The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Lessons from the 2021 draft class and how they apply to this year

Episode Date: April 6, 2022

What lessons can be learned from the 2021 draft class ahead of this years draft? Robert Mays and Lindsay Jones talk about QB infrastructure, the importance of a multi-year plan and a new era of pass catchers. They also discuss why chemistry matters, injury red flags, second-round tackles and much more.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic football show. Welcome to the athletic football show. Today's Wednesday, April 6th. I'm Robert Mays. Joining me today, it's my good friend Lindsay Jones. How are you? I'm great. How are you doing, Robert?

I'm doing wonderfully. We were doing this a little bit earlier than we would in a typical week. Dane and Lance are actually going to be recording for Friday this week because Dane's Draft Guide comes out on Thursday morning. So they're going to have some wonderful nuggets from, I mean, it literally is the beast. It is a beast of a production, and they are going to dive headfirst into that. Today, we're going to do some looking back instead of looking forward at this year's draft. We're going to look at what happened last year.

I have mixed feelings about the idea of redrafts and when they should take place. I don't think we can properly redraft the 2021 draft class right now. For instance, where would Trevor Lawrence go? I don't know. I don't know where Trevor Lawrence should go. the one year of evidence we have in his terrible situation, which we'll get to as part of this discussion, I don't think is enough to properly redraft that class. So that's not what we're doing today.

But I do think even if we don't have enough information to redraft, I do think we have enough information to talk about some lessons we learned from the 2021 draft and the 2021 draft class. So we are going to dig into some of those today. Let's do it. All right. I'm going to start it off. and we're going to get to Trevor Lawrence immediately here. Some of these are a little whole ways off of conversations that we often have on this show,

but still bear repeating in context of this last year's draft class. For quarterbacks, for the vast majority of quarterback prospects, your infrastructure and where you get drafted is hugely important to your success. And the reason why I say for most quarterbacks is that over the last few years, we had some examples of young quarterbacks, that transcended the pieces around them and were just good, even if some of the pieces and some of the support system wasn't. Justin Herbert is a very good example, right?

The offensive line for the Chargers was abysmal during Justin Herbert's rookie year. And it was still pretty obvious early on that Justin Herbert was a special player and that he was going to be really good. But even aspects of Justin Herbert's rookie season, Keenan Allen's a really good player. Pop Hamilton, his quarterback coach, has done a very good job with a couple of young quarterbacks over the last few years has earned the Texans offensive coordinator job as a result. Shane Steichen, who was their offensive coordinator during his rookie season, is now in Philadelphia,

and I think is a young coach, a lot of people around league respect. So even that, there were some pieces around him. Charle Lawrence's situation, I mean, it doesn't get much worse. It was a worst case scenario. The feeling in Jacksonville. You know, the line was fine. A bunch of acceptable players. The receiving talent never fit together. No one was on the same. same page. You could just tell it was miserable there all the time. And I think it's really hard to properly judge Trevor Lawrence's rookie year and to see what he's going to be or posit that because of those circumstances. Mack Jones is on the other end of the spectrum, right? Mac Jones was the best rookie quarterback. Mac Jones has dropped into a situation with a very good offensive

line for a first round quarterback, a play caller that is now justifiably a head coach because he'd been one of the best offensive coordinators in the league for more than a decade and a team that all they do is put their players in consistent positions to succeed. No stars at the past catching spots for the Patriots, but still a team that had spent in free agency, didn't have a ton of glaring weaknesses with their offensive personnel and on the coaching staff is about as good as you can get. And I just think even if we know that at face value, last year was a pretty stark reminder of the importance of that support system. Well, I think when we're talking about lessons and then what we learned from last year

and how that can be applied to the upcoming draft, the conversations that we were having about the class of quarterbacks this time a year ago is markedly different than the conversation right now. So it even, it just amplifies how important it is to have the right situation because you could have a generational quarterback prospect like Trevor Lawrence was a year ago. and hopefully for his sake still is. And if you drop him into a toxic situation, a dysfunctional environment, it can all blow up. And even the best player in the draft, and I still think, look, if we were going to do a redraft,

I still think Trevor Lawrence probably should be the first quarterback in that group. I do think that everything we talked about, his skill set, his composure, all of the things that we liked about him before last year's draft, I think that all still applies. But now when you look at these guys who are not polished, finished products, who are not coming into the NFL with a complete arsenal of throws and the experience of winning in college like Trevor Lawrence had, it's even more important that these guys are placed into situations where there's a clear plan, a functional coaching staff that is ready to have a system in place that will support this quarterback will put him in the best positions to succeed because everything that went on with Trevor Lawrence last year from basically from the minute that he arrived there that Jacksonville organization put him in a in a position to fail. And that was largely an Urban Meyer, but I don't, you know, I don't think Trent Balke, who is the general manager then and is the general manager now, I don't think he should be completely absolved of the things that went wrong there in terms of

the other draft mistakes and personnel mistakes that went into building that team around Trevor Lawrence. Justin Fields is another example. I think that the offensive infrastructure there had been bad for years. The coaching staff, the support system, his offensive line wasn't horrendous, but it certainly wasn't good last year. And that contributed to the problem. And I think for this year, if we're kind of projecting forward a little bit, let's look at a situation, a hypothetical like Kenny Pickett to the Panthers number six.

