The Ringer NFL Show - Why Will Levis Is Going to Be the No. 1 Pick, Plus Other Potential First-Round QBs | The Ringer NFL Draft Show

Episode Date: December 22, 2022

Welcome back to another episode of The Ringer NFL Draft Show! This week, Ben reveals why he thinks Kentucky QB Will Levis will be the first pick in next year’s draft (1:48). Along the way, the guys discuss a handful of quarterbacks that may sneak into the first round (16:32), as well as how they compare to USC’s Caleb Williams (35:42). Finally, they close with America’s favorite segment, “Two Jargons, One Lie” (37:07). Will Levis, Kentucky (1:48) Anthony Richardson, Florida (16:32) Hendon Hooker, Tennessee (26:09) Tanner McKee, Stanford (28:30) Check back in on this feed every Thursday for more of The Ringer NFL Draft Show. Check out our Weekly Fantasy Football Rankings for positional rankings and more! Email us! [e-mail] Hosts: Danny Heifetz, Danny Kelly, Ben Solak, and Craig Horlbeck Producers: Craig Horlbeck and Kai Grady Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, everyone, this is Danny Hyfitt's quick programming note for the rest of the season, instead of our weekly preview show on Fridays, we're going to be doing the Ringer NFL draft show on Thursdays here on this feed. You don't have to go anywhere else to get it. Keep coming to the Ringer Fantasy Football Show feed. And on Thursdays, we're going to have more Ringer NFL draft shows for you. That's going to be in lieu of our Friday weekly recap. Also, with the holidays coming up and, like, Christmas is on Sunday and New Year's Eve's on Sunday, we're going to pause the Sunday shows for the rest of the regular season. And we're going to give you our weekly recaps as part of the Monday show on

waivers on Mondays. So keep that coming. So Monday's going to be waivers. We're still going to be doing power hour on Wednesdays and the NFL Draft show on Thursdays. Thank you. Enjoy the show. Welcome to the Ringer NFL draft show.

My name is Danny Hyfitz. I am joined by Danny Kelly Ben Solack and Craig Horlebeck. We're coming to you here on the Ringer fantasy football show feed every Thursday between now and the NFL draft. And we are coming to you. This is part two, baby, because we ended on a cliffhanger last week. You thought the way of water was the sequel of this month? No.

It's this show. And it didn't take 13 years. to make it. I don't get that reference. Avatar? Oh, is that what they're calling it? Yeah. I saw a Black Panther, too.

It was just like better Avatar. Anyway. Terrible take. Have you seen the new Avatar, Craig? I have. It's good? It's awesome. It'll knock your socks off.

I don't know this is real, but all right. I have seen it. I went to the premiere on Monday. It's very good. Cool. We ended the last episode. It's so like basically saying

neither Bryce Young or C.J. Stroud would actually go first in the draft. It would be the first quarterback off the board. kind of blew my mind. Solac, who do you actually think is going to be the first quarterback off the board? Will Levis from the University of Kentucky. Yes. Is that the guy who puts mayonnaise in his coffee?

And eats banana peels and I'm sure a myriad of other culinary, unacceptable decisions. Oh, I love it. We have to try the coffee mayonnaise thing one day. See, okay. Now, stop. This is unbelievable. Stop. What Craig just said is why he's going to go first overall.

I'm like, oh, he's banana peels. And then just, you know, Craig, just like, you know, stereotypical white dudes just like, ah, I fucking love it, man. Got to see what this is all about. And that's every dude in a front office. Get me in a front office. So the GMs are just like, oh, yeah, mayonnaise coffee. Nice white man with a handshake.

Wait, you need to expand on that because what are you actually talking about? Are you saying that because he's white and tall, everyone's going to, they like him more? I mean, like, not just yes, but like, yes. Like, why, like, why did Zach Wilson go before Trey Lance and Justin Fields? Why did Mr. Chubisky go before Deshaun Watson and Power? Patrick Mahomes. Why did Daniel Jones go before Dwayne Haskins? Like, why? Like, the prototypical type A alpha male leadership stereotype matters magnitudes more to NFL draft decision makers than it does to us watching

on the outside, then it does to the average media member than it does to the average fan. And in that mattering, in that valuing, myths are then created to justify these players, right? Like, Zach Wilson is a perfect example. He's like Patrick Mahomes. He's like Aaron Rogers. No, he wasn't, not at all. Not for a second. But we said it, right?

We leaked it to, you know, reporters and to John McShay and then Mel Khyper and the people who talked about these things. And, you know, we talked about it with Daniel Jeremiah and it got to the fans, whatever. So that when the just drafted Zach Wilson to two, because he was a nice kid with a good arm, and everyone was like, yeah, he's the next Mahomes, which is just ludicrous, right? Daniel Jones, like, yeah, his coach in college was Dave Cutcliffe, who, coach the mannings. Yeah.

Thereby, Daniel Jones will be a manning. That was a thing. Like Dave Gettelman brought that up when he drafted Daniel Jones. Like this, we generate myths around these players. And particularly, these,

these, these, like, positive theories around white quarterbacks who are like Tai Bay personalities who are chill. Because, like, the guy who didn't get that was Justin Herbert. Herbert goes six. He goes after two and after Joe Burrow.

And it's because Justin Herbert went back for his senior year in Oregon to finish his biology degree because he loves science. And everybody was like, what's up with that, man? He might have leadership problems. He can't lead. Men won't respect him because he wanted to do his homework.

This happens year after year after year after year after year. Will Levis played against Ole Miss early in the season. I'm 98% sure it was the Ole Miss game. And Todd McShay was on the sideline. McShea who does a draft work for ESPN is also a sideline reporter during the college games. And Todd McShay, they threw it down to Todd for the pre-opening kickoff, you know, talking head moment. They go, what are we watching this game?

Todd, what are they saying on the sideline? And Tom McShay took the mic and he said, verbatim, I will die for Will Levis right now. He was like, Will Levis is like, verbatim, stop it. Exact quote. He was like, this is like if George Washington

had an arm. Like, he was like, this is if Mahatma Godmee was more. Like, that's the way he talked about Will Levis. You can find this. You can take my daughter right now. In marriage. No more putting words in the mouth of time.

He said, like, NFL teams are enamored with the leadership. They see the toughness. This guy lost offensive linemen. He lost receivers in the NFL. He's still competing. He loves the game so much. They love the way he's in the room. He's so smart.

