The Ringer NFL Show - 2022 NFL Mock Draft 1.0 Superlatives

Episode Date: February 16, 2022

Welcome to 'The Ringer NFL Draft Show,' formerly known as 'The Ringer Fantasy Football Show.' Each week we will guide you through a different NFL draft–related topic, featuring player analysis, mock drafts, team needs, listener questions, trivia games, and much more.  In today’s episode we run through our highlights of Danny Kelly’s 2022 NFL mock draft by giving out superlatives. Later, we answer listener questions and play America’s favorite new game, Two Draft Jargons, One Lie. Jaguars - Evan Neal, OT (2:20) Lions - Aiden Hutchinson, DE (6:38) Texans - Kayvon Thibodeaux, DE (11:06) Steelers - Malik Willis, QB (17:36) Commanders - Kenny Pickett, QB (26:51) Saints - Matt Corral, QB (31:21) Lions - Desmond Ridder, QB (39:40) Patriots - Chris Olave, WR (46:24) Browns - Garrett Wilson, WR (52:04) Honorable Mentions (56:16) Listener Emails (58:26) Two Jargons, One Lie (64:14) Check out The Ringer's 2022 NFL Draft Guide Email us at [e-mail] Hosts: Danny Heifetz, Danny Kelly, Ben Solak, and Craig Horlbeck Producer: Craig Horlbeck Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Benefer is back. Brad and Jen are friends again, and Paris Hilton is somehow still making headlines. 20 years later, we're living in the world that the 2000s tabloids created. On this series, I'm going to tell you the story of a decade of American life through the trash we love to consume. From Spotify and the Ringer podcast network, I'm Claire Malone, and this is just like us, the tabloids that changed America. Listen on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. NFL draft show. My name is Danny Hyfitz. I am joined by Danny Kelly, Ben Select, and Craig Worldbeck. We have a big announcement. This podcast feed was called the ringer fantasy football show. But for this off season, we are renaming it, the ringer NFL draft show. Don't worry.

You don't have to resubscribe or anything. Everything's the same. We got new name. We got new art. It's a new schedule. It's like a big makeover. But the fantasy show, it's not going away. It's just, we will be back as we get closer to the season. But now it is officially. draft season because DK has put up his first mock. You can go to The Ringer.com, check out his first mock. It will make you happy. It'll make you mad. It'll probably just make you mad.

But mostly it's draft season. So our schedule, we're going to be coming to you here at the Ringer NFL draft show feed. Every Tuesday, the rest of February, and every Tuesday and Thursday in March and April. Because again, it's draft season. Again, Theringer.com. Check out DK's mock draft. It looks unbelievable. It's not like any other mock draft.

you've seen, I promise. Please go check out DK's mock draft. And we kept the email the same. Even though we're the NFL draft show feed now, our email is still ringer fantasy football at gmail.com. It's just too much to make a new email. We're not doing that. Just email is the same.

There's a hard limits on email accounts. You just can't keep making them, man. No. Also, I want to emphasize, we are going to be talking a little bit of fantasy. So for people that are fantasy fans, obviously, if you're listening to the show, you probably are.

We're going to talk a little bit of fantasy on the NFL draft show, too. So you don't need to go anywhere. Definitely don't unsubscribe, because we're coming back after the draft is over and we're going to be doing fantasy stuff too. So yeah. Okay, so enough plugs, enough explaining

what feat is what. Let's just get into it. DK did his first mock today and we're just going to run through the highlights of the whole mock. And we're going to give out some awards. We're kind of getting, you know, because you read a mock and you have reactions and we're going to focus on the reactions. And we're going to have D.K. kind of explain himself.

And I'm just going to start out. Explain yourself. With the... Justify? Justify. I actually get a lot of tweets like that. Explain yourself. Explain yourself.

You're like, that's what the little blurb was for. Anyway, I'm going to just start us off here with the, we watch the Super Bowl award because D.K.'s, with the first pick, the Jaguars select Evan Neal, the offensive tackle from Alabama. D.K., is this just like you watched Joe Burrow get creamed? And you're like, oh, the Jags probably shouldn't let Trevor Lawrence get creamed. Yeah, exactly. And the other thing, the piece of context here is this is not necessarily a sub-tweet for the Jamar Chase selection.

We've talked that one to death. But, I mean, he got sacked, I think, seven times. and I'm talking about Burrow, he got sacked seven times in the Super Bowl. It was under pressure in the entire second half. Their offense fell apart.

I don't want that to happen to Trevor Lawrence. And since I don't see them picking a receiver at this spot, I think offensive tackle just makes a ton of sense for them. You know, just in the long term, giving Trevor Lawrence

that blindside protector, the guy that he can trust. Evan Neal is really good. He's huge. He's like 370 pounds. He's 30 pounds. The nice part is he can play multiple spots on the offensive line.

So, like, not that you would necessarily move him to the left, but if he wants to start out at guard or at right tackle and then eventually go to the left, that could be a potential thing that they do. I just think he has a lot of upside, and it makes a lot of sense for them to pick him there based on his skills that he's good against the run. Or he's good in the run game. He's good against pass rushers. He just kind of got the complete package.

Yeah, it's funny. So the Jack's team is terrible, right? And I think that the worst thing that they could do right now as a franchise is say, like, hey, our favorite player is Evan Neal. But, oh, you know, like, Walker Little played kind of well for us last year. He was second round pick and, like, oh, you know what I mean? We can keep, I don't know, freaking Ben Bartch. You remember Ben Bart's smoothie era, DK?

Remember Ben Bartch smoothie? That was like 2019 Super Bowl. What are we talking? I do remember Ben Bartch. Oh, the player had this disgusting smoothie with Gatorade and Benazes. He was at the offensive line. And he went like St. John's like a tight end. And then he ended up putting on like over 100 pounds over four years.

And they're like, how'd you do it? And he was like, I poured Gatorade and nine raw eggs and do a blender. Oh, my God. Or something like that. I'm going to look up that smoothie right now. Is he still in the NFL or what? Yeah. He's like a sixth offensive lineman for the Jaguars, right?

I'm going to look at it up. All of this to say that Jacksonville's offensive line you could look at and say, oh, it's better than our defensive line. Let's focus on edge. They should be in draft best player available, especially with Doug Peterson's investment in the offensive line across the course of his career. Before we get to the smoothie, are you saying you don't think they should go of a meal?

They should go like Kavon-Tibon? I think they should take the best player on their board. And not go safe. Is this like too safe for you? No, to me that that player isn't Neil personally, but if the Jaguars like Neil the best, what I think is important is that Jaguars fans, NFL fans might look at their offensive line and say,

well, you don't really have to take it. You don't need a tackle as badly as you might need a pass rusher opposite of Josh Allen. And I think that would be the wrong move for the Jaguars. I think the roster is so bare that you just draft the guy you're most confident in and move forward from there. Okay, that makes sense. What's the smoothie, Craig?

I kind of need to know what the smoothie is now. Seven eggs. Seven eggs. Like raw eggs. Okay. Cottage cheese. grits, peanut butter, banana, cottage cheese, and gatorade.

Why does he have to do gatorade? I don't get that part. Gatoria, I think it's in the electrolytes. I actually remember he saying, I think Colleen Wolfe, who at NFL Network, asked why, and he was like, literally so I can drink it. Like, if he doesn't put the gator and he couldn't do it. I find cottage cheese plus grits to be fascinating.

I know, I was going to say, both of those are texture things. The texture of this drink. Egg yolks, egg yolks, cottage cheese and grits. That sounds... I would like to know the ratio. You know, like how much Gatorade?

Splash or is it kind of the base of the drink? We're like five minutes into this NFL draft show on the ringer feed, and it's like, we are already just turning off so many people. Right, talking about a player who was drafted like three years ago. I want Ben Barch. I don't want Ben Barch in our lives, so I want them to take Evan Neal.

Okay, let's get to another award before someone vomits. Yeah, all right. this is a D.K.'s second pick, and it's the take a hunk out of them award, a callback to the head coach of the Detroit Lions. That's Dan Campbell. The Detroit Lions are taking Aiden Hutchinson, the pass rush out of Michigan.

And this is, I think, an important award to give out because this pick and this conversation is going to be a thing. Hutchinson played at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, right? He played 40 minutes from downtown Detroit. Hutchinson has this yeoman kind of, I think, myth around him, right?

there's kind of this like the University of Michigan Wolverines like top big town football sort of guy thing that he gets and that that appeals to the Detroit Lions and their philosophy and philosophy and team building identity is a really important part of the draft teams take players off their board when they don't feel like those players fit philosophically what they want to do and what they want to be right if we are putting a premium on intensity we are putting a premium on character we are not going to draft players who loaf we aren't going to draft players who have off the field

problems. Like, that's a real thing. And so I think that a lot of people want to make this connection between Hutchinson and kind of his reputation in Michigan is this like intense dude and loves football and is crazy about the sport. And Dan Campbell, you know, also in the area, who has a similar approach where Dan Campbell wants intense football players and they want to be like crazy and like go get him. I don't think Hutchinson lives up to that

myth that's written about him, but there is some truth to it in terms of like the dude clearly loves ball and really really loves playing defense event. So that I think dissecting and getting into the guts of this like Hutchinson philosophically characterized fits with the lines want to do. I think it's an important thing. I think it's going to get talked about a lot over the next two, two and a half months.

