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Caleb regressed to merely a good QB1 prospect and is going to drive someone absolutely loving crazy when he holds the ball that long in the league. This year’s tape he has no idea what he’s doing in a pocket or with his feet but has the potential to be an AR/Cam caliber physical talent with what he can do at the margins in between insanely bad pressure decisions. I told you all about Daniels 2-3 years ago. JJ’s going to need the Goff treatment for like 2 years to make it work because holy poo poo does he look rough when he doesn’t know what a defense is planning. Still aims the ball too much. Penix is neat and old. Love his layered throws, hate his injury history and bizarre choices on out breaks. Bo’s tape is good but I have some serious reservations about how clean some of the reads need to be for him to pull the trigger at times. Drake Maye makes some fascinating throws but has been functionally playing in a fisher price offense this whole time. Love his tools. Quinn has elite tools yet still looks like he’s never read s defense before at times. That offense is really presaged on his deep ball and release and gives me some really uncomfortable vibes relative to certain prospects. Sanders has some interesting tools and timing throws but I’m going to need to know exactly how much of his pocket bullshit is attributable to his dad’s preferences. MHJ is the best receiver prospect since Calvin. Faster than AJ, more technical than Julio, bigger than JaMarr. Rest of the class has 5+ receivers I would give a first round grade right now. Bizarre RB class Shallow LB class. Deep CB class with a lot of S conversion candidates. Lots of variety in edges Tyliek Williams should be a top 3 DT on the list Very shallow OL class. Feels like the overall vibe is similar to other Covid classes where the 7 on 7 talent is there but I think we’re missing some linemen and middle of field defenders.
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Nov 19, 2023 06:07
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Doltos posted:Fields has had one of the worst coaches in the league destroying his career. I think he's better than every QB in this draft, maybe not Jayden if he reaches his potential You’re stealing my bit but yeah, Fields should go 1 in every draft that doesn’t have a Lawrence or Luck. He’s somehow still produced in flashes with a team trying to run him in the Colt McCoy era browns offense. Rosen may not have worked out but I will absolutely die on the Fields hill. Black Lighter posted:What's crazy is that there's still a chance he could fall in the draft once reporters and GMs start asking questions about what his dad's been up to since retiring So, an extremely funny bit has been the way he gets covered by Ohio State beat writers. Usually they’re very very quick to reach out to family/do quick hits with them at media availability. In 20 years, I have never seen them not only defer to but also fail to press a single quote the way they have with Sr. Sr literally said in an interview “I told him to listen to me not the coaches on technique and gameplay” and there was zero follow-up (admittedly because I’m going to bet his coaching points are similar to Hartline’s). Any other parent and we would have done like a week long newscycle about the stage parent involved but not him. Coolwhoami posted:which quarterback this draft season will be the one that rises to the top once the draft writers get bored of writing their 14th article on the top prospects throwing motion and trick the bears into trading up for the first round pick for? Daniels will rise over where he is now but is probably too dynamic and black for this treatment so gut say Nix. I’m not convinced Ewers or McCarthy declare but if they do, then one of them could do it if it they get the “here’s how their college offense holds them back” treatment (it doesn’t).
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Nov 19, 2023 20:30
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Probably Magic posted:I straight-up don't understand the Nix hype, maybe someone can explain it to me. 5 star recruit who started a billion games. Good athlete, good arm talent. Unfortunately, Oregon runs a Mickey Mouse YAC monster offense again so I can’t help but see him as Dwayne Haskins with worse vision and better speed.
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Nov 19, 2023 21:49
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Ornery and Hornery posted:I agree MHJ is best receiver prospect since Megatron but I find your comparisons weird. You picked the relatively weak thing about each other great wr prospect. Correct, my point with that is that every elite prospect someone brings up short of megatron had a weakness that he doesn’t. He plays like super Amari Cooper in that sense. Relentlessboredomm posted:Caleb’s been so weird this year, he’s just played stupid way too often. I blame the bad defense for making him think he needs to hero ball at all times. I mean, that OL isn’t helping but I don’t know many teams where the expectation on a route concept is “I’ll throw to you after 5 seconds”. Their passes take longer to develop than an end around, and Lincoln absolutely refuses to run the ball the last couple years which means no one respects their play action or the MOF threat from them. He had better pocket presence at Oklahoma when he was just going off pure instinct honestly. The more reads and responsibilities he’s given the more paralyzed he looks trying to make decisions. Everyone hit Fields for the time he took on option routes on certain vertical looks—Caleb makes him look like Brady on anything past 10 yards. From 2021 draft thread: Jayden Daniels - Arizona State No idea why he's not getting the bump Malik is. He's the same caliber, if not better, of an athlete, but his arm mechanics are a lot smoother with better touch and consistency at the sideline. Biggest issue is that he'll sidearm balls and sometimes stand up too stiff or wobbly when delivering--both of which are classic Dual Threat issues that can be coached out. I think the limited Pac 12 season has people sleeping on him a lot . He could put up a 3000/1000 year for them this coming year and get his name up there in a big way.
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Nov 19, 2023 23:21
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Doltos posted:You're overhyping a late first olineman in your mind? Doltos beat me to these although I would note with Latham that I’m not sure at points on the tape how much he gets told to punch over drive with how Bama has coached some of their underneath/screen game. They got very very space happy with their OL drift in the Tua era and some of those coaching points stuck around. Mims looks a lot to me like what we all wanted Trevor Penning to be. Honestly I don’t even like Fashanu that much at the top of the draft. He got power rushed pretty consistently against Ohio State and wasn’t anchoring well at all. This feels like a class with a lot of coaching issues, even more than usual.
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Nov 21, 2023 04:58
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Which one of you rolled out DE&I initiatives for Walter Football? Caleb over Drake. Shedeur and Rattler over Ewers and Nix? I see Charlie wrote it but usually Walt gives it a one over and gives some bell curve grades and commentary. Not even any made up character concerns on Rattler from him being a high school reality tv star If he isn’t super hurt, we have a serious chance at a first round white corner this year with Cooper Dejean. I can’t wait until one of their interns lets Walt know how the paper bag test goes there.
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Nov 21, 2023 07:01
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Dejan Bimble posted:Dane Brugler gave Marvin Harrison jr the Larry Fitzgerald comp Lmao if you’re really really trying to find something about MHJ to fuss about, he has like 1 concentration drop a game, making Larry like the only generational guy in the last 20 years that I can’t draw a line on. The Puppy Bowl posted:I'm sure you know better than me, since all I've ever seen are highlights. I love everything I've seen Odunze do. The high hands above the defense catch is one thing I haven't seen him do is all. He has all the hallmarks of a WR that falls to the 2nd round and makes 32 teams look stupid. Strong AJ Brown vibes. He’s somewhere between that and Olave on the spectrum. That offense does such good work on seam and spacing routes that I just don’t think he’s even had to go directly over a guy in coveragemuch since he’s so slick in getting around guys and penix specializes in layer and back shoulder throws. Your worst case with him feels like Golden Tate. None of these dudes are like Quentin Johnston catch mechanics though which raises the floor on the class. Coleman and Nabers both high point well. Emeka’s interesting because I would honestly tell him to stay back a year since he could be a top 2-3 receiver next year but is probably WR 4-5 in this class after his injury issues.
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Nov 23, 2023 22:16
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Doltos posted:I love WRs that are like yea he's not going to run a crisp route but who cares Honestly, I’m getting to a point where I’m occasionally grading guys down on DL for playing with good technique if they’re less productive than just some random dudes who flail. There’s a school of thought that elite 2-gap guys should basically play with no technique in mind and be purely reactive to how an OL plays them and I kind of get it for odd-front or hybrid looks now. It’s what’s so funny to me about Tuimoloau and Sawyer with Ohio state this year—least technical edge guys out of Ohio state in eons but JT just guesses run/pass and is so disruptive that the linebackers just know “oh poo poo he overran” and cover for him.