He's a great leader of men. He's brought this Kentucky program out from nothing. Like, Will Levis is everything. And then he went and like completed just over 50% of his passes in a loss. And Will Levis's production this year went through the floor. Liam Cohen, his ex-office coordinator from 2021, left to join the Rams coaching staff. the Kentucky Wildcats hired Rich Skangarello, another NFL castoff from the Shanahan Tree,

another wide zone guy. Scangarillo came in, the offense wasn't as good. So the same offense that has made like a bunch of NFL quarterbacks, Jared Gough, Baker Mayfield, Kirk Cousins, Ryan Tannahill, look better than they are. Levis was good in it for one year.

And then his production fell off and the NFL is going to get got by the same thing they've been getting got by, the same system for the past like five, six years. And last little not least, And this is like the critical thing. It's like at the root of all of this, like talking about the myth making around big white quarterbacks,

talking about the wide zone offense and how it affects evaluation, talk about CJ Stroud and Bryce Young and what they are. Everybody will fall back on the fact that Will Levis has tools. His tools aren't even that great. He's not that fast. He's not that big arm. He's a good arm.

He's got good mobility. I think he has a scintillating arm. Like to me, I can actually... Sintillating. I felt that in my gizzard. I can kind of see how the NFL would fall in love with that guy just based. on like the deep ball.

It's just a beautiful deep ball that he throws. The illegal name is going to be said, though. He who must not be named will be named. People will say Josh Allen when they talk about Will Levis. They'll say, oh, Josh Allen was also a big, huge, strong-armed white quarterback

with bad production. Will Levis is going to be the same thing. A, he won't be, because nobody's going to develop with Josh Allen. He can't set your clock to that. But secondly, like, he is not the same athlete. He's not the same arm talent as like Alan, Herbert, Mahomes.

The guys who like really, live off just being so physically gifted. Levis does not have that talent. He's got good talent. He's got tools worth developing. But it's not like we have to trip over ourselves to go draft this guy number one level of tools. With that said, NFL's going to do it because that's what this guy, that's what this guy represents to them. I mean, he looks like Thad Castle from Blue Mountain State.

He looks like the most stereotypical like football villain from a movie. He's central casting, which is I think what you're pointing out. Solek, which is that like, and it's a real thing. It happens with coaching all the time where it's like, no one knows who will be successful in a given role or not. And people kind of end up hiring people who remind them of themselves. And that happens with coaching a lot. But it kind of extent the quarter draft is just a hiring process.

So the same biases come in. I guess I see what you're saying where Will Leves could go first because we're talking about Bryce Young, where as electric as he is, you know, we're talking, you know, and C. J. Stroud has like vibes of like Jared Gough. And it's like, ironically, the lions are in the top five maybe of the draft. we'll see where the lines get a pick, you know, from the Rams. They have Jared Goff. Maybe they don't need Stroud.

And they look at Bryce Young. They're like, do we want a short person? The Seawks might be in position to maybe take a quarterback. Do they want a short quarterback again like Russ? And then suddenly it's like this Will Levis actually going to go first. Like the Houston Texans are going to take Will Levis. Dan Campbell and Will Levis are going to headbutt each other back and forth. You've ever seen those like Russian slap fights where they like hold on on the table super hard and they just hit each other twice again?

They're going to do that in the Combine Meeting Room. That's a new game show coming out. There's a new show called like Slapshot where it's just people slapping each other. Yes. What's the thing where they slap each other with like the pancakes or the tortillas or whatever? That was like a TikTok trend.

Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, Will Levis and Dan Campbell are going to engage in some sort of post Greco-Roman physical contest. And if Will Levis indoors for at least like two minutes, Dan Campbell will draft him first overall. Greco-Roman style.

I'm just confused. So Mel Kuiper compared Will Levis. Levis, right? Not Levi. Levis. This man. has a Levi-Jean sponsorship just waiting to happen. Just has to slightly change the pronunciation of his last name.

Get the apostrophe of it. He should change. Dude, how much money would you need to throw an apostrophe in your name? If you're Will Evans, how much money do you really need to throw an apostrophe in your name for Levi's? He doesn't even need to legally do it. Just say he's like,

you know, in the commercial, I loved Levi's jeans so much that I added an apostrophe to my name. Like, that writes itself. That's so easy. That's true. I wouldn't need that much money,

but I would feel confident getting a lot of money out of the gene people. I'm like, you know this is special. It's the problem when there's a problem when there's an obvious sponsor thing you want to do is like, well, do they do that? They literally sponsored a football stadium. Like, they obviously will do it. They have Jimmy G.

Wow. Get Will to the Niners. Absolutely. Yeah. It's meant to be. So he ate a banana peel that was like all brown. Like it's not only bread into yellow banana. The banana he bit into it was brown.

It was like a banana bread banana. Okay. But was this a one-time thing or does he like continuously eat banana peels? I think it's for TikTok. So he just did it once as like a fat or does he actually eat banana peels? I think. he legitimately puts mayonnaise in his coffee. And then people found this out.

And then there was a hype about it. And then the content machine demanded more. And Will Levis went online and was like, weird food thing you can do question mark. And the internet was like, you could eat banana peels if you wanted to. And he was like, all right, we'll move on to us now.

So he's a content creator. The mayonnaise thing is not a huge deal. People put butter in their coffee. Putting like fat in your coffee helps with like, it's crazy. Is mayonnaise fat? Is that what's in mayonnaise? Yeah.

Oil. I don't know what's in mayonnaise. Egg, egg, something? Yeah, it's oil and eggs. Egg yolk. You blend it up. You like emulsify it. You ain't never made it an aole?

Not in a coffee. I don't like mayonnaise. I like mayo. I like mayonnaise. I've never once looked at it, looked at my mug of coffee. I've been like, hmm, you two.

It's like a modern thing. It's like bulletproof coffee. People put butter in their coffee. It's like a new trend where you put fat in your coffee and it helps delay the release of caffeine or something like that. I don't know. This is how Craig talked about kombucha, like six months before you started drinking kombucha every day.

And I bet Craig's by the end of the draft will be actually doing this every day. Once a week. Just your Saturday. Yeah. Well, Saturday pick me up. All right. We can move on from Levis in a moment, but just to bullet point this, is there a world the way we are discounting him?

