The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Lessons from past NFL Draft mistakes with Nate Tice + evaluating the edge rushers with Benjamin Solak

Episode Date: April 16, 2021

What can we learn from previous NFL Draft mistakes? Robert Mays and Nate Tice look back on past misses and the lessons teams can learn as the approach this year’s draft. Plus, The Draft Network’s Benjamin Solak joins the show to discuss the complicated edge rusher class and the misguided narratives around Justin Fields. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic football show. Welcome to the athletic football show. I'm Robert Mays. Fun show for you guys today. Ben Solac from the Draft Network and a few other places. He's going to be joining us a little bit later to talk about it's kind of strange edge rusher class and also the discrepancy in the depth of edge rushing and offensive tackle classes over the last couple years.

We alluded to it yesterday a little bit or earlier this week with Brandon Thorne a little bit. Those have flipped and it's kind of hard to understand as to why it might be happening. So we're going to dig into that with Ben a little bit later. Before we do that, though, I'm very excited to welcome my good friend, Nate Tice. Nate, how you doing, buddy? I'm doing good. I wore a hat today. And then also, I look, and the video came live and I saw you.

I like your Nordique's at. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I really like it. I was not, because it's up, it's tilted up. And then when you look down, also, I was like, oh, that's nice. I know I wore a hat for the first time in ages. I've, like, tried to grow my hair back after wearing a hat for the last 15 years.

So. I was talking about it. Jordan a little bit earlier this week when we were doing our show together. The last time her and I pot it together, we both had beanies on. And yeah, this week we were both wearing baseball hats, which is a sign that the seasons have changed. It reminds me of, oh, hello, and the guy has a mustache. It's like, to show the time has passed. That's exactly what it's like.

My hat has changed to show the time has passed. So I have a hat at all times. It's just a different kind of hat. I only can wear one kind of hat. So the 47 brand captain hats fit my head perfectly. So I just have a bunch of different kinds of this exact hat in the snapback version. That's how I am with like a lot of clothes. Like I'll find because I have really long arms.

So like anything with with like a play off. It's a tackle in the league. How long are your arms? 34 and a half. Wow. Oh no. I'm a freak. But that's the thing.

I played the one position where that shit did not matter. It's like I know. I think when I went to UCF of my freshman year at George O'Leary who also coached my dad in high school. And I was 200 pounds leaving high school a freshman year. And he was a recruit me to play quarterback. He was like, he's just like, I'm just going to wait a couple of years and let you get, well, get a little bigger. It just happened when I got to Wisconsin and I maybe discovered beer with the offensive

alignment, also. And also the way the way it started happening. But yeah, I played the one position where 34 and a half inch arms does not matter whatsoever. I don't know how long my arms are. They definitely aren't 34 and a half inches. It's funny. My best friend is 6.5 and he played volleyball at Penn State, like, which is very good. of college volleyball program.

And him and I have the same length torso, and my arms are longer than his, even though he's 6'5 and was an All-American volleyball player. So that's the only other arm-length conversation I've ever had with the friends. I don't know how long people's arms are outside of offensive tackles. It's fascinating. It's really fascinating to do it with some people.

I don't think my hands are. I have 9-inch hands. I've measured my hands because everyone has at this point, because it's a yearly conversation. But that's the only, yeah, out of my arms, I'm not exactly sure. That was a crazy thing like me. I'm sorry, I keep cutting you off.

I have nine and a quarter hands and how big I am. But then like that was funny because I played with Russ. I'm six inches taller in Russ. And his hands are like 10 and a half or 10 in a quarter. Oh, he's huge hands. Yeah. But that's just so funny. Like I'm just so much taller than his hands are just like dwarf mine.

And I was like, that's not fair. So speaking of pre-draft measurements and hitting certain benchmarks. Today I wanted to dig into some of the lessons we can learn from. draft misses over the last 10 years or so. Barnwell and I talked about this a little bit when we were digging into the teams that have drafted well and drafted poorly since 2010. But I wanted to go back through some of the more high profile mistakes, not to poke fun or not to blow up those guys at all, but just to try to dig through the lessons we can

learn from some of the guys in the first and second round specifically since 2010 that have failed. And I think that that time frame kind of puts us in modern football. It's the current CBA, which I think is helpful. And first and second round, those are the guys you want to start, that you expect to find quality players in that range. The draft mistakes in round four, I don't think those are worth getting into. But I think rounds one and two, it's worth talking about.

And we have like five or six. And I also wanted to use that as a way to explore this class a little bit. And also just positions that are difficult to evaluate. Are there spots where mistakes are more apparent, where they're more frequent, falling into these same traps just because it's a hard position to actually understand who's good and who's not. So I want to start with that question of physical benchmarks because every single year it feels like we have these conversations about, well, look at his tape, look at his tape, look at

his tape. I don't care that he's 5-11. I don't care that he has 32-inch arms. I don't care that he ran a 4-7-40, whatever it is. And I think that is a mode of thinking that I have, I fell into in my 20s where I would just be like, well, look at the production. Like Jarvis Jones had 20 sacks. Who cares that he ran 4-7. Exactly. I thought, I thought I was so smart when I would say stuff like that. Like I knew more than the people who were just this, you know, that 40-time jockeys that only cared about the combine.

And then you talk to football people that are scouting people. And they're like, the benchmarks exist for a reason. Yeah. Like it's really, really difficult to. succeed when you don't hit those benchmarks. And that's one of those things like the Dunning Kruger effect. I came into my own ignorance and then I started asking why the benchmarks exist and I started to understand this a little bit more.

So I think that's an important lesson to understand is that when you're looking at these guys, you could have an outlier. You could. And we talked about Devante Smith a couple shows ago in relation to something like this. But there's a better than average chance that you don't have an outlier, that you were not the team that is going to pick the guy who didn't hit these benchmarks and you're going to be the one that finds a success story. That is most likely not going to be the outcome here. And there are several examples of this that we can get into. Yeah. And like certain positions too,

especially like corner or or offensive line. It's just like, especially tackle. And it's like, oh, yeah, this guy's a football player. This guy's this. But then you realize, oh, who are all the top corners? Oh, yeah. Usually the biggest and freakest guys that also can play football. That, that is something I completely agree with you I you got my upbringing and whatnot and going to Wisconsin and stuff and what's Wisconsin made of just a you know but to try hard you know smarter guys and then limited athletes at that school and it's just but like with there I would go there and I actually got a new appreciation like you got around some of these guys and it's like yeah they worked hard their film's great and then they tested and then they'd have a trait like a defining trait

and you're like you know JJ was a total total freak so he doesn't count but even guys like Kevin Zitler's of the world, you know, some of those other positions that that they had there. And that's when I started to kind of appreciate it's like, okay, it's, they're all different sized puzzle pieces. If your tape's outstanding, okay, the athleticism, it's a sliding scale of it. Athleticism might not be needed as much. You're going for, I always refer back to, you know, I read Moneyball in like middle school or high school. And, and I just remember the Nick Swisher example, always, the analytics darling and then the tape darling or the scout darling. And it's like that's kind of what it gets into with football players not so much analytics that is becoming more

and more prominent but the athletic testing as well with the tape you know you have to have that overlap and that's when you get to the perfect prospects that have both like the jail and ramses of the world big fast and also the film is outstanding but then we were talking we're talking first and second rounders a guy that i always kind of think of you know um like he didn't test great at initial glance is a guy like cooper cup and i remember him coming out and i was like and i'm I'm like, okay, you know, I think he ran a four, six flat. And, you know, he's a decent size. I have a pretty good size, actually.

He's bigger than you would expect. And I remember looking at all that. And his tape was great. His hands are outstanding. And I'm like, yeah, but he's not going to be able to win somehow. But then he tests and he has an outstanding short shuttle and three come. Like, I mean, rare, like high, high, high end. He has a defining trait.

That's still athleticism. It might not be that. That's the most important thing. If you're not going to, if you're not going to check box A, can you check box B? Can you provide me a route to. success if the testing is not there. And I think that's the most important thing. We're talking about Sewell with Brandon earlier this week.

His arms are not 34 inches long. But when you weigh 330 pounds, that's another box you check. There's a way to overcome that. But there are some guys, I think Jarvis Jones is a perfect example. Jarvis Jones was a first round pick. His college production was off the charts good at Georgia. He goes to the Steelers after testing horribly. He ran a 492 at his pro day.

Everything else was awful. His 20-yard short shuttle was awful. His 3-Cone was awful. His broad jump was in the 50th percentile. And his vertical was in the 11th. He still went 19th overall. Fizzled out. Just didn't work.

And I think the Steelers learned a lesson from that. You look at the types of guys they started drafting, even at Edge Rusher. In the years after that, there were the Bud Dupreys and the T.J. Watts. The physical phenoms started coming in, and they started hitting on those guys. another really good example is Tis Tabor, who ran up four, six something as a corner and is no longer in the league after being drafted in the second round.

So I think that these show up pretty regularly. Holoika Kaha was another good example. I think he ran 4'9. He was at Washington. And you watch him and you think, and I know he had some injury issues as well. But you watch him and it's like, oh man, look at how nuanced he is and he has all these elements to his game

that are really fun. But when you lack explosion, It's just, here's the long and the short of it. It gets harder. It's harder to succeed. So you have another route to get there. And some guys do, but you're just adding a layer of difficulty and one more hurdle to jump over when these guys don't meet the necessary benchmarks. You don't have to be the greatest athlete in the world.

But do you clear those markers that typically signify starting level player? And if you don't, I think that that becomes a problem and it's just one more thing that you have to push on through. when when those guys when especially if they're going more limited athletes it's it becomes of like can he do it or won't he and a lot of those guys it's like that some of them just can't you know they can't make that block they can't cover the fast guy that's right can't they can't live in man coverage they can't cover anybody if they're an inside linebacker just those types of types of things and some of those other guys are better athletes and why you want to i would say want to lean that way but why you tend to lean that way is okay say maybe this guy is you're 80% of the football player, but at least when he makes mistakes, he can make mistakes fast. And so sometimes that is that is kind of what you need is that some threshold. It's if this limited athlete guy makes a mistake, the whole play's blown up. It's like, oh my God, like that's ugly. Some guys that are athletic can recover.

And I'm thinking offensive alignment right now, but that's sometimes where that athletic threshold helps. It's because you give yourself more room for error, not only just as a prospect, but as a player, the actual player has it. And I mean, you see a guy like Devin White with the box. And it's like, he doesn't read football that well. But guess what? He makes a whole lot of tackles because he can recover and get shot out of cannon to knock a guy out. So I want to talk about one other corollary of this. But before we do that, though, I want to talk about why this becomes a problem sometimes.