If they do pick Kenny Pickett six overall and they play him right away, and I think that would be the most likely landing spot for a quarterback to play immediately, it would be Carolina just because of the desperation that exists there. and that's why they would pick one in the first place. If you pick, can he pick it with the sixth overall pick? There's a lot of picks in that. You don't get to pick a left tackle.

Cam Irving is still your left tackle. The left side of your offensive line is still a problem. They went outside a couple guys in free agency and Bozeman and Corbett, but you're still dropping a guy into a situation with a real question mark on the left side of the line and a play caller hadn't been back due that has not done this for a while. And it wasn't exactly a resounding success the last time that he did. So like you mentioned, I mean, this is not a generational quarterback prospect.

And dropping him in to less than ideal circumstances and asking him to play right away, I think might be a recipe for disappointment with whatever team tries to do that. And I mean, I guess the good thing for this rookie class is that there aren't as many obvious situations where the guys who are going to get drafted this year will immediately have to start like there were last year. I think there's only one. I mean, I really don't see another one. Yeah, I mean, it's not wide open. Like last year we knew Jacksonville.

We knew New York Jets. We knew with the bear, you know, I think we knew with the bears. Matt Nagy maybe didn't know with the bears, but it seemed like pretty clear that that was going to happen there. This year, that's not quite as much the case of the places of the teams who could draft a quarterback. Do you think there's one that is best set up that the infrastructure in place, whether we're thinking Pittsburgh, Washington, Seattle, just in terms of the coaching staffs that are in place? I mean, you know, I think Pittsburgh in that, you know, they're not going to rush to start a rookie. They sign Mitchell Trubisky and seem happy to at least have him be the guy for now and then figure it out in terms of, you know, Mike Tomlin, I think gives them a ton of credibility and organizational functionality in terms of like. There's no reason that you have to rush it in a situation like that, which I think is encouraging.

Yeah. And Mike Tomlin's not on a hot seat despite what people would want to tell you if he hasn't, you know, won a lot of playoff games. lately. Like he's very secure there, you know, similar to how Bill Belichick was very secure and able to take Mac Jones and kind of put him in place last year. So that might be might be my choice is the place that has the best infrastructure. The roster offensively, I don't know if it's great. You know, I don't know if they have, you know, I would rather if I was a rookie quarterback play with D.K. Matt Caff and Tyler Lockett in terms of like receiving talent. But I do think that's a place where you know that that place is going to be run well. The coach knows what he's doing.

you have at least some sort of stability systematically with your offensive coordinator there. Matt Canada's, you know, now this will be a second year, right? A second year. But it's only his second year. And I think they've been in periods of transition in terms of what their offensive identity. But getting some freedom to kind of build who their offensive identity is going to be because so long it was tied to Ben Rothos. Sure, absolutely. But this is not like New England last year where you have there is a system.

Like the system has been in place for 15, 20 years. That is the offensive system. We have people that are fluent in it at every level of the organization. There's nothing like that this year. Even with Seattle, they're in year two of a play caller as they've sifted through different options there. So, I mean, this is, and even New Orleans, right? New Orleans would be the example in any other time period. And obviously the offensive staff is mostly still intact, and they're going to have some continuity there.

But the person who is at the center of all of that is no longer there. So even if you have some optimism about P. Carmichael being able to carry on what that offense looked like under Sean Peyton over the last 15 years, I think every single one of these teams, you have to pencil in a little question mark next to it because there's something in the back of your mind that you should be worried about. All right. Let's get to your first one here. What was the first lesson you learned looking back through the 2021 class? All right. So I'm going to I'm going to talk about the Broncos here a little bit because obviously I'm going to. But I think one of my takeaways from last year's draft that, teams need to be applying this year is to have a multi-year plan to have some vision of not just your immediate needs in 2022, but looking to 2023 and beyond. And if we remember back to the first round of the draft last year, it was insane in Denver because what, it was two hours, three hours before the draft started that Adam Schaefter dropped the bomb that Aaron Rogers wanted out of Green

Bay. And the Broncos did indeed call the Packers on the first day. And the Broncos did indeed call the Packers on the first day of the draft. That's something that we have we have learned in the months since. I was told it was the only time that they actually made a trade call to the Packers about Aaron Rogers was on the first day of the draft, was calling to see if Aaron Rogers was actually going to be available. And they were told he is not. And so they proceeded. But it changed the entire tenor of how we viewed the Broncos draft that day because, you know, the Broncos get, I believe they were number nine last year. And they, they drafted a, Patrick Sertan, the cornerback from Alabama. They did not draft Justin Fields. So on Broncos Twitter and

the Broncos media, I think on a lot of NFL media, there was just a lot of disappointment of how could George Peyton not draft a quarterback? We've talked about how historically great this draft, this quarterback classes for months and months and months. And there were two of them, Justin Fields and Mac Jones, sitting there on the board where they didn't have to move around at all. And they didn't take either one of them. And George Payton took a ton of heat for this. I mean, locally, nationally, remember sometime during the offseason after that, where he talked about positional value, and that was why they took Sertan. And it was kind of like a lot of jokes of like, how could you value a cornerback over a quarterback? Ultimately, what we saw in the 2021 season is that Patrick Sartan is really freaking good.

