The Ringer NFL Show - Winners and Losers on Day 2 of the 2021 NFL Draft

Episode Date: May 1, 2021

Nora Princiotti, Kaelen Jones and Rodger Sherman hand out their winners and losers for day 2 of the 2021 NFL Draft. Hosts: Nora Princiotti, Kaelen Jones, and Rodger Sherman Producer: Isaac Lee Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Ringer's Dave Hill takes you on a journey into the underground lives and careers of six professional gamblers. This eight-part podcast is a unique look into the gambling world that you don't want to miss. Check out gamblers on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to the Ringer NFL show. I am Nora Pryanti here at a little bit after midnight, at least on the East Coast. We're potting after dark. We just watched rounds two and three of the draft. I'm here with Kaelin Jones and Roger Sherman.

We're ready to rumble. we're ready to chop it up. Guys, how are you doing? Roger, how are you doing? This draft didn't have any like MVP trade rumors at all, the second and third rounds of the draft. Yeah, we got jipped. It was kind of just like people getting drafted,

which to some people is interesting, including all of us. It's that and it's the fact that like nobody, nobody really clowns themselves in this draft. No, no clownings. You know, some of these players are obviously not going to. work out, right? But that's the draft. And there weren't a lot of like, memeable moments, which is actually, to your point, in some ways nice, because we're actually thinking about

team building and these players and they're really excited. However, I got to say, you know, one memeification, it wouldn't a hurt. Yeah, something. Yeah, the thing where NFL teams are seem like relatively competent and pick the players they're supposed to. I guess it's what we're sort of advocating for every time we roast GMs for doing something stupid, but it's not as fun.

We are the dog who caught the car. We caught the car, yeah. We didn't start starts saying that I don't know how I've been. It's late, it's late, but we're locked in and we're ready to go. Kaelin, did you have any surprises or was this draft

sort of straightforward so far to you as well? Oh yeah, no, the second day was much less hectic than the first day. I mean, you wrote about it. After Aaron Rogers were wrenching to the draft yesterday, I was kind of on edge to see if anything would happen. But no, it was nice and chill. It was just long.

Like you said, it's almost midnight. Shout out to everyone in, you know, who was born in May or, I'm a tourist. So I'm trying to just shout out everyone else to the tourists. I'm ready to go to bed. But shout out. Ooh. All right. Well, we've already got a little horoscope action then.

So what we're going to do is we've got some winners and losers. We've basically got two winners and two losers each. Although, Roger, I think you went off buck a little bit, which is fine. You know, again, it's late at night. We're keeping it loose. It's the draft. We're having fun. But, Kaelin, I'm going to have you kick it off.

Who is your first winner of Night 2? So my first winner is actually. the Detroit Lions. I know that, you know, we made fun of Dan Campbell when he first got hired and he had his, I guess, an explosive press conference made the joke about biting kneecaps. Well, he's kind of following through on that in terms of constructing the roster and, you know, credit to Brad Holmes as well, the players that they drafted over the past few days, you know, Penae, Sue Wealth out of Oregon, I thought that was a great pick. And then they followed it up, you know, with some great defensive lineman.

Levi Wuzerike, who had the quote of the century. I don't know if I repeated for you, but Lee McNeil of out of North Carolina State. And then Afidu Melifonwu from Syracuse is a cornerback that probably went a little bit later to most people expected. You know, this is kind of a pretty good job in terms of rebuilding and establishing a culture when you're talking about the lines.

I know they won't be great this year, but they're a winner for me by far. Can we come back to the quote? Yeah, that's where I was going to. Roger, do you want to read it? Yeah. Levi on Woosurike said, I like fucking people up.

I like to get off the line and just put my helmet or my hands on an offensive lineman and fuck up an offensive scheme pretty much. I like pushing him back two or three yards and just making him feel like shit. And I think the first thing you said about the lions and about Dan Campbell is, of course, that they, they, he has a quote. So they're just kind of combining and forming, uh, outrageous football guy quote, Voltron in Detroit. And that's, I think that also is it, is it rude?

Is like Voltron and Megatron? Am I like bringing up memories for the lions? Are those two things connected? It's okay. They're not on this podcast. But like, uh, at a certain point, sometimes football guys actually, do good football things, especially in the trenches. Yeah, I mean, it's a real, I hate all these sayings, but it's like a hog molly's, like,

glass pressures draft, Dave Gettleman, I'm sure, nodded in approval. You've just got to imagine, though, that when he gave that quote, like, I don't know if they were in the same room. It was probably on the phone with beatwriters. But whenever Dan Campbell sees that, he's just going to be, like, nodding his head so happy. culture is established. You have to assume that at some point in the pre-draft, they had an interview because you interview

the guys here trying to draft. And it must have been just the two of them like, are you going to bite their decaps off? Yeah, I'm going to do more than that. I'm going to rip their helmets off. Like, what are you going to do after you rip their helmets off? What else are you going to eat? And, like, they were just, it must have been great. I think that was probably where it was one.

And he's also good at football. that's a thing. And so like you have good football players with good football coaches. I don't know how good of a coach Dan Campbell is. I know that when he was standing up there on that press conference, it made me want to run through a wall. And so when you look at him being the front man and then having this really good staff beneath them, you look at Anthony Lendersder off to coordinator. Duce Staley is on staff. Probably should have been a head coach during this last cycle.

Same with defense coordinator, Aaron Glenn, a former high line. level defensive back in the NFL and then Tom Capers. So this is a pretty interesting staff. This is a pretty interesting culture. And I like how everything is kind of shaping up, especially, you know, falling off the first pick with Pena Suo. This is a really interesting makeup, you know, not just today, but maybe years from now. Yeah, it looks like a smart draft, especially because it's, you know,

they seem to have recognized, look, like, we don't know how all these players are going to pan out, right? So I say this over and over again, but so much of looking at drafts is one, if you have specific questions to answer, did you answer them? But more broadly, does the team seem like it kind of knows where it is?