Because in the same draft, I believe, that Tabor went in the second round. Or the year before, Zavian Howard went the second round. and Zavian Howard is not an above average tester. And Xavier and Howard is not one of the best man coverage corners in the NFL. So that's the problem is that when you have success stories associated with stuff like that, you're going to. That's all you think of. You think of only it's, you think of well, this guy did it.

So maybe we can do it. Even though there are years, five, nine, he's in the hall phase. Exactly. Yeah, that's totally different guys. Exactly. And there's so, you start ignoring. The dozens and dozens of examples of when it didn't work out. So one corollary office I wanted to talk about, because I think that this showed up as I was looking through some of those misses over the last 10 years, is that physicality, even in a world where passing is taken over the NFL, you still needs to be taken into account.

Even at positions where we wouldn't necessarily list that as one of the most important traits. And I'm thinking about the secondary. And a couple of guys are coming to mind, Malie Cooker. Okay, Malik Hooker was almost this ideal safety prospect associated with the modern NFL because he was a coverage guy. He was that centerfield guy that could cover all this ground. But he just hasn't held up physically in the league. And I think that's part.

You look at some of it and he's undersized and he could wait 200 pounds at 6.1. It's not very big. And you wouldn't think he needs to be at that position, but it has been an issue. I think another good recent example and we'll see what he can do moving forward. but it hasn't gone well so far is Greedy Williams in Cleveland. You know, you'd think there were issues about his tackling, the physicality, and everything else. And you think, well, does that really matter for a corner?

It matters. Like, you need to be able to hold up physically in an NFL game. Sengues Golson is another example. Obviously, injuries torpedoed his career, but he was a second round pick from the Steelers, just really, really undersized. Shane Ray was really undersized, edge rusher who didn't end up working out. These are injury driven in a lot of ways. but also it's easier to get small it's easier to get hurt when you're a smaller guy that's so that's the kind of stuff

that i made that that's like one of my biggest point especially with like receivers and stuff or even when i was talking zach wilson is some of these prospects that are coming up is size matters sizes all it's a physical sport so it's i get it like yeah there's some guys that are undersized and they can get it done but usually they have some freaky traits or their their toughness is off the charts it is a grind i i can reiterate this all the time it's a lot of long season that it's everyone that's what going to the 40 those guys just like you know they're prepped for it it always cracks me up when you see dbs and receivers they're getting ready to run the 40 and it takes them like five minutes to just get set to run this 40 being fast or being athletic or

being talented is that you can wake up a day every day and just do it you can roll out of bed and do it the condition Julio ran it and not his shoes with an injured foot that's what he that's what he did Calvin Johnson Calvin Johnson did the same thing like you know it's just like those guys can just wake up. Maybe it was Calvin who had someone else's shoes. But Julio had a foot injury that needed surgery and like a month later. And that's a different. That's the thing.

It's like that's what some of this is misconstrued. It's like, man, he ran fast at his day. It's like, yeah, but he doesn't do it on film because he has, everything has to be perfect. The NFL, nothing's ever perfect, ever, ever. Starting day one training camp, all those fun ideas. You had an off season, all that fun. Oh, I'm going to do this, this and that. Day three, you're sore at camp and you're just tired of meetings already.

And it's like, guess what? You got to perform tomorrow. You got to perform the next day. We got preseason game. You got perform then. You got to perform week one. You got perform week three. You got perform week 15.

It's a job. It's a job. And that's why I think sometimes even myself is that you look at the idealized version of what that player does. And you forget, it's like that's why consistency always matters. It's not, yeah, the top end, you great to flash sometimes. But it's like, was he doing play after play or was he doing? Yeah, he woke up on that, on the Columbine. day, ran a 4-3-8, and it's like, man, that guy looks like he barely can break four or five on

game day because that's what he is. That's what he plays like. I do think that the GPS stuff is going to be, that's, we talked about it a bunch. Now it's going to, that stuff is going to get thrown out. I mean, play speed, I think is going to be easier to understand. But I also feel like if you're watching guys that run 4-9, they probably weren't playing that fast. And that to me, I think the mistakes made with that were more about trying to prioritize. production over skill set where it's like well he's getting it done can we bet on his ability to get it done and that's where again like you said it just becomes so much harder to do it it's if just removing layers of difficulty with some of these guys i think is really important if you have a guy

where it all has to thread this needle for him to get it done yeah i think that's the issue so the next lesson i learned going back through all this stuff similar to what you mentioned with devon white which I think is really interesting. Beware the athletic linebacker in the first 50 picks. Because it was so funny. Remember in 2009 when Aaron Curry was coming out of Wake Forest? It was 2009 draft. So it was Mark Sanchez was the third overall pick, correct?

Fifth. Mark Sanchez was the fifth overall pick. Stafford was the first overall pick. Tyson Jackson was in there, which we'll get to the Tyson Jackson's here in a second. But this is a little bit before the period we wanted to talk about. But I feel like in that draft, everyone talked about Aaron Curry as the safest pick. Remember that? He was the safe pick in that class.

Fizzled out immediately. Never became a starting level player in Seattle. And I think we've seen that a lot with a position that a lot of people would probably frame as a safe spot. Remember Arthur Brown from Kansas State? I think he's another really good example. But there have been so many guys that move really well at that spot and you just think, All right. Athleticism, more passing equals coverage ability. Let's bet on these guys.

And we have so many recent examples where that just hasn't been the case. I mentioned Arthur Brown, but they're even more recent. Jared Davis, who is a fantastic athlete. I was reading some post-draft Jared Davis grades today. It's really funny. It's really, really funny. People just loving it. And then a couple other guys.

Darren Lee, similar kind of conversation. Alec Ogletree and Stefan Anthony, who went in the first round to New Orleans. You have all these guys. And I just think that's a position where it can get so easy to be intoxicated by the guy that's running high four-fours, low four-fives and thinking he can move, that means he can play, that means he can cover. And so often it's all about awareness and understanding how to identify things and how things are moving around you.

Fred Warner is not the fastest guy in the world, but he has a complete understanding of spacing and just route distribution and all of that stuff. And that's where I think some of the cracks exist with that position. And that leads me to some questions about Mr. Mike or Parsons and what he ends up being in the NFL because it's a similar conversation to what we've said about a lot of different guys. And yeah, and that's just so funny what you said is that, okay, being a three down guy, especially the last, shoot, 10 years, eight-ish years.

You have to be a three-down linebacker if we're going to take you high. Like, uh, Bidarikinney might be the, the last thumper linebacker to go in the first two rounds. Like, true. And that defense is also a little bit different. Like, they're okay with having bigger linebackers in that New England scheme. You think about what Dante Hightower has done. Van Nuoy plays off the ball for them in Miami and New England. So even that's an outlier where it's hard to understand.

I know he's been in Houston, but now he's in Miami. No, but that's a great point is that he, is that he's, but he's, but whatever all the caveats that you had to hit there. He has to be in that scheme. He has to be, you know, like so, but that's the only reason. Because his tape was so great in college, but it was just like, yeah, you can see the limitations. As soon as he had to cover anybody, it was like, oh boy.

And that's what you get beaten over your head. Has to be an athlete. Has to be an athlete. Has to be an athlete. And I just a great point. I like, because I, same thing. We have separate notes always. So anyone I listened to this show.

So Darren Lee and Stefan Anthony were like two of my biggest examples because I was like, all those point and run linebackers, they don't take on any blocks. They don't. It's just it's and they don't have that football. They're either not tough or big or athletic enough to overcome the blocking or they just, you know, they just can't play football. You know,

it's like one of those things where it's just the can't or won't kind of thing. And that's what's just so funny is that we swung so far the other way. And then now I think everyone's realizing, oh, no, you kind of have to, you know, be a football player and to be able to like take a linebacker high. But no, that's just so interesting. you know it's the other thing that kind of like has kind of like stood up to me is just as high school coaching and college coaching and kids awareness especially new generation of players even the guys you know our age and stuff everyone's just so much more aware of their peers and and what goes on

or what happens right before them is how many guys are are entering early and like seeing the age like the draft age of everybody drop over these last 10 years was pretty fascinating to watch like when I kind of was going through like you were just kind of going through it. the last recent drafts. And it's like if you have a first round prospect that's 23 or older and you have to squint a little bit, hard pass. Just push him. Yeah.

And I mean, it's just a graveyard. If you just look at any of these guys, you're like, I don't know if I see it all the way. And they're 23 and older and I'm looking at them at the first round. Yeah, I'm going to wait. I'm going to wait a little bit. And that kind of gets into the whole athleticism thing because sometimes those older guys, they look so good because they already maxed out. And then it's like, all right, what else to grow with you?

You know, what else to add to your. game. What else can we teach or if a guy is at a school where they already got good coaching and that whole aspects. I know we were talking linebackers, but I just, you see that come up a lot of times, you know, sometimes these offensive lines and they're like, oh, man, you know, he, he's just a good football player. He's a good enough athlete. You know, we're going to, once it gets into a pro system, we'll be good. It's like, that dude is 23 years old and it was a four year starter, man. Like, pretty much that's what you're getting. He probably maxed out his athletic gifts right there. So that's another thing that it was kind of fascinating to look at when you start kind of just

looking at all these old drafts and stuff is just seeing guys getting younger and younger and younger because more guys are playing as freshmen, more guys are ready to come out, they're mature enough to come out as juniors. So that's something that's also just been interesting to watch is maybe just the shying away from older players. That's something that's happening in the NBA. And I'm not saying all 22-year-olds don't take them because there's plenty of awesome 22-year-olds and there's plenty of good 23-year-olds like Calvin Ridley. But it's just that, like you said, it's the bets. It's the hit rate on these. And that's what, But if I were to bet on a 23-year-old in the first round,

I'd be holding my breath a little bit, especially even those 20s and something like that. So that's just something that's just been really interesting to look at recently. When talking about linebackers for one more quick second, when you're in the room and you're talking, I'm curious where, and I was having a discussion with somebody from a team this week about this, and they was talking about the contrast between when you're talking to players,

or when you're talking to coaches about prospects, when you're talking to scouts about prospects, The coaches want the guys They're going to be able to play right away And require no work And the scouts want the guys Who are the highest ceiling guys possible They're salivating over the 20-year-old dude

With the infinite ceiling. So when it comes to linebackers, what voices in the building do you think are loudest When it comes to wanting those high athlete Guys that can really move around at that position? I assume that's more scout-driven Than what it would be coach-driven Because a coach would want a guy

who just knows where he's supposed to be all the time, even if the athlete part of it isn't as good as you'd wanted to be. But that's the thing is not all coaches are innocent of going towards the athletes. Because a lot of them go, well, he hasn't been coached like me. Oh, there you go. Yeah, yeah. That makes sense. I'm going to make it.