D.K., what do you make of this? Because there's Aidan Hutchinson, the Michigan pass rusher versus Kvon Tibido, the Oregon past Russia thing's going to be such a thing as Soick was saying. And it's like, how much of this boils down to just Aidan Hutchinson is the guy who once pointed at the other left tackle and then knocked him over and called a shot? Whereas Tibido is like, you know, trying to like have a, brand and like partnering with Phil Knight, the Nike founder, with like an NFT. And it's like we can pause on whether those things matter. But in terms of the lions,

I kind of do actually agree that I feel like the lions, the lions when Dan Campbell's like, oh, we're going to take hunks out of people and bite their kneecaps. That's probably not the guy who's going NFTs. Right. So yeah, I think this is the big thing is and one of the reasons he gets compared, Hutchinson gets compared to like the Watt brothers is because of his on on field persona. Like he's really amped up. like, you know, for lack of a better word, just an absolute meathead. And I think that's exactly what Sean is a football guy. Meathead is good.

Meathead is good. I was looking for that word and meathead is the word. My favorite clip of the NFL entirely. I remember it was JJ Waugh and Ben, remind me, who's the linebacker Cushing for the Texans back in the day? Who is also just a massive meathead, like two of the biggest meatheads in NFL history. And there was a clip that was like from NFL films of them on the sideline. and JJ watch just goes eat eat

like he's like you know spood and like food like food into his mouth and then it like he turns to Cushing and it like turns into like this chorus of them just going eat eat eat eat like it was like the biggest meathead moment in the history of the NFL

just like Aida Cudson is an eat head he would eat along like it's just like so this is the I think this is the type of player that people are that's why they make

the connection in addition to the fact they both play defensive end are big players and they're both white, you know, pass rushes or whatever. Those are the reasons they get connected to each other. But I think, like, yeah, the connection is obvious. I think Dan Campbell would probably have joined in in that circle of, you know, because he loves that shit.

He lives for it. He's drinking 50-ounce, you know, black coffee every day just to, like, get himself through the day. So, yeah, I think just like personality-wise, identity-wise, it makes a lot of sense. We can go back and forth about Tibado versus Hutchinson, but I think just like, the identity that they're looking forward, that I could see them really liking Hutchinson. Is this the pick that you feel the most confident that actually happens?

Ooh, that's tough. Yeah, I think so. I think so. It just seems like the most natural fit. Unless Hutchinson goes first, the only reason I hesitated is because Hutchinson could go first, and that would throw things off. But yes, I do think right now, if I had to put money on it,

it would be Neil number one, Hutchinson number two. Obviously, I put that in my draft, but my mock draft, but I do feel that those feel pretty solid right now. Okay, so Neil, number one of the Jaguars as offensive tackle, Aiden Hutchinson to the lines as a defensive ad. Number three got, we're going to give the Joel Embed award for the guy. I can't believe this guy fell the number three in the draft, which is the Texans grab, Kvon Tibido, the past rush route of Oregon, which, again, I think eventually it's going to be completely exhausting on the whole, like, does Tibido love football thing? I'm kind of already going to be tired of it. Yeah.

But like, just as a player, this guy has higher upside than Hutchinson. Does he not, DK? Yeah, upside is a hard to define term, I think. But, like, athletically, I think he's better athlete. He's more agile, flexible. He's got a ton of size. He plays really low. I think he's more versatile.

You know, he can drop back if they want him to, not necessarily, like, you're wanting him to drop back in coverage. But he's, like, comfortable in space. He can play standing up. He can go down in the middle and play off of, like, a guard and do that type of thing from the interior overall. But I think, yeah, like, there's... It's not even just whispers.

It's like now there's a ton of rumors coming out that the NFL isn't quite as high on Tibido as like everyone else is in the draft like draft Twitter or draft community because there's these concerns. And this is something you hear every year with NFL teams. There's concerns he has too many interests outside of football. You know, Ben and I talked to him on Radio Row. And, you know, he to me, was very impressive because he seems very mature. He knows what he wants. He has a very specific like 30 year plan for his life. And he made fun of me for not having a 30-year plan, which is fair.

Right. So he's got this, he has this, uh, a holistic view of like his career. He's thinking outside of football. And some teams, and I think this is almost asked backwards, but some teams will say this, he doesn't love football enough. He's thinking about life after football. Like what? I wanted to ask Ben, how often does this happen where, you know, like during the draft season,

like people start to find out who these guys are and guys like Tibido, like, yeah, football's maybe not like the most important thing. my entire life, or it's one of the things I care about in life. Like, how often do those players actually not pan out because of that? Because of that is tricky, right? Like, I think that, like, we were talking about this in the pre-show, and Danny brought up Josh Rosen. Rosen's a good example.

People were like, man, like, he has, like, two political opinions. He might not be able to hack it as a quarterback. And then he didn't hack it as a quarterback. And there are a lot of reasons for that. Causation correlation or whatever. Yeah. But I think that you would find dudes in the league. who are currently decision makers now,

who'd be like, yeah, it's because he cared about other things too much. Like, he wasn't willing to, like, just die for the game, you know what I mean? Whatever.

It's worth noting that we had that same conversation about a quarterback a year later. It wasn't so much political interest as it was academic interest, and it was about Justin Herbert going back to school for his senior year at Oregon. And it was, why does this guy care about

finishing his pre-med degree? Why does he care about being ready to go to med school and become a doctor in football? Why does that matter to him? the Chargers I don't really think give a hoot right now Justin Herbert cared about that and still did right like Herbert and Tibido honestly both University of Oregon guys really really cared about their

academics Herbert had to stay four years to finish his degree Tibido finish his degree and I have very little doubt that if he has a journalism degree and I have very little doubt that if he did not finish that degree he was projected as a top five pick he would have gone back to school because to him he has to finish it and so it matters up until the point where they start playing football. And then if they're good, they're good. But I guess my question is, do you agree with teams dropping these guys down their board because of these reasons?

Oh, absolutely not. It is, it is, it is, it is important to get into the why of a player. You want to understand why they are doing what they do and what matters to them. Because if you have a guy that's like super duper money oriented because he wants to live like a big lifestyle that he sees on Instagram, you want to know that. Because once you get him into the building and you give him a check, you're responsible. What he does reflects back on you, right? So, like, looking at how a guy, what a guy cares about why he does what he does, absolutely matters.

Saying that because a guy isn't motivated just for the love of the game, you know, Cooper Cup route, you know, Matt Stafford beat the Buccaneers love of the game, right, whatever, for there to be any motivation outside of that to be a detriment is a far too narrow view. It's far too narrow mindset for general managers and decision makers to correctly interface and interact with and build relationships with their players. To me, it is a weakness of the front. office, not of the player.

Well, part of the thing that makes me a little mad about this whole thing is there's also kind of like this racial double standard of like when Tom Brady throws his helmet and screams someone on the sideline, it's because he wants to win. And when Odell Beckham does that, it's because he's like problematic and hard to work with. And like, I kind of see shades of that phrasing, but shades of that with the whole like Kavon Tibido, Hutchinson conversation where it's just implied that Hutchinson loves the game where it's like, you can also like point and like be the Watt brothers because you like

attention. Like it doesn't just mean you love the game. Like sometimes you just like want to be like a showboat. I would go so far as to say it's not you, could be the Wad Brothers because you like attention. I would go so far to say one of the Watt brothers really loves attention. Exactly. And that's a big part of his thing.

I think with anything, there's like you said, there's shades of gray. I don't think teams, the fact that teams care about the character and the football character, that's like the term typically used is like, does a guy love ball? I think that does matter. Because if you're fucking grinding all off season,

because you have a chip on your shoulder and you're pissed off. and the only thing you care about is like getting back at the people who over like overlooked you, blah, blah, blah. Like that does, that does matter. It's not like this is, we're not just saying, like we're not making this up. However, there are, you know, there's different shades where Tibido has enough talent physically that you don't want to drop him too much if you think that he's, you know, not quite as in love with football as some of these other guys or whatever. And so, like, there's, I think there's rumors right now that he'll drop a little bit. He's not going to probably drop out of the top 10, but he might not be the clear cut number one pick.

I think that's like the main thing. Yeah. He's not the clear cut number one pick that I think everyone else thinks he is or that we have been thinking he is for a couple years now. So I think that's kind of like, you know, the context they have to keep in mind. It does matter, but like to what level? I don't think Haifitz loves this pod as much as the rest of us. Yeah.