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Nov 25, 2023 03:32
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BlindSite posted:Isn't this Wade Philips basic defensive philosophy for his 34 front? Just have your linemen crash and cause chaos as much as possible, edge will contain and your linebackers in the middle will flow and make the actual plays. If you want to simplify it, yeah. It’s probably better understood as edge will either contain or speed rush depending on what the assignment is for the DE inside of them. If the guy inside of me is face up on a tackle, I’m either bending or trying a twist back unless it’s an outside zone team. If my guy is inside of the tackle, I’ve got spill and kill responsibility similar to the mint fronts that are in vogue now. Doltos posted:Drake Maye because he shits his pants any time there's pressure in his face. This year is going to read like more of a haters guide than most with supposed good QBs in the class (as in not the Pickett class). If I’m giving some annotations. Daniels wasn’t terrible at ASU so much as just drastically mismanaged. They made him a one read guy because they couldn’t design a layered passing game for poo poo. There are throws their on tape even if no one could teach him reads. Caleb looks like he gets overstimulated by basic air raid reads in favor of hero ball. Bo is a YAC artist but might be an overqualified backup as a result. I kind of don’t get what he wants to be since he started as a vertical spread guy, has turned into a mesh god, and now they’re like trying to pretend he can his like a corner or scissors concept and that qualifies as getting his very game back? Weird. Quinn has an all world arm and some bad bad feet and shoulders because most of his RPOs and bullshit in Sark’s offense are just the natural evolution of the Briles poo poo. Entire offense runs like a pick and roll and hinges on him being like 60% of what he can be. JJ’s line this year can’t pass block as well against talent and he’s had to roll a lot and gotten away with quite a bit on those. Definite candidate for the Mayfield effect where he’s no longer a running threat and doesn’t have college margins anymore on his throws which make him eat poo poo. Penix could be a Cousins type where he gets so good at little things he develops because he can do the layer throws but I don’t think his outs or fades translate yet. Also yikes on the injury history. Shedeur holds the ball forever because otherwise someone could catch up and intercept or defend him easier. Baby arm but without the supernatural Burrow thing. You’re just hoping he can be Tua which isn’t the likely outcome and he’s already developing bad pressure habits. Beck is funny because I want to love him but every time I see him throwing to an even matchup it’s either the safest back shoulder shot he can take or an absurd 50/50 ball he shouldn’t go near. No one has him throwing guys open even though he has the arm and personnel for it. Pratt needs to play in a different offense for a year for me to feel good. Physical tools look like they’re there but the spacing even on bootleg throws in the post-option offense is really wonky. Van Dyke sucks. Classic verts only guy who never learned an angle in his life and couldn’t even read the Josh Gattis package play offense. Rattler is literally just an inferior Caleb which is really really funny. Milton will have the strongest arm in NFL history and probably be out of the league mid camp unless he learns to get past a half field read. Dart looks basically like they cloned Corral but made him hang balls even more because his receivers can’t bust things open. Bryce Petty? As for Maye, the best news for him was Phil Longo taking the Wisconsin job because he got to do slightly more reads—at which point we all learned that he will immediately turn into a DDR superstar in the face of a blitz and throw wildly. If you sim pressure him you can almost call balls that should be picked like a receiver running an open streak for a touchdown against cover 0.
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Dec 1, 2023 20:53
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Ornery and Hornery posted:Found my boys I’m so excited for the litmus test of what coaches and scouts say “I can fix him”. Quinn just genuinely has gotten by on having an incredible sense for his arm angles because his feet are poo poo and he doesn’t really look until he’s staring at his throw. It’s absolutely hilarious how little anyone has tried to enforce footwork on him or any sense of timing routes. RPO world makes a lot of his decisions easier, but if you watch him run like double China he reads it the way Kenny Pickett did—not a compliment because you can use either of those as a rorshach and discover how a QB predicts coverages will work for better or worse very quickly. I think his best throws are in max protection when he’s hitting a crosser or vertical read where he essentially sets up like a trick shot. Milton is so funny man. Just absolutely no interest in ever learning to take something off. I want the dolphins to take a flyer on him so badly because I think turning him into a vert guy off the Shanny tree or running Arians poo poo from a simplified view are the only chance he has. Literally, that offense is predicated on going “1, 2, run” and he still misses reads and throws all the goddamn time, but his arm is such a stupid weapon that just running fast guys out there could theoretically put 80 yards of the field in play every down. I don’t know exactly what he’ll run but 4.6 at 6’5 250 isn’t impossible so he probably makes the AR/Newton tier of “holy loving poo poo that guy has tools”. He’s just like an even more limited version of AR in the throws in his tool kit, and he couldn’t even handle the Josh Gattis offense that even Cade loving McNamara could.
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Dec 2, 2023 07:39
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indigi posted:is Trotter Jr gonna be good Couple notes here: The saying in strength training is that your absolute strength is the glass that determines what you can do. Arm strength does that for QBs too. Technique is an optimization problem. A dude who has an extremely live arm at lower levels typically doesn’t lose it but can lose margin with bad mechanics and footwork. Early Mahomes and Allen put a lot of balls on tape in college where they just didn’t know how to rein in their arms with the weight transfer and feet—lots of big arm guys only really know how to adjust their arm angles and wrist at an early age. Weird arc balls, fastballs, strange misses tend to come from bad technique with a good arm. Same time, weak arms will float balls, miss short or on the inside shoulder and get picked more frequently. Reason 1 that people chase starters with big arms—statistics back that on a relative basis the misses from a big arm are more beneficial than a weak one. Good mechanics raise your floor but can’t solve for the maximum distance you get or a peak velocity past a point. Every mechanical improvement is just bringing you closer to whatever 100% of your arm potential is—for most guys I think that’s about 10-20% velocity improvement on short-intermediate routes in the league and maybe 5-10% on deeper balls. Weight transfer, minimal drag/wasted arm motion, and minimal release times are the things that drive velocity because it’s just maximizing how much force you’re transferring into a ball going to a place shorter than your max distance. Kirk Cousins had terrible mechanics coming out and couldn’t hit an out for poo poo. He cleaned a lot of that up and makes consistent short game throws at an NFL level now. Zach Wilson had one of the best releases we’ve seen coming out but lost confidence in feet and weight transfer and has fallen apart. Deshaun’s motion didn’t transfer weight effectively but had a decent release and bark path. Burrow’s weight transfer is incredible but fell apart during his calf injury. Josh Rosen had some of the best mechanics you’ll find in pairing feet and arm. Notice, I’m covering the gamut of quarterback performance here to illustrate that a mechanical flaw is something where you can theoretically do better while also acknowledging that doing things well don’t inherently clean things up. Anticipation is the problem solved that can make a weak arm with average mechanics into something special. Burrow has a bottom 10 arm for starters—doesn’t matter because his ball placement for whatever his mechanics produce is otherworldly. Tua is bottom 10 but doesn’t have to throw hard because the offense expects him to hang balls out for fast guys. Knowing where a ball can go and hitting it is essentially a way of creating margin if you and your receiver are capable of hitting a mailbox throw against what should theoretically be good coverage. The best improvement in velocity I can think of offhand is Watson. Looked pitiful at Clemson, suddenly hit layer throws in stride when he feet got fixed. Call it like a 50% improvement and serious outlie to a normal 10-15%r. Air yards? I can’t think of anyone maximizing those significantl—5 to 10% from better weight transfer but max effort is max effort. Consider velocity and air yards as in tension on some level. The hardest thing to do is throw a fast ball for fewer air yards because I have to transfer the force into the ball flight’s speed but not the trajectory. The cue of “throw as hard as you can” tends to push people into maximizing both. The nfl is predicated on being able to control how much air your hard balls get.
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Dec 3, 2023 07:41
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A Buffer Gay Dude posted:What’s your take on Penix here? I’ve honestly gasped at the velocity on some of his flat-trajectory throws from the far college hash to a route on the other sideline. Bit of a red herring. Hard outs are essentially a different throw in college—hash to hash has more space which means it’s a sharper angle where you can place is more easily away from a defender than the league. Penix has good velocity but he’s not throwing the balls that Stroud/Lawrence/Fields were on this, more or less by play design. I think he might have it, but there will be an adjustment period to his placement and a need to consistently transfer his weight because his peak velocity does look nice. Doltos posted:On my end I thought that Bryce could get away with it. I don't think footwork matters that much on short routes which Bryce excelled at. Kind of like how a shortstop can do an off balance throw because the torque of the elbow snapping. Like GG said the margins in the NFL are so exact that having just a little bit off can dumpster your career. For what it's worth I think he still looks the same in college on the short routes, it's just when he has to push the ball you see what happens in that video. Locked legs after a drop back basically kills any chance of delivering a speedy ball beyond 10 yards. He definitely has to fix that. Rosen was our white whale, but I think I was a little cooler on Bryce than you just because I wasn’t sure that he was growing much more as a player beyond hitting some movers over the middle and some deep balls. It’s really really jarring to me how bad his feet got when I don’t honestly think his Carolina line is about the same marginal disadvantage that his Bama one was. Reich really really tried to make him a drop back guy and more or less turned him into Baker on a bad day when his feet were messy under Hue. I told you all about Stroud though. That one feels like the best eval I’ve had in a while.
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Dec 3, 2023 22:02
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Ornery and Hornery posted:??? ?? https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4018787&userid=184604&perpage=40&pagenumber=2#post529087137 https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4018787&userid=184604&perpage=40&pagenumber=1#post528563960 I called CJ QB1 and worst case was calling him 1a to Bryce’s 1b. I think I gave them the same subjective score which in retrospect I probably should be dropping guys with his level of footwork problems more even if their objective scores go up on scrambling ability. I was arguably more critical of Stroud because there were flatly more reps where he showed good and bad traits, while Bryce’s offense in the stuff over the middle or deep balls to talented receivers looked elite (when his feet were set and not causing him to leak power) even though he didn’t have the same throw variety or protection responsibility on hand. Fun thought experiment, how different are Rattler and Caleb now honestly? Great arm talent that they trust to make wacky throws. Caleb moves better but will stall and make worse decisions trying to extend things. Spencer arguably has better mechanics and speed off his hand. They play more similarly than ever since Spencer stwet d getting asked to run.