I'm going to figure it out for him. I mean, trust me, there's dozens of coaches I've been around that said that. I look at him like, yeah, you just had a first round pick. You didn't develop his ass. So what makes you think you're going to develop this guy? So it's that is something. Yeah. So I will agree.

that I would say a lot of scouts are going to, they're going to go to traits, traits, trade, straight, straight, straight, and you know, good foot quickness,

above average this, very good this, excellent this, as opposed to a coach might just go, oh, he's a football player. But I will still say that coaches are definitely not, they're very guilty of falling in love

with a player that they're like, oh my God, this guy ran a 4-4-2 though. Like, four-four-two guys, it's like, yeah, he hasn't made a tackle.

He hasn't made one sack. And then it's just like, nope, I got to coach him up. He gets put in a blender on every single angle route that they've ever run against him. Yeah, exactly. No, once I get my hands on him, I'll coach him up.

And it's like, yeah, but your ass might be gone in a year. So we're stuck with him for four years, you know. So that's another thing. I think it's just, it all depends on the personality. And every, every team's different. The GM might be the alpha male in the room. Sometimes the coordinator might be very outspoken. Sometimes a position coach might be very outspoken.

And then some position coach just don't give a shit. And they're just like, yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, I agree. And it just, it all depends on those personalities. And that's team makeup too. And that's where I think the best teams are the ones that have those communication and open line of, okay, what do my coaches like? Okay.

Sometimes you kind of trick them and go like, okay, I know you like this, but this guy actually might be better for you. You don't straight up tell them that. But you kind of go, hey, check out this guy. Just take a peek out of them. You almost have to trick coaches. Like, because they're just, they're going to watch one thing. It's their idea.

Yeah. They're going to watch one game. They're going to text their buddies. Their buddies are going to say, oh, I hate him too. And they're like, yeah, I hate him too. Duh. And then, boom, they might hear that. And then a coach might just go, oh, man, everyone else.

Or they might see it a flip side. Oh, everyone else loves him. I'm going to be like, I'm going to be a contrarian. And I hate this guy. And it's like, sometimes, like you said, you have to plant the seed like a little inception going on and going like, you know, hey, watch these 12 guys. And then watch these three, too. Just tell me what you think.

And it really is the other three guys that you want them to watch. But, you know, just a little mind games you have to play sometimes with these coaches. How many coaches that you were around that you were talking with prospects about were of the opinion that they just knew everything about every position. Like were their head coaches and even coordinators? Because it's funny to me when I talk to some coaches, some are like, when you talk to people about Shanahan, I remember, and I talked to guys in Atlanta and even offensive line coaches

and offensive line men and everything else, they're like, he could coach any position. If you wanted him to be the position coach, he'd coach any position. There are other offensive coaches I've taught to, offensive play callers that I think are very good. And if you ask them, like, who are the good offensive linemen? They'd be like, ask the offensive line coach. I don't know.

And I just think that contrast is so interesting. And I've seen it work with both ways. So that's what I just don't know. I think humility and understanding what you don't understand is really important and is a good trait in leadership. But it's also nice to have like Belichick could probably scout anything. And that's also a nice thing to have every once in a while. So I don't know which of those I would probably prefer because I've seen it both ways. Yeah.

I hate anyone that's a position specialist. like oh no he's really good with receivers it's like okay like okay great okay that's two guys three guys on the field all right what about the other 19 you know like and that always gets me the more you can do the more more hats you can wear Kyle yeah Kyle's just yeah he he can talk anything when he came into Atlanta they had Dan Quinn and then running the defense and then Kyle with the offense he would position by position basically had a cut up about what traits he likes. And so like he first he did tight end. Then you get they you know, quarterbacks and then receivers and then how he just broke it down. And he would

have the position coach in there, but Kyle's leading it. And you know, then we talk to quarterbacks and then he had to offensive line. And it wasn't like Chris Morgan was offensive line coach in 2015 when he got there. And it wasn't like Chris Morgan led the meeting. Like they both it was kind of like it was co-op, you know, they co-opted it. And it was just like, oh, Chris said something. Kyle was saying the exact same things. And I, that always stood out to me. I've been around plenty of play callers or offensive gurus, quote, unquote, that as soon as you ask them about protections or anything, they're just lost. And it's just, it's astounding. It really is because you're like, oh, shoot, that's not good.

Because then you don't know what your weaknesses are. I feel like if you, I know what my strengths are. I should know what my weaknesses are because I want to know what attacks that. So I don't know. That's something I've been lucky. I play quarterback. My dad's a line guy. So I kind of had an appreciation for that.

But I mean, but a guy like Kyle, he loves defensive stuff too. Like, you know, like certain guys he watches. A lot of offensive guys are good defensive scouts and vice versa. A lot of defensive guys are good offensive scouts because they know what beats them. They know what's a pain he has to cover. They know what's a pain he has to block. They know which guys get open over and over for the most part. I'm not going to broad stroke it.

But it's just one of those things where I think it all depends on the guy. But it is astounding some guys that just openly just got, I don't know tight ends that well. You know, and it's just like, oh, okay. But yeah, I think it all just depends on the personality. I've had a lot of conversations about post-mortem meetings and planning meetings as they relate to NFL teams recently. And there are three kinds of meetings that I would love, love, love to be in. Draft post-mortem going back and looking at the mistakes made the same way we are now. It sounds like a fascinating process that I know very smart teams do in depth,

like covering over every rock to figure out how you don't make the same mistakes again. Two, diagnostic meetings about what your game planning looked like and what successful game plan. planning looks like and how you can change your offense from one year to the next to stay ahead of the curve. Though that idea is fascinating to me. I remember talking to people in Tennessee last year about their process of trying to, all right, this was great. How do we avoid regression by tweaking it just enough?

How you'd come up with those ideas is fascinating to me. And the other one is an offensive-minded play-calling head coach who sits in his defensive meetings and tries to tell them what is hardest to deal with. because the really good, you talk to anybody about McVeigh, he will literally construct scripts in practice trying to find the pressure points in the defensive scheme because he understands it so well and is sitting in those meetings talking about how to do that. That interplay to me is absolutely fascinating. Like I just wish I could sit there as a fly on the wall and listen how that information travels back in for it.

No, I always love cross-training. I learned so much from other position coaches because I've been on all. offensive sideball in my whole life. And like I didn't play even defense in high school. I'm not that good. So the, but the other like, but learning from other coaches, especially when I, I talked to like a linebacker coach or something like that. Because, you know, that's the OG thinking is that they're the quarterbacks of the defense. It's kind of funny as some of that has shifted to safety, it's having to have that IQ too. That's been fascinating to watch too. But it's one of those things where you just also, they might say one thing. They might a lot of it just be like, yeah, yeah, whatever. They might just say that

one thing and you're like a white bulb goes off and you're like oh so that's hard to defend paul chris actually had the same theory with mike riley was that with the g a usually you're a g a for two years was okay say i was a quarterback a former quarterback okay first year obviously offensive g a but then his thing was to switch him the second year so the offensive ga is now the defensive ga and vice versa and i always thought that was just great because i've learned i've learned so much just even just simple stuff like when i was with the aaf um uh uh just like sitting there. I became friends with a couple of defensive coaches there,

just happenstance. And it was cool. I got to like sit with what they went through. And I was the first time I ever sat really in a defensive meeting for an extended period of time. And I was like, oh, okay. Oh, okay. That makes more sense. Oh, okay.

Now I see why that gives them difficulty. And it's like light bulbs go off. And I think just expanding your world. Being hyper focused on something is great. But it's just, man, you learn all the aspects of football. It makes everything come into focus. Because then you just understand. understand how it all fits in together because it's uh it's it's really it's the ultimate team sport and

that's why it's so much fun about it but it is really cool when you start getting an understanding of a whole new world like i'm trying i'm still learning coverages like i'm still learning offense every day but it's like i'm still trying to learn coverages just so i can like speak in that parlance a little bit rather than just going uh single high i can have uh i could have further conversations with guys but i think that's what the best coaches are the ones that what you said understand that we're but also just have an appetite to learn more about football. Absolutely.

It's infinite. You can learn as much as you want about this game. That's what's so awesome about it. We'll move on because this is a long tangent, but I remember talking to Monty Kiffin once about when Kyle got hired in, when Kyle Shannon got hired in Tampa Bay. And he would, Kyle Shannon would just creepily sit in the back of the defensive meetings that Monty Kiffin was running. And like, that's where he would sit at the beginning.

And Monty Kiff was just telling me, he's like, yeah, Kyle just sat there in the meetings. It was like 2006 or whatever it was. It's his first year as an assistant and he would just sit there and listen, which I just think is so interesting. All right. Speaking of defense, I want to talk about a couple specific lessons that we could learn about defensive alignment. Because if you look at the hit rate in the first and second round, defensive line has actually been the least effective drafting spot over the last 10 years. That's so surprising, isn't it? It really is surprising.

And so 37% of defensive linemen did not get a. second contractor did not, was not one of their five-year starter with their team, according to the study that Stephen Holder did for the athletic, for a piece you wrote about offensive tackles recently. And that was surprising to me, but I think one of the lessons I learned looking back is especially a defensive line, low ceiling bets often disappoint. Because especially in the first and second round, the hit rate is such that there's no safe picks.

We talked about this as related to linebackers. And I think making a low ceiling bet, on a defensive lineman, if they're just as likely to fail, you're cutting off so much of what can be there. And I think this really relates to one specific type of player, and it's that kind of oversized tweener edge rusher. Guy like Taco Charlton, Dayton Jones fits that description,

LJ Collier to a certain extent. Charles Harris, Charles Harris was smaller and more of a true edge guy, but also somebody that they're low, he was not a high-ceiling guy when you looked at the testing, So those defensive linemen between like 6-4 and 6-6-6-270 to 290 that don't necessarily. And I think that there can be success stories now. Like Chris Jones, I think is a really good example of someone who just plays inside.

They're just like, you're an interior player. And for the most part, I think that's been a good way to deploy those guys. But I think there have been a lot of disappointments within that range of player. even in the first round, let alone in the first two rounds. And what you know, I actually think it's going to get even harder as more and more colleges

going to the Titan mint fronts. And there are three down fronts where they have the two gap and they play the frock stance and all that stuff. So it's really going to be traits and everything. And that's, I think some of the projections are going to be even harder

as more and more college defenses to just go to that. And that's just such a good point. It's always that same size guy. Yeah, like you said, it's like six, three, six, five, two, six. 260, 285, because it's the sliding scale.

I mentioned before. If your size isn't great, your athleticism better be. And, you know, obviously we want the big and fast guys, number one. But, like, if we're getting to now the second tier guys, okay, if your productions is off the charts, your size better be up the charts or your athletic better be off to charts. Well, you have to have one. It's just, yeah, the top 10 guys, the top, the lottery picks, they're going to check all seven out of eight boxes or five out of eight boxes. You better get to half if we're now in the second half the first round or the second round.