Like, what if he's good? Is Stafford the right comp? I think the Herbert thing really kind of like opened my mind to having a more open mind about guys. Like, I think the Herbert discussion coming into the draft was like, he's not very good. was like almost a shock when he was taken in the top 10 and we made fun of the Chargers. And now look at him like a couple of years later, everyone thinks he's the best quarterback in the NFL. I'm willing to have an open mind about this.

And I think more than Solek, maybe like I kind of see what the NFL sees in him in terms of like, he does have a big arm. He can flick at the wrist, he can get 50 yards down with you. He's big, tough, rugged. I do think that the interpersonal stuff matters because like these coaches are going to have to work with the guy like, 57 hours or 80 hours a week or whatever and they're going to have to, they want a guy who's like going to work and all that. And when a guy is likable, coaches work harder on him and the locker room has more

patience for him developing. See Wilson, Zach as part of the issue, right? Like, it's okay to be bad when you're young. It's just you have to make sure everybody around you is okay with that. And Levis will because Levis has good character. And that's why teams do care about it. It does matter to some degree. And you said a word there, I think that matters, young. Like, the other thing about Levis is like Josh Allen,

when he came into the NFL, he's like 21 or 22. Levis is already, he's going to be a 24-year-old rookie. That's wild. So in his fifth-year option, like, his rookie contract's over, he'll be like 29 years old. And the reason he's so old, by the way, like, he's built as this project. The reason he's so old is because he was the backup at Penn State behind Sean Clifford for three years, right? Yeah. And they would use him as like a gadget guy, but he couldn't squarely beat Sean Clifford out.

Sean Clifford, who's still at Penn State, Sean Clifford, who's not going to be an NFL. He goes to Kentucky. He gets the McVeigh offense. He has incredible production for a year. And then the McVeigh guy leaves, and the production isn't as good. And so, like, he's old with one-year production

in an offense that tends to be a cheat code. It's very similar to, like, the Kenny conversation or the Zach Wilson conversation, who Jeff Grimes, is his office coordinator at BYU, and they ran the wide-zone play action offense. Yeah, I think overall, Hi Fitz, you mentioned Stafford. I came up with the high-end low-end comp.

The high-end comp for Levis, the best possible thing that he could become is the guy that Matt Stafford defenders think Matt Stafford is. The low-end comp is the guy that Matt Stafford haters think Matt Safford is. Too many turnovers, over-hyped, just everyone's so enamored with his arm, but he's actually not very good versus the Matt Stafford lover.

People defend Matt Stafford thinks he's like one of the better quarterbacks in the NFL. I think that's kind of like the range of it. He's going to be like a litmus test or like a Rorschach test for a lot of people. The Herbert comment is, I like that. I do think that that's a good point to make because Levis was so much more accurate in 2021 than he was in 2022. Remarkably, like, okay, the offense was better. But he just hit throws far better two years ago than he did. One of the things about Justin Herbert coming out was like, this guy's not accurate.

Like, he's just missing throws. Why? And it was because he was playing with some NFL was on the offensive line, but he had no NFL is in terms of past catchers. And I think that now as you've seen him in Los Angeles to be so accurate, and we go back to his Oregon film and wonder why didn't this show up. The caliber of talent, the expectation of be on your route where you're supposed to be, when you're supposed to be there.

For a guy who processes like Herbert did, he just never got online with and jive with those Oregon receivers. I'm not sure that's a one-to-one comparison for Leviss, because I don't think Levis processes in the same way that Herbert does. But it is worth noting that Levis is pretty deficient of NFL. fell talent on his 2022 Kentucky Wildcats roster. And that does make it tough to parse some of these traits where it's like, all right, just how strong an arm, just how accurate is he.

It is affected in terms of the visuals of it by your surrounding cast. I think to wrap up, Levis, like, I remember last year watching him and kind of over the summer and during the, like, as the season was beginning, I was like kind of excited about Levis. I was like, you know, he showed some really interesting things last year. Like, he's running around. he's like fist pumping, he's running over guys, running through guys. He's like really tough, rugged type quarterback. And I was getting pretty excited about him.

But then this year just left you wanting something more. You know what I mean? And add in the fact that he's 24 years old and it kind of feels like he's being overhyped. But at the same time, I can definitely see like what the traits that the NFL is going to like about this guy. So at the end of the day, I kind of like him. I think he's overhyped. But I think the NFL is going to love him. So, to go back to Ben's, like, original point, like, there's a very strong chance.

Yes, he will be the first quarterback taken. Bryce Young is a slight favorite over C.J. Stradd and Levis is like 15 to 1. That's unbelievably mispriced. Oh, there's Ben's tip of the day. We bit having Will Levis first overall take this. Early purchase. Yes. We're recording this December 14th.

So if it's changed since then, we apologize. But we're going to get rich. All right. Next up here, so that's the big three. It's Bryce Young, C.J. Stroud, who again, we covered a lot in our episode last week. will love us from Kentucky. And then the next guy, I am fat. This is like my muse.

I'm not obsessed, but like three notches below obsessed. Anthony Richardson, who is the quarterback from Florida, who, Solac, you told me a few days ago, I thought this was absolutely perfect. You said that Anthony Richardson is the first Josh Allen since Josh Allen. Yeah. This is the real Josh Allen con. So he can just do, so he just has all the tools and like no control over his body.

Yep. What if we put a little? laser beam on a sled. Like, he's just like, holy smokes. When he runs, we're not like, what, 6-4-22, I want to say he's about what he's listed at? He's probably a little bit thinner than that. He's 6-4-2-37 is what I saw.

Yeah, so I think he's somewhere in, like, the 220's range legitimately in terms of where he plays. So you could take this guy and, like, Felipe Franks him and put him at tight end, Logan Thomas him, if you wanted to, just slap a few pounds on a go tomorrow. He has tackle-breaking ability. He's got, like, a stiff arm. He's willing to put his shoulder down.

Like, he is a tough physical runner. And when he opens his stride, he can absolutely go, right? He can break an angle on a dude. Then he throws like he hates the sound barrier. Like he strives into everything. That's a good one. Write that down.

He's got to chill. He needs like so much of accuracy is how you take that lead step, how you take that front step. And Richardson just takes these enormous steps, like massive lead out. It's like Baker Mayfield. Whenever Baker wanted to throw the football really far down the field, he was like to take these enormous strides.