And this draft seemed very much like they were just reinforcing both lines, getting good players who fit the culture, fit what they're trying to build. Not really, they're not really in a place to draft for need because they have a lot of needs, and they were just taking good guys. And that's really all you can ask for at that point.

And biting some kneecaps. There's such a thin line in football between coaches who say outrageous things and everyone in the locker room is like, why is he saying that? And coaches who say outrageous things and they're like, I will die for this man. And it's real.

This is like a real thing that actually does change the fortunes of football teams if Matt Patricia had said something like that, they would just be odd stares. And instead it actually, we feel like Dan Campbell's doing something good. Yep. Wow, are we kind of bought it in on the Lions culture, guys?

It really is getting late. I am a little bit. I like it. Well, other things we like. Roger, what is your first winner? I think the winner of the first few days of the draft are the Cleveland Browns. Wow. Browns Week.

Okay. Browns Week 2.0. We're doing it. And not necessarily Cleveland itself, because it looked very cold and rainy through both nights of the draft. And like tonight people were mittening up and like wearing as many clothes as possible on set. It really did not look fun to be there.

But they picked Jeremiah Awosu Coromoa. And this is a guy who on the ringer's big board, Danny Kelly had him ranked ninth. and they traded up and they got him 52nd, which is lower than 9th. So you can't really have much more of a... There's a guy who won the Buccas Award in college. It's just an unimaginably good pick that deep in the draft.

And he fell because of some concerns is he a safety, as the linebacker, but he was the best player available by a lot. And it just seems like they're crushing it right now. So I ran the numbers on that. is indeed lower than ninth. The Browns, so they get Greg Newsom, Northwestern cornerback in the first,

and then Ouzu Kormoa in the second, and then Anthony Schwartz, the receiver from Auburn in the third. Kalin, you watch a ton of college football, super tapped in. Any of those picks in particular standout to you? Is it Ouzer Cuomo, like Roger Singh? Oh, yeah, all three.

That's the thing. All three are great picks. Like Greg Newsom, very standout corner, it was probably a really significant reason why Justin Fields, when we talk about why he wasn't good or whatnot last season, his performance against Northwestern was heavily influenced by Greg Newsom. JOK, like Roger mentioned, you watched the Clemson game and you watch him cover Amari Rogers. For me, that was the game that I was like, okay, that guy is like Danny Kelly has him rank

top 10 caliber player, top 10 talent, and then Anthony Schwartz, I love Auburn players, so I'm kind of biased, but the dude runs a 4-2 and has track speed. So when you look at Cleveland's offense, they were really missing. missing that home run hitter. And I think that's what they got in Anthony Schwartz. So again, Anthony, or excuse me, Andrew Berry, GM over there, hitting bullseyes with every single pick, it seems like. You know, it's funny because all these teams want speed so badly,

but there are a lot of offenses around the league that you look at and go, man, they're pretty good. They're smart. They're, you know, well-designed. But there's a lot that's a little bit too horizontal. And I think you could say that about Cleveland at times. and I like the Schwartz pick for that reason that you're explaining there. I mean, if it works out, it just seems like he could add an element because of the speed.

That's really cool. Roger, though, I thought you were going to say Cleveland, the city. And I know that it was rainy and gross. But, I mean, the number of times that we have heard over the last two nights, someone just say, Cleveland, it's got to be pretty good for tourism. them. I feel like Cleveland, I don't know how this is possible, but like on the ratio of how fun it is to yell a city's name out loud in public versus how much people otherwise seem to enjoy being there for that, outside of the three seconds where you're yelling the city's name, Cleveland somehow seems very enjoyable to yell out loud. I think even people in Cleveland want us to stop talking about the rock and roll hall. of Fame. Yeah. Yeah.

I think you're spot on with that. The actual NFL, the actual pro football hall of fame is like very close to Cleveland. And the NFL was like, no, we're going full on rock and roll Hall of Fame, all draft, like at any possible moment. And in some ways, they just had rock and roll people that are not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, like, for example, all 27 minutes of Kings of Leon. Not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at all. Never will be. Yeah. Okay.

Okay. If we're going to get into a debate about like Hall of Fame eligibility, I wasn't expecting it to be Kings of Leon and as opposed to like football players. What about Machine Gun Kelly? Yeah, he was there too. Also not going to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Anyway, no, I was talking about the Cleveland Browns. They're actually becoming good at football.

And the lions are too, and just everything's upside down, man. Like, the two teams we cited up front are like the lions and the Browns. Yeah, the decision making is getting better. That's the thing. Perceptively, at least. I do think there's a little bit of a sort of holdover effect where we can't quite quit thinking the Browns or the Browns, because the Browns are a really smart organization that's kind of gotten themselves together. And yet every time they do something smart, well-reasoned, good value, there's just this,

little like vestigial organ that's like the Browns really exactly exactly it's hard to believe well that's a good segue into my first winner another long maligned entity

Dave Gettleman Trader Dave winner of the first two days of the NFL draft and for the first time like I'm just picturing Dave Gettle in the Giants facility, just like, like he's on a bender, he's on a trading down bender.

Dave Gettleman, who'd famously never traded down with the Panthers or the Giants. He's now traded down twice. In the first round, he traded down with the Bears and still was able to get Catarious Tony, which they needed some sort of, you know, past catcher receiving weapon, which I think was really good value there because they got a 22 first and a fourth just to move back eight slots, right? And then now that he's gotten a taste of it, he can't get enough. Because then tonight, they have the 40-second pick. They trade out with the dolphins.

