The Ringer NFL Show - Draft Takes: Bold Predictions, Wild Scenarios, and Favorite Player-Team Pairings!

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

Sheil and The Ringer’s own Diante Lee look ahead to next week’s NFL draft and talk about the team moves and scenarios that they think will make the biggest impact on both the league and the 2026-27 season.(00:48) Draft takes: Bold predictions, wild scenarios, and favorite player-team pairings!(02:49) Defensive ROY predictions(11:11) Examining the day-two prospects(16:32) Favorite player-team pairings(24:16) Offensive ROY predictions(37:59) Bold draft predictions(46:12) Ranking the top prospects (51:45) Which NFL player could pull a 2021 Aaron Rodgers–style holdout this year?(58:34) Which top prospects could fall to day three?(01:00:53) Ranking the biggest media draft takes(01:09:14) Ranking three possibly surprising outcomes for the draftVisit us in stores and online at https://Warbyparker.com/RINGERNFLThe Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available.Host: Sheil KapadiaGuest: Diante LeeProducer: Chris SuttonVideo Editor: Stefano SanchezProduction Supervision: Conor Nevins and Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Ringer NFL show. I'm your host, Shield Capadio. We've got 10 more draft questions today. We've got bold predictions. We've got player team pairings that we really like in the first round. And then we go over some potentially shocking outcomes where we don't think they're going to happen. But hey, what if this actually happened? So we're going to run through a bunch of those different scenarios with my friend, Deonti Lee, from the Ringer.

Let's take a break. We'll come right back with Deante. We're back here on the Ringer NFL show with my friend, Deante Lee. Deonti, we had so much fun. I thought last week with the Capodia 10 going in a bunch of different directions, I thought, why limit ourselves to one singular theme with the drafts? Let's just run it back. I've got more questions for you about what's going to transpire next week. So that's the exercise today.

Now you've had one under your belt. Now we expect you to make kind of that set. You know, it's kind of like the second year leap here with this exercise. Absolutely. And I'm here to just like encroach on all your Philly special territory. So now that I'm here with the shield of fortune, you know, I can kind of stick my finger in the eye with Anthony Bundow, my guy over there, and eventually I'm going to come up with the D. Lee 3, you know. Oh, I like that.

Walking all over everybody's territory, so to speak. But now I'm glad to be back, like you said, it was a bunch of fun, just kind of balancing ideas around. And I think that's reflective of this time of year, right? We're now in the cramming for the test portion. So there's rumors and news flying left and right about who wants to trade, who's on a visit, to where? What is this team planning to do? Oh, they've changed their evaluation on X, Y, or Z based off of their positional needs. I feel like this pretty reflective of where we're at right now, and I think that this exercise captures that effectively. And of course, our favorite reports this time of year,

Deante, Team X is making calls or willing to take calls. Unbelievable. Yeah. As well the GM will be doing anything else during this time of year. All right, let's get to it. I've got 10 questions here. I tried to hit on a bunch of topics or prospects even that we maybe have not discussed in depth, but we'll see where Deonti goes with some of these answers. All right, if you missed last week's episode, he just picks a number one to ten. I go to that question and we do the exercise until we hit on all of the questions. All right, Deonti, what are we starting with today? Let's go with number four, right?

We're in April. Son's birthday is in April. Autism acceptance month, the whole deal. So we're here to be good advocates and we'll go forward to start this all. There you go. All right, this is a tough one. Give me your defensive rookie of the year pick. Now, normally we would have this question after the draft,

or you'd say, I like this prospect on this team. You don't get that luxury here. Deonti, you just have to look at the prospects in your head. You kind of know or have an idea where players are going to go. You know how defensive rookie of the year is generally determined. Who would be your pick if I made you select this before the actual track? I think that to your point about like how this is voted on, this is a Saxon Turnovers Award, right?

Like do you hit the quarterback? Do you take the ball away is typically what's going to win you this award? And if there's one guy, I think, that can step in the league immediately and go get you eight and a half sacks and be that kind of major breakout right away. It would be the guy who's coming in as like your designated speed rusher type and I will go with David Bailey. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that I think that he's the best defensive prospect in this class so that I think he should be the first defensive prospect taken. But if I'm just thinking about the guy who can step in from day one

and have a rookie of the year level of impact, the way that Bailey plays, I think, is best suited to do so. You know he's going to be in a wide alignment, no matter where he lands. You're not going to be drafting this guy because you need him to set edges, you know, at the point of attacking the run game on first and second down, you're getting him because if you get play action pass,

you want a guy who tears off the edge quickly enough to go get in the quarterback's face before he gets to the top of his drop, right? You want those third and eight, third and nine reps. So this guy really kind of gets to get in that sprinter stance and show that speed, show that burst getting out on his first step. And I think that Bailey is probably your best bet for that. Deonti, I was joking about Bailey with Billy Gill on our last podcast because in The Beast, by Dane Bruegler, of course, which he does a wonderful job on.

He had this line. Scouts say his practice habits have matured. And that, quote, he is learning to love the process. And I was like, hmm, that kind of feels. That cuts in either ways. Is that a backhanded compliment? Yeah. Is this a good thing or not?

Damning with faith praise. It's so hard like this. How do you digest all of the scout say stuff this time of year, Deonté? Let's do a little draft media literacy type thing because one, of course, it's more information with that type of stuff. People working in the league, the better. But I do feel like there has to be sort of an art to figuring out how much stock to put into a lot of that stuff.

100%. it's always so conditional, right? Like, there's no context to that quote. They could just be talking about making sure you get in the weight room on time, right? That might have been a struggle for him. I'm just speculating here. It could have been as simple as like when we're practicing in shells that you have all the equipment that you need, stepping out of the locker room, just being focused, right?

It could be something as serious as like, hey, he just wasn't as detailed in terms of learning the defense. So we had a very, you know, kind of muted role for him in terms of how he's involved and stopping the run or, you know, those different times. types of things. I think that those are all the things you have to kind of keep in mind. And I will say for a player like Bailey, it's really interesting because he is carrying old Stanford baggage in his draft evaluation, right? Like you hear the way that he has talked about like, oh, you know, when he was at Stanford,

he was really only using sub packages. So he didn't get a lot of reps before he transferred over his Texas Tech and then had this late breakout surrounded by other pros. And there is some truth to that and you should always log that information as part of your evaluation. But ultimately, that doesn't mean that when this guy gets into the league, that you're going to see reports left and right that, oh, he's not showing up. He's not doing X, Y, or Z thing.

We didn't hear any of that about Abdul Carter last year. At least I don't remember hearing anything about maturity and, you know, his preparation for the game coming into the league. And then midway through the season, we're hearing that he's getting fined and he's getting reprimanded in the locker room because he's not showing up to things on time. He's not preparing the way that they expected him to. So, yeah, I guess you take it all with the grain of salt. And ultimately, what you have to come back to and lean on is the tape.

We're not the ones doing the top 30 visits, right? We're not the ones doing the extensive background checks. I'm going to lean on the tape. And I think that, again, if we're just answering the question of who can make a rookie of the year impact coming into the league on day one, I think the most likely pick for that would be David Bailey. It's also a, yeah, you put it in good context there. And it's also a reminder, and I'll sound like a broken record here, but that the NFL is like, you know, many other industries where there are some people who are fantastic at their job.

There are other people who might not be fantastic at their job. And so when, you know, a scout could have got their job because they really worked their way up and did a great job and it's work ethic and it's a keen eye and they're trying to learn the newest processes. And another scout could have got their job because their dad was drinking buddies with somebody in the front office. And they didn't know what they wanted to do with their lives with 23 years old. Yeah, drive around the country. Yeah, sure. I got, you know, I don't really have a lot of other stuff going on. So it's just you never know when you hear that.

And again, I'm not criticizing, like quoting the Scouts. I like reading that stuff. And then we have to put together the full picture. All right, well, this scout said this. This scout said this. His tape looks like this. His coach said this. Were there any disciplinary issues in college?

No. You know, how old is he? What did the athletic testing look? Like, it's all a puzzle to put together. But yeah, that stuff that surfaced is this time of year, it's always good to have kind of some of those reminders in mind about, well, all right, you know, who is this actually coming from? I'm looking at the last 10 defensive

rookies of the year here. Deonté Carson-Schwessinger last year, which I don't know. I would say he kind of breaks the trend line to me. You typically don't see like offball linebackers and get a bunch of tackles. Go, you know, get that award,

especially not in the modern era. So that was definitely a surprise. But this was also, we're coming off of a draft that was pretty light in terms of edge rush impact. You know, Abdul Carter, like I said, which is part of a rotation,

didn't really flash, you know, as early as I think people expected. And there weren't a lot of edge rushers behind him that got a lot playing time to make that impact either. Yeah, last 10 years, the only offball linebackers, there's Schwessinger and Shaq Leonard in 2018, which, man, you know, I feel like we did.