So Richardson's got a lot of lower body stuff that's got to get cleared up. Alan had lower body to upper body mechanic issues. That were the problem with his accuracy of Wyoming. But when they are accurate, they're throwing a strawberry through a battleship and they can push the ball 60 plus yards down the field. The expressions, man.

You're on fire right now. Did you make that one up too? Strawberry one? That's a real one. Yeah, that's a real one. Richardson, I didn't think he was going to come out because I didn't think NFL teams would give the feedback through like, you know,

the grading channels that Richardson was good enough yet to come out and say, stay for another year, develop a little bit more, and then let's talk. The fact that he came out leads me to believe he's going to go round one. I don't get that.

Why would you develop better in college than in the NFL? Like an NFL team and you get to work there and you get to go through practice even if you're not playing games. You wouldn't, like Jordan Love isn't developing better

on the sideline for the Packers than he would be in college? Well, what creates development? Right. Because there's a few different ways to develop and a lot of it is contingent on who is developing.

What is your personality, right? When I want to get better, like I play a lot of chess. There's two ways you can get better at chess. You can do a lot of theory. You can read some books, learn some openings, do some puzzles, or you just play. And I tend to get a lot better when I just play. Sometimes I lose games, sometimes I win game, but generally I improve. Quarterbacks can improve by sitting on the bench.

It's happened before. They go through the playbook, go on the chalkboard, do your drills, fix your mechanics. Like, for a player with Richardson's issues, fixing your mechanics, not going to happen during live game reps. So absolutely, like being in the NFL and sitting, getting NFL coaching could be to his benefit. Most of the time, guys have to hire. private quarterback coaches anyway, but whatever. For some players, you just need live reps to develop. You got to go through the growing process.

And I think when Richardson elected to enter the league, if you want to read between the lines, he entered the draft, I should say. Reading between the lines, it seems like, all right, they're going to draft him early enough that he feels like he's going to get at some time in his rookie contract the opportunity to start, right? And that'd be the argument against coming out, right? Like if there's going to be a third round pick of the Titans like Malik Willis was,

well, if Ryan Tannenhill stays good and stays healthy, I'm not getting reps, I'm not going to get better. So I think Richardson got the sort of feedback that he's going round two or earlier, such that he can expect to get starting reps and have that opportunity to grow and win a job. So to give context for what Ben's talking about here, I believe, and correct me from wrong, I believe he has 13 starts in his college career. It's like he's a starter for like a year and change. He's had a couple more appearances where he's coming in relief and this, that, and the other, but like 13 actual starts on his career, which is, really rare. There's only been a few guys that have gone early first round or just first round in general that had fewer

than that. And so, I think that is the big deal. He just doesn't have the live fire reps. We've talked about this a lot with Trey Lance, who I think he had more starts on his resume, but the problem was he didn't throw the ball very much. And so we were actually concerned about literally just the number of times

he had thrown the football. Trenz had 17 starts his career. And he had, he went third overall and the 49ers traded two first round picks to get him. So that's some context, I think. And if you look at the number of past attempts in college, Trey Lance had 318 pass attempts in two years starter. Richardson has 393. So maybe Richardson technically has a little more experience. Like he has more. That's really interesting. Versus FCS reps, I think has to. Absolutely.

Lance is absolutely, though, a useful construct for like, if a team wants to talk themselves into Richardson, if they feel like he checks the boxes, then yeah. I mean, like, the rise you can see could be VD Oric. just because of how valuable the traits are. So with Richardson, to me, he's much better Josh Allen comp just because of the physical traits. Like he has potential to be like one of the most physically impressive, explosive athletes.

He is enormous. He's a big, fast guy with a big arm. I actually think he's got kind of like underrated feel for the pocket. Like when you watch his tape, he'll step up into the pocket. He's not afraid to be in that muddy pocket. He's got the size. He can, you know, strafe around. and buy himself time to throw the ball.

Really, it's just like a lack of experience. You're going to hear the word raw thrown out with him a lot just because he doesn't have that when he starts. He's kind of inaccurate. Like his accuracy comes and goes. His ball placement comes and goes. His completion percentage was like 54% this last year, which I would contend to probably be about 10 percentage points higher

if his receivers were any good. Like I wanted to gouge my eyeballs out watching some of his receivers here. But the other thing is he's only 22, or actually he's only 21. He'll turn 22 in May. So, yeah, I think the NFL is going to see this guy. Some teams will just be like, no, we don't want that project. Other teams are going to be like absolutely just like wanting to get this guy in the building.

And to be honest, I don't know enough about like him personally, like as a person to comment on that. I think that will be a factor that will, you know, be talked about a lot in the next couple of months. And so, but like physically speaking, yeah, he's, he's awesome. But like you said, you talked about how he declared, which means that he thinks that he'll be able to get playing time on his rookie contract. but if he goes later in the draft, he's likely to get drafted by a team who has a good quarterback right now. So isn't that kind of like a catch-22? If he goes early, he'll start,

but if he goes late, he won't. Do you guys think that a team like a Texans or, I don't know, a team that needs a quarterback is more likely to go up and get him? Or do you think he's more likely to just be like a Malik Willis type that somebody drafts with a strong starting quarterback already, and he's not going to see the field for a while? I think kind of the Drew Locke range is more what I would say, right? There was hype that like Drew Locke was going to go maybe first round.

we got close to the draft, then he ended up going early second round. He went to the Broncos after they had just acquired Teddy Bridgewater. And they kind of knew, like, all right, like if Teddy hits for us, like, cool, but probably not going to go win a Super Bowl with Teddy. There's also a chance that Teddy's just not good enough to elevate our offense way.

We need him to, and our season's lost. And it'd be nice if we had a developmental quarterback to put out there for eight games and see if we can get a starting quarterback out of him. So that kind of like early, second, late first, which over the course of NFL history, that idea of like, oh,

just draft a developmental quarterback in a second tends to not hold up. Most of those guys miss. But if you look at how helpful it was when the dude hit, Jaylen Hertz for the Philadelphia Eagles,

the value gained, if you get it right, is massive. So Richardson, I think, like, once you get outside of the top 10,

you're going to go to some sort of team with probably some sort of established quarterback. But the, the late first, early second window and kind of

the hey, like, let's see if he's ready and when he's ready and what it looks like, Lamar behind Joe Flacko at 32, like that sort of an approach. To me, make sense. It's like more like the team that takes him is less likely to have a really strong starter and more likely to have like a, like a Washington commander's situation. No, I'm gonna call my shot right now.

