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Re-Ranking The 2026 Rookies After The NFL Combine (Top 43) || Fantasy Football 2026
01:05:46
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- [00:06]
A
The combine gives us another piece of the puzzle as we try to put this together. Looking at all of the prospects coming into the 2026 NFL Draft. And, Jeff, we came out with version one of our rookie guide a couple of months ago. Now we have version two coming out after the combine. And with version two comes big swings in our rankings. Not really, but we got to hook the audience to somehow. Let's talk a little bit about how we look at the combine and how much this actually impacts our rankings, and then we'll go through every player inside the top four rounds talking about who rose and who fell.
- [00:36]
B
Sounds good to me, Dave. Let's talk about the combine.
- [00:39]
A
Sorry, I did not set that up for a question at all. But, you know, we do, like, we want to put some sort of weight into the combine, but it's also important not to double count, as they call it. So, like, Mike Washington, big, fast, we knew that about him. And then he goes out in Indianapolis and he wins, weighs in big and he runs fast. So do we move him up? No, like, we already had him there, but, like, if he came out and he was slow, we'd in, like, react to that. So I think really, like, the. The biggest rises and fallers here are the guys who surprised us that did something different in Indianapolis than what we saw on film.
- [01:10]
B
Well, I think that's part of it, but I do think that you. You need to look at it. And I know for myself, I have big tiers, some. Some big tiers of players that you're looking for something to differentiate. And as you go through, as you get some of the athletic testing, as you get maybe some of the buzz around players as we start to. And then you get to the draft, you get landing spots, you get draft capital, those types of things, those are all separators in that tier. So that's where I think the. There seems to be a philosophy, belief that you can't move too much off of the combine, but at the same time, you're getting new information. You're. You're learning more. And I do. At some level, yes, we knew players are fast. We didn't know Mike Washington was going to have one of the best speed scores ever for a running back. We knew he was fast and. And things like that. So you're filling that in. And I know that there's tracking data out there, but we don't have tracking data. That's. That's like proprietary information. That's. The NFL is tracked or shared with teams or the college teams have those and so I think that that's one. One thing that it is something to see a guy like Emmett Johnson run a 46 versus a guy like Mike Washington run a 43 3. And. And that those things do matter. We're learning more from the combine, so we should react off that.
- [02:26]
A
And I think you talking about the tears, I mean we talked about that so much that we were saying like this cluster of like RB2 to RB6 is so hard to differentiate between. And at the combine it gets a little bit easier once we have this information. A little bit of housekeeping before we jump into the show. We are going to be talking about relative athletic score a lot today. Relative athletic score, it is our friend Kent Lee Platt. You can find him on Twitter @MathBomb. What he does is he looks at all the athletic testing and and then grades it on a 0 to 10 scale. So 10.00 would be the best you could possibly score. All of his athletic testing information dates back to 1989. So you'll hear us a lot. Like if we say a player has a 9.5 relative athletic score, that essentially means that they are a 95th percentile athlete dating back to 1987. So just if it's something you're not familiar with, wanted to hit that on the top of the show, but let's go ahead and jump in right now. And Jeff, we're going to move pretty quick, quick through round one because we didn't have a lot of big changes here. But what we're going to do is go through the Super Flex rankings in Our rookie guide, footballguys.com rookieguide we're going to talk about every single player, whether they're a riser, a faller or whether they didn't move at all. Jeff. 101 Jeremiah Love, riser, faller. No movement at all.
- [03:38]
B
No movement at all. Nobody is moving Jeremiah love off that 101 line right now.
- [03:43]
A
102 Fernando Mendoza, another guy who's stuck right there, didn't test at all, but as the kids say, frame mogged the rest of the quarterbacks just by showing up and weighing 200. What was it, 232 pounds or something like that? Like one of the biggest guys there at the draft. So didn't even need to step on the field or do any testing to solidify himself as the QB1 at our third overall pick, Jeff Makai Lemon, we also kept him as our wide receiver. 1. No big change there, right?
- [04:13]
B
No, no change there. I mean, there is some negative. I don't Know, if negative buzz is the quiet way to say it, there were some people claiming that Makai Lemon didn't handle the interview process very well. I mean, I don't know. Take everything with a grain of salt right now.
- [04:28]
A
Yeah. And it's really hard to read too much into that. I saw what you saw said as well, and it was from a lot of, I don't know, not insight like ins. Adam Schefter, Tom Pelosaro wasn't tweeting that. It was a lot of guys who just like, you know, sources of a source told me this. And like, I think people really reacted to the video of him where he was kind of, you know, some. Some weird mannerisms and whatnot. But, Jeff, we've both been football fans a long time. Like, how many superstar wide receivers are a little bit odd and quirky at some level?
- [05:00]
B
You'd think it almost creates more value for. Oh, he's got a. He's got an eccentric personality that. That could play profile to be a true wide receiver. 1. All right, what do we got here?