You also can't come out publicly and say, well, we think we're going to fire our coaching staff. Yeah, yeah, that is true as well. But they, Peyton, clearly had kind of a long-term vision here at quarterback and wasn't going to take a quarterback just because he had to take a quarterback. You know, it's unfortunate for Vic Fangio that he was entirely right on his evaluation of what the Broncos needed and why they were not competitive in the AFC West. It was because they didn't have a quarterback that could compete in that division. He did not make it long enough here to see them get a quarterback. But there was not like a knee-jerk reaction of there's a quarterback here, so we have to take them. There are going to be a lot of

quarterbacks on the board for teams that are in the late, you know, nine, 10, 11, 15, 20 range, who might say there's a quarterback here. Do we have to take a quarterback here? You feel in the pressure. You're feeling the pressure from maybe inside your building, whether it's a business decision. Your fan base wants you to take a quarterback. You know, these guys who I know you and Nate have been doing a lot of the quarterback evaluation. Might not believe there's any first round pick quarterbacks here, but by the time we get to April 28th, these guys keep getting pushed up and pushed up and you feel this pressure that we have to do it.

But if you can have the patience, the job security, the confidence in your long-term plan, the best call might be to take the guy that you know is going to be a good player right away and not have to rush the quarterback when you don't believe it. I don't think that this time last year, George Payton knew that Russell Wilson was their long-term plan. But I think he, to his credit, had enough of a vision to say, there is a quarterback plan here in place and we don't have to force it right now. There are a lot of teams that this applies do this year. The team that just is in blinking lights to me is the Falcons. I understand you have a top 10 pick. I understand you do not have a future quarterback plan. You don't need to do it,

guys. You don't need to do it. You don't need because what happens when you pick a quarterback? Clock starts. Moment you pick a quarterback in the first round, you tip over the hourglass. on your tenure as a GM. And I don't think that's necessary for some of these teams if they can convince ownership that patience is a virtue and that patience is warranted. If you're Atlanta, take the best player you think is there and you move on next season.

Hopefully you'll have a top five pick. You're going to be a really bad football team this year, most likely, and that's okay. And hopefully you have a top five pick in a draft next year that is going to have better quarterback options. And you have an extra second rounder next year. Little things, or third rounder, in the Matt Ryan deal, little things like that.

I feel like that's a team that this is an example of. The alliance are another one. You don't need to do it this year. You got two first round picks next year. Just let it ride. Go go pick, Trayvon Walker, whoever you want to with the second overall pick, trade down. If a team like the Saints wants to come up and draft a quarterback, a lot of different options there. So I think this is totally relevant.

And the other part of this with the CERTAN thing, one of the lessons I would take from this, your needs today are not your needs tomorrow. When they drafted a corner, everyone's like, man, they have so many corners. Why would they draft a corner? And Kyle Fuller is no longer there. Price Callahan's no longer there. I mean, he's a starting outside corner on that team with Ronald Darby. Yeah, he's better than Ronald Darby. Yeah.

They had paid last year in free agency. So, yeah, and especially in some of those positions where the guy, you can't have enough of those guys, right? I mean, how many times do you hear that. So my, I would just say the one other thing. I'm not, I am not philosophically opposed to the keep shaking the tree to get a quarterback. I'm just saying you don't have to. artificially like convince yourself that you have to take one higher than you normally should.

That doesn't mean, you know, if you're the Falcons and you don't, there's somebody there in the fourth round or something. You say, shoot, come in and let him compete with Felipe Franks to be our backup quarterback or whatever. I'm not philosophically opposed from the idea of, I don't mind you taking them year after year after year if you do it later in the draft. But here in the first round, have a long-term plan. I do mind taking them later in the draft because it's a waste of draft pick 98% of the time. For every Dak Prescott, there are, name your fourth round pick that didn't work out and never played.

And just if you consider backup quarterback position maybe, but I think for the most part, quarterbacks outside of the first round, we've seen that history has littered with the corpses of ones that don't work out. All right. So mine here is pretty specific. But looking back through some of the hits from last year's draft, some of the hits outside of the first round,

three names jumped out to me. Elijah Molden, who was the slot corner for the Titans that played well as a rookie. Javon Holland, who was excellent for the dolphins last year as a second round pick. Javon Morg, the safety from the Raiders, who was also a second round pick last year. Those three guys had one thing in common in college. Insane ball production. If you look at the numbers, these are all from PFF, and I thought that they were so telling. Elijah Molden broke up 17 passes over a year and a half at Washington.

Javon Holland had 20 combined past breakups and interceptions in two seasons at Oregon. Javon Morg led college football in past breakups in his final two seasons at D.C.U. I had a conversation yesterday with Devante Lee on this show about just slot defenders and safeties and what we're looking for and how you try to value these guys in the modern NFL. And I think that if there's a question about a guy, if he's a day two type of prospect, not a no-brainer, not somebody you're going to pick in the top 15. The trait I would keep coming back to that I do think is translatable is, is he a guy who does shit?

Does he get shit done? And these three guys, that's what they did. So if you have a guy that has a certain urgency and plays with that or a physicality, he's always around the ball. He has a sense. That sense in a world where we have these guys, especially through the spine of the defense, which is these three guys are. I think that's kind of, it applies more to those guys.

guys that are going to play safety or slot corner that are closer to the ball. If there are questions about their stiffness or the way they move or their size, things like that, those questions are probably warranted. But I do think this trait is one that's translatable and shines through. The same way other traits are. You know, like broken tackles with Javante Williams. Yeah. If you can break tackles in college, you can typically break tackles as you get to the NFL. And I think that ball production for some of these eye of the beholder defensive backs, that is another example of that to me.