The team that should do this is the Seahawks because they've got the two first and two seconds and they should just take like Will Anderson or someone in the top, like in the top five. And the search should just trade slightly up from their top second. Just take like, Anthony Richardson. I like that a lot. I mean, are you talking like,

and then keep Gino around for a year or two? Keep Gino for like three years. I don't care. You're a lesbian in the bench. Just teach Anthony Richardson. When I, the first time, we can move on a second,

but I just, the first time I saw him play, I didn't know idea who he was. And I was watching some Ohio State game. And they were talking about how Marvis Harrison Jr. is on the team. And there's USC or like, you know, they got Jerry Rice's son.

And then I turned on Florida. I was like, Cam Newton's too young to have a son playing football, right? That was like, honestly, the first thing I thought. Like, He's where the, like, this kid is incredible. I mean, he reminds me, like, the way he plays, like, you could see a Justin Fields type.

Like, if you build a Justin Fields type office we've seen this year, where you're really kind of, like, holding hands in the passing game. But, like, he can do some things as a runner and then develop him along the way kind of deal, get some weapons around him. Like, I'm really excited about what he can do. And as so, like, brought up at the beginning, like, a lot of people thought he was just going to go back to school. And a lot of people probably think he should go back to school. But in a lot of these cases, like, he'll talk to, like, the NFL advisory, draft advisory board. I can't remember what it's called.

The great advisory, like, they'll give him, like, basically, like, first second round or later round, I think is, is the criteria they do. And then a lot of times people base that decision on that. So definitely will be really interesting to see where he goes. I think he's going to be a first round pick. Next guy here, Hendon Hooker for Tennessee, who was playing well. And then he tore his ACL against South Carolina. Sucks.

Sucks that he tore his ACL. He doesn't suck. I'm not saying he sucks. Well, put it as the headline of the episode. Hendon Hooker is 24 years old. So, like, how old are you? 25. I was born in 97.

Hendon Hooker was born in January of 98. All these guys are old. What? This is the new thing, Craig, because you get the extra year of eligibility with the COVID year. Plus now guys are staying for extra years. People are transferring.

Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Handen Hooker was originally at Virginia Tech, meant to save Justin Fuente's tenure there, and that went terribly. So he left at Tennessee. Then Josh Hoypo became the head coach of Tennessee. Josh Hoype was previously at UCF. He was through the Oklahoma tree.

He runs the Baylor offense that like Baylor just won national, not national titles with, but bailo was unbelievably successful passing the Art Bryle's offense. And he took Hen and Hooker and he was like, hey, you can throw it like 65 yards, right? And Hen Hooker was like, yeah. And then he was like, yeah. And if you tuck and run, you can like break a tackle, right? And Hooker was like, yeah. And he was like, all right, you're going to be a Heisman.

And then that's exactly what happened. It's been awesome. For you guys to visualize what the type of offense that he's talking about, at least for Tennessee this year, they have their five offensive linemen, usually him and shotgun, and then a running back. And then the receivers are standing like on the sidelines.

Yeah, they're so wide. Like, there is far away from the, like, formation as you possibly could be. It creates, like, so much stress on the defense in terms of, like, the space or whatever. I think it makes the reads really relatively easy for the quarterback. It's, like, half-field reads most of the time. It's like you're playing. the most annoying kid in Madden who just goes like four deep every time. So is the guy who's almost Solex age with the torn ACL and the fake offense?

Is this a first round player? No. I don't think so, especially because of the ACL thing. Like, I think there was a chance. He was getting a little bit of momentum for potentially being like a late first round type player later in the season. What does he do well? Like what is he good at besides throwing a deep ball?

Got a cannon for an arm. He's big. He's strong. He takes care of the football too, which is like a lot of these guys. especially, you know, like when you talk about Will Levis. Like he's got kind of a lot of turnovers relative to a lot of these guys coming out of college football. I want to say Hooker has something like 58 or 57 touchdowns and three interceptions the last two years. All right.

Next guy here. Tanner McKee from Stanford. This sounds like a Madden generated college player, Tanner McKee. Sounds like a Stanford name, doesn't it? Danny, how did we let Tanner McKee get in this episode? When we were talking about it, it made sense. There's some people that think he's going to be a first-row pick. I don't think he's going to, but I've seen some whispers that he could sneak into the first run.

I'd like to say Tanner McKee break a tackle in the pocket, and then I will treat him as an NFL draft prospect. Give me the rundown. Big, small, fast, deep arm, accurate. Tall as fuck. This guy's a tall glass of water, Craig. He's 6 foot 6. Oh. 228 pounds, so he's a tall, skinny guy. Well, I guess he's big enough. He's not really, really skinny. I would say he's kind of like got that awkward teenager, like newborn giraffe vibes in terms of athleticism. He's like not super important. He's at Stanford for a reason.

Well, I was going to say, so I saw that he was in the same high school class as Trevor Lawrence and Fields. And like those were the top two guys. And he was just like the awkward third banana as like the third guy in that class. And then he went, he did his Mormon mission in Brazil for two years. And so like he's 22, but already did that.

So in a way he's young. He's relatively inexperienced. He's got, he's a two-year starter, but he's also old because he took two years off from college football to do his mission. But the thing is, like, he's really, really tall and a little bit awkward, I guess, or I don't know, it's just hard to explain. To me, his mechanics are even more. Do you remember watching Brock Osweiler tried to move, try to throw the football, try to do a thing? Yeah, like he's got NFL armed talent. And certainly because he played for David Shaw, he like ran growing up concepts, but he's not particularly accurate.

I don't find him to be like remarkably smart, like elite process or moving guys in his eyes. He doesn't manage a pocket very well. And then like with CJ Stroud, we talked about in the previous episode, right? Like, oh, and it breaks down. How good can he be? Whatever. In the key, it is a lost cause. There's, like, Strouds at least got something.

McKee does not have the ability to operate outside of the pocket, which to me is just a total non-starter in the modern NFL. So like on the fantasy show last week, we were talking about like if modern, I know you're not a huge movie guy, but modern, like a modern movie, like a teen. teenage romance comedy. Yeah, like a rom-com, just like, who like the name would be

for like a modern, like villain of a high school movie? And we were like, Brock, Hunter, Chad. I think Tanner is like on this list. Tanner McKee.