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Dec 4, 2023 07:58
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Doltos posted:Stroud and Young were both very good prospects and I believe deserve to be ranked high. GG was beating the Stroud drum from the get go which kind of made me do it too. I don't think anyone imagined Stroud would turn into the second coming of Drew Brees and that Young would be this bad. QB scouting be hard. I’m firmly at the 3 year check in rule with most QBs. Stroud’s stuff should carryover to future success since it’s not exactly pure scheme it up stuff from a rookie. Young could still turn out but I’m going to need them to fix his line and stop loving around with his drops. Reich thinks from the context of statue quarterbacks who hang in the pocket and need to be forced into being loose—Bryce needs to if anything be tightened up. It’s bad enough when your nfl coach messes with your mechanics, but that footwork is just bizarre given his tendencies scrambling and usually setting his feet decently prior to this. Carter is so loving weird. I love his talent and technique but he’s basically a 1980s throwback for when you rotated your DTs like crazy and had specialists in there. Conditioning was weird, but like all UGA guys are essentially conditioned like Olympic sprinters where not being able to rotate seems to turf them outside of a handful of exceptions. It’s a flip side of how much explosion they get out of spots.
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Dec 5, 2023 03:01
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whos that broooown posted:Stroud always had that dawg in him and it will always be one in tggs biggest misses in that regard I literally put it on coaching at Ohio state man. Day is very much a “not too high not too low” guy who absolutely 100% puts guys on a leash. All his media availability at Ohio state sounded like a weird youth pastor who didn’t understand the job (don’t call your rival just another game). Maybe something really did snap in him after Georgia and all the fan backlash from the Michigan games because he was not nearly this cool in college lol. Ornery and Hornery posted:I always loved Stroud ahead of Bryce except ironically when TGG said he had the arm strength of Watson and when TGG gave Stroud a dishonorably low score in how much dawg he had in him. Watson’s velocity remains one of the more dramatic improvements anyone has done mechanically (may he burn in hell otherwise) but CJ made some tweaks going to the league now and cleaned up some of his release points on layer throws and loft where his bow and arrow release might have been making his life harder. Learning wrist work like that is just technical reps but it’s really given him the extra 15-20% of throws he needed that are conceivable for anyone who doesn’t have a Mahomes/Allen arm.
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Dec 5, 2023 18:03
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A Buffer Gay Dude posted:I have nothing to back this up but Stroud being a tall black dude with dreads and Bryce being a cute lil clean cut guy 100% was a factor for Carolina, prove me wrong. Lowkey, I don’t think I’ve ever seen espn more disappointed to interview a two parent household than they were with Bryce. His dad is like a family counselor by the Rose Bowl here.
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Dec 5, 2023 18:05
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xbilkis posted:Also CJ Stroud is a vanilla personality mondo-Christian so he's not really giving off Bad Boy vibes His dad is a pastor who got convicted of armed robbery, and he grew up playing in the Snoop league. A disrespectful score is warranted for a guy who focused on the pastor part of that life lmao
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Dec 5, 2023 22:51
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Ginger Beer Belly posted:My memory of the C.J. Stroud discussion before the draft was that there was a ton of concern over his S2 Cognition test as he scored in the 18 percentile on it. He clearly doesn't seem to be having read processing difficulties, so I wonder if that means that the test itself isn't quite as predictive as the company makes it out to be, or if he just had a bad day. I mean, can we predict every single dollar a person earns in their life by their ACT score? Standardized tests measure a type of intelligence relative to specific questions and contexts. The actual standardized test for quarterbacks is on their goddamn tape every week or on a chalkboard. The wonderlic ain’t it. Iowa basically plays 3 coverages. Cover 2, Cover 2 man, and Cover 4. In their version of Cover 4, he’s basically an additional free safety who calls his own switches because of his athleticism. In 2, he’s frequently used as the pivot guy who moves from cloud to sky to sink as a trap to bait interceptions out of guys. In 2 man, he’s a good cover corner, but his best attribute is that he can come on and off guys so quickly with his hips and speed. In a lot of systems, I’ve described an ideal free safety who will either move around to follow a matchup or play MOF coverages and break on balls. You’re essentially saying “if I move him from a side to the middle, I can use him like earl thomas”. Based on skill set, I kind of get it. He’s so fluid that from a scarcity standpoint a guy like him who can freelance in zone is a lot rarer than a corner with his hips. It happens a lot when Iowa has undersized corners just because of the asks of that defense.
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Dec 10, 2023 03:37
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Rectal Placenta posted:Is Desmond Watson staying for his senior year? He isn't one of those imitation beefy boys, he's the real deal at 6-5 435. There’s absolutely no shot that dude is getting picked highly enough that he should be leaving. Nose already is a weird position to value, but he’s a guy where like….i actively cannot believe they’re fine with him playing that big.
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Dec 24, 2023 03:30
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Relentlessboredomm posted:Cam Ward declared for the draft, maybe another 1st round guy at QB? He holds the ball like it’s covered in Teflon, trusts his arm too much, and he makes reads that will drive an NFL coach insane (he has a couple double China reps that gave me vapors from the bad Pickett film). Love his tools and think he could’ve developed into a 1-2 round guy but just cannot get over how bad his mechanics are and how weird some of his progressions look. Round 4 feels right at the moment. He’s basically just a worse Jaren Hall as is. mcmagic posted:Michael Penix Jr looks a lot like a more athletic Tua to me. I think he's an NFL starting QB That’s basically the passing skeleton they operate but he’s really a lot closer to the love child of Zach Wilson and Derek Carr right now. Ball just zips right out of his hand but with a 3/4 release. I still think he throws more fast than far, so his deep balls are going to look floaty in an NFL environment my biggest issues with him are that he gets by on a lot of sharp angles from the hashes on corner and sideline throws that don’t translate to narrow hashes and the injury history. I think you could drop him on most Shanny teams and win 10+ if he’s healthy but I wonder a bit if he’d really be comfortable in something like the Stefanski offense where the hard PAP is a bigger deal and you can’t risk as many flat foot reads from empty without taking your running game out of it, because they let him run the offense and running keys like late Ben Steelers teams did and very very few coaches even in a modern relaxed nfl will allow that. Doltos posted:I had a post somewhere in the past threads where I called Dak Prescott a hidden draft gem and it excuses all the QBs I've missed on since then. He was a hyper Tim Tebow with jump passes and crazy roll outs so I loved him. He was also extremely smart and constantly found guys in a whacky offense. That luckily translated into the NFL and why I'm not super down on Caleb after this year. I will volunteer as the town Caleb hater because Dak would’ve gone down as a double heisman winner in those SC offenses. Caleb’s offense is wacky because he wants to freelance and Lincoln is too big of a coward to coach him now. Dak’s was by design because you try getting more than 1 decent receiver to Starkville. Improvising can take you a ways, look at Fields with the conga line of the worst OCs around, but you only win games with those as a sometimes food at the next level.
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Jan 2, 2024 07:32
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a neat cape posted:Probably Marvin Harrison Jr. It’s Odunze. Marv is capable of dropping gimmes and being one of those “too wide open” types. Nissin Cup Nudist posted:Quinn Ewers was the QB giving off Zach Wilson vibes, not Penix mcmagic posted:Don't compare Penix to Zach Wilson......... He's started a LOT of games in college and he knows how to play. That isn't his issue. Wilson threw 800+ attempts in college and played 3 seasons—the issue is that all his good tape is predicated on coddling his slow decision making and vision which was partially covered by his release being fast as the dickens and letting him get away with being late at time behind his grown man offensive line. Penix winds up a bit but the ball ultimately does leave his hand absurdly fast once he actually gets it to his ear—but he’s making that read generally faster than Wilson did and into a tighter window. Where I see Wilson in his game is in the pocket movement within layered concepts and his release, dude moves pretty well in sync with receivers and loves a good hi-lo read, he just does it in tighter windows than Zach did because even the very good Washington line isn’t quite outclassing opposing talent the way BYU does. But all that said, the age and injury history will be what probably make him go lower than Zach even if he’s probably a more proven quantity as an actual player. I could make an argument Penix might have fewer raw air yards in his arm too but that hasn’t stopped Tua or Burrow from succeeding in modern vertical throws.