Right. Only Hyphitz is that's committed. Hyphitz has a 30-year plan. Yeah. Yeah. It's like he was reading about Ukraine right before this podcast. What is he? He is not focused.

All right. So that's the top three. So Dike's got Alabama offensive tackle Evaniel go to the Jaguars. He's got Aiden Hutchinson, Michigan pass rush, are going to the Lions. Kavon Tibido, Oregon pass rush

are going to the Texans. Okay, let's move around a little bit. Next award here. Yeah, so we're going to jump to the 10th pick here. And the award is the right off the gate, I'm not thrilled award, which is Danny Kelly has the Steelers

trading up to take the Jets' 10th pick in the draft, two draft, quarterback Malik Willis out of Liberty. Yeah, I just got to say when I saw that,

when I logged on to NFL draftofferringer.com and I saw that. I wasn't thrilled. The whole meme with like the guy grabbing his chest. It's like it hurts my heart a little to see that pick. I don't want to work in progress.

You know, I think the Steelers are kind of ready to win now and I just don't want like to have to redo the whole situation to like kind of tend to Malik Willis's needs. Well, maybe it doesn't have to play immediately. Maybe Big Ben can come back for another year and Malik Willis can sit behind him.

Oh, perfect. I didn't know it was on the table. That really hurts my heart right there. That would make it happy? Mason Rudolph Bridge, quarterback. Actually, that's probably the most plausible scenario. Mason Rudolph is the starter in year one. No. No, Mason Rudolph needs to jump off the bridge. This is why he was not. So, Hyfitz had the same reaction, too. He was like, oh, they trade up here. You know, that was kind of like

confusing, I think. And so the reason, so let me, let me explain it. Back off, first of all. Just let me explain my pick. First of all, back off. Okay. So at the Senior Bowl, which happened a couple weeks ago, a lot of rumors and sort of like open secret that the Steelers really like Malik Willis. So that was number one. I think, you know, they're going to be looking for a new quarterback, obviously. That's the main thing. But the question is, which one is it going to be? Is it going to be Pickett? Is it going to be Willis? Willis was very impressive because, number one, he's big. He's very well built. He's very athletic. And he didn't seem to have as much trouble playing in the rain, playing in the cold because it was rainy and cold at one one of these practices.

So his like physical attributes, I think, are what really jump off the pay or jump off the pay or jump the screen much more than any of the other quarterbacks in this class. So that's one thing. And then number two, like the question of trading up. And I got a few of the comments of this from this on Twitter. It's like they didn't. So in my draft, in my mock draft, I had them trading a second this year and a third next year to move up 10 spots. That's not as much as, for instance, the giants got back for trading back last year.

So the, um, the bears gave up a first round, a future first round pick to trade up from 20 to 10. However, what I think is going to have, and this is like a macro point of view about this draft, is with the quarterbacks not being considered quite as elite this year as it is in typical seasons, I don't think it's going to cost quite as much to trade up, especially in this scenario. So the Steelers look at this as it's a little bit of a bargain to move up and grab the guy that they want. None of the quarterbacks are off the board at the point where the Steelers go, so they get their pick of the litter there. And that's kind of like the context for which I was thinking about this.

I think the Steelers like Willis. I think they like his skill set. I think that they have the creativity and the willingness to kind of like work around him, much like the Eagles have done with Jalen Hertz over the last year plus. So that's kind of my focus. And I understand that Willis is going to be a very hot button topic, I think. A lot of people really like him. A lot of people think he can't play.

So this is what's going to happen. Ben, help. Here's my main thing. So a lot, like all of that tracks me. Like this is like a thing that I think we're going to have to entertain as a possibility. It's going to get sourced and talked about, you know, now we're going to get a lot inside the combine, whatever. I don't think that the price of trading up will go down. Yeah, that's that's fair.

Yeah, and that to me, because the thing is this, if I'm the guy who takes the discounted price to move back out of a spot and that quarterback ends up good, I'm twice the idiot, right? I'm definitely already the idiot. And so maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe it's like, all right, if Willis is good, then either way I traded out of the spot, I'm like, that's bad. But in my, like, in my estimation, I'm twice idiot. Like, I, like, was so desperate to move out of the spot because I was so positive that this guy was not going to be good, any of the guys would be good, that I took a discount

to move it back, and then I lost it. To me, that that's concerning. The other thing is that with the way that teams manipulate compics and, and kind of have an increased visibility on those, and then also the fact that there are just simply more compics in the pool. now with the adjustment to the rule of hiring minority assistant coaches and getting complex for that. I just think that there's a increase, there's a glut now because complex can be traded of like more third and fourth round picks than they're usually would. That makes it a little bit hard

for that market to be going down when there's just like so many more picks that are going to be available third and fourth round to trade. Yeah. So I'm not sure that that market has the effect that it does. It's going to be really interesting to see because the most interesting world for first round trades is the world we're in right now, which is, crazy active free agent and trade quarterback class, horrible draft quarterback class. Like this could be one of the quietest first rounds in terms of trades we've seen in a while,

which I know like isn't fun, but it is interesting to talk about it. It just shows what kind of the movers are when we talk about trades in the draft. Well, I think we have a lot of time to like do trades and stuff and like maybe the Steelers would throw on something extra to the jets to like make this sweet.

But I think I question is like, in terms of Malik Willis specifically with the Steelers, we're basically talking and tell me from wrong D.K. it's not about he played through like the rain in the senior bowl one time it's this guy is Lamar Jackson's speed with Josh Allen's arm but like the problem is that he also has

Josh Allen's like 54% completion percentage and like not really knowing what's going on in college right correct and and that's what Ben we talked about this on the quarterback episode a couple of times ago I still can't get out of my head

Ben being like yeah there are just some passes I watch on tape and I'm like I don't know what the hell this guy's doing I don't want that yeah I think that's definitely fair She said this past week on his pod that like Malik, no, it wasn't it was Hugh Freeze to Sean McVeigh

to Todd McShay. Man, I didn't realize Sean McVeigh and Todd McShay run until I accidentally said the wrong name there. So Hugh Freeze, who was Liberty's head coach, Malik was head coach, said, Malik doesn't know what he doesn't know yet.

And that's a two-sided, that's a double-edged sword. It's not a backhanded compliment, but it's a little bit of like a compliment with a poke. Right. It means that like, yeah, like he's just like, you know, he's a confident dude

who attacks and knows what he's good at in terms of stuff that he doesn't do like it doesn't really matter to him like he has the cardinal traits necessary to like get the job done with unbelievable arm unbelievable movement ability but the other edge of that is like he doesn't know what he doesn't know yet

is a reminder that it's not just like oh we have to help him process we gotta teach him how to process like a coach yeah and you can claim that's good like you don't have to like strip any bad habits down you just kind of get like ground zero and can build from there but like it is I like again like even with Josh Allen it's very hard to think of a quarterback who came in and had needed such foundational pieces needed such clear cornerstones that he doesn't or like have at least some semblance of right now and you see Malik Willis like that Josh Allen where you like you need to basically start from the bottom I think it I with Josh Allen I don't think you had to start from the bottom I think you had some things and in terms of like you could see him try to like rhythm with his feet it was bad and again there's an argument that this is in Malik Wilson's favor because you have to unteach bad habits to

quarterbacks you already have that and that's really difficult to do. Willis does have some bad habits but like there's, it's not like he currently knows, like thinks he knows how to read out like snag and you have to like re-explained to him. He just doesn't know how. And so like you just kind of start from zero and I'm like maybe that's good, but maybe that is, it's very hard to figure out. That's a great point though that maybe it's actually an advantage like starting like the blank canvas might be better.

Yeah. One of the most difficult things in coaching is, unraveling bad habits. It's so much more of the process than people realize. It's taking things that quarterbacks have relied on, other places have relied on as crutches, and getting rid of those and replacing them with something is really tough. I think, yeah.

And at the bottom, at the end of the day, if you're going to take a guy in the first round, I think teams are probably more, this is sort of the Brandon Whedon thing. Like, Brandon Whedon, when the Browns picked him,

it was always like, oh, he's got a good floor. You know, he's a lot older. It's like, why spend a first round? pick on a guy when it's like your ceiling is so low. Like with Mike Willis, he has an extremely

strong arm. He has, he can throw on the move. He's, like I said, I've said this many times, but he's going to be the second best rushing quarterback in the NFL immediately when he gets into the NFL. He's that good of a runner. Um, so if you have a ski, if you can design a scheme that brings him along slowly, we've seen coaches have the ability to do this with quarterbacks, especially more recently. Like, I don't know, his, his ceiling is just so much higher than any of the other quarterbacks in this class. He's, he's beginning to be my favorite quarterback in this class simply for that reason,

even though he's raw. Like, and I don't disagree with Solek on any of what he's saying, but I think I'm just maybe like being the optimist where he's like maybe being a pragmatic or whatever. It's like, I just see the upside there. And I think he could turn into someone like a really good quarterback. But it's going to take a little time. There's going to have to, you're going to have to be patient as a coaching staff. and as a fan base.