Shaq Leonard's going to be one of those guys forgotten to history a little bit because the injuries just kind of stole what was an unbelievable start to a career, like a Hall of Fame trajectory there. So he won it in 2018. You're right. You got six pass rushers in there. Jared Verst,

Will Anderson, Micah Parsons, Chase Young, Nick Bosa and Joey Bosa in the last 10 years. And then you got a couple of cornerbacks snuck in there, Marshawn Ladamore and Soss Gardner also sneaking in there. So I would say, you know, I like, I'm tempted to be like, well, what defensive player are the Vikings drafting? You know, and I was like, if they got Dylan Thanneman or even Immanuel McNeill Warren and it's one of these guys where you're like, oh my gosh, look at this guy in four, is his defense. I don't care what the numbers say. This is going to be an exception year where a safety is actually going to win it. I could see that. I think Sonny Stiles, which, who we talked about in the last pod, where if we had to pick one player who was going to make the Hall of Fame from this class, it was going to be Sonny Stiles. I think he could fit in that Carson, Carson-Schwessinger

mold. Arvel Reese kind of could, maybe could fit both. Maybe he is. It would be like a perfect outcome. Yeah, or maybe he's playing great as an off-ball linebacker, but I don't know if he's going to the Jets, you know, how confident are we that that's going to be the case? So those were some of the ones. Caleb Downs, I guess, was the last one. Caleb Dales is another one. Yeah, I think he might be, he would make my top three for sure, because he might be in a situation where he's always going to be around the ball based

off his skill set. He's got great ball skills. He tracks the ball well, right? So I do think that there's a chance that you look up and, hey, he's got five picks and they bussed him off the edge a few times, and he's got two and a half, three sacks. And just by the accumulation of those splash plays, you're able to put together a defensive rookie of the year type of campaign. There you go. All right.

Four in the books, Deontes. What do you have? What's your next number here? All right. You know, like you said last week, you appreciate having the numbers and clusters. So I'm not going to make you work harder than it's necessary. Let's go with the, let's go with five here. Five. Okay. Five. Who is a brushman?

There you go. Another man. I like this. We're naming some guys who are unbelievable. Like, you know, you're looking at like our football viewing lives. that man, those USC teams were incredible. All right, five. Who is a prospect that is going to go on day two, a second or third round pick,

that you actually think maybe should be a first round pick? Deonti, what do you think? I mentioned when we were doing our mock draft and somebody that I think that the football world is falling more in love with, the more that they watch. And that San Diego states, Chris Johnson, right? I mentioned him as like, when we got some pick 32,

that he would be the perfect kind of Seahawks, you have a physical guy who can play some inside, some outside. He's going to make tackles. He's going to challenge you at the line of scrimmage. You know, you're going to get tight coverage down the field. And all the personality stuff as your national kind of insider types are hearing more from scouts and GMs who are evaluating these guys. Everything that comes back on Johnson is glowing, right? Like he cares so much about the sport. All he wants to do is work and get better. I mean, I will say being in San Diego, right? Like when I, now that I'm a head coach at a high here, their defensive coordinator came and stopped by, and I was just talking to him about,

you know, how he felt about the team that they just had. And Johnson was one of the first names he brought up about how easy it is to build a defense when you have a guy like that in your meeting room kind of helping to lead the way. So it's not a surprise to me being local that he's really picked up in this process. And this is a guy to me. I think if you're just evaluating the tape, he would be kind of right on that fringe, you know, 30 to 45 type of draft range. And I think that If I were a GM, I would want that guy on my team, especially if you are drafted in the back half of the first round and you know you're going to be competing for the playoffs and you want a guy who can step right in and get with the culture.

Johnson's that guy. Johnson is that guy for me. I like that corner group, I would say, it's not like, I feel like it's pretty bunched up, you know, based on who do you like, what are your preferences, what scheme are you running? What are you comfortable from an injury standpoint? What are you comfortable with? From an experience standpoint, what are you comfortable with? what are you comfortable with?

So we'll see what happens with those guys, but I like that one. You have probably a day two pick, but who knows? Maybe he sneaks in there day one. I wrote down Deontay, Ohio State's Caden McDonald's. I'm looking at the defensive tackles.

And I'm usually the guy saying, if you can't affect the passing game, you know, what kind of resources. But then I was thinking about Jordan Davis and he's not the same athlete that Jordan Davis is. But just looking at the player, even Jordan Davis is now for the evening. Eagles at this stage of his career. And he's not necessarily a very impactful player against the

past. He's not staying on the field on third down. Yet he is a very impactful player overall, maybe the best run defending defensive tackle in the NFL, or at least on the short list. And he just got paid $26 million per year. And he was, what, the 13th or 14th overall pick. So I'm looking at a guy like McDonald's who has been a dominant run defender on a great college defense against high-level competition, has. has been very productive. And I'm looking at like the nature of this draft where it's just, you know, you kind of go through even starting very early and you sort of have questions about a lot of guys.

I do wonder if there's going to be a team there in the 20s or even 30, 31, 32 that looks at it and says, you know what? Let's not overthink it. This guy's going to be an impactful player, you know, at a position that matters for us. And let's go ahead and take Kate and McDonald here, even though you probably see him in a lot of mocks on day two right now. I love Kate and McDonald's funny. Last two years ago, I should say,

when Ohio State was making this run to the national title, I'm not saying he was the best defender on the field during that playoff run, but there were times during the playoffs from like, man, why is it that Notre Dame can't run the ball in between the tackles? Why is it that X team that they're playing against cannot run the ball in between the tackles? And it's because this dude is eating double teams

and tossing both linemen away and making an impact on the game, even if he's not the one that's logging the tackles. Those are the things, in spite of not having this refined pass rushing skill set or this extremely explosive kind of first step, the way that Jalen Carter did coming out of Georgia, right when he was being drafted. Even though he's not that guy, the stuff he does in the run game, like, it's going to pop on film in a way that lets you know that,

okay, this is all going to transfer immediately into the league. He's got great size. I think that you can play him as a nose. You can play him in a four-down, right, as you're more run-stuffing defensive tackle as well. And I think that he will thrive in either position. Like you said, you don't typically talk about defensive tackles that have like a day two projection that aren't going to step in and give you, you know, a 13% pressure rate as highly as I think Cady McDonald's has been talked about. But that just goes back to show like what you see on tape, it is all extremely enticing.

And in this league, in this era where teams want to play more soft zone, more two high shells, more light boxes, you need a lot of McDonald's in your rotation to be able to handle what's going on in the interior. and I think that he would be an ideal fit for a lot of defenses in the league right now. Yeah, he passed the, hey, when I was watching Ohio State, were they like circling him a lot or talking about him a lot? Yes, like you knew kind of when he was out there. And again, that's on a defense that is just loaded with defensive talent, as we're seeing in this draft year. All right, that was number five, Deontay.

What's the next number? What do you got? Let's go with two. No significance. He talked about me hating Derek Jeter a week ago that hasn't changed. Let's go with two. All right, I like this one. What is your favorite prospect team pairing in the first round?

If you could just say, hey, I would really love for this guy to end up here. That would be a lot of fun. I've got a few written down, but what was one or a couple that you had on your mind? I think Kenyon Sadiq to the Rams has been around. That was one that's been floated. I think very early in the process, right? I'm still all attached to that. I still love the idea of getting Sadiq tied into a Sean McVeigh offensive system.

I think you mentioned Dylan Tieneman or Emmanuel McNeil Warren landing in Minnesota. That's when every time I'm doing a mock draft and I get in that range, usually one or both of those guys are available. And I'm like, man, if I were Brian Flores, I will be grabbing everybody by the collar and saying you are not writing any other name on this card other than one of these two safeties, please for the sake of my defense. So I love that. That's going to be so interesting. Just real quick on the Vikings there. Sorry to interrupt you, Deonte. No, please.