All right. What's your next one? All right. So this is evergreen advice and not necessarily strictly a lesson from the 2021 draft, but I will apply it anyways. Don't take a running back in the first round. Let's just not, let's not do it. Right. So Eric Acosta, the general manager in Baltimore, held his pre-draft press conference today. This is Tuesday. And thank goodness he came out and said, there aren't any guys running backs that we like that we would want to take at 14. So thank goodness for that. I hope that nobody else is looking at this class and saying,

okay, here's a running back we want to take. I'm not sure how many years and years and years of evidence that we need to say, this is probably not the best way that we want to spend our resources. So last year, there were two running backs drafted in the first round, Najee Harris in Pittsburgh, who was really, that was clearly like a, we have a clear hole here. And this is the position that we have to fill. And he was fine, right?

He was fine. He was a functional. Because every other aspect of the machine that goes into running the ball in Pittsburgh was terrible. And the machine needs to be good for your running game to be good. We knew this in the months leading up to the drafts. It was the least surprising thing in the world that the running game still wasn't efficient after drafting a running back in the first round. And everybody knew they were going to draft one too.

It was just wild. So as much as I just said that they were functional in like a well-run organization, even the best run organizations can still make really dumb decisions. And it was just, it was a bad decision. And it didn't work out. And I hope other teams are looking in that and saying, yeah, that's not the way we want to use our resources. The other first round running back was Travis Etienne from Clemson, who didn't play a single snap last year because he got hurt and didn't play for the Jags at all in year one. It was probably a questionable pick to begin with.

It was very much part of like Urban Myers. We want to like get, we want to have a lot of speed and like, I don't know. I never liked the play there. and then weren't they going to try to change his position. And it was just a huge mess. I mean, it was just another layer of dysfunctionality that was going on in Jacksonville. So they drafted Travis Etyn in the first round, right? The running back that they were trying to replace the one that they stumbled into is an undrafted free agent last year.

He's pretty good. He finished sixth in DVOA among running backs last year. They had one of the most efficient running games in the league when he touched the ball. Despite every effort from Urban Meyer to not play him and not get him the ball. It's truly remarkable. Can you remind me when. James Robinson was drafted. He was undrafted. There you go. There's the answer. There's the answer right there. So who were the best running backs, the rookies in football last year? It was Giovante Williams,

who you just mentioned, the guy who breaks every single tackle. He was a second round pick by the Broncos out of North Carolina. And then Elijah Mitchell, who was a six-round pick by the San Francisco 49ers, but he wasn't the first running back that they drafted. So that was Trace Sermon, who they traded up to draft in the third round? Third round. Third round. Yes. I believe traded a third round pick to go up and

pick to Trace Irwin in the third round. So that didn't work out, obviously. But Elijah Mitchell, six-round pick, had a great rookie season. So I don't know why teams keep talking themselves into these first-round running backs. They think they have a hole. They think that this guy is special.

He can do things that other guys can't. It was Clyde Edwards-Hillair the year before, which I didn't hate as much because the chiefs were coming off of the Super Bowl. It was kind of like a luxury pick at the very end of the first round. But even that hasn't paid, you know, paid off. Your needs today are not your needs tomorrow. Like it just whatever the offense looked like in that moment, like let's say T. Higgins is on that team right now.

Like just little things like that. I mean, there are just so many examples of it. It's and I have to remind myself of that because I felt victim to that as well. when they made the pick. I was like, oh, okay, I understand it. Like, that'll be fun. Like, it'll be fun in that offense. And then you said, oh, it'll be the cream hunt role and he's going to catch a lot of passes.

I do that all the time where I get too caught up in what it's all going to look like when the pieces all fit together. And then you step back and it's like, you can't do that. Like, Daryl Williams is going to be just as good for this team as Clyde Edwards-Layer would be in that same exact situation or Jerich McKinnon last year in the playoffs, who they signed for next to nothing. It's just, it's just where we are now. Like, I hate to be. I'm never going to be that running backs don't matter like bang the drum guy. It's just, I don't want to be. I don't.

But when you look at it. I think they do matter, but where you're drafting them also matters. Yes. And I think that if you, there are certain guys you can find like Jonathan Taylor's and the Nick Chubbs. If you get those outlandish explosive athletes in the second round, what they can do for your rushing offense. I do think that's a real thing. But I just think that there's when they have to be a very specific type of prospect in the very specific. specific type of range for them to provide value for you in these situations.

And when you're considering your long-term plan with your first-round draft picks, you also have to keep in mind that you have the fifth-year option. And that is a value when it comes to some positions, a quarterback. You want to have that fifth year. The running back, that fifth-year option doesn't matter nearly as much as it does. So just wait. Just hold off. You're going to get yourself a running back later and you'll be just fine.

All right, my next one here is that pass rusher is a position now. And let me explain what I mean by that. This kind of dovetels a little bit with a conversation I had with Deontay on yesterday's show. We were talking about how as more and more teams step away from traditional four-man fronts, and they have these more nebulous fronts where guys are all over the place, and it's harder to find where guys are lining up and you're lining guys up in weird places, I think you have certain spots that are just X's on the chalkboard now, that that's where you just drop your best pass rusher.

The best example of this, obviously, is Michael Parsons, right? He was the most efficient pass rusher in football last season at any position, and he's theoretically a linebacker, but they created mismatches with him all the time. He's coming from all sorts of alignments, blitzes, twists, stunts. It's just making sure you're trying to create. mismatches and uncertainty with where some of these guys are coming from. And even if he's not a traditional hand on the ground pass rusher, he can be a real pass rush threat.

