Yeah. didn't hit.

We talked about, I mean, one of the things we don't like about the Quinn Sean Judkins is how much of his yardage came against light boxes. His first two years

were at Ole Miss. Yeah, for this offense. How hard is it for you? You always hear don't scout the helmet. No question. Yes.

So how tough is that? But it's not, it's not necessarily like about scouting the helmet because I'm not comparing, it's like, oh, I don't want to draft this Miami.

I don't want to draft this Miami defensive end because, Jerome McDougal didn't work out. Right. It's, you're looking at the system and you're looking like this is what projects, right? And so, you know, like Savion Williams,

the virus view from TCU, he plays essentially like the same role was to do the same things in the same offense that Trey Berks was at Arkansas. And it's like, yeah, like, Berks had, if had issues, you know, transition to the NFL, like there are going to be concerns there. So I do think you have to include that in the evaluation.

Okay. Good conversation. Trey Harris is scary. But, I mean, he could be good. And he's a great kid. Like everyone, everyone you talk to is like, oh, the kid's awesome.

Like, everyone loves him, good work ethic. Like, if anyone's going to hit, it would be him, but it's, it's a scary projection. Don't you think that if,

if you were running a team, if you were running a draft room, it's hard to pull a trigger on a guy who you don't feel strongly about it, right? You only get so many picks. You only get so many, right? So you might as well take a guy

who you feel better about the, you know, the projection. Yeah, and there are a few ways that comes to roost. It's like, you have these profiles this way.

it might be, hey, you know what? Like this guy had a good season, but he was just okay at the senior bowl and then didn't work out at the combine. And it's like, I don't know. I don't know. Rather than taking a guy where the hour is pointing down in the last two months,

like I want a guy who's like, Gray's able where film was good, senior ball was good, combine was good, like, yeah, I want this guy. The flip side is, one thing I've heard about the Eagles is from Howie Roseman's point of view, one thing that he feels very acutely

and is, is, projected onto the scouting staff is just FOMO. Like he doesn't want to miss out on a guy who could be special. And so, you know, it's like, it's go do that extra homework on that guy. Like, that is like acutely how he,

it's the same conversation we have about Howie Roseman, like the thing that makes him stay awake at night is the idea that somebody in the league is available who he doesn't realize is available, right? Yeah. That's how he feels. Like, that's how he operates the front office, is deep foamow.

And so a player like that is maybe intriguing to him from that standpoint. And it's interesting too. I remember hearing this a few years ago. And I don't know what at what point this changed or if this did, it might just been this was the first time I heard of it. But the Eagles have a, they have a very large scouting staff, right? And it's a,

I would say a lot of people would describe it as a top heavy scouting staff, right, where it's a lot of college directors and assistant GMs and directors of player personnel, like guys who have come in from. being general managers or directors of personnel elsewhere and now are just sort of advisory. And you have coaches, like coaches are very involved, right? And so you are going, if you are Walter Nolan, like it's not like, oh yeah, area scout college director and Howie watch it.

You're going to have double digit sets of eyeballs have watched and written up Walter Nolan, right? And so, you know, with the Eagles and a lot of other teams do this too, is this is not like specific to the Eagles, but it's, we want to know as soon as possible who are the guys that could be great players And to your point, like we want to know who they are, but as early as possible. So you want your scouts in the summer when you're getting ready for the following draft, if you think this guy could be one of those guys, we need to know about them fast so we can get multiple sets of eyeballs through and we can start making sure we can do all the legwork possible on them. Interesting.

That's a good way to think about it. Yeah. Super chat from Fresh Prince, who says he's going to send a super chat on the show this afternoon. I mean, double-diff. We appreciate that. But how do you think ZB. will feel about E.J. Smith saying that Olivia Reiner is Jeffrey Lurie's favorite on the beat. I know. E.J. said ZB.'s time has come to an end. Unfortunately, I think that he's right. Oh, wow, really? And so I think that this is one that Zach is going to be rolling around with and has been poking around his brain.

I will tell you that he was not thrilled with how Monday night's party went. I don't think he got the face time that he was hoping for it. Yeah, I haven't seen him yet, so I haven't heard of chance to talk to him about it. it more on the show this afternoon i look forward to it all right give me uh we want to talk about some of the range for for these potential eagles targets yeah uh now you did the work which people can check out on the consensus mock draft last week but some of these guys who who have been in focus for us take us through like how how realistic it is that they could be on the board of 32 yeah so we talked through uh walter nolan earlier and i said we would get to this part of the conversation so um basically in those 36 mock drafts walter nolan was available for the eagles 14 times out of 36 so

pretty often he was there on the board eight times the eagles passed six times the eagles took him uh in those situations so as high as number eight so one time number eight one time number 11 three times at 12 to dallas three times at 16 Arizona four times to cincinnati at 17 so nice little cluster where he's in the top 20 but then a number of drafts where he was he was falling to the to the back end of round one and certainly to the eagles at 32 okay how about james pierce junior james pierce junior also another player. Now, I would say that the landing spots for Pierce are not as widespread. I've got

1, 2, 3, 4. 9 different landing spots for James Pierce, but it's all big clusters. Four times to Atlanta at 15. That's the highest. Four times to Arizona. That's the 16. Four times to Cincinnati. That's where he ended up being the pick in that mock draft. That's at 17. Three times to Tampa at 19.