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Jan 3, 2024 17:02
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Kevino07 posted:Where would Zay Flowers slot in if he was in this draft class rather than last years class? WR4/5? 6ish? MHJ Odunze Coleman Nabers Worthy? Doltos posted:I think NFL GMs have been waiting for MHJ for a year. Yeah, the Washington offense is explicitly aimed at loving with modem nickel coverages and fits by abusing corner and flag routes against perpendicular cuts to not only force choices but guarantee the carry rules to pass guys in a pattern get screwed up. It’s the logical zag to what the “4 verts or bust” type of offense that Briles and now like Heupel run but can still borrow a few concepts like Choice as internal constraint plays. If they have the receivers to run it, your only real hope is to sit in man and go blow for blow right now because the receivers are too experienced to run zone against it. GMs aren’t going to love projecting some of the cross hash calls but it’s not like watching Hendon Hooker tape where you just throw like 80% of it out as things that don’t happen in the NFL
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Jan 3, 2024 21:32
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Doltos posted:drat JJ McCarthy sucks rear end I want him to declare just so we can get it over with. He’s Jake Locker with less reps.
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Jan 9, 2024 07:38
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indigi posted:Arch Manning must suck Arch Manning is a mid 4 star recruit without the last name. He’s the first one with Archie’s athleticism but holy poo poo he should be better than this. Yeah he played for their tiny private school in New Orleans but so did like Odell and he still balled out. Much less, dude has been in national camps his whole life, he has to have seen high end competition in 7 on 7 at least. Unfortunately for Quinn, another year of Sark’s fisher price offense isn’t fixing the problem of him make 3ish bozo throws a game and frequently missing reads because Sark’s whole manner of setting up second and third optioned relies on a quarterback having some eye discipline if the first read isn’t there. Still love his stupid arm though. wandler20 posted:WR1 Gun to my head, third guy off the board for receivers right now. MHJ goes too 2, and I think Nabers and Coleman are too tools-y for a GM to not freak out over. Odunze is going to do the Amari Cooper thing where he rolls into the league wing excellent at many things but doesn’t really flash one specific calling card doing it. Then you look up and he’s somehow top of p in receiving in the league. Im still so intrigued by Nabers and Coleman. Nabers doesn’t try at any route and still separates and catches effortlessly. Coleman’s route running got worse at Florida state and didn’t even matter because he’s such a freak.
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Jan 12, 2024 07:43
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Benne posted:McCarthy is just Stetson Bennett with a yoga routine This is massively unfair to Stetson because he had actual sideline throws on tape his final year, but I 150% will agree that him 4 inches taller would be talked about the way McCarthy is. It’s not a coincidence that they basically ran the Monken MoF packages this year from the first Georgia title, John literally hired him because the entire scheme is the only way they found to beat both modern nickel looks and the mint front in the same offense and Jim just stole it because it kicked his rear end prior. JJ literally does not have nfl layer or sideline throws on tape because he never threw them outside of busts or trick plays.
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Jan 15, 2024 02:28
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Re: 2025 QBs, I uh don’t know that I really like anyone right now. Ewers is the Charizard to prospect Herbert’s charmeleon. 2-4 generational throws a game, 2-4 backbreakingly terrible ones. Weird misses that look like no one knew the play. Fisher Price offense. Doesn’t really have any feel in the pocket or consistency to his feet even with the improvement this year. Just one of the most ludicrous arms we’ve had on a minute, ball just instantly comes on a line. Beck is very talented and has a lot of responsibility in his offense but doesn’t really do anything that impresses me in terms of throwing guys open or maximizing his receiving talent. Big numbers but leaves a lot on the table downfield and outside the numbers in favor of making the throws that won’t get him yelled at. If they unleash him a bit and open up to make up for their TE deficiencies this coming year, he could put enough on tape to be QB1 because he has the physical tools right now. Shedeur doesn’t have anything resembling pocket feel or timing, and their insistence on going air raid with him will hurt when the league asks him to run quick game or make a tough throw in favor of holding the ball forever. He kind of does a mediocre Burrow impression right now but without the pinpoint accuracy getting dropped by receivers on Burrow’s junior tape. Average arm, not really sure why he gets the love he does. Allar sucks. They Hackenberged him and failed to design an offense that teaches him timing. Maybe the new coordinator helps but I can’t imagine adding option wrinkles cleans up his lovely feet. Good arm though. Riley Leonard might rise if he stays healthy. He hit some windows at Duke that were NFL margins off of his receivers limitations, and he has pretty good pocket feel, but someone needs to rein his feet in a little bit because he’s very scramble happy and tries to do Mahomes poo poo they he’s not built for. Dillon Gabriel is an RPO merchant Smurf. Great Value Tua Van Dyke will regress as all Longo QBs do. Milroe ha the tools and no midrange game in an offense where that will be the ask. I don’t know how that’s going to work but if he fixes it, round 1 for sure (he wont). I saw Weigman on a board? He has some Jimbo timing throws over the middle and nice feet but they haven’t let him push boundaries or vertically enough for me to feel super comfortable mocking him on this sample. Could rise a lot on tools but who knows.
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Jan 17, 2024 19:58
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a neat cape posted:Herbert also has incredible footwork in the pocket and is very very smart Lynn and his off-season coaches completely reworked his feet from Mario’s hosed up pistol mechanics that they ran at Oregon. The boy genius part was always true, he knew what he wanted to do but desperately needed someone to fix his spacing and mechanics for consistency so his output felt controllable. SKULL.GIF posted:re: Josh Allen, I posted a thread a few years back about how the QB scarcity crisis was "solved" and that Allen's development process was a huge clue towards why/how. It wasn't received too well The real tell for what valuation is becoming is going to be what happens with Tua or Cousins this year. Look at the Seahawks with Geno and Drew. Everyone is going to try for a lottery ticket even if you have a good game manager because it just fundamentally changes the math of what’s possible. Tua and Cousins do numbers like Geno—what teams does that improve versus what teams is that the status quo or ceiling holding back what it could be.
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Jan 22, 2024 06:42
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but it ended on this fantastic/prescient post from TGG discussing game managers vs. "tools" QBs that I think should get eyeballs today, especially after the last few playoff games:
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Ornery and Hornery posted:I don’t think Drew Lock represents some deep preference of QB evaluations in Seattle. I think they traded Russ and got a qb back in the mega deal. It’s not about deep preference, it’s a pure potential play. If drew lock was as unproven as he was but had only Geno’s toolset, he might not get traded or keep a roster spot as easily because “what’s my upside here’s really?” Organizationally, they love drafting high composite athletes and traits with things like Geno’s success representing some minor deviations from that. Does the organization invest a spot in Lock past the initial trade if he has lesser traits? I think there’s definitely been a sea change if teams will speculate on those traits as opposed to generic “backup who knows the offense” types for the QB2 spot in the league every single time
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Jan 22, 2024 07:41
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I’m waiting for people to watch enough Drake Maye tape to realize he’s a candidate for the Jake Locker “gently caress it I’m out” award for guys who do not protect themselves and take away all their actual advantages with stupid decision making and nonsense scrambles. Wanna find out what Josh Allen does if he isn’t a giant indestructible cyborg that got retaught how to play football? Sign here! JJ is just the ultimate football guy horoscope. There’s no sample size for any throw on his tape so pick whatever you think is real. At all. Deep layers? Like 2-3. Hard outs? A few here and there. He literally never had to do anything and basically avoided putting outt bad tape by not putting out anything. If I had to guess, he’s more interception prone than we see, solely off of his motion doing a bit of aiming the ball like Watson or Zach Wilson. He has the tools to do quite a bit, but I hate his footwork on the run, he just kind of jumps and submarines himself into balls when he gathers, which works until someone cuts their grass differently and your cleats make you miss a guy 10 yards short into an NFL safety. One of you needs to suck it up and draft Rattler. He’s still way too arrogant deep, but he’s going to throw some sick vertical concepts in between getting screamed at for turnovers
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Jan 23, 2024 22:43
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Doltos posted:Latu is pretty accomplished as a technician. He gets really low and constantly wins leverage battles. He's mostly a hand fighter and uses sheds more than bull rushes or beating people with athleticism. Only average first step, explosion, and strength. He's just smart on how he stunts and where he places his feet. Not a lot of wasted movement. He's also decent in coverage. Latu has a big concern with his neck though. It got surgically repaired but he did lose a ton of time to it. That's why he wears that collar roll. This is great work. I think Trice is going to drop because of combine and the tape in big games but I think a huge issue with his run fits is that there was basically no one on that defense who can two gap meaningfully which means they always can get manipulated and moved into the wrong gap like a bad Schiano or Grinch defense on the front. He’s absolutely an odd front guy to me but I think he’s going to produce well in that context Verse and Turner are hilarious because they’re two very very different takes on “pass rush specialist where we hate what he does in run support”. If turner had Will Anderson’s instincts, he would be 1 with a bullet but no one at Bama taught him how to spill or close wide properly or how to cross guys faces consistently because he just either rips or does some weird rip under finish that works but will get punched into oblivion by NFL tackles if he can’t counter off of it. Verse with anything resembling a generic disengagement to regain gap control but he’s too busy learning to clown Ts with half spin long arm bullshit that wins but also puts him 2s behind a called run. It’s like when Jon Jones talked about learning moves from YouTube videos before fights, he just crushes clean technique but it doesn’t matter because the play went away from or past him. Someone needs to get him bending consistently on speed moves to at least gamble for TFLs on early downs like young aldon smith. Latu is like 90% of Nick Bosa as a prospect which is probably worth the gamble. I hate whoever taught him to go at a guy’s ribs on baiting hand fights because he’ll get clamped doing that anywhere inside of a T’s shoulder but the technique and production makes me think he‘ll be fine. I worry a lot about if he’s going to be too stiff at the shoulder with the neck because his hand fighting is going to require flexibility to get around NFL tackle length consistently. Chop is funny. Classic Penn state guy who will get a little bit of coaching and be a 10 year player. I don’t think he’s powerful enough to move around much but maybe the best pure “can play 4-3 or 3-4” edge of the crew on traits like bend and tackling.