And Odafe Owe was kind of like this for me with the Ravens, right? No sack production in college, zero. Not a traditional bender. He's not going to give you that refined past rush production that we see from other guys drafted in the first round. He led all rookie edge players last year in pressure with 49. A lot of twists. A lot of him bending back inside and kind of using that athleticism.

So I just think that trying to find guys, even if they don't fit a traditional box as a pass rusher, but have explosive traits, a really good moving toward the quarterback on third down, whatever their position on the depth chart looks like, that is a way to identify a potential rotation player, a potential useful piece for your defense right now. So this isn't necessarily entirely different than I think how a lot of us kind of have been viewing this position. And it's something that we've been sometimes struggling to articulate, you know, from the pro football writers where we have our annual awards voting and we're figuring out, okay, is it edge rusher? Is it defensive end? Is it outside linebacker?

And it's just so hard to like slot these guys. I'm really happy to see that some teams are now kind of eskewing the typical like, oh, he has to be a defensive end. or he's only a three-four end or he's only a four-three outside lineback or whatever kind of the traditional norms might be. I do wonder how replicable somebody like Micah Parsons is and the evaluation of him. I think there's some lessons that we should take from how the cowboys used him and the versatility and the open-mindedness that they had about his skills and how they could use him when they were in a pinch.

I mean, they didn't necessarily make him a pass rusher because they just wanted to. I mean, they were kind of short at sometimes. They were there were injuries and stuff that were going on that they said, we're going to, we're going to line him up here. And God damn it worked and it worked great. So sometimes I want to see if there's going to be any like overcorrection on people saying, let's see if we can find guys who have similar traits as Michael Parsons and we can turn him into a similar player. Or if Michael Parsons is that much of like an alien that he's just so much better at what he does than anybody else.

But I am excited about this kind of prospect. of the draft process and the evaluation process catching up to kind of these more nebulous defensive systems that we're seeing. The one other thing I wanted to mention with Parsons is that I think that his value points to a conversation that we're actually going to dig into next week with me and Deontay about where offball linebackers are in the modern NFL. If you look at the recent history of first round off ball linebackers, it's brutal. So since 2015, there have been 14 off-ball linebackers taken in the first round.

You ready? And this is not with Mike Parsons and Devin White. And I'll tell you why those are exceptions in a minute. Zavin Collins, Jamin Davis, Isaiah Simmons, Kenneth Murray, Patrick Queen, Devin Bush, Jordan Brooks, Roquant Smith, who is good, Tremaine Edmonds, Leighton Van Derreshe, Roshan Evans, Hassan Reddick, who is very, similar to Michael Parsons and Devin White in this situation, Jared Davis and Darren Lee. Those are the 14 guys.

Parsons, Devin White, and Hassan Redick, their value comes as pass rushers. Hassan Reddick is now a full-time pass rusher. But Michael Parsons was the defensive rookie of the year and one of the candidates for defensive player of the year because what he does is a pass rusher. So in order to recoup value from first round off-ball linebackers, you've had to have a guy. who gives you real pass rush value. Devin White is an excellent blitzer. That's where he's best.

So moving toward the quarterback. So that's a larger conversation. But I think that it extends into what I was talking about where past rushing and having a guy that can add to those packages and really have juice in that area is its own position in certain ways right now. All right. What's your next one? All right. I want everybody to make sure you're paying attention to injury history.

And I know that's something that we probably say every year, but I'm really, really curious how this draft is going to go and if it's going to be better this year, because if you recall back to last season, there was no in-person combine. The medical information that normally comes out during the draft process was much harder to get to get. It was the biggest complaint that team personnel, scouts, GMs,

people across the league had about last year's draft process was the difficult. in getting accurate and comprehensive medical information. They did have some. They'd had kind of like a medical combine where guys who had, you know, really known injury issues in college came in and they went through a medical process. But it was very different than what happened pre-COVID and what is happening right now in terms of the amount of medical information that is gathered and then shared.

But there were a couple of like injury red flags in the draft last year that did come up and were an issue again this year. I'm looking at Caleb. You want to talk about him? Yeah, well, we'll get to the Bears in just a second here. But I'll start with Caleb Farley, the cornerback. He came out of Virginia Tech. He took the 2020 season off because of COVID.

But he was during the draft process, he had a lot of medical issues, particularly with his back. So he wasn't able to work out at all in the pre-draft process. He was off the field during the off-season program. And he had a really, really slow start to his rookie. year and then ultimately handed up tearing his ACL. So his rookie season was basically a wash. He still has like huge athletic upside, right? I mean, this is why it was a kind of a high risk, high reward type of draft pick. I think the Titans still really, really like him. They released Janores Jenkins. So they're very much planning on Caleb Farley being their starting cornerback

of the future. But I think that's still a really risky proposition. So, you know, he was a guy that, you know, I think you could like love him as a prospect. You would like look at his traits. and his size and his length. But sometimes those injury red flags, they're there for a reason. And if you kind of keep overlooking him, the Titans are an organization who have overlooked injury red flags in the past. And sometimes it's worked out, right? Jeffrey Simmons came into the draft a couple of years ago with some injury history.