- [05:10]
A
Next up, we've got Jordan Tyson at 104. Also did not move for us. I mean, we're still looking at this cluster right here that we've talked about so much this offseason. Kyle Lemon, Jordan Tyson and Carnell Tate, who we have as our 105 as a very tight tier. Now, I hate that we have to talk about this, Jeff, but we have to talk about this. Carnell Tate's 40 time. How much does that impact how you view Carnell Tate?
- [05:32]
B
I mean, I saw him get open and beat guys downfield, so I'm not too, too concerned with it. Again, that's another the whispers and innuendo that he. Several scouts had him at a much better time than what was actually posted. So, I mean, I'm. I'm not overly concerned and I think part of it too, It's. I don't. To me, Cardinal Tate was never going to be a burner downfield. He's not never going to be like a 429-guy- that stretched the field vertically. You want him with working, yes, he can work downfield, but really that intermediate area of the game and using his size and he's got plenty of athleticism, great technique as well.
- [06:08]
A
Yeah. And you look at some other guys historically that had very bad 40 times. DeAndre Hopkins, Cooper cup, like, there is almost no correlation between what a wide receiver is going to do through his career and the 40 time he runs now. If he comes out and runs a 5 1. Yeah. Then we might be asking some questions here but still clear the bar that we want to see. He's got NFL speed. I am not concerned whatsoever. So that is a through pick five. Nothing has changed there at all. We still have the same rankings that we did before the combine at 106 though this was a mover for me, Jeff. I've got Kenyon Siddiq at 106 and I had him as my tight end one before the combine but I had him as a back end of round one pick. I had him at 110. Now I've moved him up to 106 as well. Just one of the most athletic showings we have seen from anybody ever. He comes out, sets the all time record with the vertical jump, immediately gets that bested by Eli Stowers who we'll talk about in just a little bit. But also the fastest tight end of the group. We talk so much about relative athletic score, how that is tied to draft capital. These freak athletes just don't fall into day three anymore. Kenyon Sadiq not only locked in first round draft capital will probably locked in being the first wider or the first tight end off the board, right?
- [07:19]
B
Absolutely. I believe that he did and I think it becomes a little bit more for me I still had him at 106. So he didn't move but at the same time he moved the 106 I think is the way that I view it of he's a rise. He moved the value of the 106 less so than he actually moved himself maybe on that. And but I do think, I think
- [07:39]
A
he's trying that tier with the receivers. Is that what you would you feel comfortable saying that or do you still kind of have a little tear break between those three receivers in Sadiq?
- [07:47]
B
Well, let me ask you this. If, if you were to go off the board before those receivers, how shocked would you be right now the way that the league is trending towards a player like that and really we know it's a copycat league teams are looking for because I'm. I'm trying to work through a mock draft right now, the NFL draft mock draft to put on football guys and I'm landing around like that 107 pick to Washington starts to get start to be pretty interesting. Maybe in the 109 if the Chiefs of Jeremiah Love, there's hot rumors there but if he's off the board, maybe they look at Sadiq at the 109 to say maybe he's our Kelsey replacement. You start talking in that range. And I would not be shocked really at all to see him off the board before those three quarterbacks, those three wide receivers.
- [08:34]
A
And that was the talk last year when we were talking about Colson Loveland. Just kind of looking at the history of tight ends who get drafted inside the top 10 and what they do throughout their careers. And we were very much so on an island last year when we were saying, like, no, we're taking Colson Loveland before we're taking Matthew golden and Emeka Buka and these other players. And I think if that's what we see is these wide receivers falling into the pick 20ish area and Kenyan Sadiq going inside the top 10, it would be foolish to ignore that because the hit rate of guys going tight ends going Inside the top 10 is just fantastic. So definitely interested to see where he lands, but. And that's it. Like, we can't raise him from tight end one, but I think he also raised his stock in the NFL draft where he was regularly getting mocked at the back end of round one. Now we're talking about him as potential top 10 pick, so definitely a big riser for us, even though we didn't really raise him that much. Pick seven, Casey Concepcion. This guy didn't move for us at all. Just solidified his standing as the wide receiver. 4 Look good out there, you know, nothing really to take away from his combine performance. Eli Stowers, though, is quite the mover for us here. Jeff. We've got him all the way up to 108 now, so, I mean, can't really ask the question because we, we know they're two picks apart in our rankings, but that gap between Sadiq and Stowers really tightened up over the weekend.
- [09:52]
B
It absolutely did. And of course, very timely. We had just recorded a tight end episode a little bit before and, and I, you know, I wondered, like, what level of athlete is Stowers really? Obviously it was exceptionally productive working with Diego Pavia at Vanderbilt the last couple years and they came over from New Mexico together. They knew each other very well. But what level of athlete really was he? And I wondered, is that relative? Athletics were going to be high? Because if he's a lighter tight end and he's not this elite athlete, and then he goes out and jumps a 4, 3 like 5 on Friday night before anything even or 43 inches in the vertical, and it was like, okay, yeah, he's, he's very, very athletic. Jeff, you are an idiot.