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Jan 25, 2024 05:02
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wandler20 posted:Caleb Downs is gonna be a top 10 pick isn't he? He’s the reincarnation of Eric Berry in a defense that’s going to use him as a moving weapon. I’d be floored if he wasn’t.
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Jan 25, 2024 05:03
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Doltos posted:Jalen yes, Kyler and Baker both held on to the ball forever in college because Riley's system makes them. He preaches passing lanes so he has his QBs either rolling out or sitting in the pocket forever looking for the defense shift to favor them. I think Klassen described that offense as a million ways to throw a flat, wheel, or seam in a way that doesn’t really ask anything of a quarterback other than to wait. It didn’t used to be like this, used to have a lot more traditional stuff over the middle, but his OLs at USC have been horrific at executing counter or any good middle run, so the defenses just stack up in the middle and dare you to misdirect enough to punish them. Caleb is bad for him because he can hold the ball forever with his scrambling so coaching points from someone like Riley become like doing meth.
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Jan 29, 2024 02:53
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Gareth Gobulcoque posted:dude absolutely crushes it blocking in the film I've watched. he seems to both enjoy it, and be pretty good at it. I expect he'll have pretty good numbers for anything fast and some very middling numbers for anything quick. Corum’s whole thing in college is being a weirdly competent hole finder who sort of snow shovels his way to 3 yards guaranteed most of the time. I…don’t think he’s translating to the NFL. The whole “get skinny then explode up” method works when your line blocks well and the linebackers aren’t powerful enough to consistently stick you. Good way to become a 2 YPC back in the nfl if you aren’t exceptionally big and strong. He’s not big enough to be a real short yardage guy in the nfl so I just don’t know what to project. Losing carries to the guys he was is interesting too considering Edwards was terrible this year and the younger guys were average at best. Someone’s going to want him to be Zach Moss but I keep seeing a whole hell of a lot of tape that looks like Donald Brown to me man.
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Jan 30, 2024 04:34
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Doltos posted:Olu is still fine and properly rated, I think. It's just that the first 10 or so picks this draft all have huge ceilings. I think the comp for Olu is Matt Kalil when you look at the polish versus the upside, right down to where I think his pass set is so drilled and consistent that like you said, he doesn’t really do improv but is permanently capped on how good he is unless he gets faster to the edge. The Michigan tape is very very concerning to me because that Michigan disguise set is essentially just the current Ravens pressure package that’s about to become the nfl defensive meta at multiple new teams. I’m of the mind you can always improve pass technique, but you can’t really teach vision in getting downfield or anything like that. I also just don’t like when my LT has an inconsistent anchor. Sometimes when guys are getting beat wide, the coaching point is to back step low and try to get a defender either too high or later in his bend than you want, Olu doesn’t really do that because I guarantee his coach is telling him to play with width and not depth. Alt does some goofy poo poo in his pass set and has the annoying Notre Dame thing where he gets his hands swatted at times because he reaches a little too reactively, but he can do literally any run scheme you want which is getting more valuable. If Olu is an elite foot agility guy, Alt’s merely good. I don’t think it’s an issue in a world where guys like Orlando Brown is a playoff tackle with rings. Mims gives me Jedrick Wills vibes, maybe better upside. I get the upside play, but I don’t know that he holds a stance well enough for the average nfl passing game, gotta get his head up sooner and not give his outside shoulder so easily. Guyton played in the Mickey Mouse spread this year so I’m questioning how well he can consistently pass set when there isn’t run action to give him margin. He has a number of times he lost reps that just comes down to him overstepping and failing to get his feet down trying to oversell a pull or kick step. His upside from a movement standpoint is great but raw hand placement and could add a little bit of play strength. Gun to my head? Alt Olu Guyton Mims. At least on like 3-4 games a piece.
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Feb 1, 2024 21:28
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Doltos posted:Cooper DeJean has all the talent in the world but he's just so inconsistent. He displays all this ability in the run game and then just completely takes plays off or doesn't fight for the tackle at all. He's got all this amazing agility at times but then he just freezes his hips and lets guys break on him constantly. Someone needs to teach him effort. I’m not 100% sold on it being effort over him just not knowing how to read in man-match consistently. Ever since Parker moved them to base quarters and man-match, they’ve been a factory for long, slower corners that essentially are guaranteed to make nfl rosters as safeties in the worst case since they drop and break on most downs. Dejean is like dropping a guy who plays like Deangelo Hall into that where he loves to gamble and try to guess as opposed to just reacting in the structure. He’s too dynamic to coverage to not have out there since he’s a legitimate scoring threat, but you consistently have to shade your other DBs towards preparing for him to freelance. Nwankpa on that defense is a future star at safety too—consistently bailed out Dejean and others on the bad plays which is really hard to do in quarters when an outside corner isn’t supposed to have help in exchange for having a narrower zone to have to carry upfield.
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Feb 14, 2024 17:07
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Doltos posted:If JJ is QB3 it's based entirely on potential and zero what he showed at Michigan. Even for a Jim Harbaugh offense he was a checkdown machine. He's got not timing on sideline routes or middle seams. I think it's going to be a disaster pick but who knows? This is what I’m so baffled by. Usually this type of pick is because he can rip hard outs or seams or is a ridiculous athlete where you know the scrambles will work. He’s not big enough to run consistently or fast enough to avoid getting closed down at the edge (he’s basically the same type of runner Burrow was in college). His deep balls routinely got bailed out by having a very very good deep ball guy in Wilson and a guy he could safely overthrow in Johnson. I just don’t understand what the potential here is, because no trait he has shown screams upside to me right now, unless he’s secretly a complete prospect and Jim is just fundamentally opposed to passing now.
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Feb 19, 2024 23:15
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Ornery and Hornery posted:Nice thanks for sharing. I think this actually indicates that Michigan faced a very very low % of 3rd and longs this year so they didn’t pull out a bunch of weird constraints or anything on those passing downs because they didn’t have obvious tendencies displayed. I’d need to double check, but I have a memory that they had very very few instances of being behind the sticks. Re: McCarthy in a McVay system, you guys are missing the point of stafford in that offense. Goff can hit the short/intermediate poo poo in that system, it’s not hard. They need someone who can hit those vertical/PA shot plays consistently because that’s the hardest thing since the system trades the short range mismatches for slightly smaller windows on traditional seam/deep routes. Goff couldn’t do that poo poo, and McCarthy doesn’t have tape that says he’s getting that type of throw out on schedule (albeit like no one in this class really has that tape).
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Feb 27, 2024 01:09
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Working on my yearly QB post, and I swear to god every single one of these guys can run now. I’m getting to like QB 10 before I see a dude who I just do not think has any scrambling or play extension ability. We do not give enough credit to how athletic the position has become.
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Mar 19, 2024 16:19
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Doltos posted:I think he's garbage poo poo. He's got athleticism and he can keep plays alive to dart balls but his deep ball is atrocious and his decision making is awful. We’re going to have a dialogue about it, but I’ve never seen a guy whose biggest improvement I can see is “started behaving like an nfl 3rd stringer”within college. Like even Kenny Pickett became a bit better of a gunslinger even if jt was in an offense that was best described as “packaged plus designed to always force exactly 1 guy open”. Nix is like a YAC artist where the entire offense was predicated on “if we get a receiver the ball at around 10 yards downfield in space, we’re good”. He feels like an air raid QB (derogatory) without the benefit of me feeling like he consistently will pick the guy who’s loving open.