But that's where a lot of this guys, a lot of those guys in the 20s, because once you get outside the top 15 picks, give or take, 18 picks, it kind of becomes, you know, eye to beholder on who likes who, which is kind of fascinating because it's the first round. You know, those are like usually hear that about second or third round or fourth round picks are like, oh, man, that was a coach favorite. That's why we took them there. But all of a sudden you see these guys pop up, like the Shane Ray's of the world, like you said,

or the Taco Charlton or something. because you see the production and then you're like, okay, but he's going to be plug and play. You know, that's the other thing when we say the idealized version of a guy. They think of him just because they're maxed out doesn't mean they're plug and play. There's a big difference. That's what I'm saying. That doesn't mean they're safe.

There's a big difference. That doesn't mean they're safe just because there's nowhere for them to go. I know. And you see that in basketball all the time. They go, oh, he's a senior, you know, he's a safe pick. And it's like, what makes sense a safe pick? Just because he's a senior? Just because he has more film.

No, all of their same. saying is that they have more film on them so they're more sure of what he is. That's all they're saying. And I know that is fascinating to me. There's more certainty, not more safety. And I think those are two very different things. I'm certain he's not awful. That's what they were saying. They're like, I know he's at least average. So he's not a complete bus. But then it's like these guys don't do anything. And if you're taking a guy in the first round, you want that guy to be not only just a starter, but like a good starter. I get the top half of the first round. You want all stars. But the second half the first round you know your your thresholds a good starter and you know but you take these guys and

some of these guys they take like take like take like third round picks basically at the end of the first round because they're like well if we don't we love this guy but if we don't take them now in the 20s you know we might we're going to take someone else and say you know they talk themselves into it and it's just very fascinating to watch because it happens all the time I mean we all do we all have guys that are limited that we're just like he's a football player I'm going to take a chance on them then you also get other things too if you're undersized like that you better be tough as nails because it's a hard living at D.N to be undersized at D. end.

And some of these guys are tough. So the guys that are oversized, they're not tough enough to play on the inside. If you're a 6'4, 285-pound guy and you can live at defensive tackle, especially in today's NFL, even as a first and second down player, that is the path to success, especially for guys drafted early on. But if you're a 280-pound guy who can't live inside for whatever reason, then you start to fall into the cracks. then your tweener status is no longer a positive.

It becomes a negative. By the way, do you know who LJ Collier's number one physical comp is on mock draftable? No. Breeland speaks. We're talking about these guys being the exact same shape. That's the type of guy that we're talking about. So those picks, and I used to love those kind of guys that were those in-between guys. Michael Bennett was a little smaller than that,

but he was somebody that could play both. And I think that sometimes when you have somebody that can survive inside and that can deal with the speed of the game in there and physically hold up, it can be a positive. But I think too often if you're looking at that guy as an edge player first, you're really limiting the ceiling. And I think that we've seen that happen a lot over the last 10 years as defensive linemen have shrunk a little bit. And as the lines have started to blur between interior and edge guys and there's been so much moving around, it's so much. it's so much easier to talk yourself into oh we can just bump them inside on passing downs and then I think that's how that bowl starts to get rolling oh man that's the same thing of like oh he's a great tackle he'll be a good guard or oh he's a big receiver he's going to be a tight end it's like it's not mad it's not

madden that the traits needed to like play these different positions things happen differently the ultimate litmus tests I always thought kind of those unders i don't say undersized but you know medium sized outside guys was was tray flowers because he's he was 6-2-265 and and but the thing was he had long arms and his 40 was only a 4-9-3 but then all his other testing metrics were pretty damn good other than three-count and it's like that was also like a fascinating litmus test for me he was a third round pick because his film was awesome he had great film that was one where it was just like I I even me when I remember watching him when I was with the Falcons I was just like I love this guy but he's not a freak athlete so you know okay I

think I had a second round he was drafted in the fourth round wasn't he yeah I think Yeah, fourth round. That's okay. That's what I mean. If why is this guy different than the guys have worse film but have the same athletic traits or worse athletic traits than tray flowers? And that's what it was just such always a fascinating litmus test is are we looking at the athletic traits or are we just looking at the 40 time? Because that was the one number that was low for him. Everything else was good.

He was 84 percentile vertical, 82 percentile broad, 83 percentile bench press, you know, 54 percentile short shuttle. It's like, okay, so what numbers are we actually looking at here? that was all he'll always just stick in my mind because he was a film guy and he had enough traits to win with and that's what we're talking about what can you win with do you have the paths to success and being a good athlete helps you but if you're a damn good football player and a pretty good athlete it still works i just the arguments change really depending on the eye of the beholder that's what's so fascinating with those types of guys so speaking of how do you win the next lesson i have here is if you can't separate in college you probably can't separate in the

NFL. And that is, in my opinion, there are two mistakes that have been most frequent as they relate to wide receiver is something we talk about on the show all the time. Don't overdraft the small fast guy. You're going to regret it. But the other one that we have not talked about as much is the separation problem. If you look at the first round receivers, even the second round guys recently that have failed, for the most part, they're guys that just can't get separation.

The most recent glaring example is Nikhil Harry. When I was watching Nikiel Harry at Arizona State, I was like, he's never open. Like, this seems like it would be a problem. And I think saying, well, he makes contested catches, I just think that's a really dangerous world to live in when you're projecting a guy into the NFL. A couple other guys I think fit that same bill. Lequant Treadwell was like that in college where he has that big body and he's shielding people off. And it's like, okay, that looks great. Kelvin Benjamin.

So Calvin Benjamin, I think, fits that. J.J.R.thago Whiteside, I think, is in that category. And to a degree, I think Josh Doxon is in that category. And those are the guys that we've seen drafted very high that have just been total flameouts. I know Calvin Benjamin had like some moments. But for the most part, those are the guys that have not contributed at all, even if they were drafted pretty high. Oh, yeah. Like Doxon, too, was like 23 years old, too. He was a weird study. I liked him. I enjoyed him. I was just about to say that. Because there was some acrobatic shit going on And he was doing some really cool stuff

But I think that was again At a time in my life When I was looking at guys for the flashes It was how good can you be Let's bet on this? Because I had no idea what I was watching I still don't But I knew less than

You've narrowed it down Now you're now you're like Okay five 10 and under Okay wash them away Okay now big guys Can they separate? Okay now you start like narrowing it down There's a it's a weird thing

Like a lot of receivers are in that sweet spot of six foot six one six two you know they're not the big tall tall tall guys even though i love them or they're the short short guys like it's that seems to be at sweet spot and not only just athletic traits same draft class as dockson and treadwell um was corey coldman uh from baler and he has been a fascinating always stuck out to me because that was when the bailer offense had taken a new leap in college football uh the mid mid 2010's uh starting with rg3 and going from that point, the Bryle's Baylor offense. And now it's really started to proliferate throughout all of college. Like, it's only a matter of time before bigger, bigger schools start running it.

Because what happens with that offense is they're indefensible place. They make you go man to man and then they run go balls on you with good, rangey athletes. So I looked it up today. He had 116 targets his last year at Baylor. 103 of those targets were go balls, hitches, slants, or screens. 113 of 103 of 116. And that's what his film was. And now I think, I hope, is scouts and people have realized, oh, okay, that really inflates numbers and all that.

And we've gotten better because now we have, like, you're able to look up exactly how many he ran. This was an eye test kind of thing. And it's nice that we can confirm it a little bit. But that type of offense is spreading throughout all college football. Like a bunch of teams in a Mac run it. If you watch DeWain Eskridge from Western Michigan this year, they're running it. And when you watch,

those offenses. The production, of course, you're going to look at it because the production is so great. But then you have to actually trust your eye test there because the guys still might be freaky. Those teams don't have a playbook, which is not the end of the world, or like a tangible playbook, but how they train the guys. It's training guys to win with indefensible plays as opposed to training them how to play football, if that makes sense. We're teaching them plays. We're not teaching them football. And I was around two Baylor guys with the Raiders. One was a quarterback. One was a receiver. Rookie mini camp for the quarterback, undrafted free agent for the receiver. Pretty hyped up to get both guys.

Like, we were, I think the receiver was like the, Blake in his name right now, but he had the highest rookie bonus for the undrafted guys. Dude didn't know how to play football. Like I've never seen, I was actually embarrassed for him at times. I know that's mean, but no, seriously, when you're in the NFL, it was like, oh, my God, don't want this guy play. Like, he's going to get somebody hurt. And same with the quarterback.

The quarterback couldn't even get a play call out. And that's where you really, really, really have to, with these receivers, and especially with RPO's becoming bigger and bigger. is what actually translates. And I know that's easy for me to say right now, but it's like winning versus press, the feel and space, the hand-eye coordination.

It becomes more of a trait test. It's the Kyle Shanahan. It's so hard to judge it. It's so hard. So hard. It's because it's there are other, there are examples on the other side of the equation, right? D.K. Metcalfe is built like a Greek god,

but there were questions because all he did at Ole Miss was line up in one spot and running straight lines. I was wondering what he could do. even if with all those physical skills. And it's look at what he did. But he was a 64th pick in the draft. And I think that's the thing. That's the key.

He got selected when he should have been selected. That's the thing about D.K. He should have been a late second round pick depending on his film. I get he was a freak and everything. But that's where it was a proper pick. And they get the. But those guys are now every time. So with Yami Brown,

I know that he is not as physically gifted as D.K. McCaff. But in these rooms, there's going to, there's going to be a group of people. sitting around a table. And one of the offensive coaches is going to say, well, he only does one thing. He lines up in one spot and he runs go balls and slants.

And then somebody's going to say, well, D.K. Metcalf only ran go balls and slants. And that's how it's going to be. The back and forth is so interesting because for so many of these, there are going to be examples on either side that if you want to yell about it loud enough, they can make your point for you. But you have to understand what is most likely to happen. Let's look at all of the information at hand. And I think that's one of the biggest things.

All right. Last one I had here. But Diami Brown, too, though, that's a great point because we talked about it too on our podcast. But then that's where the trait watching has to come in. It's like, all right, does he have foot quickness? Does he have the body control? Does he have?

Because he ran out routes a couple times. I mean, honestly, probably I can count them like three times. I watch him say you do anything other than a go slant or screen. And it was like, oh, okay. That's actually what made me like him more because I had to see it. I have to see it. But also just the body control. yet and other stuff. But that's just such a good point because you can argue it either way.