They are a very interesting team for this draft because they fired the GM. You know, they've got this de facto GM, but I think we know Kevin O'Connell's, you know, has the juice there and it's making the decisions. Yet Brian Flores is the most sort of proven guy just in terms of my side of the ball is going to be good, you know. If you guys can figure out what you're going to do. And Kevin O'Connell has been a good offensive coach, but just like Flores, he's, has kind of lifted their floor here over the past couple of years. And, you know, there was some reporting that he and Questia dofa Mensa, you know, had issues. There's other reporting that Kevin O'Connell and Questio Dofemza had issues.

And so I do wonder what they do is going to be very interesting. Is O'Connell going to be like, I'm getting myself an offensive toy, whether it's Kenyon Sadiq or one of the receivers or somebody else. Is there a, hey, let's zoom out what's best for the football team? You know, Flores tells me if we get Thineman or McNeil War, and that he's going to have this great plan for him. And you know what? We might not have the best offense,

but this is going to be better for the team. So, yeah, a team I feel like maybe we haven't discussed in depth in this pre-draft process. But when you mentioned those two, I had the same ones written down, like any of those safeties go to the Vikings, that's going to be a fun pairing. They're a team we're going to learn something about,

I feel like, on day one and throughout this draft. 100%. And another offensive guy I've been thinking a lot about it. And I think you can kind of take your pick with Carolina. I just really love the idea of KC Concepcion playing in the slot in Carolina as like your YAT guy, somebody that you can get the ball to underneath. They can go create big place for you. In my last mock draft, I had Jordan Tyson landing in Carolina, somebody who can separate B. Stefan Diggs-esque type of receiver, right?

So those are two guys that I find myself really fascinated with, right? And I think that if you're Carolina, while you do still have some needs trying to find Premier Front 7 talent to really try to round down. out this defense. I think ultimately the biggest priority is ending the 2026 season with clarity as to whether or not Bryce Young is going to be your quarterback in the future. And the best way to do so is to try to backstop your offense with as much talent as possible as that way you're not asking him to be a superhero on a down-to-down basis. Yeah. And it's even how, you know, how are they planning on doing that? Is it definitely a wide receiver? Are they a sneaky Kenyon Sadiq team? Do they look at their offensive line and say, you know,

Iki Aquano's got the injury and we signed Rashid Walker to that low-level deal. But, man, we really love one of these tackles. So I'm with you. It feels like that's going to be offense. They, you know, signed guys on defense to kind of help, help on that side of the ball in a free agency. But it feels like they probably need, you know, one of those areas they got to address on offense.

And maybe it is Concepcion. That would be fun, nice match there with Ted McMillan. And do you get a better idea of who Bryce Young is? It feels like we've said that for, you know, several years, but it feels like, yeah, this really is that year where you want to get the evaluation there on Bryce Young. Let me see. What else did I have down for this one? I can cheat because I come up with the question so I can prepare for these.

We mentioned Caleb Dallens earlier. I think him with the Bengals would be fun. Just they kind of need, like who's the face of that Bengals defense? You know, they're trying to rebuild it there and just reach a level of competency. and if he's the one directing everybody, setting the culture, being a playmaker on the back end, I think that would be a fun one.

I even think, Deonti, if he went to the Cowboys at 12, that's pretty fun too. New defensive coordinator, you know, the Eagles, when they got Vic Fangio, Quinion Mitchell and Cooper DeGine,

that was kind of a turning point for that defense. The Cowboys now have a Fangio disciple there in Christian Parker running the defense. Do they draft two defensive backs? Is it a defensive back? And a pass rusher,

can Caleb Downs kind of be the guy that changes the fortunes of that defense. So those were a couple other ones I wrote down as well. I like that. And I'll stick with receivers and offense. I like Mackay Lemon as a potential Steelers slot, right? Like somebody who can go win some contested catches. I think that the style of offense are going to want to run with Mike McCarthy

and we're assuming Aaron Rogers in the final year of his career. Or maybe they go out and get a young quarterback that they want to hand the reins off to. Either way, just knowing what McCarthy likes to do with the calling his offense. You want guys that are unafraid to work in the middle of the field in the quick game, can get you the ball, secure the ball, go win on fades if you are throwing the ball deep down the field. And I think that Lemon's a kind of guy, at least what we've seen over the last year, right, being able to go up and win those passes and not necessarily needing to be a burner to get separation at times and somebody who is going to play tough and do all the small things that you need them to do as a slot receiver

and a spread out West Coast offense. That's another fit that I think I've really, really come to like. I like that one. last two I had written down Cardinal Tate to the commanders at seven with Jade and Daniels. I think that would be fun. And the one you see in a lot of places

is Venga Yowane to the Ravens. I had that one on my list as well. It just feels like he's going to get taken pretty high. You know, and you just look at all the players, you're like, who is a player you just feel the best about? There's going to be a team that says,

like, we don't want to take the risk on some of these other guys. And it doesn't mean it's a sure thing. It doesn't mean, you know, plug and play or high ceiling. We all know that those phrases don't always come to fruition, but just in terms of like, oh, you know, scouts are good on him, coaches are good on him, analytics is good on him,

owner, GM, like everybody being like, yeah, no, we like him a lot. It feels like Yawani's that type of player. Does he go 14? Is it possible he goes even earlier? We shall see. All right, we take a break. We come back. We get to more of these draft questions.

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that aren't. Of course. The offensive rookie of the year pick is coming. However, you may not pick Fernando Mendoza or Jeremiah Love. I thought it was too easy. Those two. Those feel like the obvious favorites right there,

Mendoza and Jeremiah Love, if you disagree or if you want to say anything about those two guys, you can. But let's say you got to take those two off the board and I say, here's $100 you can put it down on who the offensive

rookie of the year is going to be who would your choice be not knowing what team these guys are going to land on and that's really what makes it tricky

I think that's really what makes it tricky but I am going to go with Kenyon Sadiq ultimately I think that and this is not necessarily oh we're going back

and watching this college tape is seeing a bunch of production because that is kind of the knock on him right is that for all of the athletic traits we don't have that big breakout in terms of big year yardage. We don't have a big, you know, 19 touchdown season or something like that, right? It's not like Tyler Warren coming into the draft. Or it's like, oh, you can just turn on the Penn State tape.

And every time Penn State needed a play, they were going to that guy, they were going to 44 and he was going to go make it happen. Right. But I do think, just looking at the way that the league has been using young tight ends year over year, right? Like I look at Kenya Tadik and you say the best realized version of him is something like Sam LaPorte right out the gate, right? Because he does have these great physical traits, we can get into formations where we're making him the number one receiver on the backside of a three-by-one set, and we're going to use him against corners to run slants and quick outs and, you know, see if we can try to, you know, kind of build a Travis Kelsey S package for this guy where he can just go make a catch out in space

and make a play. You think about Brock Bowers, who was certainly much more refined, I would say, in terms of his full tight-in skill set than what Sadeke is. But again, that was a team that was rebuilding, that needed a guy that could final targets to who had the athletic profile to be able to go make guys miss in the middle of the field and go get you a few explosive plays here and there. I think the Sadiq can be that. And then I mentioned Tyler Warren for a reason, right? Like I would say in the first half of the season,

the Colts are just basically it seemed like every week. They were just in front of a whiteboard and saying, hey, what's the most creative way that we can get Tyler Warren the ball here, whether it's at fullback or as an off tight in, an in line tight in, split out as a receiver, et cetera, et cetera, right? Like I think that wherever Sadiq lands, you're drafting him with that kind of offense in mind, that we're going to have a package of, you know, six to eight plays each week

that if we're in the right situation, we're going to manufacture this guy at touch and just go let that, you know, sub four four speed, go get out in space and see what it can give us. So I would say if I can't pick Love, who would be my pick in this situation, it would be Sadiq because I think he can just give you enough raw yardage in production to make it work.

There was a time there where it was just like, don't count on your rookie tight end to be productive at all. I mean, it was a long stretch where it was just really tough, guys taking in the first round, it's going to take a while. Like three years usually before they turn into something. Right. It was like, is this a good investment? Because by the time they get good, they might be on their third year of their rookie contract. And then Brock Bowers had that year a couple years ago. And then last year, like you mentioned, Tyler Warren, Colston Loveland.

Terrific seasons. And now I don't know in my head whether, hey, Shiel, it's recency bias in a small sample or it's like, nope, maybe these guys are just more prepared to come into the NFL. and be productive right away. Or maybe the teams, to your point with the Colts, have a better plan for them right away, how to integrate them. So, yeah, I probably need a bigger sample, so I'm, like, open to it,

but I'm also a little bit cautious. Like, it wouldn't shock me if Sadiq went to a specific team, and it's like, all right, they didn't have a great plan for him or they don't have a great offensive coach, and now all of a sudden we're looking at it going, oh, man, I thought he was going to be a really exciting young player, but it's taking longer than maybe we expected.