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Mar 20, 2024 22:10
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This took a lot longer this year because parenting really cuts into the time you can spend watching a 4th round pick's film cut ups it turns out. Caleb Williams – USC I’ve been thinking about how to talk about Caleb since he took Rattler’s job in all honesty, because he’s always been a guy where you just cannot look past what he physically has at his disposal. We judge Caleb on a curve that is borderline unfathomable—why doesn’t he always make the perfect play every time? Why did he miss his receiver deep when he still had time to gather and make a read? Why is he taking fumbles and sacks behind the line that he has no business taking? I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a guy with his level of both talent and production where I’ve despised his tape this much. I’m going to pause and talk about his physical traits before we discuss the actual play, because there’s no reason to be as negative as some of this report is going to come out. By virtue of how the league works now, scouting is a question of “how is this guy succeeding or failing in the NFL” and trying to back figure those outcomes. There is no world in which Caleb’s physical talent is the issue, barring an Alex Smith caliber injury. He’s listed at 6’1 215, but I would wager he plays a touch heavier just based on that being his listed weight since he was 17 despite being significantly bigger. I don’t see a guy on tape who has trouble seeing over the line, and he moves very well in the event there’s some garbage over the middle although he’s pretty good at staying upright as long as he can to maximize the view. There aren’t really injury concerns here. His arm is fascinating for an NFL guy. I see a very high release where people mistake high for tight. He still can wind up and torque his elbow when he’s off schedule or releasing wide, but I think some of that is him trying to force himself to pause and set before releasing. I think he’s going to be somewhere between above average and high-end velocity in the league—not the Allen/Stafford gun but enough that you’re not going to mistake him for Cousins in the short game, particularly when he steps in while in structure. His ability to throw on air and put distance into the ball is probably top 5-7 in the league from day one, which tells me he genuinely could get to that league leading velocity too if a team will let him step into throws and actually block for him for the first time in like 3 years. His real genius with his arm is his ability to throw with touch or velocity when he’s falling off platform or pressure—some of that is arm angle but some is just having repped those throws a billion times. He has so many throws where he’s either reading hot or has a missed assignment in the blocking where he gets the ball where it should be without having to force a ball out in the way he wants, but let’s put a pin in that idea of forcing balls for later. Honestly, I think his feet are really solid for a guy with the reputation of playing outside of structure and bolting the pocket in scramble mode too. He’s never going to be mistaken for Brady, but he does a really good job of keeping his feet square and transferring momentum into his arm from a solid base—maybe some light overstriding on longer plays where he throws from too wide which probably get picked in the NFL if the ball doesn’t have enough on it, but I think he just ends up sacked on those plays anyways. So why am I bothered by this dude? We can’t talk about Caleb without talking about Lincoln Riley at this point. The man who gave us Baker, Kyler, and some level of Jalen Hurts has essentially the first instance of a quarterback where he’s had him from the beginning with borderline limitless potential. So what is the offensive genius hailed as 1 of 2 big QB whisperers in college doing with his masterpiece? Frantically trying to hide the part where he can’t run the ball or pass block anymore. When Riley takes over the Oklahoma offense, the big innovation is that they start iterating GT Counter and Zone principles to the air raid create traffic and garbage that a defender’s eye discipline can be bothered by. All of his RPO work hinges on this idea that you force the defense’s eyes to the edge or cutback and force them to make a choice on how they’re coving what are ultimately very simple one-back route trees. Every consecutive Riley offense has run the ball less frequently and less effectively, which is fine when your passing game is good enough that you’re only using the run game as a constraint. Enter the USC years—where his OL is bottom half of the Pac 12 and probably bottom 3 in the new Big 10. He wasn’t able to bring the OL coach from Oklahoma with him who seemed to smooth over the inherent difficulties of running what was essentially NFL-caliber GT Counter and Zone plays while still maintaining enough technique and athleticism to handle dropping in pass pro 50 times a game. USC did not have a Tackle on the roster that could execute their running schemes and passing schemes at the same time, so he frequently would just pick the guy who could sort of drop and simplify to run more zone runs so that missed blocks wouldn’t completely end their rushing attempts. Unfortunately, this does some strange things to your quarterback when they have to play under these conditions, as Lincoln started calling his offense like a 12 year old Madden player spamming 800 ways to force the ball on a wheel or to the flat with the knowledge that he would absolutely have to win in space to win games. There are two schools for dealing with an elite QB—blitz or max coverage. When you blitz, the rush must get home, or you’re losing coverage integrity the longer you leave your guys in space. Riley’s offense was more or less predicated on that exact gambit the last 2 years. When you label a playcaller arrogant, what you’re saying is that they know exactly what they have on their team and know that their team will make it work. Caleb does that. There are so many reads in games they won where Lincoln calls some type of slot wheel, snag, spot, or double move that just creates the gambit “Caleb, if you can stay alive for 3 second, there’s a touchdown here”, and usually he did just that. The entire Nevada and Colorado tape looks like a guy where he’s just angrily calling plays that will prove the superiority of his QB and receiver, ignoring every other guy on the field to the passage of time. Consequently, Caleb looks absurdly comfortable against pressure and the blitz and will just float around moving until he’s ready to throw, perhaps a bit too long but when there’s only 5 defenders in coverage, you have margin if you’re alive. A lot of the throws that people describe as “off structure” against the blitz for Caleb are him throwing an intended route where he knew what he had and just needed time to get the ball there. The reality is—these throws are within structure because they’re expected. A lot of what look like broken plays where Caleb hits a bomb are in fact just some of the worst blocked shot plays you’ve ever seen. Max coverage is a different beast though. When I’m a DC, my goal is to break the offense’s structure in such a way that I can benefit. If my blitz isn’t getting home, the question becomes how few guys can I send and still get pressure? This year, USC couldn’t consistently block 4. Then, as a playcaller, I’m faced with a different set of problems. It’s no longer “Stay alive and this will be open for you”—it’s “Stay alive but also don’t miss your windows” and this is where a lot of chickens come home to roost for the USC offense now. Lincoln doesn’t like throwing MOF consistently because he can’t keep Caleb in the pocket easily, so better throw to the hashes. Lincoln can’t call designed counter or cutbacks so option looks are the only real way to create backdoors in the running game. Lincoln can’t call dive or tight zone well because his linemen aren’t really road graders and struggle to open lanes in the middle against basic run fits. When you add all those together, and you’re struggling to run your offense against a base defense only rushing 4, the onus is entirely on the QB to hit tight windows against 7 defenders without the advantage of the full field being threatened. Yes, Caleb can punish bad angles and absorb some space scrambling, the dropping 7 or 8 even means he’s not getting that far out before running into a defender. So what does he do? Caleb holds the ball forever against max coverage. If you look at his sack rate and pressure stats, it almost counterintuitively seems that the best bet to get sacks is to rush minimally and make him try to outsmart the defense while running scramble drill behind his OL who have all lost their matchups. His sack rate shows up as significantly higher that a lot of guys in his hype level in the draft almost entirely because he is trying to maximize these moments. This is why I bristle a bit at the idea of him being brilliant out of structure—because he’s not really making those highlight throws consistently post-structure, just when he’s blitzed into them. Coaches in the NFL want guys who can check down and not force balls in these situations at the next level. The genius of Mahomes is that he throws hard checkdowns and consistently maximizes yardage at the margins to make it so that those bombs are actually devastating rather than just what it takes to stay in the game. Caleb is not there yet, though there really isn’t a reason he can’t learn it. Bonecrushing sacks and fumbles, along with stupid arm punts, are just a choice that he makes by virtue of refusing to check down and always going alone in these moments, which could be something that changes when a coach isn’t running scramble rules that allow for it, or it could be an ingrained tendency that Lincoln had to try to account for in the offense. So where does that leave us? Objectively, I think Caleb is the best touch passer at QB1 in a few years—better than Trevor, Fields, or Stroud on that front. I also think he’s got by far the biggest hurdles to overcome on his scheme and tailoring his game. Trevor’s offense hinged on simple reads. Fields and Stroud were meant to maximize the vertical game to the detriment of some short throws. There is no analog for being a hash merchant like Caleb in the NFL because the hash marks aren’t where they were in college. You don’t have the ability to force coverage off an additional 10 yards wide on a whim now. Additionally, how does it work when he’s asked to move protections and hot reads around pre-snap as opposed to reacting to being hot and figuring out where his receiver is about to have space built into the play. You cannot count on your receivers just winning against blitz the same way in the NFL, so there has to be an evolution of his approach here the same way that he’s going to have to learn to settle down and read tight windows from a pocket once he has a line that can actually block for him (although maybe the Bears still can’t do that). As a prospect, I think he looks a lot like Dak with higher end talent and features around him. They had very similar issues where the passing snaps on tape just don’t match a lot of the NFL in the love of Wheels and flats that Mullen and Riley share, but the physical ability and game feel post-snap give