Yeah. I think if you find yourself a Stanford quarterback, little Davis Mills, a little Tanner McKee, KJ Costello, I think that's a good, that's a good through line

to villain in a teenage rom-com is whatever the Stanford quarterback currently is. All right. Tanner McKee, tall white, six-six might just go in the first round. I would say, if you put together, like, a cut-up of some of his best throws, there's some pretty impressive, like, he'll drop it into a bucket throws, but the consistency is not great.

And again, like, I just think he's a little awkward out there. Like, he's just too tall. I went back and read Robert Mays a couple years ago, wrote this article. He wrote, Mays, like, reported an article about, like, is six-foot-six like too tall to be right. You know what's so funny is, like, there was, Mays was obsessed with this for years. And then in a side on hard knocks, John Gruden just answered it basically when he was yelling at Mike Glennon on hard knocks.

And he was like, Mike, can't throw that. You're too tall to stare down your receivers, Glennon. And I was like, oh, that's it. It's just you could just see them staring it down easier. Well, I think the other thing that May said that he wrote in the article is like basically, it depends on when these guys get tall.

Like, essentially if they're early, if they grow up really tall, they're really tall from a young age, they're just a little more like gangly and awkward, whereas if they get tall later in life, they're a little bit more seasoned. They can understand their body. So maybe he's the,

you know, maybe this is good. I don't know. I have a great tall NFL draft story, which is a good young reporter, Ben. I was at the Senior Bowl. It was probably 2019-ish.

And Donald Parham was a 6'8 tied out of Stetson, right? He now plays for the Los Angeles Chargers. And Parham was a late out of the roster. He was a late bloomer, college football at Stetson in Florida. like no one's ever heard of it. He had shot up tremendous over the last few years. He came to college like six foot. He was six eight. He just couldn't stop growing. And I was like, I want to

write a piece about this guy. Came out of nowhere. It was incredible. And I was like, the most interesting thing would be like, what's it like to be six eight? Like, how did this happen? Like, this is crazy. And so I sat down with Donald Stetson, who now in my professional career, I would be able to identify, oh, this person doesn't want to talk to me at all. But at the time, I was a little guppy. And I was like, this is going to be very cool for me and for him. And I was like, Donald, like, and I started asking him the questions, that, whatever. And then eventually I was like, what's the worst thing about being tall? Like, what's the most inconvenient part?

And he looked at me dead in the eyes and he went, I'm always in pain. And I said, I said, what? And he said, my growth plates constantly hurt. I'm always in pain. And I said, thanks, Donald. It's been a great time talking to you. I appreciate it. And then I did not write the article.

Oh, my God. Constant growing pains. Jeez. I'm looking at highlights of Tanner McKee right now. I wanted to ask you guys, quick aside. Is watching highlights one of the biggest waste of times if you want an accurate assessment of a player? Yeah.

There's, how does the average person, like, know if a quarterback's good? All you can do is go on YouTube and watch their seven best plays of the year where everybody looks fantastic. On YouTube right now,

type Tanner McKee verse V.S. All right. And what do you got? So it's like, he's Tanner McKee versus Washington versus USC, but they're all short. They're like eight, seven minutes.

Is it just every pass of his? Yeah. So, yeah, this, this was the revolution, man. Like, when I started wanting to work in the NFL space,

I came up in the draft space, because that's where there were so many opportunities to learn and talk about plays because there was a huge community of guys, shout out the OG draft breakdown community that would just take a, they would TiVo a game, three hours, and then they would cut it up,

so it was every single play of Tanner McKee, and then they would put it on YouTube. And it was like, this is why the drafts so big. We were doing a draft show two years ago, five years ago, now we are. Why is the drafting of such a big thing in the NFL? It's because back in 2004, when the Pittsburgh Steelers took Ben Rothesburgh

out of Miami of Ohio, you open the paper, and your favorite sports writer was like, Ben Rothensberger is big and good. And then you went to work and you were like, you'd hear about this kid, he's big and good, this is sick. You had no opportunity to watch and play, right? And then over the last 10 years with YouTube, highlight reels certainly,

but also these full game cutups come out. And now, like, you know, you drafts in, you know, RG3 out of Baylor. And instead of like caring about what some talking heads says on the draft, you can go and watch and play. And you can go, oh, this is the greatest player that ever existed. we're going to win all the games. And that created this demand for more players to have their cutups, foot up and more plays to be available.

So if anybody's like, oh, I wonder what Tanner McKee is like. You can search highlight and it'll give you like an impression of what he can do. But if you want to see like what the nuts and bolts are, first name, last name, verse, enter. And then you'll be able to find game cutups and it gives you a better picture of strengths and weaknesses. That's too boring, though. I can't watch him play Washington. I literally am watching the Tanner McKee, Washington. Whoever said he was like a giraffe is I've never seen him.

more awkward person trying to escape people in my life. Yeah. Stuff. Oh, you're so right. It's incredible. So big picture question here. I'm curious, including Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud and all these guys, Will Levitz, Richardson, Hendon Hooker, Tanner McKee.

How do all these guys compare to Caleb Williams for USC, who's not draft eligible yet, but he just won the Hizman and is the man? Like, is he just, like, miles above all these people? And, like, he's the best player in college football and all these guys coming out or like, none of them are even close? I mean, it's like this every year We say this shit every year But yeah, Caleb will There's always the guy next year He's better than everybody this year

And then you know, time will tell If this ends up being true Yeah, like he's super exciting Go look at any 2023 draft piece Written around this time last year And there's references to hashtags About tanking for Bryce Young

And Bryce Young may not be the first pick this year Bryce Young is 5 foot 10 right Grass is always greener next year's class Caleb is very, very, very good. The answer to your question is probably yes, but we do this every single year. So it's always important to like, you know, temper your expectations.

So right now, Will Levis going first? If you had a bet which of these guys would go in the first round right now and we'll hold you this for the rest of your lives? How many quarterbacks are going in the first round? Bryce Young, Stroud, Will Levis. Three, are any of these other guys going to go in the first? Richardson. If I had a bet right now, I'd say four.