They just move back to 50. And they get a third round next year. And then they still are able to draft Aziz Ujali. So that's two really good players. And then next year, in a draft that's viewed as a really valuable one to have picks in because it's going to be so different from this year and the scouting is going to be so much more normal and those future picks

ended up being really coveted. The Giants have two firsts, two thirds, and two fourths. Let's go back just like a few days ago. Gettleman said that he'd never traded down because he didn't want to get fleeced. And now, Trader Dave, if anyone's doing the fleecing, I mean, I don't think because they traded with the bear

so ended up getting fields with that first round trade and that was kind of a win-win. But it's a new era. Gettelman said that he's learning to turn right in NASCAR. And I just think that it is a beautiful thing. Kaelan, how do you feel about this incredible growth for our guy? Well, we could call it growth, or we could call it someone who got bullied enough on Twitter.

I don't know if David Gettelman is on Twitter. I don't know he did. Absolutely, people bullied him for saying that he doesn't trade down. Why would I ever trade down? And then two or three days later gave in, whether it was to, you know, they'll never say it was the people online. But look it, dude, you listen to everyone online that you were scoffing at all two, three days ago. Now all of a sudden you're doing it and can't get enough of it. So it's really interesting there.

Analytics King, Dave Gettleman. Would you rather have, if you're the Giants, though, great trades down. He did all the right things from that number's perspective. but like would you rather have Justin Fields and not Daniel Jones? Okay, hold on. I'm going to defend my guy here. I'm now like on Dave Gettleman Island. This is horrible.

Oh, okay. You are a ghetto woman. There was a moment when they were in the, they were in the Giants War Room and he was standing there like, just sort of like playing with his hands. And I was just looking at him on the screen being like, you go, buddy, let's go. So, okay, yes.

Would I rather have Justin Fields? Yes, I would. However, they don't. And we have to work within the boundaries of reality a little bit. And right now, I'm not going to talk about past failures. Right now, what they need to do is evaluate Daniel Jones to the fullest extent that they can and make a decision feeling like they have as complete a set of information as they possibly can gather. And I think just in the last two nights, they did pretty well as far as supporting him with a cast that can help them come to those conclusions and just making smart, you know, value-oriented decisions to do it. By the way, well, go ahead, Roger. He's moving forward. He's learning just in the prime of his career, the prime of his career is. Stop it. He's figuring it out. It's really beautiful to see. What were you going to say? Well, I was going to say that you're a hater. But also, we should mention...

You're so in on Dave Gettlement all of this. I know. I never sing. I love to sing when... He's taking a lot of hate. Speaking of a lot of hate, Ryan Pace, having a good draft. Sorry.

Also having a good draft. Yep. Like, up is down. Cats are hanging out with dogs. Sir Per and Nike Belichick are like going to get a copy. Yeah. I'm just... I'm just picturing, like, Dave Gettlement and Ryan Pace, like, walking triumphantly into a sea of tweets, just laughing.

So you shouldn't fire your terrible general manager. You should hold on to them long enough for them to learn from everyone getting mad at them all the time. And then... I mean, you can make a case that happened with Jason Light because, I mean, he drafted Robert Aguile. And then he trade up to go get Robert Aguil, like two of the other. years ago, and then they're in the Super Bowl, or just won the Super Bowl. And, you know, you draft Josh Rose in one year, and then you just forget about it. And you're the same general manager, and you draft Kyler Murray the next year.

So we have to give these general managers time to grow and learn these poor hassled executives. All right, I'm moving on before you guys can say more mean things about my trade-down King Dave Gettleman. Like you said at the beginning, the general managers are just doing well and it's annoying. They're just doing a good job and we have nothing to make fun of anymore. They've taken everything from us. Sorry, Kaelin, go. Oh, so am I announcing my second winner?

Yes, please. We need more positivity. Oh, I mean, you might dislike this then because the winner is feeling old, at least for me. I'm only 24, but I feel old when, you know, I see Asante's, Samuel getting drafted to T. Martin's son getting drafted Patrick Sertan, the second getting drafted. Like, J.C. Horn went yesterday. And then you have Wyatt Davis going today. I mean, some of those guys, again, like they're a little bit beyond, you know, influencing, at least their father's played before informing me of like my football fandom and whatnot. But to see Asante Samuel's son

get drafted today. And by the way, like, that was a phenomenal pick by the Chargers. I think they'd be a winner here if I wasn't picking NFL dads. But the fact that I feel so old watching some of these guys get drafted makes me a little bit uncomfortable. Like, I'm not too far removed from college, but I'm starting to feel old watching the draft. I feel like a lot of other people now seeing people like that you grew up watching have their sons get drafted. It's kind of uncomfortable. But shout out to the dads. I think this pick is on your part personally at the ripe old age of 24 is going to make a lot of people angry. Yeah, our producer Isaac just message

just messaged us and said Kaelin, please. I'm sorry. I did learn today that Tyson Campbell, the cornerback, the Jaguars took at the top

of the second, was coached by Patrick Sertan I first in high school. There you go. There you go. That's someone of growth watching

in Formula football had the double sleeves in Miami. I totally remember that. I was like, man, that guy's cool. Now his son's playing in the NFL. It's crazy.

And also Rishon Slater, who went to the Chargers early, his dad, Regis Slater, was in the NBA until 2003. Oh, that explains why he's so much bigger than him. Okay. I was wondering why, because when you saw the massive human being, just give him a bear hug, you didn't even see his head. Just a mega dad. Just on the screen. That was crazy. Okay.

Shout out huge dads. We love to see it. Well, huge dads help you become a huge person, which is really important to become. an NFL player. Definitely a correlation. There's a reason that people we watched on TV are, it's a thing is genetics are important in football is something we're hitting on here. Very stoop.