them a lot of margin to learn what they need to do at the next level to succeed. Another comparison that comes to mind, ironically, is Fields where the slowness in processing against max coverages ends up leading to them having to run vertically more to force defenses to play more gap sound and create space a different way in the passing skeleton. Another guy that comes to mind is Russell Wilson in terms of trying to succeed by maximizing that which happens outside of the tackles—Russ threw a lot of waggle and jerk routes at Wisconsin the same way Caleb does now, frequently off of plays that extended longer than they needed to. I think Caleb can succeed just because of the enormous margin that his athletic ability and arm will give him, so long as a coach is patient enough to let him rep, but I also see the potential for him to immediately follow the career arc Fields has had where an attempt to try to immediately fit him into NFL schemes leads to his development stagnating in favor of doing the handful of things that keep his team in the game. I have him as QB1, but I don’t believe he’s the caliber of prospect Lawrence or Fields were. I put him in a similar category to Stroud or Murray where he should be QB1, but I don’t believe what’s on tape necessarily justifies overlooking some of the flaws inherent to his game. Drake Maye - UNC I have a lot of takes about football, but one I’m very willing to fight to my last breath is that Phil Longo belongs in the Hague. That’s right—I have to start this eval by talking about the Wisconsin OC, because I probably will never forgive him for the list of QBs he’s effectively destroyed in his efforts to appear “Fun” or “Uptempo”. Let’s talk for a minute about tempo and what the air raid was supposed to do at its purest. Air raid offenses, and a lot of the one back passing concepts they drew from, want to force you to make decisions about how you’re going to cover from the beginning. All Leach wants you to do is “Throw it to the guy who’s loving open” and to have the easiest understanding of who that will be. To help solve the issue, he’ll call things like Mesh and 4 verts where you’re supposed to read, either from the breaks or shifts, what shell the defense is in and throw where you know there will be space because the crossers or straight vertical releases made a DB show their hand. Longo is an air raid guy, and every “air raid guy” is essentially defined by where they break from Leach in approach. Dana likes using the backfield and weird sets in the running game. Lincoln, at Oklahoma at least, brought a Counter based run game that punished attempts to solve the play quickly. Dykes brought in a zone running game to pair with RPO looks that take advantage of the short crosses. Sumlin and Kliff bring in West Coast passing concepts to try to create some more consistent progressions for a QB against even competition. All of them basically spend every waking minute getting told by Leach that they’re running the ball too much or making things too complicated by adding too many plays and options. Not Phil Longo—this dude has like 4 running plays and 8 running plays just like Leach, and his whole theory is “Well if I use tempo and out execute you, that won’t matter”. Consequently, every year, his offense seems to have diminishing returns as a conference realizes “oh, we have like his whole playbook” and starts to make aggressive gameplans to deal with him. Now, there are essentially two types of offensive mindset in college and the NFL—those who care about the “right” play and those who want to out-execute the other team. The latter mindset came in vogue around when the West Coast offense really took off, but it’s infected just about every team out there now. “It doesn’t matter if I call the right play, the QB needs to make it work” is the mindset on display here, and it’s very common with young or college QBs or situations where a coach just reps something to death trying to get a team running it perfectly. If you’re a Leach, or someone like that, this means “hey, we’re going to rep this a million times against some other coverages to try to prep for this week” and even then, it doesn’t necessarily work. Remember how Washington never lost to Wazzu for a while? It’s because “drop 8 and use a weird sim pressure” was essentially unsolvable for how Washington deployed it, and Leach had no interest in building out a counter. Longo is, objectively, the closest thing to Leach on this front where he just refuses to add much to his playbook or really do anything beyond occasionally move faster or slower or occasionally focus his offense on his NFL backs as opposed to his QB for once. That’s a lot of words to say Drake Maye’s early tape doesn’t do it for me. This most recent season under Chip is better, but I would love to see him in an offense that actually challenged him over the middle more to take advantage of his ability to push outside the numbers in more space. You see a lot of glimpses in his tape of what should work—whipping overhand release with elite velocity, fairly quick decisions, size, and enough movement ability that he can give himself a space bubble. Arm strength is pretty good—on par with a Derek Carr or Rodgers where I see a guy who could very easily be top 10 on both velocity and air when his delivery is consistent. He’s a better velocity thrower than an air thrower right now because his footwork and release occasionally make him flutter balls on longer snaps. I don’t think we need to talk about him like Allen or Fields caliber athletes, but the guy he really reminds me of in how he moves and behaves back there is Sam Darnold, where I see a guy who can move well but does his best when he’s essentially forced into either pocket mode or running outright. They’re both fairly stout and take some hits but are never going to be mistaken for true running threats. That gets into what drives me utterly crazy about him—he doesn’t scramble with any type of plan. Typically, quarterbacks have three responses when they know they’re hot, either move a protection and try to stay in pocket, scramble and either run or throw into obvious space, or find the answer behind the pressure before it gets there. Option 1 doesn’t really happen in college outside of top 20 programs where the offense is heavily NFL-influenced, because there’s just not that many dudes who can do it or that many OL who are experienced enough to make it work. Option 2 is risky because it might work against teams where you’re more talented but then get you hurt when talent evens up. Option 3 sounds like “oh just beat the blitz” but isn’t. What I mean there is that either a quarterback finds space where the blitz is coming and throws to the immediate opening even if the shell is tight or burns the ball and doesn’t take a negative play. Guys like Brady made their entire career on knowing how to make 1 and 3 work. Mahomes gets credit for Option 2 but is actually a genius at 1 and 3 with the ability to do 2. All scrambling and athleticism really gets you is potential margin if you know what to do with it. Maye’s offenses have never provided enough structure around him to build in an obvious plan for play extension beyond “look around”. It’s a cardinal sin of the air raid. If you’re the type of freak Caleb is and have someone like Lincoln who will coach on what a scramble drill should result in, you can make it work. No one in Maye’s orbit felt like doing that, so what I see on tape is a guy who stops moving his feet with any type of intent and just tries to make things happen when he sees them. He basically just finds guys moving around the edge of the numbers and rips it and hopes it works, often from unset feet the second he’s out of the pocket. I’m not a purist on footwork if your arm motion is consistent, but he very very frequently doesn’t spin the ball perfectly when his footwork is off, meaning the ball flutters which is going to screw up timing routes and invite guys in trail to bully him at the next level. The mindset of trying to make things happen doesn’t bother me, but it is concerning that a guy with his number of reps on tape isn’t really feeling or sensing space obviously. A lot of this also wasn’t controllable for him as a prospect. I hate his line’s technique. I hate the reductive schemes. I hate that they never challenged the middle of the field until the past year consistently. He can’t do anything about any of that, so if I had to guess who the guy where being in NFL surroundings might change or demonstrate some things he hasn’t shown, it’s him this year. So what do I want to do with him? If he can land somewhere that the offensive line keeps him clean and lets him operate from structure, he can be an NFL starter. I would compare him right now in terms of physical ability to something between what Darnold or Will Levis are, with very similar issues to both in that he forced a lot of balls into danger and lived or died on scrambling moves. Mentally, Darnold or Jordan Love are what his reads and tendencies remind me of. I would love to watch him from a clean pocket for a year to that we can watch him get the types of structured reps that should help him learn what should be his next steps outside of the pocket. It’s easier to learn to improvise than to learn structure, and I think he just needs more complexity to get to where his scrambling routine can potentially solve problems later on so that there’s space. I have him as my only other surefire first rounder, but I think he’s by far the highest variance prospect this year. I saw someone compare him to Herbert: Herbert was toolsier than this and had significantly worse ball placement in a pistol offense that was built in a lab to minimize his tools in favor of trying to force him to hit tight throws over the middle or slow things down vertically. JJ McCarthy – Michigan I have genuinely no idea how to really articulate how weird JJ’s tape is from an NFL standpoint. Does he throw some Harbaugh classics like Spider Y Banana to Loveland on tape on time? Yup. Did he throw some clean play action deep? Yup. Did he complete some tight sideline throws? Sure thing. His sample size though, despite multiple years starting, is 50% of what I want to be to get an honest feel for him. Michigan’s lack of interest in meaningfully passing the ball is detrimental to him in the sense that you’re trying to figure out what so many of these passes really equate to and why they weren’t putting the ball in his hands more beyond just straight up risk aversion. Michigan’s big renaissance on offense is best described as “let’s actually bother to apply our NFL plays to college”. Suddenly, Harbaugh cared about running formation to boundary (sticking all your big dudes on the short side of the hash), crossing routes, Power RPOs, and shifts to force open additional gaps the way better Stanford teams did. Consequently, a lot of the accolades that usually come with “pro style offense” don’t really matter that much—he has the same ultrawide and unreplicable throws on tape that Williams, Maye, Daniels, Penix, or Milton have on tape! That gets into what I think his actual best trait is—game sense. When you watch the way JJ reads his protections or moves on PA and in the pocket, he’s a guy who senses pressure well and doesn’t necessarily overreact, accommodating it with actual protection calls, hot reads, and audibles. You cannot run this offense