I would say four, too, yeah. There's our quarterback preview for you guys. We're doing the NFL draft show every Thursday. We're going to do now, America's favorite segment, the only segment as far as I'm concerned. Two jargons in a lie. Yes. Two draft jargons in a lie.

Let me ask you guys, both D.K. and Ben, are you guys running out of jargon or is there still a deep well of jargon available? Oh, we are 100% running out. Plumbing the depths of the draft jargon. Just, all right. Coming the sea. Digging into crates to try and find new words. Ben, I'm going to take you out of this one, okay?

because I feel like you know too many of these terms. So this is for Craig. Copy. Great. All right. Number one, tight rope walker. Number two, go home gear. Number three, got some shit in his neck.

Stop it. Got some shit in his neck. Do you have definitions prepared for all of these phrases? Yes. You can say no. Can you use got shit in his neck in his sentence? No, no, no, no. Not got shit in his neck.

Got some. He's got some shit in his neck. That's the sentence. This guy. basically it means he's nasty and tough. Where did that come from? I don't know. Where did any of these?

There was once a guy. There was an old, old curmudgeonly scout set at one time and everyone was like, yeah, I like that. I think the gear one, wait, what was the first one again? Tightrope Walker. And what was the second one?

Go home gear. I think tight rope walker is fake. If got some shit in his neck is fake, that's such a bold flex by a decade, be like, I'm going to make up something so random and specific, and it will be fake. Agree.

Go home. Gear, I don't know how somebody would think of that. Go Home Gear is just like the guy who's got the extra gear and they just named the extra gear is go home gear. Okay. Right? I assume it's like a speed thing. Am I supposed to answer that or you guys are guessing so?

What is go home gear? Yeah, go home gear is like he just runs past everybody. He's fast enough to get away from everyone and go home. The Forest gum. Yeah, it's like run for us and then he just runs out of the stadium. Tightrope walkers fake. Yeah. That's an easy lie to come up with.

Okay, yeah, that's right. Yeah. What has got some shit in his neck? It means he's tough? That one is not like as well known. It's not in the lexicon quite as much I think as people think. I did look it up on Twitter. There was some reference to, I think, Bud Grant,

like old school coach saying it. But the true story behind it is I was talking to Nora, Prince Yaddy, and I was telling her that we were doing some of this stuff. She texted a source asking for what, things they use in their rooms. And that was what he said. Wow. So I thought that was a good one. There was some video. I can't remember

who it was. I was like a draft video release of a team talking about a player. And one of the guys, he was like wearing like a full suit. He got the Microsoft service guy, 10,000 notebooks. He was just like, yeah. He's like a cross between Ezekiel Elliott and, you know, Eric Dickerson. He's got some shit in his neck.

And everybody was just like nodding wisely. He's like, yeah. So he was like, you just put this out? That's not real words. But if I'm it is, out of all the quarterback in this draft, who has the most shit in their neck? Levis. No question, Levis. Yeah, it's eating banana peels.

He's like, banana peels and mayonnaise. In addition to having like terrible taste in certain things, he's, he actually is like reckless with his body. I think that's another reason that maybe he gets like the Josh Allen cause. He will like lower his shoulder. He'll like dive for a first down and just get freaking helicoptered in like by like three guys. Looks like he's meet Joe Black get hit by cars.

I'm getting huge 14-year-old boy vibes from Levis between just I'll eat anything if I'm on camera and you dare me and like yeah I'll just like throw my body in the line He needs to chill a little He's got some shit in his neck I don't I cannot confirm this whatsoever He's on steroids Look at him

Craig While we're doing the pot Craig just text us a picture of Lilithes He is so defined and vascular This man's on stairway Vascular That's a term vascular.

Tight skin, this Will Levis. We haven't used this text chated in like a minute. It's been a year since we did this pod. Tiny hands, big yields is the name of the text chain. Shout to Chris Ryan. Shadow death metal draft. The yields are not that big right now. They're mini yields. They're medium yields.

Also, the tattoo he has, because I'm looking at this thing of him flexing, and the tattoo is Second Chronicles, 15.7. I googled that. And the Bible verses, but as for you, be strong and do not give up for your work will be rewarded. Chronicles is good for some one-liners. I like to get a chronicles in there, get a Psalms. But is that God endorsing steroids? Depends on the interpretation. What kind of exegesis are we doing here?

Are we translating from Aramaic or what do you think? I don't know. Got some questions. What are you up to Will Lovis? Vascular. Can't get over that. Dude, he has like a river of veins dispersed over his forearms. Craig is so perfectly making my case for why Will Lovus. This is going to go first overall. Every time he talks about him, I'm like, and that's a general manager. I just accidentally knocked my headphones out.

Because that's too distracted. The first Houston Texan reporter is going to be like, Nick Casario, why, Cal McNair, why Will Levis? And Nick Casario is going to be like, have you seen this guy's veins? He looks like how I wanted to look when I was 23, and we went from there. Two jargons that a lie. This one's from Jacob. Jacob.

Jake. I pulled this email all the way from April when we were talking about Traillen Burke's hunting pigs with like knives and hunting boards with knives yes and Jacob says growing up hunting in Kansas I've heard a lot of euphemisms for different types of game

animals below are two real ones and a lie whistle pig ditch parrot speed goat speed goat's real fun claws speed go is real what's the linking

category? What did they say these are from? Game animals. So whistle pig is a bourbon in Vermont, which I'm like, oh, it's fake, but then I'm like, but is that why they named it a whistle whistle. Is that where they got the name from? I feel like a whistle pig's got to be just a pig that can run really fast. It's like whistling. Oh, yeah. It's like when you throw a Nerf football. Yeah, yeah. It's like how their horns are sticking out of their mouth creates a whistling noise. They're running so fast. If whistle pig is real, I feel like ditch parrot is real. I feel like it's like a pejorative for like a grouse, which would then mean Speedgo is fake.

Ditch parrot is so funny. And if speed go is fake, I will be sad. Speed go. What a speed goat? I thought you knew that what a speed goat was. No, I just, I love the idea. And Matt,

I'm just thinking of a fast goat and I'm laughing. Come on. Goads just moving quick. I could totally see two dudes hunting looking for like, as you said, like, you know, grouse or something.