So I like the choice. We'll see with Kenyon City. I feel like Deiate, he's the player that's on probably most group chats among NFL fanbases. 100%. Between like 13 and 27. Absolutely. Every fan base is just like, yeah. Every subreddit is.

Yeah, we need to make him number one on our board for sure. And I think that this exercise is really interesting when you take love off the board. Because you consider like the receivers that we're talking about, most of them that we've mentioned has almost always been like, oh, we're adding him. to a team that already has a number one, right, or a de facto number one. This guy is just going to slot in to a certain kind of role. The only receiver that I think I would feel like could just go on his own and produce enough

to be a rookie of the year is Jordan Tyson, and he's not walking into the year with any clarity and walking into the league with any clarity on what his health is going to be and whether or not he can handle the rigors of a 17 game and maybe someday in a future an 18 game, NFL slate, right? Like that to me, I think, is the biggest hang up. So I went with Sadeek, and if I couldn't go with Sadiq,

then the next best thing would be someone like a Jadarian Pricer or a Mike Washington, Jr., or running back who maybe is just going to go get you the short yardage touchdowns that you need, right, and go maybe pop an explosive runner to as part of the rotation. And, hey, maybe they've got eight touchdowns in 850 yards and ended up being, you know, one of the team's top two backs and ends up just kind of sneaking out with a offensive rookie of the year if it's not Mendoza or love. Yeah, I was looking at Cardinal Tate and thinking,

if he goes to Washington or the chiefs. It would have to be those two. I know. You can talk. You can talk about. I'm not picking him. Yeah. I'm not picking if it's Cleveland.

I thought for that reason, here will be my official pick. Omar Cooper Jr. Because I feel like if he goes in the first round, it will be towards the end there. Yep. And maybe it will be a team that has a good quarter. Now, to your point, he probably wouldn't be the number one target on a lot of those teams. but if he can go to a team that's good as a good quarterback, a good offensive coach,

then maybe he can just come in, you know, like a Buka, the first half or whatever it was of last season, where it was like, oh, this is kind of what everyone thought it was going to be where he's come in,

be productive right away. I don't think Cooper Jr. is that level of wide receiver, but I think he has a chance based on where he might get drafted, his experience, that he could come in and be productive right away. So I'll go Omar Cooper Jr. for my pick there.

I won't go on the soapbox, but I think that we all need to expand our imaginations. And I think there might be some years of the best rookie is alignment. I know that they're never going to win the award. Okay, I like this. I know they're never going to win the award. But we've got a lot of tackles coming into the league and a lot of guys that I think will be asked to start and produce

in pass protection right out of the gate. And I would say it's very possible that we look at someone like Spencer Pinot or maybe a Francis Maui Noah or Caleb Lomu ends up being the most impactful, you know, rookie to come into the league on offense, even though I know they're never going to get the votes that they'd need to win the award. Has it ever happened?

I'm looking now here. I'm looking it up now. If it did, it would be... It would have to be in an era where kickers are winning MVP because they would get the most points, right, in a season. That's the only time I could see something like that happening. No, I just pulled it up. Pro football reference, going back to 1967,

I guess, was the start. of this award being candid out. And I'm seeing running backs. I'm seeing full backs. There you go. That's kind of close. Wide receivers. Quarterbacks, obviously.

Actually, I don't believe a tight end. I don't think a tight end ever won it. I didn't know that. Wow, a tight end. Okay. For whatever we were saying earlier. Brock Bowers probably had an argument, his rookie year.

But, yeah, no, we haven't had a tight end win-one yet. Okay. I mean, like, just think of the odds. Okay. To your point. that one of the offensive lineman would not be the best offensive rookie in any given year. Like, think if you did this on the defensive side of the ball. And you're like, no defensive lineman was the best player.

It actually makes no sense. It's kind of crazy. I don't even think, you know, as much as I would love to rip you and be like, here's a hipster take, it actually do. It probably is a hipster take. But I can get on board with some hipster takes. And it's true, what would it take? you know, let's be the change we want to see in the voting community.

You know, I feel like, what would it take some sort of social media campaign? I almost feel like it would take these wide receivers, quarterbacks and running backs. They would have to be like kind of unimpressive more, you know, as much so as one of these offensive linemen being unbelievable. Although if it's ever going to happen, now's the time. Because now, like, we're more into offensive line play now than we've ever been, right? as a football viewing public, and you can produce clips very easily that, hey, don't worry about PFF grades.

Let me show you what this guy's doing and how fun it is. And you can have an offensive line clip go viral if they're getting to the second level and just burying a safety or a linebacker there. Or you can show, hey, man, this guy blocked Jared verse one-on-one on the biggest third down of the game. So I think those are the types of things we need.

Let's remember this. Let's get to week six, seven, eight next year when we're getting ready to maybe do the mid-season awards, and let's make sure we keep an eye on how the offensive line in our performance. I think the big thing, the big thing is that we need the nerds help. Now that we have all this player tracking data and we can do things like rush yards over expectations, you can start to look at, you know, pocket health. We've seen that with the Amazon Prime videos broadcast.

If you're able to start to tie the analytics in or you can say, hey, this offense is only able to get certain passes off because of how well this guy is playing as pass protection or when a team is running behind this rookie right tackle, their rush yards, over-expected spike because they're just moving guys off of the interior. That would be, I think, the best bet to make that happen. So to my buddies that work at the NFL, you know, Kee could have to do some of my other guys

that are working on the analytic side of things. Next time we go to the big data bowl, I need that to be the project, put together a data set that is going to help, you know, people realize how valuable offensive linemen are when they come into the league. Well, you make a good point. We can actually, you know,

there are kind of three sets of people here that aren't always aligned, but we can actually align analytics, the film grinders, and then just the old heads. I think all those communities agree that like, you know, offensive line play, very important, offensive linemen should be getting more credit, more, you know, more praise, that kind of thing. So we really just like all those little factions in the NFL analysis community just need to get to the mainstream people, or maybe just the people who have the votes in the media there, get to them and make the case all that. You know, everyone's got to be aligned, though, between like, if we get into some

situations, Deonte, where it's like Spencer Fano against Francis Maui, Noah, and now we're in a bad spot. There's splitting votes, and I don't think, you know, there's not going to be enough there for it to happen. But I like that. I think we unearth something there that maybe we can revisit once we get to October, November, and then once the awards are handed out at the end of the year. All right, there we go.

Maybe an offensive. We should have chosen. All right, let's do it now. You have to choose an offensive line. Which of these guys has the best chance. I feel like, you know, we can't go guard if we're trying to make this change, Deonte. No, so sorry, Benga. It's got to be premium position.

I love your, Vega. It's not happening. No centers. I don't see it for you. Sorry, guys. I'm going to go with a row for youling. Okay. That's been my favorite tackle.

That's been my favorite tackle. of the guy that I project the highest coming into the league out of this tackle class. I think that all the athletic traits are there. You watch him as a run blocker to your point about needing those big highlights. You're going to get a couple clips where he gets an edge rusher

and puts him on skates and he's escorting that guy to the sidelines, right? You're going to get those clips. He doesn't lose to power very often. So you're going to have your Jared versus or you're big, powerful, you know, hulking defensive ends, try to run through this guy's chest.

And he's going to anchor down and go nowhere. And you're going to get those, hey, you know, NFL next-gen stats is saying that this guy rushed up against Monroe Freeling 22 times in a game and you only got one pressure, right? And the pressure came after three and a half seconds or whatever. So I would say that Freeling is probably my pick for that. I think the most realistic would just end up being whoever ends up drafted the highest, right? That would be the thing is, oh, this team drafted on top five overall.

The Cardinals went and took, you know, whoever Spencer Fenno or whatever, and he ended up being, you know, a high level, you know, maybe Pro Bowl level tackle. and maybe we can gin up a couple votes. But we are circling back to this. I am not going to allow myself to forget when we get to Christmas time and we're really starting to talk about reward awards and who's going to be winning what. And we're voting for all pro teams and all of those things.

This is something I'm going to come back to and I'm going to make a campaign out of this if I can. I got to say the example you use, if Cardinals tackle Spencer Fenno and wins offensive rookie of the year, that would be one of the greatest upsets in NFL history. I like Freeling. All right.