All right. Well, Roger, I promise we're going to give you the floor to get to some losers here in a second. But I'm just going to do my second winner first, which is Bama. So eight Alabama players drafted in the first two rounds of the draft, which is the most in the common draft era, which, by the way, the common draft era is one of those things that just sounds way too formal for what it is, which was just like the draft used to have a bunch more rounds and now it doesn't, so we have to distinguish. But anyway, I always feel so.

It sounds like back of the day there was like a really nuts draft, like the irregular draft that were just not, the rare uncommon draft anymore. It's like how they're used to, like all those factoid's about like there used to be. real cocaine and Coca-Cola or whatever. That's what they were doing. Yeah, they used to do the cocaine draft every year. Oh, my gosh. All right, we're moving on.

Anyway, I do think that there is something a little bit interesting to this. Like, obviously, Alabama getting a lot of guys drafted. They had seven guys drafted last year in their first two runs. That's not, that's nothing new. That's nothing unusual. But I do think that there is a little bit of something to this particular draft when there was such information scarcity and teams were worried about the medicals.

A lot of coaches, it seems like, went into their information pipelines. You know, the Patriots double-dipped on guys from Alabama. So did the Eagles. And then you also had guys like Terrace Marshall goes with Panthers. There's an LSU connection with Joe Brady. I think a lot of teams ended up leaning on those things even more heavily than usual. And that happened to a degree last year.

But there was so much more film. There was just a little bit more for scouting departments to sink their teeth into. So I think that ended up getting kind of emphasized this year. But you guys are my college football fanatics. Did you think that there was any sort of redistribution of the balance of power of conferences or teams that had a ton of guys drafted or less guys drafted. Kailen, I'll go to you. Well, I mean, with Alabama, you saw the typical powers, I guess, when you talk about

the top teams in college football, Alabama had a lot of picks, Clemson, Ohio State, Georgia, teams that dominate recruiting, you know, ended up, you know, three, four years later or whatever, ending up producing all of these high-level picks. So it was really, like, pretty curious that, you know, Alabama, again, like, like, the point that you mentioned, how teams went back to, you know, the welfare, lack of a better word, in terms of, you know, looking for the talent and seeking out familiar sources and getting out the right information before making informed decisions on them. So I think that's probably why we're seeing some players from, you know, schools that aren't necessarily big, you know,

whose prospects are probably considered hired on consensus boards and whatnot, not get selected, even though it's a little bit chalkier than usual. I think that, you know, when you look players from Stanford, for example, like Walker Little hasn't played since 2018. Davis Mills, a guy who was a former five-star. You know, David Shaw mentioned this in his press conference during Stanford's Pro Day that, you know, NFL teams tend to come pick guys from Stanford because, you know, there's a familiarity with, you know, how everything is run there. And I think I'm curiously, I don't know what the situation is like.

It's Washington, but you saw something similar tonight where you had so many guys from that university get selected. So I do think that teams ended up going to what was familiar and what works for them. Roger, do you think that there was anything that we learned tonight or last night and tonight about how the guys who opted out were viewed? Because it didn't seem like ultimately, it seems like there was a lot of... Yeah, a lot of talk, but it didn't seem like those guys were penalized at all. I mean, there were so many of them in the first round.

I mean, Sewell and Slater were right up there at the top. the first two offensive tackles off the board in spite of the fact that they didn't play this past year. And Jamar Chase, too, first wide receiver off the board. Yeah, it didn't seem like it's any problem. With regards to Alabama, I mean, the Alabama team this year was one of the best of all time, just destroyed every single team they played.

Last year, we saw LSU have five first-round picks, and then set the record for most picks in one draft in the common draft era. Thank you. So I'm not sure how LSU fits into it, but it does seem to me just that even as poorly distributed as college football already is, Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia are just getting such a ridiculously high, percentage of the top-tier recruits in a way that even compared to five years ago, wasn't the case.

And I don't think this is going to stop. They're still getting the best players. We're going to see Bryce Young, the quarterback for Alabama, drafted extremely highly in a few years. We're going to see Alabama just continue to churn out the, it's just a factory, and why would you go anywhere else if you're a top-tier guy with NFL hopes? So, yeah, Alabama, won and they'll keep winning.

It was they were undefeated last year and we can't stop them. They're like they're going to take over everything. We will all be Alabama someday. Well, Alabama's great, but now it's time to talk about some things that are not so great. And Roger, I know you've been eager for this. So we'll stay with you. Who's your first loser? I think the biggest loser of the NFL draft so far is the company that paid to sponsor the Rams

draft house, the mortgage company that paid to sponsor the Rams draft house, and then they haven't been on TV at all. I'm not going to name them because they're not paying me, but it's a mortgage company. You can look it up if you really like to. I'm not going to give, I'm calling them a loser. I'm not going to give them any extra publicity. But so the Rams, of course, didn't have a first. round pick because the Rams don't like first round picks. They had a second round pick, which they used on 2-2-at-well. It was the 57th pick. He's graded by pro football focus as the 157th best prospect of this class. He weighs 149 pounds. Yeah. There has a bit of player that light

in the NFL since the 1990s. I looked it up. The last player 150 pounds or less was Tony Jones. who left the NFL in 1993, you can't make a player on Madden under 150 pounds. I'm really worried about Tutu Atwell. We need to feed this guy. Or like maybe he should get an exemption for a special jersey and like more padding. I just want, I just worry.

The one thing about this draft that sort of bummed me out a little bit is that it feels like there are a lot of, particularly in the receiver group, there are a lot of like body type issue guys. And I always hate, like, there's something sort of ridiculous when we're talking about these, like, incredibly good athletes where it's like, oh, well, he might be a little too small. I don't know that he can hold up against NFL competition. And it just feels so lame and stupid and unfair.