You're like, okay, do they not run them on that? Because he can't do it or, you know, those are the questions. But that's where scouting comes in. And I think that's why you have to have an offensive coaching staff that is willing to tailor stuff to their players, especially early. And I think that's why overall, we can have a long conversation about this. I think you kind of did in the wide receiver podcast. But I think overall, that's why you've seen the breadth of receivers and the pool of them

increase even more, both in the. in college and guys later in the draft succeeding in the NFL because coaches are more flexible. Coaches are much more. There's less rigidity in offensive approach. And I think that's why more guys have been able to succeed because they've been brought along at the right pace and at the right ways. The last one I had, there's a bunch of others. Like running back, you probably shouldn't do it.

Like we all know that. You just probably shouldn't do it. Even in like the first like 40 picks, not even first round guys. Like the Bishop Sankey's and the Monty balls and. All of that of the world. I mean, there are a lot of them. And obviously, I didn't get into character stuff here or severe injuries because that stuff is just not even worth getting into. So I'm not going to have a conversation about the lessons you can learn from Isaiah Wilson.

They're age-old lessons. It's not worth discussing. The last one that I saw, and this is kind of just a throwaway when we can end on, if you're going to draft a quarterback between 15 and 75, just don't do it. No, no, don't do it. Just don't do it. And I think people are going to say, well, that's a convenient cutoff point. Russell Wilson was the 75th pick. You're drafting that guy to be a backup.

Like that, if you're throwing darts in the third or fourth round on deck, Prescott or Russell Wilson, those are dart throws for backups. That's fine. If you want to do that in the third, fourth round, be my guest. But in a range where you're looking for a starter, it is a graveyard in the back half of the first round and the second round. I will read you the list right now. Since from 2011 through 2020, there have been 22 quarterbacks taken between 15 and 75. You ready?

Okay. Let me do it by. Let me flip it by. I'm excited. I remember most of them, but I can't wait to remember some of these names. Brandon Whedon. Okay. Johnny Mansell, both 22nd overall, both to the same team.

Yish. E.J. Manuel, Paxton Lynch, Jordan Love, which we'll see. Lamar Jackson. which Lamar is going to lead to so many mistakes. Outlier. He is a very strange sort of player. It's not a good lesson to learn. Lamar doesn't apply.

I completely agree. Dwayne Haskins. Teddy Bridgewater. Gino Smith, Brock Osweiler, Drew Locke, Deshawn Kaiser, Colin Kaepernick, which, again, that one works. That one works. Jalen Hertz.

We'll see. Christian Hakenberg. Jimmy Gerell. below. Andy Dalton, who is the best one. Derek Carr, who is one of the best second round picks of the last 10 years in terms of what he has produced. Absolutely. Russell Wilson was the 75th pick.

Ryan Mallet, Garrett Grayson, Mike Glennon. That's the name I was waiting for. Garrett Grayson, that was the one I was waiting for the whole time. Oh, yeah. But if you're good enough to be a first round quarterback, you're going top 10. That's exactly that. Okay. And then stop squinting to find anybody else.

else. That's, that's just what it is. It's, if you're good enough to be a first round quarterback, you go top 10 or top 12. Like, it just, it is what it is. And it's like, if you have to squint for a first round quarterback, yeah, I mean, the, the famous one for me, I wouldn't say famous, but the one I always remember is the O four draft or O three, oh, three drive. Well, the Ely draft. JP Lozman is the one we always forget. Yeah. It was like, it was like, it was like those big three, no three feature all are famous, but we'll talk about Eli.

I'm just saying it for, don't jump down my throat. A man won two Super Bowls. Between them, they have two super, they have four Super Bowl wins and Philip Rivers is a Hall of Fame quarterback in my opinion. And Phil Rivers is one of my favorite players. Yeah. And then, but then it was like the bills were like, no, we got to get our guy. And they take J.P. Lousman into 20s. And it's like, yeah, that's the thing is like you don't really usually remember the guys in the 20s.

Drafts like Dan Mariano, those drafts in 80s do not count. This is modern era. But that's just what I kind of always remember with that. It's like, yeah, if you're good enough, you shouldn't have to squint, especially at quarterback. Like, I shouldn't be having to go like. Yeah, we got our guy at 27. It's like, oh, boy, really? You got your guy?

Yeah, like top end, like mid-level starter. The reason that I mentioned this is because when Davis Mills goes 29th to some team or Kelvin Mond goes with the 42nd overall pick, they, maybe they could work out. Maybe they could. But the history of the NFL is littered with examples of why this has not worked out. It shouldn't have to quit. It is. It shouldn't have to squint.

All right. You just should. Yep, this was great. But shouldn't have to squint ever. that's all we got. Thank you so much for doing this. We'll obviously talk to you next week. Draft is coming.

We're like two and a half weeks away. And we're going to let people know here for the first time. You and I will be together for the first round of the draft. We're doing a live stream during the first round in Chicago, in person. We're doing an in-person bit of work for the first time in over a year. I'm very, very excited about it. I'm excited to see you. I'm excited to do it.

We'll have a lot of information. for people as we get closer to that. Until then, always good to talk to you, buddy. We'll chat with you next week. So long. All right, I am very excited to welcome now. My good buddy, somebody that we've never had on the show, and the draft time is the perfect time to do this for the first time.

That's Ben Solac from the Draft Network. How are you doing, man? You do a lot of different stuff, but I'm going to say you're from the Draft Network for our purposes here. Yeah, now that's what people always ask me like, oh, what should I shout out? I was like, if I'm here for the draft, shout out the Draft, keep it neat, keep it simple.

That's for the most of the draft work's going to be anyway. But yeah, it's a tis the season. Fala la la, la. We love it in April. We're two weeks away from the live show, the first round that Nate and I are doing. We're recording this on Thursday the 15th. And it's not nearly fast enough. I want it to be here right now. I've already gotten tired of some of the discussions.

But we're going to get into some of those discussions. You've done a fantastic job of contextualizing some of the larger narrative points that have been made, especially about the quarterbacks with the work that you've done over the last couple weeks. I would be remiss to not talk about that stuff with you while you're on here because I too often will just say we've already talked about that. We're not doing it again. And when it's the quarterbacks, that's not a good way to handle your podcast. So we're going to get back to that here with you. But I wanted to talk about something else that you and I had been kicking around for the last couple weeks. And that was the idea that for the second

year in a row, edge rushers, which is a premium position still, even if we want to have a conversation about coverage versus past rush and everything else and the way the league might be trending, it is still considered a premium position. And for the second year in a row, I think that this class would be considered or categorized as a down year for edge rushers. This would be the first, if an edge rusher does not go in the top 15 picks,

which if you look at some mock drafts, there aren't. They're all in the back half of the first round. It would be the first time since 2004 that a defensive lineman has not gone in the top 15 picks. Even in a down year like last year, where it seemed like, you know, it wasn't as good of a class as we've had in previous years.

Chase Young still went second overall. There's always at least one guy, even in classes that are considered a little bit lesser. In this group, there isn't even that one guy. There isn't that outwire. There's the outlier receiver this year with Jamar Chase or offensive tackle, but not with the edge guys. So do you think overall the fact that we've had two straight years where we don't have two or three and of elite edge rushing prospects

says anything on a grander scale, or do you feel like this is just a little bit of a blip? Both, you know, it's a difficult one to commit to. What rings in my head immediately is what Seth Gleena likes to say. I know you had Seth on a couple weeks ago where he says, why is the NFL afraid of the tight front? Because you only got one true edge, and the NFL loves edge rushers.

You know, so you don't want to take that body off the field. Or at the college level, they've accepted it. You know, they've been more willing to take that body off the field. And we've, when we talk about evaluating edges, coming out of college, it is as much, if not more so, traits-based than probably any other position. Totally. Because typically, past protection of the college level, not too good. And so if you're going after.

But they're getting rid of the ball so fast. When you watch these guys, it's amazing just how quickly the ball is getting out. And just the, you know, there's more RPO's in the NFL, but the rise of it at the college level. And just how instantaneous this stuff is, it's really hard to see a lot of true dropback snaps, both for tackles and for edge prospects. Right. And so, right, figuring out the reps that you want to actually put weight behind when you're evaluating. And then also, you know, so the number of those and the quality of those, it's just not as much as you might get as other positions.

So you're really evaluating on traits with more of the tight fronts, with more of the RPO's, like you're saying, there's fewer and fewer of those reps. There's fewer of fewer of those opportunities. So the body types are changing a little bit. And I think that matters, you know, we obviously, we got three straight years of like unbelievable body type, unbelievable athleticism, all from Ohio State, boasa, boosa, young. And that's just not really happening anywhere else. You know, you've got to start figuring out what do we do with our Brian Burns is and our Caleb-on-chas, right? These 245-pound rushers who come out and they're all speed and it's all about can you race the tackle to the outside corner and they've got one move in their arsenal. You know, this year the sub-250 guys Azizzo Jolari out of Georgia figuring out how he fits in an NFL defense, how many downs is he going to play.

So that's your difficult part of the process in terms of how am I taking this college guy in this role and fitting him to the NFL? where the demands are going to be so drastically different. So in that way, there's, I think, a little bit of a trend. But in general, we're probably looking at a blip. And the reason is because when a team sees at the college level, big, long, strong, they try to get that guy on the defensive line, right? Like, Jason always the perfect example. You know what I mean?

Penn State, he started playing football as junior of high school. He could be 6-4-2-40. He could have been a tight end, could have been whatever. And they elect to stick him at egg. And does O'way know what he's doing yet? Not really. But boy, there are those reps. You're like, ah, I get it.

I know why you're here. It's because this position demands elite athleticism. And so elite athletes get funneled there. And so at the end of the day, eventually, I think you're going to get a pick back up on some of the top guys coming out of that spot. Well, it's also one of those things that I think that recruiting pedigree in what you were in high school endures with this position almost as much as any other position. A lot of the guys that were top recruits in their class end up being top draft picks. like obviously miles garret was a huge recruit chase young was a huge recruit this i think next year kvon thibito is probably going to be a top 10 pick the guy from oregon who i watched a little bit

while watching elijah vera tucker the other day and i was like holy shit that guy is good to marvin leal the guy from texas a and m is projected to be a top pick so the best athletes are still going to get funneled there like you said and i think that stuff is going to endure even if the structure of college football doesn't have as many of these guys on the field and it's a little bit harder to understand what you're watching with them. So this group, even if it's pushed into the back half of the first round, and I think overall, when I sat down to watch them because a lot of them had balked into the back half of the first round, I didn't have high expectations for the group as a whole.