Freeling is the official pick of the Monroe Freeling, the offensive tackle from Georgia. We both like him. He's the official pick, sight unseen in terms of where he's going to go for offensive rookie of the year next season. Let's see. Let's see how that take looks down the road there.

But I like it. We got to a good place there. All right, Deontay. That was question number three. What do you got? What's next? All right. Now we're going to go to one.

Let's finish out the box. the first half of numbers here. We'll go with one. All right. Very simple. Give me one bold prediction that you want on the record before next week's draft. So this isn't your last ringer NFL show before the draft. We're going to do a fun group mock exercise that'll be in everyone's feed early next week. But I thought, you know what? Let's just make sure Deonté, if maybe he's been had something he's been sitting on, you know, sometimes you go to bed and you say, I'm thinking about it.

Then you wake up and you say, yeah, I feel good enough to go with that. Deonti, give me one bold prediction you want on the record. I have multiple, but I think my spiciest one is that the Chiefs and Cowboys both end up making selections in the top five of this draft. Oh, okay. All right. So Chiefs are trading up and Cowboys trade up. Do we have, hey, I think they would want to target this player or we have or we're just saying we think they're going to see someone they like and they have multiple first round picks and they're going to be aggressive. I think both would be in the search of an edge rusher. Okay. And I think that specifically with Dallas, I think there's already kind of those smokes and it goes out that like, oh, they're concerned that if they wait, that New York might end up taking, you know,

a defensive player that they're really interested in. They're concerned that, you know, the edge rushers that they might be into or some of the dbs that they might be into at pick 12 just aren't going to be available if they sit back and wait. And I think if you're Kansas City, again, you've got to look at this and say, we may never get another opportunity to go make a pick in the top 10, and we actually have two first round picks that we might be able to go leverage to get some control over who we select. That was kind of my thinking for both.

I think that the Chiefs might be targeting someone like a David Bailey, who we've talked about multiple times being a really intriguing speed, edge rush type that I think is kind of starting to pick up a little bit more in the process. I think that before he was kind of in that morass of, hey, where do you rank him against Starvel Reese? where do you rank him against Rubin Bain? I think that as we get closer to it, people start to get a little bit more infatuated with

just what his ceiling can be as an edge rusher, which is why I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up being the top edge rusher taken. So I have the Chiefs making a deal with the Cardinals. So the Cardinals are getting off that number three pick. We're not taking a quarterback. We're not in any rush. This is going to be a long rebuild.

Let's go get number 9 and 29 from the Chiefs and let's add some day three draft capital swaps to make the trade calculator look good. And then for the Cowboys, I had them making a deal with Tennessee. Another team that already has their quarterback, they're in a rebuild. If they do want Jeremiah Love, you might be able to kick back and wait for a little bit and still have access to them in the teens, right, if you want to wait. And I have Tennessee taking 12 and 20 and a fourth round pick for Tennessee's number four

and number 35. So I think that that was maybe my most ambitious trade because Dallas has given up two first round picks, but they're getting a second rounder back to consummate this deal as well as a number four pick. And yeah, like I said, I think this is going to be for two of the premier defensive players in this draft that they'll be making this move for. All right. I like it. That would be exciting. That would be fun. Let's make it happen. Let's get some trades going here. I may have the little Cowboys hypothetical trade in a future question. So I'm not going to step on the toes there. But I like that. A couple teams, the Chiefs and the Cowboys making moves to get

into the top five of the draft. I don't know if this one's bold or not, Deont. We've talked a lot about Jeremiah Love, and I'm going through the mock scenarios, and I'm looking at it. Jeremiah Love, not a top 10 pick? I don't know. Is that a bold? Is that bold enough? Do you think like, no, I actually think that's realistic because I'm going through these teams, and I just don't know that there's going to be a team in the top 10 that actually takes them? I think it's bold in the sense that when we are having this conversation as people who analyze the lead and are watching the trend lines and, hey, this is positional value. Y-Z, I think it's a less bold take in that realm and maybe more bold in the sense of like,

the reality of it is these teams see these special athletes and they get infatuated and they feel like they've got to have them, right? And you look at the commanders, you look at the Titans, you look at these teams that he might be linked to. I would say the Giants might be on that list as well. And I just have a hard time thinking for teams that might not have access to blue, blue chip talent that might immediately change your franchise, maybe the next best thing they're most interested in is just an athlete that everybody gets excited by this. You can just hand the ball off to and let him go. And I do think that love is going to end up being a top 10 pick, ultimately for that reason. Man, the Titans at 4, that would be very interesting if they just stick it 4 and take

Jeremy. I love. The other one I had written down, and this one is not, you know, well, maybe it is bold. I don't know. How about Garrett Nussmeyer goes before Ty Simpson? That I think is bold. That one I think is bold. Okay. All right. Let's go with it. I think that we're in the people who like Nussmeyer more than Simpson are more in the minority these days. So whether it's you, whether it's me, whether it's our guy, Fran Duffy,

who I think likes Nussmeier a little bit more than Simpson. I think my buddy Nate Tice likes Nussmeier as much, if not more than Tice Simpson. I think that will probably be able to call this company then. I'm in. Exactly. All right. If these guys are behind me, then I'm good.

I can just blame it on them, you know, if it doesn't work out. Exactly. Yeah. I was just looking at what they said. Did you say you had some others there, Deante, some other bold predictions. I have one more for you. Okay. I don't know if it's bold because if you're just reading the reporting, it seems like maybe

this is just kind of leaning in that direction of happening. I think that Dexter Lawrence is ultimately traded on day one of the draft. I think that is bold. My landing swap for him is Chicago. I think that the Chicago deal is number 25. So you're on board. All right. 25 for Dexter Lawrence.

Now, I had when I had this fake prediction that the. giants are sending a fourth back to the bear. So it's a fourth and Dexter Lawrence for 25 overall. I don't know if they would need to do that or not. But yeah, there's some reporting that tops are at an impasse with Dexter Lawrence. I think if I still had to actually guess, I think he ends up staying with the Giants. But yeah, the closer this kind of gets to the draft and to new regime in New York, and it's a player that I think teams would be interested in.

I think that would be a fun trade. let's get Dexter Lawrence to the Chicago Bears. I want to impact players on teams who are competing, man. This is what we're here for. And it's funny that it's playing out this way, and we talked about it the last time we were on, right? Like the Dexter Lawrence situation is actually a very simple one. It's give me guaranteed money because I'm a vet who has proven myself

or send me somewhere that will pay me. And it seems like New York feels like, no, we're going to play. We want you to play out the string on this deal. And then in 2027, we can come back to the table. and talk about an extension. And bets who have been watching, you know, what was going on with Trey Hendrickton and Cincinnati and other vets across the league when they get to the last year or two of their deal

and they've run out of guaranteed money, they're not going to sit around and wait. Nobody is going to play on non-guaranteed deals, right? Because now you're telling me that I basically have half a foot out, if anything goes wrong in this year or I get hurt, that I am now risking my future value for that. So I think that ultimately, the best way to resolve this would be to pay Dexter Lawrence,

but if you're not going to give him the money that he's asking for, pay him at market rate, even if it's in the $29 million for two extra years type of category, then you might as well move him onto a team that is trying to compete and will be willing to pay him into his early 30s to try to maximize what's left of what's been a great career so far. I want all your bold predictions to have it. It would make for a much more fun draft,

you know, a draft that maybe lacks little juice, if we could get the Chiefs trading up to the top five, Cowboys trading up to the top five, and Dexter Lawrence being traded to the, the Chicago Bears. I'm on board with all of Deontes, both predictions there. All right, let's take one more break. We come back. We'll get to the rest of these questions. All right, we are back on the ringer NFL show. All right, Deontay, what do you got? What's next? You know, in the spirit of me being a coach, I was looking at the clock and saying like, all right, I think I've been a little

long winded. Let's try to go a little no huddle here. See if we can bounce through some of these on the back five. So let's go with nine. Let's go with nine here. Unfortunately, this one, it's tough to be too short-winded on. But that's okay. We got some of these that can be more quick hitters. You have just been named the GM of an expansion team, Biente. You don't know what scheme you're running. You don't know who else is going to be on your roster.