And now he's turned out to be one of the best interior defensive linemen in all of the NFL. So sometimes it works. They spent money on Bud Dupree last year coming off of an injury. It didn't work. and right now it hasn't worked yet with Caleb Farley. And I would say the one other guy, the one other example here that I kind of pulled out pretty quickly is Tevin Jenkins in Chicago, who when they drafted him in the second round, it says, great, you're getting this left tackle. You have your rookie quarterback.

Perfect. This plan is in place where you dropped to this rookie quarterback and now you have to protect him. He had back surgery during training camp. And fairly soon after, you know, the back injury and then the surgery, you know, the back injury. it came out, I believe Brad Beggs from the Chicago Tribune was the first person report that what did you know? Tevin Jenkins missed time and had back injuries during the end of his career at Oklahoma State. Is that something that teams knew about?

Maybe. But it wasn't probably as well known as it would have been during a normal draft evaluation process. So especially if a guy has history of back issues, be very, very, very, very cautious, I think. So those are those are my warning signs of let's just not ignore. this listen to your medical experts and don't be like the bears i'm fairly certain that since 2008 the bears have taken three i'm doing this from memory i think they've taken three offensive linemen in the first round i think those three off or let's say in the top 40 picks the offensive tackles so that's what tevin jenkins is and it's been Gabe caremy

chris williams and tevin jenkins chris williams also had back problems that made him miss, I believe, his entire rookie year. So two of the three over the last decade and change have had to miss a majority of their rookie season or all of it because of previous back issues that required surgery, which is awesome. It's definitely what you want as an organization. Things are going really well. All right. My next one here, we've talked about this a little bit in regard to why there are so many receivers that are just littered. Every draft is littered with receivers at this point.

Every single class seems to have five, six, seven, eight guys. It's like, oh, man, that guy's really good. And I just think the age of the just-ad-water pass catcher is here. Like, guys that could just come in right away, be really good, and kind of transform your passing game. Obviously, Jamar Chase is the best example of this last year, right? I mean, what he did for the Bengals was incredible. He was an all-pro-level player right away.

But Jalen Waddle was really good. I mean, J-Laddle was a really good player and instrumental in shaping that Dolphins offense. last year. Kyle Pitts was just good. I mean, he was just a good player immediately. And there's a conversation to be had still to me about scarcity with these guys because the example previous year was Justin Jefferson. Justin Jefferson was picked in the 20s where all of these guys were picked in the top 10. So how much you need to spend and where you need to find these guys, I think is a more complicated conversation that we can say for a later date. But I do think

that these guys are ready to contribute right away. I mean, there is no more acclimation period with some of these young pass catchers. Devante Smith was really good right away last year. I mean, these guys that were drafted in the first round last season were able to contribute immediately and be real difference makers for the offenses that they were dropped into. And that just wasn't always the case with receivers. I mean, guys really started slow at that position for a very long time. It was kind of notorious that you couldn't get immediate production out of that spot. And now you can. And I think your next one here is maybe a theory as to why that's the case.

Sure, yeah. And I'll get to my next lesson or my theory here in just a second. This is something that I was talking to coaches and GMs and stuff about last week at the owner's meetings. Because I think there's a really interesting kind of shift in the calculus that's gone on in the NFL when it comes to the receiver market where there's a handful of teams who have decided that it is worth it to give up draft capital. and really, really high contracts, I mean, like record-setting contracts, to get this top tier of receivers, Devante Adams, Tyree Kill, being that kind of crew right there where, you know, you're realizing that this guy is going, or you believe that this guy is worth it. It kind of started with DeAndre Hopkins a couple of years ago where you trade for him, even though they didn't have to give up a first-round job

pick. That was probably more a failure on Bill O'Brien's part than it was a statement on the quality of player that DeAndre Hopkins is. But the DeAndre Hopkins contract, which at the time seemed like an outlier, became the standard. And this is what it took to acquire an elite receiving talent. But then you've seen these other teams that have decided, nope, the calculus there doesn't work out for us. You're looking at kind of the current NFL landscape, the college football landscape,

and realizing we might not be able to get a receiver that is exactly Tyree Kills caliber. you're not going to be able to replicate Tyree Kill. You probably can't replicate exactly Devante Adams. But the guys that are coming in now, year after year after year, are better and more ready to contribute right away. It was something I asked, I was talking to Matt LaFleur about it. I asked LaFleur about the traits and what he's looking for specifically in receivers. And if it's more likely now, if they think you can find those guys coming out of college.

And he was like, I don't want to, he didn't want to do a disservice to like Jamar Chase or any of those guys. he was like, Jamar Chase is a complete freak. I mean, he is like a one of one of one type of talent. But I think it's true that you're looking now at what's happening in college football. The guys are absolutely more ready to play now than they were five plus years ago. The NFL part of that I think is the NFL game adapting to what's happening in college football, a lot more of the same concepts that are happening there. obviously players are you know coaches will tell you all the time that it's like the year round seven on seven stuff is kind of trickling up these guys are just much more polished their route trees are a

lot more polished i mean five years ago you would talk to coaches about these guys who would NFL coaches would come in these receivers and say they didn't have a route tree they didn't you know they couldn't run NFL routes more and more guys are ready to do that now um so my next lesson is that as the one i remember earlier this week i was watching clips of chriselave and not even like route trees and stuff. It's understanding when you're in the blind spot of a corner. Like little tiny subtleties where you just understand timing and how to set things up and just stuff that you develop a feel for over hundreds and hundreds and hundreds

of reps in ways that receivers 15 or 20 years ago did not have the time on task to mold and to shape and to hone in the way that these guys do now. I think that it's really apparent when you want. watch players at that level. And beyond what the offensive structure looks like, it's just how comfortable you feel with every single aspect of the position. Anyway, go ahead. Yeah, it was just, I mean, the learning curve there is not quite as long as it used to be.