I was talking to a head coach last week, I think, and I was talking to him because he's been watching a lot of the defensive prospects. And I said, what do you think of the edge guys? You know, it doesn't seem like a very good class. And he was like, I like, I like, I think there are a lot of guys that are intriguing. And when I started to watch all of them, that was my takeaway. I was like, oh, there aren't any ready-made top 10 picks in this group. But every single one of these guys that you watch, you understand how someone could talk

themselves into this version of this guy. And that's why I think the stacking of them is interesting. So if you were going to go one through five, and I think the top five for a lot of people are probably in some order, Azizzo Jolari, Quiti Pay, Jason Oway, Jalen Phillips, and who would you say the fifth one is? For me, it's Carlos Bashman awake. Okay, that's right. Greg Rousseau out of Miami, Joe Trine out of Washington, Joseph Osai,

at Texas, yeah. So all of those guys are typically slotted into that number five hole. So if you were trying to stack them right now, how would you go one through five? Yeah. I'm very glad you brought me on for edges because I get a lot of guff for being a fence sitter, and everyone's fend sitting on this edge class. This is great. This is my spot here.

Jalen Phillips is the number one edge for me. Off of film, there's nobody better. There's a lot to talk about about Jalen Phillips, not on film, but on film he's the dude. Number two for me is Aziz Ojolari. I only have Phillips as a round one grade. Ojolari starts guys outside a round one for me. So that's what we're talking about. I got a weaker class.

Three for me is Quitty Pay. Four for me is Carlos Basham. Similar-ish players, athleticism and size. And then five is Jason Owe. I'd love to be higher on him, but I'd also like for him to sack the quarterback in his final college season. So really, we can only get you up so high on the list.

So with Phillips, I tend to agree with you. When you watch him play, if you could just project this guy to be on the field consistently at the NFL level, I feel like he has the best set of traits. The length is there. You can see some of the hand stuff. He's athletic enough.

He's actually a very good athlete plus the prototypical size. Obviously, for people who don't know the question about him, is mostly health. I mean, he walked away from the game at one point, I think because of concussion issues. There had been some injury concerns even beyond that when he was at UCLA, when he was the number one recruit in the country. So when you watch him play,

I think if you could absolutely, guarantee that this guy could stay healthy, he'd probably be in the conversation to be a top 12 pick in this class, let alone a first round pick. So is your number one concern with him just the ability to stay on the field? Yeah, he's a very interesting arc. This is one of those guys that he played in the high school All-American game and NFL guys were like, yeah, it's top 15 pick. It was one of those sort of like, oh, we already know, four years down the road, we got it. And he ends up going to UCLA and depending on who you ask, he's had somewhere from two to four concussions. It's one of those situations. He thought he had a concussion. Medical staff

didn't. Medical staff wanted him to play. He thought the medical staff was pressuring him into playing with a concussion. And kind of this, this has been talked about different angles from different people and from different sources. He ends up medically retiring. The other injury he got was he was on a scooter and got hit by a vehicle and broke his wrist. So it was a non-football injury. And so he medically retires. He's out of football for a year. Alex to come back. He likes wants to continue playing. Goes to Miami and just starts waxing kids. Right. We were like, oh, Miami, good opportunity. You know, Gregory was so opted out.

He'll boost his stock. He was just dominant. You know what I mean? This was exactly what was billed from before that we were never able to really get at UCLA because he was so spotting on the field. So, yeah, your number one concern is health in terms of recurring concussions. NFL teams are also going to go through the process of figuring out why there were disagreements with UCLA and how that all fractured and fell apart because you want the guy

to be able to stick it out when he does get injuries, whether concussions or otherwise. So that red flag is always tricky to prognosticate because I'd tell you this is a maybe the most talented defensive player in the class, definitely for me like top two, top three. At a premium position, that's a top 10 pick. There'd be no way he'd make it past the Giants at 11. Book it. But you never know with red flag players. They got that red cross on their name and that means that some teams will take them straight

off the board and some teams won't. And so now it's a question of who's willing to take that risk and where are they in the draft. I expect him to go top 17, thinking about. the Raiders and how they should not be passing on top defensive talent right now. But it is a difficult projection. What aspect of his game jumps out to you the most? Obviously, the frame is there, like we talked about, just overall. He checks a lot of those physical boxes, but is there one thing that sticks out to you the most?

Yeah, but watch a lot of basketball. He likes to Eurostep. Yeah. That to me is the coolest thing. The fact that his size, he has that sort of flexibility is just really impressive to watch. And that's the thing is you watch him move and you think in your head, $250. and he was playing north of 260 and he's well strapped together. Good length as well.

And so is the hand location and the work perfect? No. But when you're already three quarters of the way on the outside shoulder the tackle and not need to be perfect, just needs to get the job done. He understands also as well how because he's a little bit taller, I think he's 605 and a half, I want to say. Because he's a little bit taller. It's a little bit tougher for him to take tight corners.

So he will stay connected to a tackle and use him to leverage into the pocket. We talk about rushing with tilt. You got to use the tackles well. weight to your advantage, have him anchor you to try to take that corner. That's important for taller rushers. And Phillips as an inherent knack for that. Like, he was preordained to play this position. He's not only big and explosive and got the quickness, but he has a good knack for space.

And that's why you see that inside outside, those Euro steps. He's got the outside swim and the inside club over. I can take you two ways. And if you react to my first move too much, I've got an angle. I can go and I can get skinny through a gap. That's pro level. And the big thing there is a player of this recruiting caliber, a player of this physical toolkit typically comes out a year ago, but Phillips opted out.

And so he's even more physically developed and even more refined than we expect of these X five-star recruits, right? And that is really enticing in terms of a year one projection. So you had Ojalara as your second guy. I understand the appeal. And I think that what jumps out to me is, first of all, he's very strangely built. Like I can't remember somebody who was six, two, but had 34, I think, in a half inch arm. So he's long, but he's not tall. And that's why when you watch him, it's difficult to understand exactly what you're watching on some plays, but he still uses that length extremely well.

I just think if I'm watching the other guys in this group, his physical upside in terms of just tools, explosion, everything else is one step down for me, even if he was more productive than some of those guys who might have a bigger bag of just overall physical gifts like an O.A or even like a quitty pay. Yeah, he's, he's a great example of the traits don't match the skills, and that makes him a tough player to riddle out. Yeah, so firstly, 6-2, 249 with 34 and 3-8th inch arms.

It's not even real. Firstly, Kirby's smart and Nick Saban lost their minds when they saw this game. This is ideal, right? If you're going to put him in a role where he's going to have to be able to stop the Roma first and second down, the optimal play-with leverage edge is short with vines, and that's what those already is.

Yeah, it's so true. Yeah, right. And the tricky thing here is he's a little bit high-waisted too, and he doesn't like to sink his hips. And so you're watching his frame and you're thinking, get lower, you need good leverage. And then you go see his shoulder pads. It's like, oh, wait, dang, you're only six-two. It's so true. It's okay. It's so true. He plays so much taller than he is in multiple ways. That's why when you watch him, it's just like, I don't have any idea how big that person is. Yes, and nobody projected his, like, we all like try to figure out where they're going to weigh in at

what their height's going to be. Nobody got it right. He's very difficult. And he's actually like, he's a very interesting player to watch. When you talk about evaluation, you talk about rushing with Bend, which is our typical term for edge rushers on the outside track. That can be a very nebulous term. It's not very intuitive.

It's not very visual. O'Jolari is a really good player to watch to kind of understand that process. Because he's not Vaughn rushing with Bend, because Vaughn can run under a table. He's not Harold Landry, right? Where he's dropping the shoulder all the way down. He's folding himself in half,

and the angle on his hips is crazy. That's not how he's going to succeed. The ankle flexion, Right? The flexibility in the ankles is where the money is. It's where O'Jolari wins. And so he works that stab chop. That's home base, man. That's bread and butter. We ain't ever leave it. It's not the long arm. We're going to long arm to stab chop, long arm to push pole. This is our home. And so that he has a series of rushes, a series of rush moves, which I really like. One of the things that I'm an Eagles fan. One of the things the Eagles defensive line coach Matt Burke did last year with Josh Sweat was basically tell Sweat, you're trying six different rushes. Try two. You're either going to long arm or are you going to work. the long arm to the swipe. It's either going to be through or outside. You're only doing it one way. We're just going to get good at those. And Joshman had a great season because he stayed home. And he had his moves. One let him go through. One let him come outside and he was able to be successful as a rusher. So OjoLawry has... That's why I love Lawson. Because Lawson just

has those two things that are perfect compliments. He's got the long arm and he's got the stab off of it. Just one after the other, one after the other. Carl Lawson's a big OJolari fan. That's really funny. They're similar games. X's and O's right. I'm trying to get you on board here. Fran Duffy, who works for the Eagles, posted a clip of O'Jolari running a stab chop and basically comped to Lawson. And Lawson responded like, his foot works better than mine was.

I just got to learn us how to work with the long arm. He's going to be great. And Lawson's like big O'Jolari fan over here. But I want to watch more. I don't, I've only watched like two or three games and while I'm impressed, it just, I don't know. It does you just jump off the screen to me. Yes. See, I thought you'd fall in love with Alabama

because he's out there stunning Deonté Brown at 360 pounds, man. Heavyweight fight. I'll go back and watch again. I am more than willing to admit that I probably should like him more than I do when you consider the things that I'm typically attracted to. But that's why it's so weird watching this group because when I watch OA, I'm like, I get it.

Like, I totally understand it because he had no sacks. But you look at the physical profile, it is all time. Like, it is as good as anybody's is going to be. It compares to guys like Clowny. and Daniel Hunter and everything else. His three cone is way better than Clownies was. And so my thing is with guys like that, and I'm curious what you think about this.

Because when I watched Chase on last year, I was out. Because I just felt like at that weight, he was getting washed out so often. Like I watched him play against Andrew Thomas, and he was just getting pushed out, pushed past the pocket consistently. Just had no ability to like anchor down

and not get running. past the quarterback. Always seems to have more functional strength at that position with all of the Twitch and explosion. I just think when I'm watching him play, I watch the Michigan game today. And it feels like he's like half a move away all the time. Like if we can just refine this a tiny little bit, I don't think there's that far to go if you get him with the right coaching staff. I think the gap is small enough where I can talk myself into him not just being a traits guy. Yes. No, I was very low on O'A at first brush. I was like, I can't do this with this guy. He doesn't know what he's doing out here, whatever. And then I actually, I was assigned a piece and I wrote a piece about the history of guys with low sack totals and how they go through if their first round picks. Because after the way Oway tested, I think he's going to be a first round pick. You know, John Grun, they're going to have to lock John Grun in a closet. They don't have him take this guy. This is crazy. And so you luck and it's a problem, though, is that he needs coaching. And we, that's my concern. is there, but they still have done a very, and Rod's like 78 years old, and they have not done

a good job of developing defensive linemen or getting a lot out of them over the last couple years. So him going to a place that's been a wasteland for improvement is not something that I want to see. See, this is bad because always got great length and right. And does anything Rod will fall for? It's an edge with 33 and a half inch plus and always at 34 and a half. But you go and you look at Ziggy Ansah, who is a first round big 2013 out of BYU, only started playing ball his junior year, went to BYU initially to be on the basketball team. And then he suddenly, you know, he moves to the football team. He's playing special teams.