Yet you are tasked with stacking your wide receiver prospects in the first round. So this is a tough one because a lot of them you say, well, if we're doing this scheme, well, if we need this, well, who else do we have? But no, this is just you got to say, who do I feel? like are the best players, and how would I rank them? So we're talking Ohio State's Cardinal Tate, Arizona State's Jordan Tyson, USC's Mackay Lemon, Indiana's Omar Cooper Jr., Texas A&M's Casey Concepcion, Washington's Dentel, Boston. I think those six guys, there's an expectation could all go or will all go in the first round.

How does Deonté Lee rank them? It's tricky, man, because these guys are so different stylistically. They're all so different stylistically. And maybe this is going to be revelatory for just how I view the position and the things that I prioritize and the things that I don't. I think that Tate remains number one for me. So I'm sticking with consensus there. I've got Jordan Tyson as my two and Casey Concepcion as my three. I think that that might be a bit of a break.

I think that a lot of people are a little bit warmer on Mackay Lemon compared to the rest of the receivers in this class. So that's my top three. I would say McCillivan is fourth, but you could probably go four and four-a-eight and maybe between McCai-Limon and Omar Cooper. And then last on that top, you know, consensus, top six would be Denzel Boston. Okay. I like it.

I went Taint Tyson, Lemon, Concepcion, Cooper, Boston, but I'm kind of with you with, you know, Lemon Concepcion Cooper. I don't have a big difference between those three. Tyson, it just, you just have to make a decision. Do we feel like we're going to be able to figure out the medicals or do we not feel like we're, you know, is it he was injured before, so he's going to be injured again?

Or is it he was injured before? But none of these are like, you know, injuries that are going to impact the rest of his career. Let's get him with our medical staff, our training staff, and he's going to be a steal because of his talent. And then Boston, I just, like, he could be great. I just, whenever I read that a guy in college is winning with sort of size, physicality, and not necessarily a great separator. And it's probably unfair of me because there's been guys like this who have been, who've turned into great prospects. I just get a little bit nervous when I read that type of thing. And I think, are, am I sure that's going to translate to the NFL?

So I think we're mostly on the same page with that ranking. Yeah, I think that I'm glad you brought up Boston because he's the one who hangs me up the most when I'm talking about evaluating these first round receivers. Because in my heart of hearts, I want to believe that the big body, bully ball style of receiver is going to get into the league and you can just muscle guys up on third down. He can muscle guys up in the red zone. And I think that what we've seen borne out year over year is that it just doesn't always happen that way. And you do have to have an element of separation to your game.

Now, I think that whether it's by data or by film, I think that Boston is a little underrated in that regard. I don't think it's because he has a full route tree. I think that that is a bigger hang up to me is that you don't have the most detailed route tree where you're just seeing him snap off these routes in the intermediate area. And he looks explosive getting in and out of his breaks at all times. you're seeing things that are a lot more off the vertical tree, which is fine for a big bodied receiver. It's just not as detailed maybe as what you would like to see.

And if it were, he'd be right there 1A, 1B with Carnell Tate, ultimately, I would think. So I think that for him, he is a first round receiver because the ceiling, the possibilities are there. I know our own Danny Kelly Compton to Cortland Sutton. I think that that's an aspirational landing spot for him. But if you were to be that level of receiver, I think that that would merit being a late to mid-to-late first-round. pick. So yeah, I would have him at the bottom, but I still think he can be a good player.

That cluster you were mentioning, though, between Lemon, Concepcion and Cooper, like, that is truly like a dealer's choice. You just kind of have to figure out what kind of role you're trying to fit these receivers into and what really matters most for you at that position. All right, there you go. You know, I just realized Deonte mentioned we're behind schedule. The offensive lineman as rookie of the year, like we spent a good 20 minutes on maybe. You know, we got a little too carried away there, but that's okay, like Deante said. We don't get enough time to talk about the trenches anyway, man. I got to give the big guys a little bit of love.

There you go. We gave the big guys a little bit of love. All right, Deontay, what's your next number here? Let's see. If that was nine or ten, I don't remember, but we'll go with eight from here. That was nine. And then see what's left over, yes. Okay, eight.

So I was thinking about, you know, I was thinking about draft memories over the years. And I was thinking about 2021, Deante, when Aaron Rogers kind of hijacked the draft. You know, it's draft day. And all of a sudden, ESPN's Adam Schaefter has a report that Aaron Rogers is so disgruntled that he doesn't want to be back with the Packers. And it's his bombshell of a story and teams are calling Green Bay or had already called Green Bay. Let's say a similar story breaks out on draft day this year. You know, maybe we're trying to get a little walk in on draft day. morning knowing we got a big three days, a little workout in, whatever, and all of a sudden,

the phone starts blowing up that a prominent quarterback in the NFL wants out. If I told you that was going to happen this draft day on the next Thursday, which quarterback, if you had to choose one, would you say, hmm, the Aaron Rogers, this is difficult. I, very listeners, I did not give Deonté a heads up for this. This is a tough one. This is a tough one. But if you said, hmm,

I guess I would go with this quarterback to be the Air Rogers 2021 version in 2026. Who would it be, Deonte? And you could just, if you want to talk it out,

walk us through, you're just going through probably like I do, the ESPN standings page and just like, this guy's quarterback, would this guy make sense? Is there anyone

that has gotten you to at least a maybe as I've tried to buy you some time here? with this question? Maybe no, but let's exist in the realm of fantasy for a little bit. Okay, I like that. It's going to hurt. We got some time. It's a hypothetical.

Yeah, it's a fantasy world. I hate that this is the first name that comes up because I'm just going to get absolutely blitzed on social media for this. But the first thought is that it would be Jalen Hertz. So Jalen Hertz sees these reports about how people in the organization don't know how they feel about him as a leader. And, you know, they're blaming some of the things that go wrong in the offense. on the fact that he's changing play calls and et cetera, et cetera. And the fact that Philadelphia didn't come to the table this offseason and said, hey, let's tear up the last few years on your deal and let's just give you a new one

because you want a Super Bowl for us. We know you're our franchise guy. And he says, you know what? I'm going to play the big joker here. Did you guys have so much to say publicly? This is how I feel. Pay me my contract. Pay me a new contract or get me out of here.

Since we're going to be blowing up this whole thing and AJ Brown is probably going to get traded and we need to reset and get younger on offense anyways. count me out of that. I want to be some place that always wants to maximize its opportunity to win by having the best players

on the roster at all times. It's a good... Honestly, that's a good... It's a good answer. He's not saying... Right, I'm not saying it's a... No, I'm not saying that I... But we're trying to...

Because Jalen Hertz has not really done the thing where he gets his side of the story out there in the media with the other stuff that's being put out there. And yeah, maybe he says, I won a lot of big games for you.

You know, we've won a lot of games. together. I've won a lot of big games and you guys aren't showing me the proper amount of respect here. Howie Roseman had had a press conference this week where he just kind of gave a very clunky answer when asked about some of the reporting on Jalen Hirschard. I like that. Jail and Hertz is a good one. I wrote down some names. I didn't feel like I could, I nailed it with any of these, you know, but it's just the exercise you just did. I did. And I was like, what if Lamar Jackson, you know? That was the other one that I thought about. Right. Yeah. Because it was we've been to that weird between him and the team in the past.

And they did the restructure this offseason, but they didn't give the extension this offseason. And maybe just like enough is enough. You wanted to move on with your head coach. You should move on with your quarterback to I want a fresh start somewhere else. So that was one I had down. You know, Bo Nix probably isn't at the same level of prominence. But if there's at some point just a report that like Bo Nix and Sean Payne,

just this isn't working out, man. They almost came to blows in the meeting room. Nix is just like sick of this guy and he wants to go somewhere else. Again, I don't think that's going to happen, but I was like, all right, that's worth at least writing down. If he's just like, I'm just annoyed with my head coach and you know what, I'm going to get something out there. That was another one I had down. C.J. Stroud, I just wrote down if it's just like, he's like, man, you know, it was this going great after my rookie year, but you haven't paid me yet. And I feel like my play has declined and maybe I'm starting to feel some of that heat.

but I think it's some of the stuff around me and the decisions you guys have made. I would like to go elsewhere. Again, I don't think it's going to happen, but that was another one I wrote down as well there, Deont. And then I think some people would probably mention Joe Burrow just because of the, you know, some of the press conference stuff. I always felt, I never felt like that was due to him.

Now, it could be wrong. I didn't feel like he wanted to leave Cincinnati. None of that to me came across like a prelude to a trade request. That very much felt to me like a quarterback trying to realize, his power and trying to exert as much of it as possible on the organization to make sure that it's building a contender around him. But I mean, he's an Ohio guy, right? Like he's an Ohio guy. He's close to home.