So it's tough. I mean, this is the situation with the entire class. Like, no one here is a slam dunk guy. Let's get to the next one here. I'm going to go an Arrested Development Award.

You remember Anne from Arrested Development? And it's, and Michael's always like, her? Who? Her? Her. No one remembers Ann.

What is she funny? What's funny? What's, you like her? And I'm giving that because you've got, D.K., you've got the Washington commanders. I'm sorry,

first of all, can we just, yeah, let's pause. and ponder the name. By the way, this is the first time I've written out commanders when I was doing this mock draft, and it felt very weird. It's a fine name.

It evokes little emotion. It is a name. It's a name. It sounds like a flag football name. It does. It's so bad. It's better than the other options that they had, some of the other options. Well, their options were limited by the thousands of names trademarked by all the law firms in D.C.

that were like, I bet we could just make like $100 million. If we just trade more these things. Anyway, I was just like, incredible. Anyway, go Washington commies. That worked out. Way to go, commanders. By the way, I love that. So, Washington's name is the commanders.

And the first thing that Craig defaults to is the commies. The other, which I think is one of the antithesis of freedom and American, the American democracy, the American political system. Doesn't fit the fact that this is the seat of America. freedom. Right. Some of the other options when they released like this was a leak

so I don't know if it's 100% true but like some of the other options were the royals and the monarchs like the monarchy. I don't... Washington monarchs.

No, the butterflies. The Washington Royals. What the fuck is wrong with you? Sorry, I wish they went with demon cats. I didn't know that was on the table. It was like straight out of like Taledana nights.

The demon cats. I think I should have just stuck with football team, to be honest with me. I don't know. Anyway, okay, so anyway, back to, it's like the bland of names anyway. Speaking of bad names. Yeah, Kenny Pickett, the quarterback from Pittsburgh, give him to Washington. But when I first saw this, I was like, him, him, him? Is he funny?

But like, I feel like Washington had RG3, 10 years ago and was like the coolest quarterback ever. And since then it's been Kirk Cousins, like Ryan Fitzpatrick when he was like old, Alex Smith, Taylor Heineke, Haskins, like, these are all, like, boring quarterbacks. And, like, Kenny Pickett, like, is there any reason Washington fans should see Kenny Pickett and be like, yeah? Like, it's just like, him?

I mean, totally, if I'm being completely honest, no, not really. He's essentially... Here's the sell. Here's the tagline. Kenny Pick it. What have Taylor Heineke made four fewer mistakes this year? Yes, I was going to say he's actually just sort of like an upgraded Taylor Heineke. Oh my God, that's worse.

You said it would be better. I mean, it's better than Taylor Heineke. That's such a low bar. He's going 11th at the draft. What happened are you copying him to Tony Romo? I know. Well, that's what I'm saying. Well, Taylor Heineke, in terms of like the escapability, evade pressure,

that's like what I was looking at. That's like Taylor Heineke does that too. Now, I'm not saying Taylor Heineke is Romo. I think that Pickett is more physically gifted than Heineke. So that, number one, that's a big thing. Okay. But, like, being physically gifted, there's still the question of like, is his hand size an issue

because he has small hands. But yeah, I don't know. It's tough. Oh my, okay. Wow. This is so discouraging. I will say. I just will say he is my top rated quarterback, but it is the question of ceiling versus floor. I think he has the highest floor of any of the quarterbacks in this class. Danny. The ceiling is not the highest. Danny, water gun to your head.

Who goes? No, real gun. Real gun to your head. Squirt gun. Super Soaker. Are we talking? Okay. That's a birds with friends. A bit for shout-up, but we'll choke a body. but water gun to your head. Pickett or Willis,

who's first off the board this year? Willis. All right now, Van Duel. Pickett's plus 175, Willis is plus 200s. Right now there's a market edge for Pickett to be the first quarterback

off the board. I agree with Danny. I think that Willis will end up more likely. So it's a good bet. What's the best dark horse bet on there? So corrals like plus 500.

Our boy, Britter is like plus 1,000. You know what I mean? I don't think Britter's going to be that big. I don't think the teams are going to see enough from him. But, like, Corral plus five, maybe. I don't know.

We have Corral later that we'll talk about. Well, let's just skip around. Let's just do Corral now. Okay. Yeah. So this, Matt Corral was the 18th overall pick. You went to the New Orleans Saints. This was our rest in peace,

Tassum Hill Award. Because Taysam has been a longstanding Ponzi scheme. Well, I guess it's a lot, like, nothing. No, he's a money laundering fee. Monday laundering scheme run by Sean Payton in the final days. to us that we should have known that eventually like, oh, Sean Payton looked at the total cap space

and he retired. No, he looked at Taysam's contract and was like, ah, there's nothing more I can do here. I can't funnel any more millions of dollars out of X into Y through the Taysom Hill contract. So here we go. But Tassum has long felt like a bit propped up by Sean Payton.

And now Jean-Payton is no longer there. I cannot imagine that even Pete Carmichael, who's going to stay on the Northern States offensive staff, is in any way to perform dedicated to Taysam like I don't think he was the reason

it really felt like a Sean Payton thing and so if the Saints are making a quarterback pick which I think the Saints are a team that reasonably could make a quarterback

pick because with New Orleans you can go one of two ways here you can say Payton is retired we've spent a lot of money over the last few years we've pushed a lot of money

from future years into cap to try to field these competitive teams let's chill for a year or two this has to be a long-term rebuild

or you can and taking a quarterback in the first round allows you to say, all right, let's do that. And if that guy's good enough, then we don't have to pay any quarterback's big money and that's going to help us out with our rebuild. Sick.

By the same time, you can draft that quarterback at 18. Let's say you hit. Let's say you hit big. Let's say you hit quick. Team's still really good. Defense is still on. Dennis Allen's still there.

There's still a lot of talent. And you can quite quickly say, what if we did the old push some money into future years thing again, right? And kind of just run that train back in the event that you really hit in round one. So they make a lot of sense. as a team to try to draft the quarterback,

not with any sort of urgency to compete, but also leaving the door open for that guy to develop and then to make this seemingly like three-year rebuild a much more quick like one year, one and a half year reload, which would be a really nice, lucky thing for New Orleans. I'm not sure it happens in this class, but they're a good team to take a first round quarterback accordingly. One question I asked myself when I was doing this exercise.

For Matt Corral or for the Saints? For Matt Corral and Saints. Ben, I want to ask you this. Would you rather have Matt Corral or Tassum Hills straight up? Oh, Corral. Yeah, me too. Because Crowell can throw the football. And he's a pretty good runner.

Yeah. Yeah, and if you're going to argue that Tason can throw the football, we're looking at 31 years old versus 22. He transferred 22? Yeah. But is he better or like a lot better? Because... Than Tase him?

Yeah. He's a much better thrower. He's much better. Yeah. Okay. He's not as good of an athlete. Right. Now, that question coming from the guy who is like better than Taylor Heineke's a low bar.

Oh, is he better than Taysom? Man, I mean, like, an average wide receiver might be a better quarterback than Tayson Hill. Oh, yeah. Might be a better receiver. Okay. But can Matt Karel play special teams, though? Can he be like an upback? Can he play tight end?

Think about the 53rd roster spot that you're losing when he lose Tazem. Oh, what a shame. Okay, so next question, would you rather have Matt Corral or James Winston? James. Okay. So I think that's the question that the Saints have to ask themselves. and I don't know what the answer is there for them. I don't necessarily,

I might be on the island with this. I don't really think James showed all that much this last year. I didn't think it was very good. I think that they were doing the same shit they were doing around Taysam Hill where they were trying to hide James the entire season. So that's just my personal opinion. That's why ultimately I won with Corral.

I do know James still has a lot of people that think he's good. I'm just not really in that camp. I don't really get it. I don't really see it. So that's kind of where I am. I don't, you know, I think right now, I think James probably still has a little bit higher floor, obviously, then Corral if he comes in here.

Corral is going to be, he's played only in an RPO offense. So it's like you're going to be pretty limited with what you can do with Corral coming in. But just long term, I think I'd rather bet on Corral than Winston. That's just me. All right. Let's finish out with the last quarterback here. Ben was going to answer. Oh, sorry.

Please, so like. I was just going to say, money gets put into that conversation as well. I think James is better than Corral. but I think once James proves he's better than Corral, you're paying Jamis more than you'd be paying Corral even on the middle of the first round contract. That's true. Yeah.