There's injury. He has to play. He gets like five sacks in his final season. Goes to the combine. Doesn't even like train for it. Runs like a 4-7 or something ridiculous. And then- He also weighed 270, which is just wild.

Nuts. And he's a first round pick. And within three seasons, he's got like 16 sacks in a single season. Jason Pierre-Paul out of 2010 was a Juco, South Florida. Same sort of thing. Allway only started playing ball in high. high school. And the athleticism aside, what that means is that he doesn't have a ton of bad habits. He doesn't have a ton of good habits either. He hasn't really habituated anything yet. He hasn't seen it a ton.

He's had 1.5 full seasons of starting because of Big Ten being late to college football this year. And so you don't, you have a lot. You have to teach him. But you don't have a lot. You have to unteach him. And arguably unteaching and unraveling and getting rid of bad habits is more difficult, more time consuming than actually installing a guy on a rush plan. And so there's a good argument for Always development being, you know, he's really actually a moldable piece of clay. A guy like Quitty Pei Pay, great athleticism, he's got some bad habits. Quitty Pay's stance is not good.

Quitty pay is the last dude off the line. Like, that's a tough thing to get a guy out of. Whereas always just like, somebody please tell me, like, what do I do? When the tackle looks like this, I don't know yet. So I'm willing to gamble on him. Would I go rushing up with the card in the first round? Probably not. Somebody else can do that and make that investment.

That's tricky for me, but I'm with you. Like, that's the sort of player, both in terms of the narrative and the athleticism, that I say, this guy's got a good chance to develop. Would you say that he has the most upside of any of the guys on this group solely because of the tools? I would have said it before as pro day. After it's pro day, nobody can say otherwise, I feel like, you know what I mean? Like, this is a legendary. I think somebody would make an argument that Quitty, that Quitty pay, because of the strength.

and the fact that he's so rocked up and he's a little bit stronger than OA seems to be. I think somebody could probably spin it that he is in the conversation, but I tend to agree with you. Yeah. Also, the thing is, the guy who's spinning it for Quitty has got to be using Quitty in the right way because how Michigan used him and how he projects to be used in the NFL is a lot more so based down Big Five Tech interior sub-package Russia, which I don't think is O-Way. I think you want O-Way living on the outside for as long as possible. What do you think of the Hunter comparisons? Because that is, I think it's easy when you think about the physical tools, no sad production.

The difference is DeNeil Hunter was a third round pick. Exactly. I'm totally cool with saying, this guy's going to have a DeNeal Hunter arc, and he's like DeNeal Hunter out of college. DeNiel Hunter's price was substantially different. And that's what's always, like, you know, we've all had the Mac Jones conversation 10,000 times. That's why when we make comparisons,

the acquisition cost and the opportunity cost are critical, right? If O.E. becomes Hunter, great, but you're taking a lot bigger risk because you're spending a lot higher of a pick. Is there a fit or a situation with one of these four or five guys that you've just kept going back to over and over in your mind? Whether it's because they would want him or they're motivated to get him or you think this is the team that could unlock player X. OJolari to Bills at 30. They need a Jerry Hughes running mate and then they needed Jerry Hughes replacement.

They've got to be awesome. Yeah, they tried 10,000 different big ends, right? Mario Addison, Shaq Lawson, you know, AJ Epiness in the second round last year. They need to get a guy who's a high side. rusher, an outside track rusher. Right now, Ojalari cannot come inside. So that is your high side rusher. And then he's fundamentally a three down, base down player, in my opinion. You have to line him up seven to wide nine order to do it. But he can play on the outside for you and keep a staunch edge, which if you can't play the run, Sean McDermott's not interested. They also can use him

situationally to us. And when I say situation, I just mean the way that they rotate their guys, he's getting to play 40% of the snaps as a rookie and he's still a really useful piece for them. Yeah. So to me, that one is, I forget when I stumbled across it. You do 10,000 mock drafts. And eventually, wait, oh, it's a lorry of the bills. It's kind of right in front of you. Fun part. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Eventually you come across these words like, oh, that's starting to make sense.

And now that I've watched most of the guys that are being mentioned in the top 30, 40, 50 picks, I've started to really churning through them. Now that's where my mind is going to go. It's like, all right, which of this starts to make sense? And so that's why I was curious. Do you think that there's a guy, I think Phillips may be the answer, but who do you think is the most ready made? Like if you need somebody that's going to give you seven sacks on a contender tomorrow,

which of this group? you think fits that it's jalen phillips and that's the most difficult thing about this class we we called it intriguing another word for intriguing is not ready yet nobody knows you know what i mean this is this is a prognostication across the board phillips if he's healthy for 16 games i think is an eight sack rookie season which is like a substantial number i it again if he's on the field he's healthy baller great player ojolari is not that because right now he doesn't have the counter he needs to have more so of his of his counter game he can't just be an outside russia quiddy pecky pecky pey has never been a productive sack player.

It's always been kind of more so of an at the line of scrimmage run defender. I like Carlos Basham at a wake forest a lot. 270, great athleticism, but they're just using him as a base five tech, and then they'll stand him up and make him Preston Smith. And he's just being used as a hammer. Just break the pocket, break the pocket, break the pocket. He's got no finishing ability right now.

So the sack numbers aren't going to be high for him. A sigh, try on, all these guys are athleticism. This is not a class for immediate year one impact on passing downs. the edge position. What do you think about Oway going to Cleveland and getting to sit for a little bit and come along slowly because they have so many guys on a one-year deal that they can just have him be a part of a rotation there before they ask more of him? Love it.

I was very worried about Cleveland before the Clowny signings. For months, I was like, they've got Adrian Claiborne one more year, perfect for development. They've got Shelton Richardson one more year. Go Christian Barmore. This is great. And then they cut Claymore. And I was like, no. You can't go diving for year one edge.

you have to make it in the playoffs you got to win playoff games in this class can't do it you got to be able to let these guys come along slowly like rotation we were talking about with disease so all way to cleveland i'm extremely big on i also you know they had olivier vernon they obviously have miles garrett they had clayborne they like two 60 plus pound guys it would seem obviously those are some different acquisitions from a different front office if you're still priority on size that's your quitty pay landing spot and i can kind of dig it because again he gets to play on rundowns for you which helps, but I'm, I'm shaky on pay. I'm worried about them. I thought that they were going to be in the Clowny race even before Free Agency started, and it did turn out that way. So I'm just curious

how they think they're trying to build that group. Obviously, with Clowny, it makes it less of a priority, but I still think that they're keeping wide eye in the future as they do this stuff. Absolutely. And your number one objective is to be able to say confidently, we have a guy who if you're going to sell out to double Miles Garrett, our other guy can create a problem. He's going to be able to win isolated opportunities. That's why it's interesting to me, because that partnership,

not just this year, but over the next three years, is just something that I don't know. It makes sense to me. Yeah, that's why, you know, you used to sign clown, you're like, right, good, cool, that'll help on first down.

However, if we're having clowning one-to-one against right tackles, this has not worked well in a while. And so I, no, I think that, Cleveland's in a good spot to wait on the Christian Barmore, Jason Oway, Quitty Pay train, and say we're going to add a pass rusher for 2022 at this spot. Who it is, who they like the most, we don't really know. Oway is for where he's projected to go, always probably like good value.

But again, I don't know. I don't remember who the defensive line coach is in Cleveland, but that man's got a paycheck to earn over a year because you've got to get him ready. It's Chris Kiffin, I believe. Oh, man. You're pulling the Browns defensive line coach from memory. That's nuts. Who is the assistant offensive line coach for the Niners and then came over with Joe Woods.

Is that correct? Oh, wow. Yes, defensive line coach, assistant coach for the Niners. Chill out. Wow. Whatever. I'm just thinking in my mind, I'm thinking left to right on third and eight, Miles Garrett, Malik Jackson, Genevian Clownie inside Quitty Pay, or you switch in Sheldon

Richardson for Malik Jackson, whatever you want to do. Right. That stuff starts getting interesting real fast. But, yeah, that one was in my mind. So, okay, last one I'll ask you about the edge, guys. Is there somebody outside of this top four or five that you just had your eye on? It keeps popping up. You can't get it out of your head.

Yeah, I like De Ode Yingbo out of Vanderbilt and Peyton Turner out of Houston. It is the year of the 270 plus pound. I'm super long. I don't really know what I'm doing edge. I typically hate those guys. I watched Peyton Turner today because you told me to. I'm in. Yeah.

I'm in. The arc for Peyton Turner, we talked about the arc for Justin, or excuse me, for Jason Owey. The arc for Peyton Turner is pretty important. You can still go and find Payton Turner's like old basketball huddle highlights if you want to. You know what I mean? He was not going to be a football player. And then he comes to Houston over the course of three head coaching arcs, right? Tom Herman ending, Major Applewhite and Dana Holgerson.

And they're just trying to figure out who this dude is. is they got him at 285 plus playing sub package three tech he's firstly we're talking about quitty pay stance turner does not know how to get down like it is it is not looking good for Peyton turn the highest cut edge rusher i think i've ever seen he's standing all the way up on pretty much every single play and you're like man like I do not know how this is supposed to work and then what's nuts is he ran a seven flat three cone at like six five something just bananas uh the flashes of natural quickness like in the bi y u game he has a chase down tackle on a

Zach Wilson scramble we're just like stop it that's not real uh he is so stinking fun and that's why we talk about like Oway in the first round is a bet that sure but I'd rather let somebody else take it once we start getting to Peyton Turner on day two now I want to start taking

my swings I said that edge is going to be as traits based as any evaluation for any position to Peyton Turner's the guy I'll go for and then day Odeyingbo has been such a fun one Vanderbilt recognized pretty quickly. They're like, all right, we have one good defensive player. Let's do everything with him. And so he's playing base five, subpackage three. They put him up at the nose on third and long. He's like 275 pounds.

Just trying to get triple teams, you know what I mean? Like he's the whole focal point. He's raw power. He gets his hands underneath your chest. It's a walk back pretty much every time. He's so much fun. His senior bowl was highly anticipated and then he had an injury right before. So you're seeing now a lot of like, oh, don't forget, NFL teams really like Dao de Yingbo. Yeah, the, the, the, the, the, the, The film last year was a lot of fun for the Commodores. So he's another, this group is tricky. Bash him, Ode Yingo, Payton, Payton Turner. How legit of rush threats against guards are these guys?