The entire franchise has basically worked itself to make itself in his image because he does have all the offensive firepower that he needs to have a top five offense year over year when those guys are healthy. I couldn't imagine him being the guy to ask out. I have maybe two more names that could be explosive. All right, go ahead. Day on. This one is like an absolutely not going to happen because his new money just kicked in. But it will be Justin Herbert.

If Justin Herbert was like, hey, man, I am tired. I'm tired of you guys talking about these compics. Jim Harba is too weird for me. Yeah, exactly. You know, like you guys got me Mike McDaniel. That's awesome. But every free agency, I'm waiting for you guys to add a little bit more at receiver or along our offensive line to help keep me upright

and give me better players to throw to. And you keep telling me about this mythical day. in the future where your cap sheet is going to be clean enough to be able to go be aggressive for the exact perfect player and it never happens. I'm tired of it. So that's one guy I thought about. And then the last one, that again, wouldn't happen because he just would never find a landing spot better than where he is right now is Jared Goff.

If that would just be a, hey, at random, I want to compete or, you know, I feel like I don't get my just due here or we missed our window to win a championship and I want to be someplace where I can try to make the most out of my. my last few prime years, that would be the only other guy I could imagine. But again, none of these are things I think would happen. I feel like if I had to rank quarterbacks who are happiest with their situation, I feel like I would have golf very high. Like he's probably like, man, McVeigh was kind of a jerk to me.

You know, Campbell gives me hugs. The O-line's pretty good. The crowd is cheering my name. Yeah, they're cheering my name. Yeah. I mean, man, the problem is it's hard to find the quarterback who has the personality, honestly, too, or at the stage of his career where he would pull something like that off. That was the hardest part about this exercise where honestly, yeah, I just kind of couldn't get there

with a lot of these players. But it is fun exercise. It's kind of like an NBA podcast segment on an NFL show with those quarterbacks. Maybe if we miss someone obvious, let us know. All right, Dea Tech. That was fun. I like that. You were squirming a little bit, but, you know, Jeter might be the right answer for,

for that one. We're Lamar Jackson, I think. Those are probably the two that may be come to mind. All right, what are we got? What's next? We are going to go with number six here. All right, six is a quick hitter. Here's where we can make up some time. I just want your favorite day three guy. Give me a day three pick

that we're going to look back five years from now and we're going to go, man, teams are really, how did teams let him fall to day three of the draft? Who's your guy? So I have one on the fringe. She's a hometown guy for me and Grayson Halton from Oklahoma, right? This is somebody actually had the opportunity to coach against

when he was in high school. Give us the background. I don't know much about him. So, you know, before he became this, you know, kind of game wrecking defensive tackle, like he played out on the edge. They would move him around. I had, there were some rest where he was in the backfield going like Vita V-to-A style as your lead blocker, the guy you're handing the ball off to in short yardage and he was in high school. But yeah, I mean, a very disruptive guy, great first step. I think that you've seen over the years at Oklahoma, he started to really develop. up his hand usage, his ability to play the run. I think for me, that's a guy that you look up, you know,

two or three years down the line when he's getting close to the end of the rookie deal. The same way in Philadelphia, you're talking about, you know, your Milton Williams is or your Mora Ojima's like, hey, like, we kind of waited. This guy actually developed into exactly the player that we thought it was going to be. And oh, crap, he's about to go make $20 million on the open market because of how valuable he is as a disruptor, getting TFLs, you know, making plays in the backfield, affecting the quarterback.

So that's one that I have is kind of like a fringe, could be a round four type of pick. Another one in that kind of vein would be Oscar Delt, tight in who kind of does it all. I feel like he checks all the boxes, but he's not going to wow you in any one particular way. Great athlete, but that athleticism hasn't turned into big time production,

you know, and I think that for him is going to be a matter of, he's probably not your lead tight in, and he's definitely going to have to continue to grow as a blocker, I think to maximize his value. But you see what he can do athletically when he does get the ball out in space vertically every once in a while.

And you can kind of see the outline of a guy who can be a major impact tied in later on in his career. I love it. There you go. Two day three potential day three picks. We never know where they're actually going to go, but two potential day three picks that Deontay likes. Sorry, Deonti.

I think we have seven and ten remaining if I'm doing this correctly. What do you got? There you go. Your accounting is right on point. So we've got left over. So I'll go with 10 and then we'll wrap up with seven. All right, 10. Let me see. All right. Rank these draft takes based on which you're most on board with to least on board with, Deonti. Okay, so I've got three here. Number one, you can't grade a draft until three to five years after the fact. That's draft take number one. Number two, the NFL made a smart move in cutting the time between picks from 10 minutes to 8 minutes,

just 8 minutes in the first round this year. That's number two. And then number three, some team should draft solely off of a consensus board for five years and see how they do. So those three takes, number one, can't create a draft until three to five years after the fact. Number two, NFL made a smart moving cutting time between picks from 10 minutes to eight minutes in the first round and take number three. Some team should draft solely off of a consensus board for five years and see how they do. If you don't know what a consensus boarded, board is, all right, remember how to talk there. We talked about it with Billy Gill on the last show.

It's these, you know, you take kind of, it's a law of numbers thing. You just take a bunch of different draft boards that are out there. you throw them into a spreadsheet, you come up with a consensus board. And the idea is, you know, what one person might see something that another doesn't see, it accounts for some variants. There are NFL teams that include this in their modeling, in their rankings where they say, hey, maybe there's something out there that we missed. All right, Deonti, which of those takes are you most on board with?

Which are you least on board with? The one I'm most on board with is that it was a good idea to cut the time from 10 minutes to 8 in between picks. Okay. And this might be for selfish reasons. A, the draft broadcast is always too long. It's always too long. We're just writing down names and negotiating trades at the end of the day. Okay?

Like, I get it. ESPN, NFL network, all these places that broadcast the draft, you've got to fill in your ad time, right? You can build these very robust broadcasts off of it. And I'm not saying that I don't enjoy it. I'm one of the sickos. I will watch the same clips that I've been watching for the last three months, you know, on the broadcast.

You know, when a guy gets picked and you're telling me all the reasons why he's going to end up being a superstar for the team he just landed with. But ultimately, like, I don't think you need 10 minutes to sort it out who you're going to draft, especially, like, on day one, right? Like, you don't need that much time. Your boards have been set for a long time. You probably know what the trade market is already outside of, like, the teams may be in the back quartile because you're waiting to see how the board is going to fall and maybe you get an opportunity to jump back in if you're in the second round. Maybe you get a chance to trade out or make a big leap up towards the middle of the first round. if there are players you're targeting and you feel like they're not going to be available to you. But yeah, we don't need 10 minutes.

And again, selfishly, I want to have a 2003 situation again. I want to see a team like the Vikings, you know, miss a pick. And now everybody's scrambling and, oh, my God, I don't know what's going on. And I love the fact that, like, the rules basically say, like, it's like, well call from there that as long as you get your pick in time, or if you don't get your pick in time, you just continue to get skipped until you ultimately make your pick. I think that that would be great for the content machine. if we had a week where everybody is freaking out

because some NFL franchise was trying to be too precious about negotiating a trade or hymen and hawing over do we want Kenyon Tadig versus this player? Do we want to get this running back impositional value versus this edge rusher? And you look up and it's like, oh, grab, we've been waiting, you know, we've been basing this off of 10 minutes worth of time.

We've only got 40 seconds left and nobody could come to a consensus. I think that that would make for great drama and great theater during the draft. I'm going to make a prediction, Deont, that there will be at least one GM that complainant or says, we couldn't finalize a trade because they moved it from 10 minutes to 8 minutes. I think that's going to,

I don't know what the, I don't know what the right amount of time is because I'm with you. Like it doesn't seem like they need 10 at the same time. I do like trade. So I want there to be enough time. Now, a lot of times those trades are agreed to before the day begins. The frameworks are set. But still, you know, we've seen the draft video.

They're on the phone. They're yelling. The analytics guys putting it on the board. Is this fair? Is it not fair? So some of it does happen here to the moment. But yeah, if that feels like that was the right move, so I'm with you there. All right.