And it's also just like a little bit weird because there's so much that's a part of talking about sports where you're just like talking about strangers' body types, which in and of itself is a little bit odd. I have to say for our guy, Too-2, I just, I've watched a lot. of football. It is a collision thing. And it makes me nervous. Look, it's okay. This is a great moment for slender people and small people to see so many short slot receivers. As someone who is a part of the under 510 human being gang, I guess we can call ourselves, this is a phenomenal draft. I love this draft. Did you see the run in the middle of the second round where they have Elijah Moore, Ron Dale Moore, who went to, excuse me, oh my goodness, I'm losing it off the top of my head, Tutu Atwell, and then there was another slot receiver who also went in the middle of the second round.

But point is, and then you have Devante Smith, who was six foot, and then only weighs, what, 166 pounds? This is huge. This is a thing for small, slender people. You too can play in this modern NFL, and I wish this would have happened when I was a little kid, because then my parents would have probably let me play tackle football a little bit sooner than they did, I would have known whatever I was good or not sooner. So good for smaller people.

So you did play tackle football and figure it out eventually bad. Yes. Okay. But I would have learned out sooner. But what could have been? What could have been? Roger, I'm surprised we didn't get an Elijah Moore take out of you. That's your guy.

Huge Elijah Moore fan. College football legends, he, I don't want to say he cost Ole Miss their biggest game of the year by pretending to urinate on the field. But anyway, he's a jet now. He's my guy. I wanted to get back to the Rams draft house in Malibu, which is very, looks very beautiful and is a total Cliff Kingsbury ripoff. But anyway, the Rams did not have a first round pick.

They had a bad second round pick. And then they traded out of their third round pick. So someone sponsored this very nice house in Malibu. looks like a great house. It has a pool. And it was just for Sean McVey. It has a photo of Roger Goodell on the wall. Which, and, and that, they got like 45 seconds of air time.

It was a bad investment by the company that I'm not naming. I think it got, it got enough buzz online ahead of it, I guess. And then Twitter isn't real life, except for Dave Gettleman, I guess. Twitter is a real life, except. for when it's influencing Dave Gettleman. Yeah, and then their general manager, Les Need, unfortunately, tested positive for COVID and then couldn't even make the pick in the draft house. He's at his unsponsored garage making picks.

Yeah, which it seems like I don't mean to get off topic here. But in Les Needs garage, they're like mattresses leaned up creating a thing that he was sitting in while he was drafting. There was some photo of him that I really didn't understand. But I don't need to... Was it a podcast studio? It actually kind of looked like it could have been. Maybe great audio in there.

Who knows? But I'm getting a soft topic. Caleb, your first loser. Okay. My first loser. I picked the Big 12. Going back to your point about Alabama having such a great run of prospects, comparatively, the Big 12 did not have a great run of prospect.

So far, through three rounds and 105 players, there are approximately six players who were selected out of the Big 12, which is in the middle of what's supposed to be football country, you know, having schools that are in Texas in the Midwest. Tevin Jenkins went to the Chicago Bears in the second round. Trayvon Merrick went to the race in the second round, Sam Cosmy from Texas, went to the Washington football team in the second round. Creed Humphrey went to the Chiefs, Joseph Osai to the Bengals, Ronnie Perkins, the Patriots. Zero first round picks.

Comparatively, the SEC had 12 total picks in the first round, the big team. 10 had seven, and the ACC had six in the first round alone. So it's really shocking. Again, we can look back at recruiting. I'm sure if we did the deep dive that we probably could into how recruiting works, into how that influences where the talent is flowing. But it's really strange that, you know, you haven't had too many big time players come out of what is supposed to be a football hotbed, you know, from the time these guys are, you know,

five years old playing tackle football. It would be nice to five. So, Roger, do you think that, so is this sort of like just a continuation of that real lining of the real, real powers in college football? Or, like, what's going on with the Big 12th? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it got hard to get defensive players out there in the last decade because the offense was way off the charts. Texas is like not a powerhouse

and Kaelin will be able to elaborate on this. I feel like went from not a powerhouse to like not good, which is which is not good. We saw some the there was a

a big 12 quarterback hype era when we saw Back-to-back Oklahoma guys, number one, Jalen Hertz turned into a quality prospect at Oklahoma. You know, people were like, you know, looking for the next Patrick Mahomes. But that's really not so much of a, doesn't feel like a thing that was happening in the whole conference. It was just like a few guys who were great at scheming, good at quarterback development as opposed to a string of five-star recruits wanting to play in the Big 12, which they, they, they, they haven't wanted to in recent years.

They keep wanting to go to Alabama, Ohio State, and those schools are just going to keep on showing up on draft day over and over and over and over again. Yeah, Ohio State is known for pillaging Texas especially. The Big 12 is really struggled at developing point. Because when you look at some of these teams like Oklahoma and Texas, they are always in the top 10 of recruiting. It's just they really struggle at developing position. players who are going to be NFL players,

especially in terms of premiership. However, the Big 12 did give the NFL Cliff Kingsbury, who in turn, because of his own draft day photo, inspired the Rams draft house sponsored by the company that we're not naming. So you can't say that they didn't have their fingerprints on, well,

although not the first round, right? Still stuck in the second round. And Cliff. who was a tiny quarterback at one point is now hoarding the short Kigs that we were just talking about. Short Kings, there we go. Oh, my gosh, the team of Short Kings, the Arizona Cardinals. Oh, that's awesome.