So that's 15 picks, 15 out of 36, where he is going in the top 20. Now, he fell out of round one altogether in 11 of these mock drafts. So 15 times, he's going in the top, he's going in the top, top 19. And then he was available for the Eagles in 15 of them. So again, it's pretty wide variance there for James Spears,

just more streamlined in terms of what the team fits were. Okay, let's stick at that same position with Donovan Azaraku. Yeah, he was available for the Eagles in 22 of 36 mock drafts. So pretty often that he was available. He fell out of the first round to the Eagles, passed on him in the situation 19 of those 22 times. So he was pegged to the Eagles in three of those 36 mock drafts, including, I know he was Zach's pick, right, and one of the more recent mock drafts.

I was Iraqu, Eziraku, Aziraku, as a rockoo. As a rock, as a rock, uh, right over the bridge. That way? That way. I fought my first gut was that right. It was the right, right direction. As high as Atlanta, it's a number, number 15, two times. Uh, you saw them kind of a smattering here and there, but really the, it doesn't start

picking up three times Buffalo at 30, three times the Eagles at 32. But outside of that, it really feels like Azaraku more commonly is seen as a second round pick in mock drafts. And I know you don't love him as much as Zach does. If it was a trade down to the middle of the second round, would you feel okay with that? I think so. So here's where I'm at was with Ezoraku. He's a little bit undersized. Putting him and Nolan Smith opposite each other, you probably want a little bit more size there. I don't think he's as good. run defender as Nolan is and was. I don't think he's the athlete,

Nolan is and was. I do think that he's a more polished rusher than Nolan was coming out. I think that he's got a more well-developed pass rush plan. I thought that he was really crisp at the senior ball. I thought he showed the ability to win at BC. It was extremely productive. So again, I'm someone that believes

in production on the defensive side. So I do love that. I just, again, I don't know that the ceiling is super, super high with Ezrako. And that's why he's going to be a little bit lower for me. I do think that he could be a solid rusher. He's probably just more of like your number two and potentially like a number three rusher

if he's limited against the run. And how does James Pierce fit into that conversation? Pierce is just, Pierce is tricky because everything with him is like speed, speed, speed. He's just a run around you. And, you know, it's, I don't think that sounds like a Vic Fangio guy to me. It does not, personally, no.

And I think that his run defense is like, I check the box kind of thing, but it's not, it's not, it doesn't move the needle. There's some, I talk about behind the scenes like off-field stuff too but I think when you're looking at Pierce just like stylistically as a rusher

like I compared him to Vic Beasley there are years where you can get a guy like a Vic Beasley and he could be extremely productive I don't like what happened with Bryce Huff like there are years where you have that guy and he can be productive I don't know if I'm taking that swing in the top 20 it's a matter of like how soon

do you want to try and take that swing on that kind of player All right give us last thing the range in the two big safeties Malachi Stark and Nick Em and Worry All right. So with Malachi Starks, he was available for the Eagles 10 times. Nick Emannwari was available 17 times. Now, what I would say, if you're doing it more recently, that would not be the case. So the cases where Malachi Starks fell out of the first round, they all have happened since the Combine. The cases where Eminwari fell out, mostly were before the Combine. So they have kind of swapped places in a lot of mock drafts. There are still mocks out there that have Starks going before Emunwari. Clearly, there are still mocks that have MNWari falling. to the backstages of round one. The earliest we've seen Iminuari go has been 14 to Indianapolis.

The earliest we've seen Starks go in mock drafts was as high as number nine to the Saints. It feels like that's not going to happen at this point. He's probably more back in round one. I could see Eminwari going as high as that. Honestly, I actually really like that Colts fit. I think that would make a lot of sense for them. So that would be one certainly worth watching.

So let's say Nolan, Stark's, Eminwaria, you're all off the board. Who would be your ideal Eagles pick at 32? me personally. Yeah. I love Gray's Abel. So his Abel's there. That would be the guy I would have the most choose for.

Yeah, he's, him and, Imm and Warrior, are the two guys who I think of as your guys in this draft class. All right, I can take that. Okay.

Yeah. All right, good stuff, Fran. Thank you so much. We will be back next week with another edition of the PHOI draft show with Fran Duffy. I think at some point, over the next couple weeks,

we're going to do a second show. Yeah. And maybe do just all questions. come in the chat and we'll be doing it's not a mailbag it's not a mailbag it's a chat bag oh wow

not a mail bag much different it's much more it's more jazz more free flowing more free flowing okay yeah defiant jazz yeah a chat bag yeah

drum up to drum up the interest yeah okay thank you everybody for the super chats thank you for the super chats we'll talk to you next week next Tuesday we'll be returning we got them all right Yeah, we'll be returning next Tuesday at noon with the next PHOY draft show with Fran Duffy

and then of course check out the PHY Eagles show today at 2 o'clock. We are beginning our draft position previews with tight end is Colston Loveland a good pick potentially for the Eagles at 32? We'll talk about it later. Thanks for watching the show. We'll talk to you next week.