It used to be a real rare occurrence where you see a rookie, rookie receiver come in and have a ridiculous rookie season. And now, you know, Justin Jefferson and Jamar Chase, while they are extremely special players, and I wouldn't be shocked in a couple years if they're the guys that teams are to trade for because they're going to be very, very coveted. It's not as hard to find quality year one starters coming out of college as it used to be. So that said, as you're looking at this draft class and you're figuring out who is the right receiver for our team for our young quarterback, a lesson from 2021 and from that draft

class is chemistry matters. And it's not a terrible thing to say, hey, is there a receiver in this class who our quarterback knows who our quarterback likes, who our quarterback already has chemistry with, and we can put them together and week one, they're going to be ready to go. Joe Burrow, Jamar Chase, Devontas Smith and Jalen Hertz, Jalen Waddle and Tua, to a degree, although I think there's right after that draft pick happened with Waddle going to Miami, we had to remember that that Waddle might not have, you know, always been like the biggest, you know, to a cheerleader when they play together. But all three of those relationships carried over into the NFL. And when you have, you have

had three really young quarterbacks, not rookies, but really young quarterbacks who are trying to take the next step in their development, having a guy that you're familiar with, that you trust, that just understands your leadership style, how you operate in the locker room, and how you like to play, you know, those intricacies that you were just talking about, about, you know, when you're coming out of your breaks and how you like to get open and some of those kind of unspoken, those just intangible connections that you have with a guy when you have had a lot of reps together, that stuff matters. I'm not necessarily saying the bears have to take Chris Olavé. Oh, I'd love it though. But it might not be a bad idea if you want to do it. This is great.

This is something that I just wouldn't think about. You're totally right. I mean, I do think that there is some benefit to that. It shouldn't drive you to overdraft a player. But if you have guys that are equal or it's a toss up and you're looking for tiebreakers, I do think there's something to this because I do believe there is real value in that chemistry and understanding how it's guy moves and how he's going to come out of certain breaks and what his tastes are and where he wants the ball and body language and all of that stuff that does take a long time to refine. If you can jumpstart that process, I think that there is benefit to that. And I think we saw that, especially with the Jamar Chase and Joe Burroughs side of this, where

it's so many, what was the meme? It's like, fuck it, Jamar's down there somewhere. Like, I mean, that's true. And some of the decisions he made, I think, was rooted in that just inherent confidence that comes with time together. So 100% I think that's real. And in that case, I too wonder, you know, Jamar Chase did not have the best start to his offseason and his training camp, right? But this, you know, if they didn't have that previous relationship, would the quarterback have that much trust to know, hey, this guy is going to work through this? I know he's going to be my

guy. You know, just that that relationship, I think certainly helps. All right. Here's my last one. This is one that we've talked about before, and I think last year is just another example of it. Second round tackles is a dicey man. So I listed off the linebackers earlier. I want to do the second round offensive tackle since 2015. Okay, you ready for this? Last year, Walker Little, Jackson Carmen, who played guard but played tackle in college, Dylan Radunes, Ezra Cleveland, same sort of situation.

John Taylor, Greg Little, who bounced around positions, Cody Ford, who bounced around positions, Dalton Rizner, who now plays guard, Max Sharping, Connor Williams, Brian O'Neill, Cam Robinson, Jason Sprigs, Donovan Smith, Jake Fisher, Rob Havenstein. There are some success stories in there. Rob Hammondstein's been a good player, Donovan Smith, has been a good player, Brian O'Neill. But there are a lot, several guys that just have not worked out. And if you look at last year's class, Walker Little did not play. they brought back Cam Robinson on the franchise tag this year. Cam Robinson hasn't been great, but apparently Walker Little is not ready to play. Dylan Radunes did not play last season. It just doesn't work out very often. It's not a good spot to find those guys.

And for whatever reason, Tevin Jenkins isn't even on this list. And Devin Jenkins should be in here as well. It's been a pretty rough spot to find guys at that position. And I think that that's always worth remembering. And you're going to mention this here in a second. But I think if you look at a lot of these guys, a lot of positions, switching that just hasn't really worked out where you say, ah, he's probably not a tackle, he's just going to be a guard.

And sometimes that works to a player's benefit. Often it does not. And I think there are plenty of examples throughout this that show that. That it's not always as easy as, you know, we're just going to move him to guard and it's going to be fine because that's not always how it works. Yeah. And that was my last lesson. And I wanted to kind of integrate it with your last lessons because this is also about

offensive line. I don't think there's any danger. And if you're drafting a guy in the fifth, sixth round, and saying, we're going to figure out what position he's best suited for. You know, maybe he's a guard, maybe he's a center, maybe he'll be best to tackle, maybe he'll be our swing tackle. But if you're going to invest in a first round pick or even a second round pick, offensive lineman, I think you need to be really confident in your evaluation of

what is his position going to be. And there are some guys who their talent, the situations that they're placed in, they'll be able to succeed no matter what. You look at Penae Soule, who goes to the Lions last year. He'd been a left tackle. They moved him to right tackle. to start his career. He had to switch back to left tackle when Taylor Decker got hurt. He played fine there. I think he succeeded despite the switching the sides of the line. I'll be very curious

to see exactly, you know, where he is long term. And hopefully he can kind of settle in and be a long term left tackle, you know, for a very long time. But then you look at like, which of these situations succeed. Ray Sean Slater and with the Chargers. I almost said the San Diego Chargers, What piece of my brain just clicked in there to say. I still do it. So every once in a while. But like you just say, he's our left tackle of the future. We're making him our left tackle.