What about the other two takes here? Next one, the one that I'm most interested in, I can't say bought into it. But the one I'm most interested in would be drafting only off of a consensus board for a few years time and just seeing where you land. That would be interesting. I mean, you kind of spoke to the wisdom of crowds theory with following consensus boards. I think that for the most part, the way that people are drafted and how effective they are once they get to the league and how productive, et cetera, et cetera, is typically borne out, right, on the whole with consensus boards, which is the whole reason why you might lean on them is because, you know, over the widest breadth of information gathering, these are just the guys that are most likely to end up being the best. They end up kind of bising themselves or climbing up closer to the top. So I would say that that's number two for me.

The number three is the idea that you can't trade a grade a draft. I forgot how to speak. for a second for three to five years. Why would I have to wait until these guys are signing their second contracts for me to grade how effective a GM was at their job? That's a me as GM propaganda that I'm not going for. I'm so, I'll be honest, I was nervous because I didn't know how you felt about it. I figured you were with me on that one with the draft grades because that one annoys me to knowing. This is going to happen on Saturday night, Sunday, Monday next week.

where some media types going to get on their high horse and say, you can't draft a grade, you can't create a draft until three to five years down the road. No, you're wrong. I disagree with you for two reasons.

One is, teams don't get that benefit. Like, it's very, of course, anyone can look back five years ago and identify the top players. What are we actually accomplishing with that exercise? Nothing. Anybody can do that.

The entire point of the draft and why it is very interesting is because you are making decisions under uncertainty. You don't know, and you have to try to piece it together and solve the puzzle and decide how much risk do I want to take on? Do I want to swing for a home run? Am I okay?

This is a safer player, but man, he's never going to be an all pro. You have to make all those decisions on the fly. That's why the draft is very interesting. And no one is like, this is the exact way you should draft because it's hard. There is no precise way where this is how you should draft. So we should evaluate them based on how we think they did with the process. did they trade multiple first round picks for James Pierce Jr. I think it's okay to rip a team for doing that.

And if you come back at me like we did last year and say, well, what if he's a Hall of Famer? Okay, that can be your response to literally any draft quits. Literally, right. So that's not what we're talking about here. And we can be wrong when we, you know, evaluate them. We can say they shouldn't have done this. And then three years later, it's like, nope, they actually nailed that.

And here's why I was wrong in the analysis. So that's one reason why. And the other reason why, Deont, Deont, maybe more importantly, it's only football people. It's going to be okay. Right. We're not trading futures in the stock market right now. No, it's okay.

Well, we can say this team gets to C minus because I think they did a bad job here. No one's going to like, it's all right. We're all going to survive if we hand out some draft grades. I mean, you know, we don't say you can't decide whether a team is good or not until after the Super Bowl. Like we don't just wait to do content and opinions the entire NFL season because I was like, we can't do it until we find out who actually is the best team. So listen, don't get your undies in a bunch, some of you out there, okay? You know, and if you're listening, feel free to rip any media member on our behalf.

If they get on their high horse about this, tell them the ringer NFL show sent you because I can't stand when those takes come out after the draft. All right. Was that a necessary rant? Probably not. But you know what? Sometimes you got a friend of me on this one. I'm 100% there with you.

All right. There you go. Last one, Diyadh, there's a juicy one to end on. Okay, we've actually hit on some of these topics, but now we're putting them in order here. Rank these three outcomes from most surprising to least surprising if these things happen. Number one, the New York Jets take Carnell Tate at number two. They look around and say, we got questions about Alvall Reese.

We got questions about David Bailey. no one wants to trade up. You know what? We're taking Cardinal Tate at number two. So that's the first outcome. Second outcome, this is the one I was referencing earlier. The Cowboys trade up to three. Kind of what you said.

They give up 12 and 20. But Deonti, they're not going edge rusher. They're adding Jeremiah Love to an offense with Dak Prescott and George Pickens and Cidi Lamb and a good offensive line. And Jerry's going, I'm back, baby. Let's go. Jeremiah Love on the Dallas Cowboys. And then three, the Philadelphia Eagles, select Ty Simpson in the first round of the NFL draft.

Those three outcomes, all unbelievable for content. Jets take Cardinal Tate at number two. Cowboys trade up to three to select Jeremiah Love. Eagle select Ty Simpson in the first round. Rank those that they actually happen from most surprise. to least surprising, Deonte. Most surprising to least surprising. I would say most surprising, honestly,

I mean, you could have set up the rubric anyway, and it would have changed the ranking for me, right? Because these are all very juicy potential storylines. I think that most surprising would be the Eagles drafting Ty Simpson, right? Like, especially in the first round, knowing that Lane Johnson probably only has a year or two left in his career to play, right? At least if we're basing it off of the fact that, Stoutland is gone as his offensive line coach,

that he's getting up there in age, that he struggled with injuries over the last couple of seasons. And I would say last season, the fact that for a guy who is typically able to just kind of tie the shoelaces tighter, so to speak, and get back out on the field and just gut it out, the fact that he genuinely had to miss time, tried to come back, wasn't exactly the same player,

and ended up missing time again, right? Like, I think that the Eagles are pretty aware of the fact that they either need to go find an offensive lineman that can play some sort of major role for them in the future after lay johnson retires or they need to just go get the most valuable player they can on the board that's not to say that getting a quarterback's not valuable but specifically in the context of where this team is at i would be shocked if it were tie simpson as the pick and i mean you want to talk about i am setting up notifications for every single radio show podcast live stream that there is in the philadelphia area

and on and all things, Eagles, I would just be absolutely drinking the content out of a fire hose. But yeah, I would say that that is, that would be the most surprising to me. Second most might actually be the Cowboys trading up specifically for Jeremiah Love. That was something I considered when I was putting together bold predictions. Like, if you're Jerry Jones, people have been giving you credit for smart process this off season,

but have they been calling you cool, right? Like, that to me is what kind of strikes me as what Jerry Jones is most concerned with is are people fawning over the cowboys? Are people making the cowboys A1 in terms of storylines? Trading up, gets you there, especially into the top three. And if you were to do it to say, hey, we've got an even better version of what Ezekiel Elliott was when we did this a decade ago, that to me, I think, would grab all the headlines coming out of day one of the draft, barring something wild happening with the Raiders at number one overall. That would be hypothetically the biggest storyline I could imagine coming out.

for that. So I will be, that would be my number two. And then the one that would be least surprising of the three with the Aftm, would be the Jets, taking Cardinal Tate number two. Not because I think that he's the second best player on the board. This would be a reach for me. Even if there weren't so many interesting edge rushers or, you know, premium defensive talents that the Jets could take,

I just don't view Cardinal Tate in the same ballpark as, you know, as he would be getting drafted ahead of where Julio Jones and A.J. Green were drafted. And like, to me, that is always going to be the bar. if you want to talk about a guy being a top three picked, you better be telling me that his tape coming out of college was at the level of Julio Jones or A.J. Green. I don't think you're going to get that out of Tate. I think the tape projects best as a high, high end,

a B plus A minus level. Number two wide receiver, not necessarily your number one with the bullet. We're going to get this guy 130 targets from the moment that he steps into the league. That's not what I see in him as a player. So I would probably, I would be least surprised of the three that you threw at me, but this is the one to me that it just does not pass a smell test.

If they don't go Arvo or reset to, I would think it has to be for a player like David Bailey. You know, I got to a point where I'm like, huh, should they take Carnal Tate? If they can trade out, I would be all for it.

Well, I was thinking, all right, so let's say they just can't get on the same page with these edge rushers. At least you're taking a premium position. You're trying to build an infrastructure for the quarterback in 2027.

it's hard to find great wide receivers in free agency and now you have someone paired with Garrett Wilson so again I'm with you I don't think I would do it I think it would be a reach I think everyone would think it would be a reach but I had that as my least surprising along with you in these top three I actually had the Cowboys

if the Cowboys traded up to three to take a running back I mean I had that as actually more surprising than the Eagles taking Ty Simpson in the first round so I flipped those two I had the Cowboys scenario always most surprising. Ty Simpson, Eagles take Ty Simpson as second most, and then the Jets taking Carnal Tate at number two. This was basically my attempt that like, let me try to come up with bold predictions that might have like not even a 1% chance, but at least, you know, like higher than 0% chance. And let me see what Deonté thinks about some of these. So yes, that was a great one

to end on. All right, that was a lot of fun. We went in a bunch of different directions. again next week we will have a little group mock draft for all of you. And then, of course, draft coverage as the festivities begin on Thursday night. Thank you to Deonté Lee. Thanks to Christopher Sutton for producing Stefano Sanchez on video. An additional production supervision by Connor Nevins and Arjuna Ram Gopal. I'm Shil Kapady. We will talk to you next time on the Ringer NFL show.

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