All right, moving on. Yeah, let's just get to the last quarterback here. I'm not going to lie, I'm so confused on Corral still. I'm kind of just, what does he do here? I actually kind of think of it. He's similar to Tua in some ways, but he's more athletic, and so he can do more in the run game. Tua's offense in Miami this year was very RPO-based,

very quick processing. the offensive line was bad, so we had to get rid of the ball extremely quickly. But Tua was a little more limited athletically to get around and make things happen outside the pocket. So I think what you're having with Corral is a similar style offense. He's a quick processor, but he has a good arm, and he's much more dynamic as a runner than Tua is. But basically, that's also a very polite, in your polite, D.K., that's kind of a polite way

of saying he's not a processor. Like, he's a quick processor is also kind of, an RPO offense is also kind of way of saying he's not actually going to, like, process all these reads. but like five minutes ago, we were talking about we're talking about Malik Willis and like, well, it's good that he doesn't know anything. And it's like, well, why can't you teach Matt Corral? We don't. We don't know.

Yeah, right. The difference is what their offenses asked them to do. So you have both like RPO heavy offenses. But Willis was more frequently put in a position where he had to read things out and elected not to. Whereas Corral is just less frequently put in that position. And now what ends up happening here is like a very dangerous assumption of rational actors.

Are coaches rational actors? Do coaches put their quarterbacks at all times in every instance in the position in which they are most likely to succeed? I would love for that to be the case, but it's not, right? So is Lane Kiffin putting Corral in a position where he's like never reading anything out? He never has like a full field read because that's what's best for Corral because he can't read it out at all? Or is he doing that because Lane Kiven's offense is Lane Kiven's offense, baby.

And this is the way we do things. is fully comfortable reading things out and is just never asked to because Lane is confident that from the sideline, Lane will always get his guy to the right spot, we'll always get a play that works. And he doesn't need to like just run like a basic West Coast spacing and be like Corral, make the defense wrong. You see what I'm saying? So like we, it's very hard to read between the lines of what a offensive designer asks a quarterback to do and how that reflects on that quarterback's ability to process. And that's why teams put such a high, priority on getting these guys in the hotel rooms during the combine and putting them on the board

because you want to see what they'll do when you ask them to do it as opposed to trying to infer what their head coach was asking them to do or what their offensive play caller was asking them to do over the years of them playing quarterbacks are hard on a sense and this is right but this is why like you know what i mean this is like we i'll never forget when dwayne haskins came out and it was oh he's a pocket passer which means he reads the field what but he was pretty raw. Yeah. Have we watched 10 snaps with Dwayne Haskins?

Like it was just like, it's Urban Meyer. And so it's like a good offense, right? Like everybody knows his name. And he brought, he's in the pocket. So he must process the field. Never.

Not for one snap. And so like that's the thing. It's like we, we try to make these connections that tell us whether or not a guy processes and they don't really work. And a guy that's a really, really,

really good example of this is the guy we're about to talk about, which is Desmond Ritter, who Danny had went, at 32 overall, it's the Detroit Lions. This is, we have it as the screw-it-why-not award. It's essentially the fifth-year option award, right? Where when you take a quarterback in the first round, especially late in the first round, you're saying,

we'd rather take this guy in the second. But if he's good, we want his fifth-year option because that fifth-year option is only available for players selecting in the first round. Only players in the first round, get that fifth-year option. The other second round, third-round, fourth-round. They don't get it all four-year-th-thru-year contracts. And if it's a quarterback who's good,

that fifth-year option is going to be much, much, much cheaper than the contract we would have to sign him to. when he hits the end of his deal. So that's why you see quarterbacks go. You have to make the decision way earlier if you don't have that fits your option too. So that makes it harder. So Ritter, where does he come in in this whole discussion

about processing and reading defenses? So the offense that we make fun of, right, in the league, San Francisco, Minnesota, Kirk Cousins, Baker-May-Fa-Foevick, put the quarterback under center, run play-action, right, wide-zone play-action stuff, and then run play-action off of that.

We make fun of that offense. because it helps like average quarterbacks look a lot better. Desmurter plays at Cincinnati. You want to know what they do on offense? They do that. There's a lot of under center. There's a lot of play action boot. There's a lot of like throw, you know, throw the slide, throw the crosser, right?

That's the offense in the league that we pick on. So it's very easy to watch Ritter. Mobile quarterback moves around a little bit, throws outside of the pocket on these undercenter, you know, moves and say, he's getting the same boost. He's getting the same benefit, the same safety net that Kirk Cousins and Jimmy Garoppel and Jared Gough did. but then when it's a clear passing down, get to third and seven plus, and they put Ritter

in the gun, they run big boy stuff and Ritter executes big boy stuff. So they run like, you know, 9-8-9, and they run like five, five-man-of-the-progression, full-field reads, and they run like vertical stretch. They run high-low, like they run all of the stuff that if you wanted a West Coast passer to execute, you see Ritter execute it. You don't see them do it on base downs, but typically they do it when they want to get to their passing downs, right? And they feel like they need to get a bucket.

they feel confident putting the keys of the car in Ritter's hands. That is not true of Willis. That is not true of Howell. That is not true of Strong, of Zappy, of Corral. It's kind of a little bit true of Pickett. It's less to a degree, Thaley Zappy. But it's true of Ritter. And so that's where if you pull peak plays, you pull highlight real plays,

Ritter is a guy that you feel confident has done NFL style processing. Yeah, I think the difference between Ritter and some of the other guys is like, when you're talking about the traits and everything, I don't think Ritter really, or sorry, I don't think, yeah, I don't think Ritter from Cincinnati really stands out. He doesn't really have like a defining trait. That's like one of the things I think that people kind of struggle with him on. And some people say, I just don't see it with Ritter is that he doesn't have like a defining trade.

Doesn't have like a huge rocket launcher arm. He's not the most twitched up speedster type guy. He's basically just, he's athletic. He's, you know, somewhat polished, I'd say, in the way that he can execute an offense. I know that some people will probably take offense to the fact I call him Polish. I know that for a fact because I had a lot of people to say that on Twitter. But I do think he's Polish because like Ben just laid out. Like he's doing higher level quarterback stuff.

He's setting protections. He's getting guys where they need to be set up. He's going through his reads, all that stuff. And he has four years of starting experience. So there's, again, it's like a vibes thing. Like what kind of quarterback do you want? Do you want a guy who's like really sort of more advanced in some of the mental parts of the game and the nuance parts of the game

where you got a guy who has like the power arm, the elite upside of like a Willis type player. And that's the question I think a lot of teams are going to have to ask. I know some people are going to see Ritter as like a backup. He's like probably a good backup. Some people are going to see him as we can definitely win with this guy because he's so smart and he's so good at some of the nuances that it really takes at the quarterback position.

Maybe he just doesn't have a defining feature. So I don't know. It's going to be very interesting. In reality, it wouldn't surprise me. all that much if Ritter went in the second round. But I do think he has the traits to be a starter in the NFL. So that's why I kind of had him with this. And again, it's the fifth round option award.

The reason he goes at 32 is because he has that fifth year option. Who's the last quarterback who didn't have a defining trait? Well, I come to him to Daniel Jones in a good way. It kind of does remind me of Daniel Jones. I know that some Daniel people probably don't believe in Daniel Jones at this point. And that might be fair. but Daniel Jones definitely flashes at times. I don't know.

Prescott to me is the one that people bring up for Ritter. He's a fourth round pick and it was like, he doesn't do anything well enough. He's like, oh, good arm, not great, not an accurate enough, not a good enough mover to be like, that's how he wins the NFL. And then he walks into the league and he wins with all of them. He wins with pocket management. He wins with decisiveness and he wins with protecting the football.

He's smart. Yeah, he's like, he's just cerebral. It's a narrow, it's a narrow, road to walk, right? The thing is we always think traits describe the ceiling. Trades describe the floor. Malik Wilson is the absolutely high ceiling. He's also high floor because at any time you can talk, run and go get 15.

It's good. Save your bacon many, many, many times. Yeah, but that's like, but that's higher floor in terms of like on a play-by-play basis. Is he have a high floor in terms of like leading a team to the playoffs every year? Like actually winning an important game? I very much agree with you, right? It kind of like depends on what exactly we're prognosticating. but for me, like the highest ceiling possible quarterback is a guy like Ritter

because he might end up being perfect. He might end up being good at everything, right? And that's like a career long sort of an arc. On a play by play basis, it's different, right? Because Malik Wills has the escape button, right? He has the Trump card that on one play can save you, right? So it's a very good distinction. Wait, so I want to make sure I heard that right.