That is very, very, very awesome. Cardinals. All right, well, moving on from that, I don't know how I'm going to top that, but my first loser is, like, secretly probably a winner, but it's Kyle Trask, who was picked 64th by the Bucks. And now I'm worried Tom Brady's going to be mean

to him because in 2014, the year 2014, it is unbelievable that it has been this long. Jimmy Carapolo also chosen in the second round. Bill Belichick, after making the pick, says we all know what Tom's age and contract situation is. Please remember that it was 2014. It is now 2021. He won. And now we might do it all over again with Kyle Trask and Tom Brady's just going to play until he's like 600 years old. In reality, I actually think this is a really, really, really good situation for someone like Kyle Trask who maybe has a lot of potential, but also who knows and could use a good developmental situation with potentially great mentorship and Clyde Christensen and Byron Lefwich and Bruce Ariens and Brady if he's not really mean to him. I actually think it would be an incredible troll of the Patriots if Brady was just incredibly nice to Kyle Trask

and did everything he possibly could to groom him into this, like, starter of the future and set up a legacy. But that might not happen, and he might be really mean to him. And Kyle Trask is going to get traded to a friendly team for a second round pick in like three years, and we're going to have no idea if he's good or not. Isn't that the like the Tom Brady backup way to kind of sit behind Tom Brady and then someone picks you?

Yeah, and then someone thinks you're better than what you are and you make a few million off that. Not a bad deal. Yeah, things turned out well for, I know that the past week has not been great for Jimmy G. But, like, he's had a pretty good career. Not in terms of playing football, but in terms of, like, people saying he's great, him making $100 million. And winning a lot of games. And winning a lot of games. I want to go back to specifically the meanness.

it was your sense that Tom Brady was actually mean to him? Like, wasn't nice? Like, didn't, like... Could you elaborate? You're an expert on this topic. No, I don't think that Tom Brady was actively mean to... That would have been incredible. If Tom Brady had just, like, pranked Jimmy Garoflo all the time.

For years on end. For years on end, like on full Eli Manning, just tried to drive him. out of town. Gosh, I wish that it happened. No, I don't think there was, look, I think Tom Brady knows how he got his job, and that's sort of a cliche at this point, but it's the same with Rogers, right? Like,

history with these quarterbacks, even if they are the untouchable ones, like a Brady or Rogers, they don't like it. They don't like it when these guys come in behind him. Now, I think maybe that's a little bit different with Kyle Trask than it was with Gropolo, and no, I don't think that Tom

like personally picked on him, But I don't think that he, you know, I don't think that he was like doing cartwheels when it seemed like Gropolo was doing well at first before I got hurt when Brady was suspended. Like it all look, these guys are just, they're just wired in a crazy way. But no, he was not like actively mean to him. The actual loser is playing Gabbert, who probably doesn't point. who probably doesn't have a who who because Kyle is does Kyle Trasp come to backup like this is he ready to go in if something happens to Tom Brady as a rookie probably probably a camp competition to be had there or does Blaine Gabbert hang out yeah it it is I mean I guess you do have to prepare for the Patriots spent like 11 years hypothetically preparing for when Tom Brady left and then Tom Brady left and all the guys they had picked either had failed out of the league or were gone.

So I guess now it's time for the Buccaneers to spend the next 11 years doing that. Well, right. And 11 being the operative number, right? Because part of the reason that all that got so as dramatic as it did in New England was that when they took Garoppolo, they were kind of like, well, okay,

Tom can't keep doing this, right? And then he was like, jokes on you. But I'll love to Kyle Trask. I hope it's lots of fun. And I hope you guys become great friends. Roger. Can I get another loser from you?

Yeah. So I don't know what to make of what's, this is a very fraught one, but the Houston Texans did not have a pick in the first two rounds because they traded for Laramie Tunsell. They're in really bad shape. They used their first pick, which was in the third round on Davis Mills,

the eighth quarterback off the board. And now it's like, it's unclear whether he's expected to, you know, be competing with Tyrod Taylor for the quarterback job. Possibly, there was a lot of talk from NFL insiders during the broadcast about how Deshawn Watson probably isn't going to play for the Texans, maybe in the NFL ever again.

But I think the weird situation the Texans are in in terms of fielding a football team didn't really hit me until I realized their best hope at that spot was to draft the eighth best quarterback and hope. It just seems really bleak and bad. And they're going like if they're starting Davis Mills this year or Tyrod Taylor, they're going to win less games than they won last year, and they won four games last year. It's just there's, I don't know what the right thing was for them to do there, but it just really, that seemed like a flashpoint moment for the franchise

about how bad the on-field product will be coming up. Kalin, Texans, 2021 season, over under four wins. Where are you? I'll take the under. Yeah, because that's the thing. Like, I like Davis Mills. I don't know if you're expecting him to come in and immediately be a starter. Like you said, Roger, like all, you know, what NFL insiders and everything we've heard,

honestly, what you see from watching him play, he has developmental traits. And there's a reason why this dude was like a former number one prospect. He was a former five star. And, you know, there's a reason why they are rated that high. There's plenty of talent. He looks the part. But isn't the guy you're going to immediately drop from, you know, playing a six game, Pact 12 season after, you know, really not ever winning a job over KJ Costello, you know,

into suddenly being the savior for the Houston Texans. If it happens, I mean, God bless him. But I think that's a really rough situation for him. And it's like you said, it's really indicative of kind of how the Texans are kind of going to go in the next year, not really having any type of direction because we expected them at this point to figure out the direction knowing what they know is happening within their organization. and they still don't seem to have it.

Yep, it's pretty bleak. I do not recommend looking up the Texans depth chart right now because it is not fun times. So asked about it, Davis Mills said he was not expecting to be called by the Houston Texans. Awesome. Boy. The Patriots tweeted this video of them telling Mac Jones that he'd been the pick in making this election.