without some sense of timing and pressure margin, and being able to make that work when large men run at you is the single hardest thing to learn. The way he cleanly sees a power RPO or crashing end and gets the ball to where the pressure was is excellent. I do think he’s potentially going to get himself in trouble since he’s not NFL scrambling fast, and he did try to extend plays improperly in college at times, but it’s a different thing than the issue I have with Maye. McCarthy’s arm is decent but could be better. He still aims the ball through his elbows, to the point where I see a guy who occasionally pushes the ball to guys instead of throwing through his stance and aiming with the entirety of his body. This also is giving him a bit of a flutter when he releases too high. It’s most evident when he throws left—because he doesn’t really step into those throws and sprays the ball with less velocity to that third of the field. My sense with this is that he’s had a coach in his life who balled him out a few times for missing tight windows and is more concerned with the placement than speed or clean spirals here which is a healthy mindset in college at least. I’ll put him squarely at the “Joe Burrow” spot on his arm where he’s got enough velocity and air to not get cut for it but not to necessarily add anything to an offense. This is fixable with some cleaner steps into his throws and an attempt to clean up his his wrists to not fire until after his core and elbows finish driving. There’s going to be some fuss about his size too since he’s thin—15 pounds is about all that’s going to take so it’s not worth pretending he’s going to havea problem there. I don’t know how to deal with his vertical throws. He misses short in the middle and wide which is frustrating. Sometimes, this is due to him throwing under duress, but I then have to compare that to some of his deep sideline throws where he tucks a ball perfectly or cleanly throws hard corner and breaks my head a bit. If I see a guy who does this, I get concerned that his INT rate is about to drastically jump in the league because an NFL DC will tell his guys to play trail and turn on the ball. I see a guy who could absolutely break things in a Shanahan tree offense with his ability to sense space and blocks or adjust a read, and his ability to go over the middle cleanly and frequently is a rarity in this class right now. Put him somewhere like Miami where he can be told to throw past his receivers, and I think you can moot some of his issues more easily than other guys in the class. I would compare him right now to Coen-era Levis or ironically a higher-end Cousins where his physical talent and willingness to use the full field are good, but you worry a lot about if he’s going to stretch the edges without some of the margins afforded by college has marks. I call him a fringe 1st rounder, but he will go in the 1st pretty much for sure. Jayden Daniels – LSU The other boom/bust prospect of the class to me—I’ve liked the way that Daniels has made plays when needed and used width of the field deep to create pressure at the sideline from the pocket and in deep play action as a constraint. I’ve always appreciated the way he’s felt where his receivers are and the plan he tends to have. For his own health, he should have fewer plans. I have never seen a guy who is more averse to throwing the ball away when he should. Part of this is just like, what Mike Denbrock does. He creates these offenses with very few hot reads in favor of letting his receivers freelance, which works the best when you have *gestures at LSU WR room*, but that also means that guys who just want to make plays will stay in place and try to throw the goddamn ball. Reader, he did that every time. I see a couple things on tape right away: vertical throws from clean pockets or extended scrambles that are insane margin-driven throws he makes possible and absolute gamebreaking speed. He’s not really the type of careless with the ball that he’s not going to throw a bunch of picks. He’s got some very clean reads in the short and screen game wide. What I don’t see is a guy who is comfortable over the middle. Now, I will 150% tell you that LSU’s receivers coach did not run the cleanest routes this year and won heavily off of athleticism. It could be that his timing isn’t the one that’s off, but my god watching some of his levels or double china concepts are giving me some vapors. Hitting guys late or soft is the type of thing where his leash is going to get very short with an offensive coordinator that isn’t throwing deep or letting him create space wide. I see a guy here who, honestly, reminds me a lot of RG3, right down to the part where he takes some of the stupidest hits possible trying to chase the two zones the coach wants the ball going into. His arm is fine—league average velocity and air at this point. I don’t love his arm angles and think that he trusts his touch too much when he should give up on a throw and either move or burn it. He gathers his feet decently when he’s trying to deliver a ball, so it’s probably not something where he has considerably more arm that he can get with mechanical improvement. The legs are just fascinating here. Jayden senses pressure well, but he doesn’t always react to it the way a guy with his legs should. He senses it and throws through the hit way too often for my liking. I want to see you deliver at the margins and occasionally take hits—I don’t need to see you hit or sacked on like 50% of your drops. This is, on a whole, not sustainable and a sign that this offense predicated itself too much on slow developing verts and screens, and it’s also a sign that the quarterback understands and is trying to execute the offense to his own detriment. He’s fast enough that he should be running pure option consistently as a constraint to push the defense into contain, but Denbrock absolutely loves to make his running QBs into statues with his passing skeletons and teach them it’s okay to hit narrow windows and not use their athleticism, which gets you Desmond Ridder when those windows get smaller in the NFL if the QB doesn’t narrow their own margins. As such, my hope would be that he learns to extend and scramble better in favor of wider windows the way he did to Nabers and Thomas deep this year at times. He’s a 1-cut runner like Griffin, Pryor, or Richardson, which makes me nervous considering he's smaller than any of them and runs into contact, but it just also means that he’s not currently going to get the same gravitational pull of how Lamar changes defensive coverages until he can consistently punish teams for camping wide. I think he’s a legitimate speed threat in the NFL, but I don’t know that you can safely run him more than 5-6 times a game at this size either, meaning his running might not come into play for an offense as much as they hope. I want Jayden to work, but I need a guy who can either make the running threat real without threat of injury (Field, Jackson) or figure out ways to make that passing margin grow with his scrambling (Wilson). I genuinely think the best thing that could happen is for him to go to either an Arians-school team that wants to throw deep or something to the tune of Stefanski where the offense uses running personnel to create the MOF passing game and then threaten the edge. In a Shanahan system, he’s going to get murdered by a rat or cloud in the intermediate zones consistently unless his offense can block long enough to let him throw deep or give him receivers he can time up with well. I think this is possible, but there’s got to be some effort to clean things up between the hashes so that his actual ability to threaten the edge or throw deep matters. Your goal is to turn him into rookie RG3, and you biggest fear is that he either gets hurt the same way or doesn’t progress and becomes Dennis Dixon. I like him somewhere between RG3 and Mitch Trubisky as deep ball merchants where the athleticism is going to dictate a ceiling here, but we just don’t know what missing parts of the game need to be filled in. I like him in the 2nd round—I don’t like burning a 1st on a guy this boom or bust but the league might. Quick hits: Spencer Rattler—covered ad nauseum as a freshman and basically played the same way with worse surrounding talent. I still see a guy who is an immediate top 3-4 velocity thrower who tries to extend or outthrow pressure and tries to beat coverages on ball placement throws he knows are there but can’t guarantee. If he’s on a good to great team, I could see him as a developmental guy with the margin the arm affords, but I just can’t get past some of the picks or the part where no one has figured out a way to scheme open receivers or maximize that arm talent into something that’s actually hard to defend. Reminds me a lot of Nick Foles. Penix—Love his release and athletic upside, hate that he’s a little slight and has injury history. I see throws on tape that look like the top 2 guys in the class, and he has the fastest release here. Some of that offense is replicable in the way it puts the safeties in conflict with switches, but he’s going to have to relearn some short game timing in a way that he can’t just push balls into the far sideline after a safety has tracked deep. More of a hard thrower than a far thrower. Plays like something between DTR and Hendon Hooker last year. Bo Nix—YAC merchant who has played in like 5 offenses and basically got really good at figuring out short/medium spacing because none of the 5 verts high school offense his dad had him run worked when being asked to play for Gus or Dillingham or Stein. Solid physical prospect but nothing special—Daniel Jones esque there. I guess you’re hoping for him to take a step and become Geno or Tyrod as guys who played a lot and can execute structure, but anything that makes him freelance will give someone a heart attack. Tall Colt McCoy. Michael Pratt—Looks like he has the tools in the 5 snaps that really translate? I’d take a flyer in like the 4th on that I guess but genuinely can’t really chart or project much beyond “hey he’s kinda fast and hits good PA/shot calls”. Jarrett Stidtham. Jordan Travis—Cool if he’s healthy but future gadget QB right now. That offense doesn’t really translate to the NFL beyond deep balls and screens, and he’s got basically no pocket presence. Bryce Petty Kedon Slovis—Basically lost all of his velocity to injuries and became a generic air raid guy. Don’t draft him please. Graham Harrell. Joe Milton—Without question the biggest arm I have ever seen in my life, and without question the least accurate QB I have ever seen get this kind of buzz. He would’ve completed 30% of his passes at best in Josh Allen’s college offense. Tyler Bray taken up to 11. Devin Leary—Elite velocity, one speed guy. No sense of pressure or spacing. No real touch throws as a changeup. Will make a west coast coach who likes speed outs happy. Homeless Baker Mayfield Sam Hartman—Exclusive touch thrower coming from 4 years in an offense that doesn’t do anything the NFL does and 1 year with a Notre Dame team that had receivers who couldn’t start in the American. Will probably make a camp team but genuinely no idea what you do with him. No real comparison because what the gently caress is this offense man.
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Apr 18, 2024 21:30
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