You're saying Ritter, who D.K.'s got here at the 30, second pick, the last pick in the first round, you think Solek has the highest upside of these four guys career arc-wise? Like, ish? Like, it's not exactly that construction. It's just like, yes, in the sense that I think of Ritter hits,

he's going to be really, really, really good. God, I hope the Steelers take him. I don't want Malik Willis. This guy's got everything, like, oh, he's No, I think the Steelers should take it. But here's the thing is, the problem is that like, if Willis hits, it's because he's doing what he does it.

right now, which is just like outrunning cats, right? And like that's going to be awesome. Senior Bowl. Yeah, senior bowl. Like there's a big reason to think like that just keeps him a float and that gives him that keeps him float high floor and also gives him a high ceiling because like you can go and like make a Lamar offense out of him. For Ritter hitting is much, much, much, much harder because he has to hit on like every trait.

He has to be like the athlete we think he is, the accuracy we think he has, at least like I do, the processing that we think he has, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, because he is like holistic. He is the sum of his parts. That's why we say that like the pocket passer. kind of style of quarterback, that archetype is dying.

It's because it is an efficiency archetype. It is every single play I'm going to be right and you're going to be wrong. I'm going to execute in a way that you can't play over play.

It's an efficiency archetype whereas your big arm, big mover Malik Willis archetype is an explosive archetype. You may get me on every other play. But boy, when I hit, 60-yard score. And that's the league is shifting

right now to that explosive quarterback instead of that efficient quarterback. Let's get to a couple receivers right now. DK's also got here. There's a couple funny ones. You've got the 10th time is the charm award here is what I'm going to give you because you got 21st pick.

You got the New England Patriots taking Chris Olive, the receiver out of Ohio State. Did you do that? I mean, obviously Patriots taking receivers is hilarious. Are you like trying to get fired or like what are you doing here?

This is one of those things where the Patriots are famous for being terrible at picking receivers. I actually looked it up. Hyfitz, you did this article. I don't know what it was like last year or two years ago. Their history of drafting receivers early is not,

they didn't draft them a ton really early. I think Nikiel Harry is clearly like the big flashing like, don't do it, don't do it sign or whatever. But if you look back in their histories, like they've got a couple of second rounders here like splashed in. And this goes back to like 2003. In the 2010s, they've only picked one guy in the first round, one receiver in the first round.

And their second highest pick was Aaron Dobson in the same. second round. So they've basically had two misses. Does that mean they should stop drafting receivers? Well, can I just briefly read the list of players who literally were the next receiver taken after the Patriots' draft receiver? Like literally, the Patriots draft receiver, the next receiver taken was. And in order, it was, let's see here, Anquan Bolden, Greg Jennings, Mike Wallace, Keenan Allen, AJ Brown, and that doesn't it count D.K. McCaff and Debo Samuel.

So it's a tough. It's a tough. look. We can say it's not ideal. We can start it's not a good look. It's not a good look. It's not great. It's not great. No, so I don't know. It's one of those things. I did this as it. You're right, it's a little bit of a trolley pick pick, because maybe the Patriots are just not going to pick a receiver. They just won't do it. But they still need one. I mean, they need a receiver. They need a good

receiver to come in and give Mac Jones some more support in the passing game. Like, their receivers were basically all just a bunch of role players. I mean, no offense to like Jacoby-Myers. but he's not like a number he's not like a prototypical alpha number one type receiver he's a good chains mover but they need some they need somebody to take the top up a defense nelson agilar is not reliable um and so this was like kind of my thinking again it might not happen this probably won't happen but this is what mock drafts are for because i want to um discuss like what's best for mac jones i think having a very good receiver like chris oliva who can separate early in his routes who can take the

top of a defense who can stretch the defense he's like a field tilting type receiver. Like, this guy has, I believe, the Ohio State record for most touchdowns in his career. Now, obviously, he's played four years, so that adds to it. And that's another question mark is, do you want to pick a senior receiver this early in the draft? Maybe not. But I don't know.

I like Olave a lot, actually. And I think he'd be, like, a really good fit in this offense and in what he can do for the offense schematically and just giving Mac Jones more help. Okay. So you wanted a receiver. You read up field stretch and you brought up Nelson Aguilar. Two picks later is Jameson Williams who's ex-Ohio State receiver

then transferred to Alabama Why do you transfer to Alabama, Ben? Because Ohio State's got a lot of freaking good receivers. To be with Bill Belichick's boy Nick State. He transferred to Ohio's, he transferred to Alabama because he couldn't get ahead of Chris Olave

in the starting lineup at Ohio State. Okay, yes. But let's not act like let's not act like that's exclusively because Alave is better than him. A LaVe was already playing and had the starting job when Jameson Williams entered Ohio State.

And Jameson Williams did not transfer out of Ohio State until Chris Olave elected to come back for his senior year, which was very peculiar because Alave would have been a first round pick as a junior. Then Jameson went to Alabama and averaged, I'm looking up right now, 79 yards per catch or something like absolutely, just like universal out of this world. Jameson Williams, to me, is like willfuler again. And I don't know why, like to me, I look at Alive as a player who can do a

lot of what Kendrick Bourne and Jacoby Myers do for them. And I always go back to Daniel Jeremiah, who shared this perspective. I think like an NFL team sold it to him, but whatever, like this idea, Jeremiah said, where you want to build your wide receiver room like a basketball team. You got to get different body types.

Chris Ballard. Chris Ballard, right, different body types and different roles into the building. And when I look at, uh, uh, Kendrick Bourne and Jacoby Myers and just the Patriots unending,

unflappable ability to, separate on eight-yard hitches and slants. I just want, it sucks that Drake London got picked. I get out of USC, one pick before him in the draft. It sucks that Traylenburgs got picked five picks before him.

They need one of those guys. I don't think they need an alave. I think they have that body type, and they have that role. I love Alave. I would have hoped they would have gone for a different body type. I want to,

I like where your head is. One thing I want to share about Jameson Williams because we're not going to talk about him again on this show, but I think it's great. He beat Ezekiel Elliott's state record in the 300 meter hurdles as a sophomore in high school. He's fucking fast, by the way. So I totally get where you're coming from.

And he has an ACL injury? I believe it is. I can't recall. Yes. Torn ACL. So he's not going to run. If there were a receiver in this class, like first round bag, not like a day three flyer track guy.

If there were receiver in this class to run four twos, that guy. James Lewis. For what it's worth, just in my defense, even though I don't actually disagree with you on this one, Chris Oliva is expected to run in the low four threes. He's fast also. Also, Chris Ballard, he's behind the times in the NBA. Now you just want like five, six, seven dudes. Build him like the Raptors, baby.

So speaking of Ohio State receivers, DK., you've also got Garrett Wilson to the Browns at 13. But like, this is also a troll pick because you compared him to Adel, Garrett Wilson to Odell Beckham. Rebound. You're basically giving Odell Beckham to the Browns. Yeah, it's the rebound award.

This is where you date someone that looks like your ex kind of deal. you're the one who did the mock, seems so. Yeah, I mean, look, they traded for O'Dell Beck. I know, like, it's... This is the Giants taking Daniel Jones because he looks like he's limiting. Well, I mean, yeah, that's actually probably not untrue.

I know there's different people in the Browns organization now than when they traded with him, traded for him. But I do think, generally speaking, the Browns do need someone like Garrett Wilson in their offense. They've got a sort of like a dedicated explosive, take the top off of defense outside receiver. In Donovan People's Jones, they've got Jarvis Landry, who is like, you know, a slot receiver who can't really threaten vertically. And then-slot-shaming once again.

They drafted Schwartz. I don't know if he's going to turn into anything. I think Garrett Wilson is kind of like, again, getting back to the basketball analogy, sort of like somewhere in between People's Jones and Landry. He's a guy that you can line up at the Z spot. He can move all around. He's very exposed to back to the- You explain what that means the Z spot. The Z is essentially a movement receiver.

You're playing off the line of scrimmage. you can motion before the snap. It's a combination of an X, which is a guy lined up on the outside, and a slot, which is a guy that's lined up in the inside off the line of scrimbors, typically. But Garrett Wilson is a combination of the two.

He can move around, go in motion. He's very explosive. He's very twitched up after the catch. He actually reminds me a little bit of Cadarist Tony in his movement, suddenness after the catch. So he's kind of just, I think he's the type of weapon

that offense really needs. Someone who could run after the catch, take a lot of pressure off of Baker Mayfield, get the ball out more quickly and do something with it after the catch. They don't really have that guy right now. All right. I just thank you for explaining the Z spot. It just sounds like so vaguely sexual when people

just like, oh, you got to get the Z spot. DK's very familiar with the Z spot. DK knows exactly where to find the scene. It's a real thing. It took me a while. So the song is Deja Vu by Olivia Rodriguez, a delightful album, where she sings about how like a guy's with a new girl and the new girl looks like her and acts like her

and like, oh, how interesting that is. Dude, I love that album. That's like, Garrett Wilson to Odell Beckham Jr. Pick, right? Where it's like, listen, we cut Odell. It didn't work here. We're fine. We're over it.