And there's no way that they're not genuinely psyched. about having a quarterback, any one of the top five, fall to them at 15 and not having to trade up for it. I'm positive that they are thrilled to have made that selection. However, I wouldn't personally have tweeted the video because they all in that draft room sound so upset and just like not excited at all. And that's just because, you know,

Belichick can be a little dower, but they're calling Mack Jones and they're like, yep, okay, yep, welcome to New England. we're very excited. Everyone here's very excited. And it's just like... What the heck? A real same energy there.

Except in this case, with the Texans, I think it's more reflective of reality. Yeah. Moving on to other bad things, Kaelin. Will you give us another loser? I pick Kirk Cousins. And it's because of the fact that the Vikings decided to choose a potential successor in Kellen Maugh. when we saw that quarterback run during the second round.

I'm really curious to see what happens with Mon because out of that collection of guys we had decided we're not in that top tier of draft prospect of quarterback, Kellamond probably has the biggest upside, in my opinion. When you talk about the athleticism, the armed talent, and really he kind of proved that he was successful at playing a consistently high competition in the SEC. I thought that he was probably going to be overdraft.

I think this is exactly where he ended up going where he needed to. And especially it's a good situation because Gary Kubiak kind of runs a very quarterback-friendly offense. And again, when you look at Kirk Cousins, he's got two years left. He's going to turn 33. He's only going, like his ceiling as a quarterback is only going to be, you know, top 10-ish, maybe. We're always going to be on the, like, question marks about him. And he's kind of streaky. So this is someone who, if I were Kirk Cousins, I'm looking over my shoulder,

I wouldn't be particularly happy about. Because if Mon develops into something, he's not going to end up in Minnesota beyond his contract. Yeah, I think that's an awesome fit. I really love that pick because the athletic ability is great, the upside is great. And then just for Mond, a great situation to obviously not have to have any sort of pressure right away.

And then to be within that, you know, Kubiak style offense that's going to take some of the processing is just going to be made a little bit easier at the front end and he'll have a chance to develop and it's a friendly scheme and that could be really exciting

although to your point maybe less so for Kirk Cousins but Kurt Cousins is fine Kirk Cousins has done very well for himself There's a few ways that when you're drafting a quarterback in the second or third round can go like when it's a first round you're like

oh that's the franchise guy when it's the second round sometimes it's your drafting a backup for Tom Brady. Sometimes you think maybe Kellen Monz could maybe outperform Kirk Cousins. And the Texan situation

is, as we mentioned, just impossible to figure out what the plan is. All roads lead to the Texans being a disaster. Nor, I believe you have some losers for us. Yes, I will give you well, so

I don't think staying in the state of Texas, my other loser was Jerry. Jones. And I don't think that the Cowboys had a bad draft or anything, but I just don't think that Jerry had as much fun as he usually does during the draft because Jerry loves to trade up and he loves to go get his guys

and he loves to make splashy moves. And what happened was that every time the Cowboys were about to make a pick and everybody knew that they needed to improve their secondary in a real, real, real way in this draft, somebody else would leapfrog them. So, like, first round, the Panthers and the Broncos

take J.C. Horn and Patrick Sturtan and everybody had mocked Patrick Sturtan to the Cowboys, and it was a little bit of an open question whether the Panthers and the Broncos were maybe thinking about quarterbacks or if somebody would trade with them for a quarterback. That doesn't happen.

They both make the picks and go defensive back. So then, first of all, Jerry has to suffer the indignity of trading back with the Eagles, which was, that's not a competitive issue, but he can't have liked. it. And then tonight, well, I think because the giants were behind them, they figured if it was going to be Smith, it would be one or the others. So like, it's in the division anyway. So who cares?

But then tonight, the Raiders traded up for Trevon Merig, the best, you know, one of the best safeties in the draft right before the Cowboys were going to pick. So, you know, they still went really heavy on defense in this draft, which is great. They got Michael Parsons. They got Calvin Joseph, a couple defensive linemen. And I think it was actually, they took five defensive players. It was the first time since, like, the 80s that they'd done that or something. Or maybe the 60s, I'm...

Common draft era, you think? Common draft era. I'm brutally regurgitating a tweet that I saw. But they still, I think, you know, did totally fine and address their needs. I just think Jerry misses being on his boat and didn't get. to have the fun that he normally has. So, sorry, Jerry. You mentioned how they need secondary help. So they ended up taking with the 99th pick, Nashan Wright, out of Oregon State as a cornerback. And I had to Google because,

you know, I didn't watch too much Oregon State last year or any year. I apologize, since they had Chad Johnson and T.J. Huishman Zad on the same team. So this guy, I went over to the NFL mock draft database, and he is listed on their composite big board, which is they take every mock draft and put them all together as the 294th best player in this draft, which is a problem because they're only like 250 picks. NFL.com has him as chance to make end of roster or practice squad.

A lot of sites just didn't do profiles. on him. So they got traded up over for cornerbacks and safeties multiple times. And then I guess they just, they either like this guy or they just panicked and needed a cornerback and took someone no one had ever heard of in the third round, like 200 picks before he should have been taken. Sorry, that was a lot on the 99th pick in the NFL track. You know what? You just taught me something, Roger Sherman, and that's the great, that's the beauty of this. To their point, I mean, like, they also drafted Kelvin Joseph right out of Kentucky,

and I think he transferred somewhere else. Like, he was from LSU, and he was a pretty good prospect then. And it's just, you know, a character issue, I guess, is what was reported as the reason why he slid. So they did what they could, I guess, in terms of getting jumped by other teams. Right. Well, I mean, it's just tough. Like, I'm sure they would have loved to take Merig, who, by the way, why did the Raiders If the Raiders first round and second round picks were just flipped,

like no one would be giving them all of the grief that they're taking, but they just can't be normal. Like, take Leatherwood in the second and it'd be fine. It's just weird, man. I don't understand. What are we in? Year three, year four of Gruden and Mayok, and it's just, they just do their own thing.