Because none of them have the hands right now to do it. If you're going to be a sub-package interior rusher, you've got to have hands. Because that's a phone booth. Got to be able to win in short areas. None of them have those hands right now. All of them have the frame. All of them have the length. Who are you confident in getting that and quickly?

I think Ode Yingbo, with his length and with his striking power, has got a good projection for that sort of a role. You also did not mention it, which is really important. Aesthetically, Peyton Turner tapes his fingers and does not wear gloves, which I'm in on every single time. Also, serious note, his motor is amazing. And that's watching him play high energy, but not in the way we typically use it as a he's nice sort of thing.

When someone doesn't have a personality, it's high energy, but he's actually stringing moves together. So it's not just energy that replaces functional utility. He actually is doing stuff where he's moving toward the quarterback. And when you actually teach him to do what he needs to do, I think that that energy can manifest in fun, interesting, useful ways. All right. You've written a lot about the quarterbacks.

I want to talk about this before we get out of here. You wrote something really good that's been cited by a lot of different people. You are now the analytics guy about the amount of times that Justin Fields through beyond his first read last year at Ohio State. The concede of the piece and how you lead with it is that this is a stupid conversation, which it's a stupid conversation. Having to count how many times a quarterback went beyond his first read, I think is the dumbest way to frame processing for a quarterback.

But I also think we frame processing for college quarterbacks in a lot of other dumb ways. So if you were trying to explain the most misguided aspect of the justice Fields' conversation to this point. What would you say that it is? Oh, man. All right. Kick your feet up. We'll be here for a while.

No. The idea that because he's a bad processor, we'll just leave that there for right now. The idea that because he's a bad processor, he won't be nearly as successful. His chance of being successful in the league is drastically reduced. The league has been finding ways to work around poorly processing quarterbacks for a while now.

And as a matter of fact, the system that is currently running like wildfire through the league is because we can take quarterbacks who maybe don't necessarily always make great decisions and give them easy looks, give them high percentage looks, give them high yak looks so that we survive their shaky decisions and we can endure that. And that's the thing is people love like, oh, you're talking about the Shanahan system. Yes, right. So people like Jimmy Garoppel, Kirk Cousins, these guys make great decisions.

Sometimes. Kirk has one or two throws every game where you're like, brother. What are you seeing? A Garapolo is a high interception player, and that's because he can be... Gruppo is a bad processor. Like, actively a bad processor. The people, they're like, oh, Groplo sees the field. No, he doesn't.

He is a pop gun point and shoot quarterback. And then the big one here is Jared Goff, with pressure, without pressure. When the system breaks around Goff, there's little that he was able to do in Los Angeles to elevate. And so in general, we love this concept of process. because we want our quarterbacks to be savant. It's a cool way of thinking about quarterbacking. Is there just these field generals, Cam Newton telling, you know, Clay Matthews,

oh, you've been watching film, like, yeah, that's what it's all about, baby. Payne Manning was that, Tom Brady was that, and these guys were aberrations. They were exceptions that proved the rule. And so now we're reaching a point where it's, quarterbacks are not getting those reps in seven-on-seven. They're not getting those reps in college RPO offenses. We can no longer have that standard, or we're never going to have a quarterback who really works for us. And the best example for this is Trevor Lawrence, who was not asked to process the field,

was not asked. It did not happen in the Clemson offense. It was an RPO and screen-based offense that for any other quarterback who was not preordained to be the dude would be a massive question mark in the process. It's Mickey Mouse nonsense. It's what Nate and I talked about. We talked about the quarterbacks. It's weird to watch him because of that. All right. And so people say Mack Jones has great anticipation. He throws before the guy's open, but there's also like 20 yards worth of space where he's throwing it to. He just knows that Jaylon Waddles faster than Mississippi State's middle linebacker. He goes with the spaces, but also I think that's a conversation that happens from Monday through Friday. I was going to say Monday through Saturday, but they play college games on

Saturday. When you watch him, and I think that's what's interesting to me, and like you're talking about with the way that NFL offenses set these guys up, I'm sure that Mack Jones would have a ton put on his played mentally for what he was asked to do at Alabama. But I also think that a huge part of playing with anticipation and playing fast as a quarterback is the way the offense is fed to you and the way that it's synthesized from the coaching staff to you before the game even starts. He clearly plays with anticipation, but how much is that anticipation built into the structure of the offense and the way that it works?

And that's the question to me. So if we get to a place where a much more talented quarterback, which Justin Fields undeniably is. That throw you posted against Penn State is funny because I saw it while watching Jason Oway today. And I was like, oh man, that throw is so fun. But it is a play where he's staring somebody down. But that's the conversation, right? It's like even if that's, he has a tendency to do that, if he goes into an offense where

the decision making is streamlined for him a little bit because that Shanahan style offense is run rampant around the league or even in a place, I think Carolina has an offense like that where it's spoon fed to you and it's easy decision making and allows a quarterback to understand which decisions he should be making. If you're helping the quarterback make decisions, and he's a more talented quarterback, I think I'm going that way every single time because there is less on quarterbacks now

because of how simplified and streamlined offensive presentation has become. Right, and that's where I think we miss the forest for the trees. We say, Justin Fields played in an offense, and he was looking at his first read for a long time, and he tried to get off his first read. He was taking sacks. He was in the pocket for too long, and that's bad. If he goes to an offense in the NFL, they're going to have to simplify it for him.

If you can simplify your offense for anybody from Pay and Manning to Zach Mettenberg, do it. Because that's just going to let you play faster. It's going to keep the playbook thinner. You're going to be able to learn concepts quicker. It's going to help your team. And then it becomes a question of who's throwing my 15-yard back shoulder fade the best? Because that's what my offense is going to have sometimes. Who's throwing my 15-yard backside dig the best?

Because that's what my offense is going to have sometimes. And the answer to like every level. of the field is Justin Fields. It's not Trevor Lawrence. It's not Zach Wilson. You know, if it's my charting, if it's Derek Classen with Roto World's charting, if it's PFF charting, everybody here thinks Justin Fields the most accurate quarterback in the class. So once, what I think is helpful here is to look at it from the defense's perspective. And what a defense usually does structurally is decide how it's going to get beat. Because you can't cover everything every single time. So you're to say, all right, if we're going to get beat, how is it we're going to get beat? And typically,

when you saw teams facing Ohio State, they said, all right, we're going to make sure that we can handle this wide zone rushing attack. We're going to make sure that we can handle the boot action. We're going to make sure we can handle the quarterback keep on the read option stuff. And we're going to go single high. And if they can throw isolated with their backside receiver, let them. And Justin Field said, I will sit in this pocket for five seconds and throw it 55 yards down the field on the dot every single time. And ergo had one of the best quarterbacking seasons. We've seen the last couple years.

So at some point, you have to stop asking granular questions about how does he do X, why does he do Y, and say, of what is he capable, which it's running like a Mack truck and throwing at an NFL level. And can I get that in my NFL offense reasonably? And the answer is emphatically yes. There's no concern around Fields's arm or physical talent in an NFL offense. If you try to pigeonhole him into West Coast, spread and shred, five-yard depth of target, you're not going to be happy. It's not his play style. If you put him in offense like you should with every quarterback and every prospect that reasonably acknowledges his strengths of weaknesses, this is the second best quarterback prospect that's come out in the last eight years. A name I have not heard mentioned in connection with him that when you're talking, it actually clicks for me, is Ryan Tannahill.

he reminds me of the stuff that you'd want to ask of him and what he could look like reminds me of what Tannahill looks like in Tennessee right now. Like Tana Hill took a lot of sacks. He held out of the ball for a long time for years. He was not a quick processor. But if you're giving him a bunch of drift routes and a ton of play action and kind of streamlining and synthesizing that decision-making for him and he can push the ball down the field, he's accurate.

He's going to stand in there and take hits. That to me, that reminds me of what we could see from Justin Fields. Like he could instantly become what Ryan Tannahill is for the Titans right now, in my opinion. Right. The most dangerous name to put around fields, but I think it's appropriate, is Carson Wentz. And it's because so, like 10,000 things have happened to Carson Wentz in the last year, let alone last couple of years, that it's tough to remember in 2017 when Wentz was an MVP caliber player two years into his career.

He wasn't shredding the quick game. He wasn't, you know, constantly, all right, they're going to rotate too high. And I see the blitzer, and I'm going to check it at the long. and I'm going to get to my checkdown. It was none of that. It was, I'm going to drop back. I'm going to look at my first read. I'm going to be 6.5, 240 pounds in this pocket.

If I get a glancing blow, it's not going to matter. If I get a direct blow, it's not going to matter. I can get out of this pocket and I can chuck that puppy 65 yards down the field. And the third down and the red zone and the explosive plays, that was the whole meat and potato's that eagle's offense. Once it occurred the injury, we know that that organization was not super healthy and things really fell apart. But some of the issues with pocket management, some of the worst. willingness to force a first read throw. It's very Wensian. And the arm talent, the size and the downfield of passing is also at times Wensian. So it's a difficult thing to do to project that

Carson Wend's career. But right, that Wenz, Tannahill, sometimes I talk about Rothesberger in terms of the size in the pocket, the willingness to hang in there late and make a tough throw. That mold is where we'll likely see Justin Fields. And that, those are some very explosive offenses at their peaks. Yeah. And I think that Tanna Hill is a perfect example of what happens when you start catering to the ease of play for your quarterback versus asking him to do too much. Going from Adam Gase to what they've asked him to do in Tennessee, I think shows the contrast in that. And I just, I don't know, I hadn't thought about that before.

But if I drop Justin Fields onto the Titans right now, I feel like we could see some fireworks. Or in the Atlanta Falcons, that number four overall. There you go. There you go. All right, Ben So-Lak, thank you very much, man. This was fun. It's always good to chat with you. Please go check out Ben's work on the Draft Network.

He also does the lockdown draft podcast, which I will be doing soon. Yes. Oh, yeah, I have to send you the list. Yeah, you do. You do. So I will be on that soon, but you should be checking it out even when I'm not on it. They do it several times a week. So please go check out Ben's work.

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Wanted to circle back to it at the end. Nate and I will be doing a live stream during the first round of the draft. He will be in Chicago. We'll be together. The light is coming at the end of the tunnel. So please watch out for the information on that. Please come and hang out with us on draft night. It is going to be a blast.

We will be back on Tuesday with the show I am very excited about. We're going to have Matt Bowen from ESPN coming on to do some draft fits. We're going to have Mike Renner from PFF coming on. So the two weeks before the draft, it's going to be a rush to the finish line. I'm very excited about a lot of the shows we have lined up. Thank you guys for stopping by. Appreciate you listening. We'll talk to you later.

This was the Athletic Football Show.