Okay, it doesn't matter anymore. Who is the most Odell-looking receiver in this draft class? We need to get Odell into the building right now. And it's appropriate. Like, adding Odell style receiver made sense for the Browns when they added Odell. I think Garrett Wilson helps him in that regard. I think that he does fit nicely with, like, Donovan People's Jones and Jarvis Landry in terms of building out that receiver room.

This team lives in 12 and 13 personnel. They live with two or three tight ends on the field. That's the thing that interests me here is if they're spending a first round pickup receiver receiver, are they indicating that we're going to change and we're going to play with more two receiver sets? And at the very least two receiver sets, if not three receiver sets. I don't know if that's what Kevin Siffansky is ever going to do. Yeah. It's brutal out here.

So, guys, does this make O'Dell Olivia Rodriguez? No. No, Baker's got to be Olivia Rodriguez because O'Dell dumped him in, like, extraordinarily public fashion. No, no, no, no, no. O'Dow is Olivia Rodrigigo. Right, right. Yes. Odell didn't get dumped.

O'Dell was like, I'm leaving. Well, but he was released. So he would be saying, because he demanded it. He would be saying to Baker or the Browns, do you get deja vu when Garrett Wilson's with you? Yes. That is it.

Thank you, Craig. D.K. is sitting quietly. Like, I have no clue who Olivia Rodriguez is. I've heard. She's in the Apple commercial. You know that Apple commercial and the Facebook commercial with the animated? What she's in, like, a bunch of them. I never listened to this out.

album ever and I don't really not big pop music fan and then I worked at a camp for a week with a bunch of high school aged kids and boy oh boy did we dance that album a lot and I was like this is so irritating and then the first thing I did for the flight home was download that entire album and then it's good it's great record man it's so good it's honestly it's just an absolutely incredible album okay so like you was so like want to run through some honor rule mentions uh yes okay so all of the picks are very good. Danny did a great job. Nothing is wrong. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Okay.

Oh, shit. No. Okay. Trayvon Walker went 14 to the Baltimore Ravens. He is the edge rusher out of Georgia. We talked a lot about this edge class. If there are a lot of good athletes in this edge class, in my opinion, the most incredible, the craziest, the most impressive is Trayvon Walker out of Georgia.

He is a tweener type, which makes him very difficult to figure out how he plays in the league. But boy, oh boy, 6-5-275 should not move the way that he moves. He is awesome. Speaking of Twitch, David O'Jaba, the edge out of Michigan, went 16 to the Philadelphia Eagles. He is 6.5-250. If you watch Aiden Hutchinson film,

and every so often, there's another dude that makes a sack, and you're like, oh, who is that guy? That was pretty fast. That was pretty impressive. That was David O'Jabo. He's also going to go in the first round. He is unbelievable. We talk about high side rushers, outside track rushers. He is extremely impressive in that regard. Devin Lloyd, lineback out of Utah, went 24 to the Dallas Cowboys.

Number one, as an Eagles fan, I continue to love the Cowboys investment in the linebacker position. This is great. Just extend Jalen Smith. extend Sean Lee, extend Lane in Van derrash. They love to do that. We need a draft another one. And obviously the Michael Parsons pick went well.

But Devin Lloyd is a player who a lot of people view very, very highly in the linebacker class. They view him as linebacker one. I seem to agree with Danny that I don't love this guy as like a top 16 pick. To me, he is like maybe a back half

of the first round guy. That's right. The Zaven Collins level of needing development, needing time to figure out exactly I was going to work. He's a legit safety convert. He is like maybe 2.30. right now. That's a good comp for him, actually. Very difficult.

In terms of like their projection, Zavon was like literally 30 pounds heavier. But in terms of like figuring out how long it's going to take for them, like Zavon timeline is great. And then last but not least, Danny had a center going at eight. And as the resident like football nerd on this podcast, Tyler Lindenbaum, center out of Iowa, wide zone machine, I'm very happy that we're drafting out here, a center in the top 10. And if there's a guy who, who warnants it at that investment, man, Tyler Linderbaum, remember Garrett Bradbury a couple years? I came out of NC State

now he was in the Vikings. We take Bradbury to slap a couple, about 20 pounds on that son of a gun. Yeah, we got a top 10 pick. Really impressive. So I have a question for you guys. We actually got an email about this from Brian. And I want to read this email because you mentioned Tyler Lindobam

going number eight to get drafted in center. So I'm supposed to go that high. I want to read an email from, from Brian. He says, as a Jets fan, I'm intimately familiar with the draft process. I think that's funny.

Specifically drafting in the top 10. I understand the concept of positional value the quarterbacks, edge rushers are going to impact the outcome of games more than safeties or guards. But what I don't understand is this. Teams generally win by having better players. If you could be reasonably certain that a player in the draft is going to be the best or top three or top five at his position, shouldn't they be at the top of the draft board,

regardless of a position? Basically, hypothetically, if you had a crystal ball that tells you that Tyler Linderbaum is probably going to have a 13-year Hall of Fame caliber career at center or make like 10 Pro Bowls, if that kind of career was like almost guaranteed, wouldn't that guy be the number one guy on your board when the other players at Edrusher or quarterback, the positional value positions are not actually as good as they are in other years? So if the crystal ball is telling me, Hall of Famer, there's no question, right? And that's why when when teams evaluate, they evaluate on a scale, usually goes from a 5.0 to

9.0. Ben, why is it a 5.0 to a 9.0? I have no freaking idea. Some old scout did it in the 30s, and they just would never ever change. The 5.0 to a 9.0. It's like when we don't have the metric system in the U.S. Nobody ever gets graded above an 8.0.

And when I say that, I don't mean that. What I mean is like only a couple guys per class get an 8.0 or greater. And when they do, everybody freaks out. Like, if you remember last year, the Jaguars draft, like, video came out and their board was kind of like hazily in the background. usually they'd blur it out.

You'd kind of see it a little bit. And people figured out that Jalen Waddle, he had a blue color tab next to his name. He was a blue chip prospect. We used that phrase blue chip. He was above an 8.0 for the Jaguars. Apparently so was Trevor Lawrence. But they graded him as above an 8.0,

which is like perennial pro bowl, perennial all pro, gonna maybe put together a Hall of Fame career at his position. That gets given out one or two a year. And yes, if you have one of those guys, you take him. But you're in the Hall of Fame. Hall of very good. Like this guy's a job.

Jets fans. So Nick Mangold, who is not going to make the Hall Fame. Jason Kelsey is probably not going to make the Hall Firm to Eagles, but just, you know, starts 10, 12 years, anchor your offensive line. If Tyler Linderbom's like that, but maybe not quite as good as Quentin Nelson, why is it weird to take a center? Right. So you bring up Nick Mangold, right, who he's a seven-time pro bowler, two-time first-team,

all-pro dude, right? Incredibly good center. He played from 06 to 2016. How successful were the Jets from 06 to 2016? Not. I mean, they did have that AFC Championship year. They had the AFC Championship, right? They had like the Mark Sanchez thing.

The reality of it is this. It's like you need Nick Mangolds to make long runs. There is no doubt about it. You need that. You need high quality players, pillars around whom you can build your offense and your defense. There's no two ways about that. With that said, players don't get drafted into a vacuum. They get drafted into a hard cap league.

And so you have to ask yourself when you are drafting top five, top ten, what are we getting out of this player's rookie contract? Not out of their first three seasons, not out of their rookie. Where are we going out of their rookie contracts? If we get a good center and we're paying him top eight pick money, which is like, you know, low eight feet or like deep middle eight figures, solid. That's great. If that player's an edge rusher who make 20 million per year on their second

contract. Do that play as a corner, a wide receiver, quarterback makes $40 million per year in a second contract, we're getting a lot more juice. We're getting a lot more money. We are drawing a lot more value out of that pick. And that's why you see those premium positions get prioritized. Because when you hit, the value of paying your top edge rusher, $6 million, is way greater than paying your top center, $6 million relative to the market.

It's like if, and this is another question you're going to face with Kyle Hamilton, who is the top safety in this class, one of probably the top players in this class, talent-wise, as soon as he is drafted, he's probably going to be, like, what, like a top-five safety in terms of what he's getting paid? I can look it up, yeah. That's just ballpark,

but, like, same deal with, like, a running back. Like, if you draft a running back in the top 10, immediately he's going to be one of the higher-paid running backs in the NFL. And then, so this is, like, it's a question of opportunity costs. If you look at it, if you looked at draft picks as all of these, are sort of a coin flip.

Like we can believe this guy is going to be a superstar at the next level. But there's been so many teams that have been completely wrong on players who are, like, quote, can't miss players. I think that's where the idea of positional value comes into play here. It's not just the impact that they can make on a field, but it's like the value you get in that rookie contract that you have to take into account. Plus the rookie contract, or sorry, the contract values, generally speaking, are tied to how the NFL views position value.