So I'd be like respect to them, but also it's a weird process. when everyone is clearly saying, oh, he's not going to go that high. Insiders saying he's not going to go that high and they're calling it a controversial pick. They admitted it was a controversial pig. It's just, it's mind-bending. Mind-bending.

They are funky, funky, funky fresh. Roger, will you close us out with a... Go ahead. Yeah, it feels like the whole idea of, like, grading or analyzing the NFL draft is not... You know, we don't know whether these players will be good. But we at least know,

where they were supposed to be taken and it feels like the Raiders are missing out on that, like, the whole concept of like draft value. They could be getting more if they traded down and still got the players. It just doesn't, it's so confusing that they

aren't hitting that angle. They took a guy in the first round that people thought would, you know, go second-ish, and then they took a guy in the second round that people thought was going to go in the first round. And because of that, there's a lot of snark

which prompted their Twitter account to tweet something about like we don't care what the in quotes draft experts say like we're going to make the pick we want or whatever I'm paraphrasing badly not certain that tweet seems all that aware

of the professional resumes of their coach and general manager if we're just criticizing draft experts here you happened to have hired one. But anyway, I don't have about the writer. Like, if I ever become an NFL GM, and I, like, if I ever become an NFL GM and, like, I give a big press conference, like, we're not listening to podcasters who have never played football before. All right.

I would love to do that happen. Roger. Will you close us out with your final loser of the evening? I would like to talk about a pick that didn't happen. Oh, boy. And I was just scanning the draft order, and I remembered a moment in time, and I'd like to reminisce about it a little bit. Okay. The Patriots had the 15th pick in the first round.

They traded away the 15th pick in the second round. They didn't have the 15th pick in the third round. Nora, Nora knows why. Kaelin, I'm going to ask you, do you know why the Patriots didn't have their third round pick? gosh, I'm not going to know why. Is it the Flake Gate? That's like 20 years ago, right? It's not so much stupider than the Blank Gate.

It's because in 2019, they sent a guy to supposedly film a web series. Oh, my God. And he spent a significant amount of time just filming. Do your job, the digital web series. He spent a significant amount of time just filming the sideline of the 1 and 12 Cincinnati Bengals, who the Patriots were playing next week. Supposedly, and that's illegal, you can't just film the teams that you're playing in the future for fun.

And, you know, it was never really decided whether this person actually was making a web series or was actually just cheating and filming. But either way, those are both embarrassing reasons. Hold on. I'm going to jump in here. The guy worked for craft sports productions. He was not a football. person. So it was just to screw up. It was just like he was doing, but either way, it was the third

round of the draft. The punishment for that came out tonight two years later. And that's just the funniest reason, whether it was because of your web series or because you're cheating against the one in 12 Bengals. Oh, it's funnier than it was an accident about the web series. It's funnier that a web series cost them a third round pick. I think I'm inclined to agree that it's funnier. that they were making a bad video for you to. Well, particularly because it's funniest when you imagine someone having to explain this to Bill Belichick, who is pretty safely the greatest football coach of all time. But the A number one thing people reference on the con column of that is the checkered history with cheating scandals.

So somebody had to tell Bill that because, and Bill hates all the online. stuff anyway, right? Like, he, the, we're going to create a digital web series and post it online and tell people how we do things inside the building. Like, that's basically Bill Belichick's worst nightmare already. And then somebody has to go

tell Bill, we're in trouble and the league is, thinks that we may have you know, done something a little bit shady because the freelance guy that we had filming B-roll for the web series,

that you probably already hate was filming the sideline and it's against the rules. And it is against the rule. Like, they should have, so the way that, and then we'll end, I can't believe that we're talking about this,

they did break a rule. That's why I don't think that it's, I mean, there's a lot of people in New England who think it's really unfair that they didn't get to make that pick. They still messed up. They broke a rule. I just don't think that they,

it's pretty clear they didn't do it on purpose and that it wasn't a football person who did it, but you're not allowed to fill in the other side line. And somebody who is working. Yeah. The third round is like a good pick.

There were good players available. Good round. The Patriots did not get to. Good round. The Patriots arguably, the Patriots like are famously good at getting those compensatory picks at the end of the third rounds. And like that's been credited as like a reason why they're able to get so many players without hitting free agency. And then they just lost one because of the web series. That's what I said.

Like, who did they miss out on in the draft? Like, where was this pick supposed to be? Because I don't even see it on ESPN's... It was in between 76 and 77. So, like, we talked about Anthony Schwartz as a great pick for the Browns earlier. That was 15 picks after this. 76 was a good player. Yeah, 76 could have been a good player for them.

Paulson and Devo. He's probably going to start for the Saints of Cornerback next year. What the heck? And Josh Palmer on the Chargers. Damn. I'd be mad. Tiny violin for the New England Patriots, not getting to make that pick

because of one of the most ridiculous NFL scandals in recent memory. Roger Sherman, Kalen Jones. Thank you so much for potting after dark with me and for talking about day two of the draft where everyone was kind of smart. Yeah. Except for the Raiders?

Are we going? No, Raiders. The Raiders are smart. The Raiders bait a great pick. Okay. Yeah, no. 32 for 32. too. Everybody did it. Good job, everybody.

Except for the Texans, maybe. Texas, baby. But yeah. Good job, guys. This has been the Ringer NFL show, part of the Ringer podcast network. The Dannies will be back on Saturday giving out overall awards for the entire draft. That's going to be great.

Kevin Clark and I will be back on Monday, every Monday in May and June. This episode came together thanks to the work of producer Isaac Lee with additional production supervision from Arjuna Ramgapal. Thanks for listening and enjoy the rest of the draft.