He's physically able to do it. He's mentally able to do it week one. That's the ideal situation, right? I mean, I know that's not as easy. You don't just get to find a slater there. If it was easy, every team would do it. But there's absolutely where conversations pre-draft about whether he was a left tackle and whether he physically had.

the frame and the body type to play left tackle and hold up in the league. He is not as big. He does not look like a prototype left tackle you'd pick in the first round, but the guy is rock solid. This isn't even revisionist history. At O-Line Masterminds last year in Friscoe, Texas, I watched Rayshan Slater pick Mitchell Schwartz's brain for an hour where just little tiny things about past sets and like details and why would you do this?

and if the angle is this way, why would you play it this way? And I just sit there watching. I was like, that guy's going to be awesome. Like, there is no doubt in my mind that that guy is going to be really, really, really good because the details matter at that position so much. And even if he doesn't have that prototype size and length and all that other stuff, I truly believe that he's going to be a technician that is going to be a very good player for a very long time. I didn't expect to be an all pro as a rookie, but I thought he was going to be pretty good.

Look, I bet Tom Telesco didn't even predict that he was going to be an all-pro as a rookie, but I appreciated the vision that they had to say, this guy is going to be our left tackle, and we're going to have him there from week one and let him grow into that position. Similarly, the year before, Tristan Worf's, he's going to be our right tackle. He's going to, this is his spot. He's going to grow there. It helped that they had a veteran left tackle there that you could just say,

here's where he's going to line up. You've seen examples as recently as last season where teams have messed this up. Alex Letherwood is the prime example of that for me, where he's drafted by the Raiders. They moved him all over. They tried to play him at tackle. It was miserable. It was a complete failure at that position. And that's not necessarily his fault.

This is the fault of the Raiders not knowing where to put him and what he's going to do best. He was fine once they moved him to guard. I mean, I don't think he was like a great guard. I wasn't putting him on any of my all pro ballots or anything like that. But, you know, when you're experimenting at midseason and trying to figure out, well, what's our vision for this guy? where does he work best? You know, I just think it just really, really shows how important offensive line evaluation it is, how difficult it is.

But if you're going to invest heavily at that position, and a lot of teams are, this seems to be a draft where a lot of teams are going to need O-line help. You need to have a very clear alignment between your coaching staff and your scouting staff of what is your vision for this player. 100%. And I think that was another one of my kind of offshoot lessons from last year is that scouting offensive line development pipelines are a massive driver of team success. And I think the best example from last year's draft is Kansas City,

where you draft Creed Humphrey in the second round. You draft Trey Smith in the sixth round. Immediately those guys are very good starters. Team over us from PFF, I think, tweeted out a graph earlier today just about the performance over expectation of offensive linemen drafted by teams over the last, I think it was seven years from 2014. The chiefs were number one. They were number one, and Andy Heck is a very good offensive line coach.

He's been a very good offensive line coach for a while. Some of the other teams up near the top, the Patriots at Dante Scarnacia, the Eagles with Jeff Stoutland, the Cowboys were up there, Washington was up there, Bill Callahan was their offensive line coach for a majority of this stretch. That shit is real. If you can create an environment conducive to offensive line success via your scouting, your coaching, and your plans for those players, it is a real efficient way to be a good team year after year

because of how important offensive line play is and you don't necessarily have to spend a top 10 pick on those guys if you can plan and develop them in the right way. And I think last year was another example of that. I would say honestly that Alex Leatherwood falls into the second round offensive tackle conversation we were just having. He was overdrafted, but a lot of people had him in the 30s, 40s, And those guys often have warts that you have to kind of overlook if you're drafting them in that range.

They're not as pristine of prospects as tackles you'd find in the top half of the first round. And for certain positions, that matters. It matters for quarterbacks. And I think it matters for tackles. And last year was another example of that. And we'll see what happens this year in another offensive tackle heavy draft. Yeah. I can't wait to read The Beast when Dane drops it later this week to learn more about which of these tackles might be ready to go.

because I'm not going to pretend that I know enough about these tackles to give you a full evaluation right now. But Dane Bruegler does, and he'll be dropping the Beast in a couple days. And he will be here a little bit later this week. We will also be here a little bit later this week. I'm going to be on with Nate tomorrow. We're going to talk about the receivers. We're going to talk about the top 10 receivers in this draft, according to Nate and some of the other guys that he likes. Very excited to dig into that conversation.

For now, you guys can please rate and review the podcast on your podcast platform. I would sincerely appreciate that. If you could subscribe to The Athletic, I believe we have a dollar a month promotion going right now. There's so many things. You can read, you can read Deiotee Lee's debut on the site. You can read everything he and Nate are going to be writing over the next however long.

You can read The Beast. It would be worth the price of your subscription just to get Dane's draft gun. It would be worth it. So please think about getting a subscription. If you do not have one, you can also read all Lindsay's work. I should mention that as well.

at theathletic.com slash football show. For now, we'll talk to you guys later. Appreciate you, listen. Talk to you soon. This was The Athletic Football Show.