You could probably sign a top center for nickels, like pennies on the dollar, nickels on the dollar, what you can sign a tackle for. Does that make sense? Okay, that does make sense. I have a Kyle Hamilton take, but it's for later. It's not for now. We're going to say, leave it on the table. That's good as you think. If you have more questions, e-mails at ringer fantasy football at gmail.com.

I know that now the show is called NFL draft show, but it's like just keep, we're getting the same email address. Ringer Fantasy Football at Gmail.com. Email us if you have questions about the draft, more high school senior pranks. I don't know, whatever you want to do. We got a lot of prank emails. We got a lot of prank emails. Thank you for the people sending the prank emails. So keep emailing us whatever nonsense you want, questions for Solac and Decat.

That was actually a really good explanation. I actually maybe changed my mind there. Let's get to the most important part of the show. Yeah. America's favorite segment. The best segment on any draft show in the entire world. I'm looking forward to this. Two jargons, one lie, which is Ben Solac is going to give us three pieces of draft jargon,

two of which are real and one of which he is completely made up. and we're going to see if Craig and I can figure out which one's the fake. So far, what is it? It's, I think High Fitz is two, two and O. And I'm one for one. I do cover the NFL for like my life, so I think I have a little more advantage than Craig. And I like kind of don't, you know, so it's like, kind of half in. Play's Craig, or Craig's playing with a handicap.

I said, Plays Craig is not a lot of play because D.K. uses the terms. Like, Dek has used the term. I got to be honest. I didn't know Pat the baby. Burp the baby. Burp the baby. Clearly you didn't know it. Okay, so like hit us.

Burp us. We have three today. We have one, cherry flip. Two, hands catcher. Cherry flip? Three, tight skin. Tight skin. Tight skin.

One, cherry flip. Two, hands catcher. Three, tight skin. Okay, I forget the rules every week. We're not allowed to ask for the like what they mean right Craig

we have to guess yeah okay hands catcher's real like O'Dell Beckham is a hands catcher like that is a term yeah it is definitely tight skin

is that just like a guy who's like fucking jacked I don't know no I think it's like no I think it's like Craig I love like Craig is like a good

I would follow a detective show of Craig just trying to learn what terms mean uh cherry flip I have no idea with that I guess I think tight skin's real I think tight skin is just like

Like there's not much muscle on them I don't know Like I But that's the opposite More muscle you'd have tighter skin But like do you Stretching the tensile strength of the skin People are like translucent skin when they're super ripped

I'm thinking about that That shirtless pick of DK. Mekap and AJ Brown from their draft cycle When they're like pumped like 45 minutes That took an immediate pick can just look incredible. You think tight skin means like they're not good at move?

No. What does cherry flip mean? I have no idea. I've been trying to think of cherry flip this entire time. I can't even think. Is cherry, forget football. Is cherry flipping like a thing? Like you flip the pit or something?

What is a cherry flip? Okay, you guys have to make your guess. You have to make your guess. I think cherry flips fake because I can't even think of what that would mean. I think that's fake too. You're both correct. Yeah. I was watching.

I was watching. freaking the Olympics this week and they said cherry flip which refers to some sort of like a jump or some like sort of like transitional thing oh that's great I figured I would grab an Olympics thing and I would get that in there

I thought I could get you guys with hands catcher and be like it's so obvious it's not I thought he was ready for it that is a good hands catcher right as opposed to body catcher as opposed body catcher right where do they catch the football do they let it get into their frame

tight skin is as Craig's surmised when a guy is really well built when he's strapped let's go no that's not correct That's not correct. Tight skin, as far as I can, as far as I understand it, it's usage, like Calvin Ridley, tight skin. He doesn't have much room to put on bulk. Like his frame won't allow for bulking season.

A light frame. Yeah. So it's like you don't have, your frame doesn't have much. Can we fact check this? Oh, no, no. I'm going to looking at Danny's NFL draft scouting glossary 2018. And I've always known tight skin to be a guy that like looks like, like, like, like his skin's about a rip wait so do you think that how much of like so obviously half of first round picks or busts

but if like half a first round picks or bust how much do you do you think that is because teams are just using these terms and they don't know what they don't actually understand them like tight skin and they think it's dkate k metcalfe oh he's galvin reddy he's like 40 pounds leslo no i wouldn't have said that like a guy like metcalf had tight skin because like it just like he's just like jack but you mean like right like tight skin is a guy where you can already see like very clear definition on their muscles and i i never took it to the full way where it means like And that means you probably can't put any more weight on them. Like if you try to add more weight, the skin will rip. That's probably true. I think both Solac and I are probably correct in certain ways. Like, I think what the bottom line is, they don't have room to add weight is the thing. It doesn't have to be a skinny guy in other words.

I'm just happy it actually had something to do with like muscles and like the body. I'm glad it wasn't like some of the music. Right. It's a classic draft term where it's like, all right, like just say that he's like filled out his frame. It's got tight skin. Yeah, exactly. That's just weird, man. Why are you thinking about it like that?

That's peculiar. I was going to be walking down the street later that. Like, that guy's got loose skin, tight skin. Can add more to that frame. My stomach is loose skin right now. I think this is one of those things where we were talking about this at the Super Bowl. So, like, we were just like, how do you tell what, how do you tell if someone is bendy? Like, that's kind of like a hard thing to define or to see.

Like, how do you tell someone has bend, you know? Right. Do they have ankle flexion? Like, these are the types of things that are hard. It depends on where. on what joint they're using a bend. Right. And that kind of dictates how they rush.

How do you figure that out on these great YouTube videos? I know. And then the other, so like related to that, my question is like, how can you tell if someone has room to add to their frame? You know what I mean?

Like that's kind of another hard thing to define. You look at the skin, D.K. It's like you weren't even listening. You just look at the skin. This is why the senior ball for many, many years had their way,

way in process visible and open to scouts and media members. And we would go and watch these guys, you know, just in compression shorts. And that's it. Walk across the States. Because scouts,

wanted to see how they carry their weight and how they're built. Yeah. And it goes back to like scouting is so inexact. They want to watch them walk so they can see how they carry their weight? It's not about like walk. It's about like when they would go get their height measure and their weight measure, they'd be facing directly to the audience. And you can see like how broad their shoulders are, how broad their hips are.

And like, all right, like, that guy weighs in at 307 and like two other guys are going to weigh in like 310 and 305. But all three of them going to look different body cop wise. And body cup. Okay, okay. And body cup kind of stuff. What is going on? It's watching them walk.

It's an exact. Yeah, clearly. It isn't exact, but man, oh man. Like, I just wrote that piece about Trey Hendrickson, right? And he, like, became this star edge rush out of nowhere. And you go back and you look at what the Saints were talking about in 2018 before he, he, he, like, exploded. And they were like, yeah, he recomped his body. Like, he came back and he's- Interesting.

He lost no explosiveness, but he's stronger and he's heavier up top. And that's what like, that's a lot of grits and Gatorade. No, he loosened his skin. That's what happened. He went on a loosening skin therapy. Oh, my God. All right. Let's get out of here for this guy somewhere bad.

All right. Thank you, D.K. Thank you, Sulek. Thank you, Craig. Thank you to everyone who got through the whole tight skin, loose skin thing. My God, I'd never want to talk about that ever again. Thank you so much for everyone listening. Email us at NFL draft.

Sorry. Oh, God, almost got the whole thing wrong. That's not real. Email us at ringerfantasy football at gmail.com. Go to NFLdraft. org.org. Which is where Dek's big board is. Go to the ringer.com.

You can seek DekK's mock draft. It is up right now. Please, the draft guy. The mock draft, it is just absolutely awesome. Check it on your phone, mobile, everything. And if you can't remember any of the websites, the Hyphitz just listed out, just go to the show description and click.

Boom. Bang. Okay. Thank you, Irvin, for listening most of all. Thank you, Lauren. Lauren. Thank you, Duolipa. Yes, D.K.

Wow. I think it was Hyphitz and I. Yeah, you guys. You love future nostalgia, right? Yes. It's like the best pop album in last five years. It really is. So, check that out.

I wanted to throw out something, and this is going to make me sound like a boomer, which I almost am. I wanted to throw out something that was in the same range as like the Olivia Rodrigo. Like, are they, like, new pop stars that are huge? Dew has been around. She was older, but like...

Okay, but they're like in this generation speaking. From your perspective, sure. It's closer to millennial and... Rodrigo is smack dab in the middle of Gen Z. She's like 17 years old right now. She is the songbird of Gen Z. Okay, okay. That was very beautiful, Craig.

Thank you. Duo is 26, and Olivia Rodriguez goes like 17 or whatever. Duo was at the game, and I was like, oh, they finally stopped showing celebrities and started showing strangers. And then it came on the screen, Duo, but I was like, ah, dang, I still don't know people. That's my bad. I should have stay at home because I was doing better alone. Yikes. But when you start with my own.

All right, goodbye, everyone. Yaki.