And they're like, oh, look at that ditch parrot there. What is a speed goat? I don't even like. Fast goat. I want speed goat to be. rail, so I'm going to say ditch parrot is fake. I think

whistle pig is fake. I'm saying whistle pig's fake. I mean, I think speed goat is fake. Oh, no fun. Whistlepick is the lie. Damn it. I'm so good. Wow. I'm so like, so what's this is annoying. So do you explain what

these things are? Ditch parrot is, yeah, basically it's a pheasant. Um, speed goat is another name for antelope. That makes sense. It's a fast goat. Just a fast goat. goat. Could get more creative than that. That's really funny.

I want to start calling things whistle pigs, though. Yeah, I like whistle pig. I feel like Antelope is so noble. I feel like if I was like, I took down an antelope today. They'd be big an impressive thing. I do that a speed goat today sounds dumb. I love it just makes it sound way worse. There's two kinds of offensive linemen, I think.

There's like big, you know, trash cans full of dirt. And there's whistle pigs. I like that. That was a good one. That's really good. Emails at Ringer Fantasy Football at gmail.com. If you got two jargons and a lie, something related to the show,

selling your job, mundane, interesting, whatever. Two jargons and a lie. If you can put the answer in white text, because then if not, I cheat, I get accused the cheating, but I lose anyway, so it's fine. Also, you can email us draft questions too if you actually have questions.

Oh, right. That too. But yeah, I always forget that. But two jargons are the lie, mostly. Thank you to everyone emails us. Thank you, Dek. Thank you, so like. Thank you, Craig.

Thank you, Kai, for production help. Thank you, Will Levis for the mayonnaise and the coffee content, but like, We'll be trying that soon. Thank you, Lauren. Lauren. Thank you.

Future. Oh, damn. Future. I mean, obviously, you're anti-Russ now, so you're big, you're pro-future. Has nothing to do with it, Craig. The second Russ got traded to the Broncos, D.K. bought like seven future albums. Honestly, the Bronco, the Seahawks should have invited, you know, the game where all the old Seahawks came back? They should have invited Future to the game.

There was, yeah, there was talk of that. Was there? There was, like, him doing. in the 12th man flag or something like, have you guys seen that video of future saying he loves cheesecake? No. No.

Is there where it's sensational? Oh, I don't know about that. Well, speaking of cheese, though, we discovered so like you eat a lot of cheese, like a weird amount, to be honest. We discover that D.K. eats like a cassidia every day, basically. Every day. Just mixed cheese and a tortilla.

D.K. Cadia. I really like that, D.K. Cidia. Is this like a snack? Yeah, it's like lunch. How big a tortilla? You know 10 inches? Just like the burrito The burrito size, yeah.

So that's the 12-inch tortilla. We've folded it over or we going one on top of the other? No, I'm doing one on top of the other, yeah. D.K. hasn't had his cassidia yet, so he's not thinking clearly. Oh, contrary. I did have my cassidy already today. Oh, guy. He sent the YouTube video.

I hope this is future saying he likes cheesecake. He does in a really low voice. He goes, I love cheesecake. Oh, I do know this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that mine. I like cheesecake real late at night. That's the only thing.

think Solac and future have in common is there two in the morning, they're just pounding cheesecake? I didn't know that that individual was future. I recognized that meme. I just had no idea who it was. Didn't someone send you cheese like unannounced? It turns out that was my cousin. So it was kosher. It was okay. He had me for Secret Santa. I forgot about that. Do you like cheesecake, Ben?

Do you like cheese incorporated in your desserts? I mean, like, I love cheese. Cheese Danish. Cheese Danish is good. Every fall for Thanksgiving growing up, my aunt would make a pumpkin cheesecake. Now my wife Meredith, who's an unbelievable cook. has the recipe and she makes pumpkin cheesecake.

This stuff's incredible. Whenever next, the next Thanksgiving, we're all together, you know, as a family. Pumpkin cheesecake, man. World ending. Does she use the pumpkin pie mix and incorporate that with like a cream cheese cheesecake? I think or does she blend up pumpkin herself? You use like processed pumpkin, right? And then there's like a recipe because like it changes the consistency of it.

You use things in different levels. And then the big thing is, I'm giving away the trade secrets. You know like ginger snap cookies? Mm-hmm. That's what you make the crust out of. You crush those up and you make it super, super thick, and it gives it, like, more fall flavor. Yeah, that's spice. That's good.

I spend 11 months of the year looking forward to pumpkin cheesecake and then one month of the year eating pumpkin cheesecake. That sounds great. I love holiday desserts. So much better than the other desserts of the year. It's not even close. Because they're guiltless because of celebration. I just think the fall flavors just destroy any other seasons like flavors. What are the spring flavors?

Dude, winter just murders people. But I very much agree with Craig. Right, the best thing is spring of all, strawberry, give me pumpkin cheesecake. Come on, dude. I'm speechless. I don't know how to respond to that, Craig. Nutmeg, cinnamon, all spice. Like, what do you make it in April?

Get out of here. Watermelon. Wow, it's a melon with more water in it than the average melon. Sick. Oh, cool. It's February. What are we having for dinner? Who knows?

I love how Craig's like, man, winter kills people from L.A. I'm out here with my hoodie over. 72 degrees here, guys. I like when there's a roadmap based on the seasons telling you what you'll be eating for dinner that month. Dude, you should come live somewhere where there's actually seasons. The sensation is heightened. Maybe I should. LA actually does have two seasons select.

There's jacket season and not the jacket season. And then what no one fucking told me about moving to Los Angeles. Oh, geez. You've said this like a hundred times. All right, say it for him, Greg. June gloom, overcast. And I'm like, wow, why is it like just so great? They're like, oh yeah, it's June gloom.

You can't see the sun for like the month of June. There's no sunlight in L.A. And everyone's like that's like this is totally normal. I like it when it's overcast. That's their winter is June. Well, the truth is that summer goes to like October in Southern California. I will say this year is the coldest Southern California has ever been, in my opinion. Oh, poor guy.

You're literally right now. We see the sunlight behind you right now. It doesn't mean it's hot. The low right now, the low today is 42. I know that's not that crazy. That's cold in L.A. in December. I'm telling you. Sol Elyclips in Michigan.

That's colder than I was expecting, Craig. Thank you. 42 is a low and out of the same. It's just I was going to be condescending no matter what, so I had to commit. I just scrape my car off this morning, Craig. Cry about it. You can move. That's true.

Yeah, relocate. Goodbye, everyone.