- [10:34]
A
Yeah. Remember when I just said Ken Siddique set the All Time record. Well, he, he didn't set. He tied the all time record and everybody was just like losing their mind. Star wars comes out immediately after and not only beats it, but beats it by two full inches. I mean this is like a drill, but they're measuring to the half inch. Like you beat that by a half inch and that's a big deal. And he came out here and just the best in NFL history for a tight end. So yeah, check the boxes. We want to see for athleticism. You know I talk about that relative athletic score. Eli sours clocked a 9.46. That means that he is a 94th percentile athlete looking at RAS football right now. Definitely. Check it out if you haven't. This ranks 74th out of 1,356 tight ends drafted since 87. So pretty, pretty good. Yeah.
- [11:22]
B
Fast.
- [11:22]
A
One of the big, strong, explosive, all the things we want to see.
- [11:25]
B
One of the things that I really enjoyed during the draft coverage that I think NFL did really well was having comps like athletic comps basically of like other guys that are this size that did this. And it was DK Metcalf was the Eli Stowers athletic comp. And you're telling me you get DK Metcalf and he's got tight end eligibility in fantasy football. It seems like a pretty good thing.
- [11:48]
A
Absolutely. Next guy we're going to talk about here, another non mover for us, Denzel Boston. He was the wide receiver five before the combine, stays our wide receiver five after the combine. Jeff, do you get a little bit concerned? I mean there were, there were some drops. I know for me, like the biggest thing that I care about is the gauntlet drill for the wide receivers. I don't really care about the testing as bad as that sounds. I want to see how these guys move. Are they fluid? Can they catch the ball? Can they stay on that line when they're running? And Denzel Boston zigzagging a little bit, making some drops here. I did have some concerns about him being a little bit raw, like a good athlete that still needed a little bit more finesse. And I had started to kind of shy away from that opinion a little bit. But now I'm kind of leaning back there after the combine.
- [12:31]
B
I think it was, I think they brought up a good point on the coverage that they had Cole Payton as the first thrower. And so the way they start that drill is you flip around like and catch that first ball. Well, they had a left handed quarterback throwing that first ball. And so these Guys play with right handed quarterbacks their entire life and the ball spinning one direction and you're going into this drill, a big moment, everybody's watching you, big job interview and that first ball is coming right at you after you turn around and it's a left handed quarterback, it's going the other because you saw Makai Lemon drop the first pass. There were multiple players that dropped the first pass and the COVID just talking about it and they say, you know, you dropped that first pass, it starts to get in your head a little bit on the next ones. And so I think that there was definitely some grace given on that gauntlet from, you know, Daniel, Jeremiah and crew who always do a great job.
- [13:20]
A
I remember I'm going way back here. I might misremember this, but it was Antonio Brown catching a pass. Was, was Mike Vick with the Steelers and Antonio Brown, is that what I'm remembering? And I remember there was a few years back and it was like Antonio Brown wide open in the end zone and Mike Vick just dropped it into a bucket and his hands were just like 2 inches off where they should be. They talked to him after the game and he's like, you know, I'm used to ball spitting coming from a righty and kind of falling into the bucket and instead it was moving away from me. And that's Antonio Brown, one of the most sure handed, best receivers that we've ever seen in the NFL and even he struggled catching balls from a left handed quarterback. So very astute observation there, Jeff. Before we get into more players, I just want to let you know I mentioned it at the top of the show, but. Footballguys.com rookieguide We've got version two out. We've got relative athletic score in there. We've got all the combine testing. We've got some updated information as well. Best of all, it's still 100% free, so you don't have to pay anything at all. Footballguys.com rookieguide we'll have a link in the YouTube description, link in the pod podcast description. Wherever you're looking for, be sure to check this out. We put a lot of work into it. You're not going to find a guide that goes this deep for free anywhere else. Footballguys.com rookieguide Next guy we got to talk about here, Jeff. Ty Simpson didn't really change his standing too much. I mean, maybe we could say a faller just because some of the other quarterbacks that we have a little bit later looked good and Ty Simpson just Kind of, you know, didn't do anything to really change his value that much. But we still have him as our 110. I think that's just where he belongs to be. I don't think there are any major takeaways from Ty Simpson's combine.
- [14:52]
B
No, I don't think there were. Other than you bring up a good point. Talking about some of the other quarterbacks and the performances there. And I think there are a lot of guys in this class that, you know, maybe we're just so deep into the rookie process now that if we're trying to find anything that looks good. But I think some of these quarterbacks, there are a lot of very, very experienced quarterbacks that have some strong traits. And so I think I would not be surprised at all if there's another Brock Purdy or something like that sitting in this quarterback group that is really under the radar. And so I think that's something to keep an eye on, keep a radar on because. And that is kind of my knock on Simpson of just playing that one year. I do think it's very important to, for quarterback to have played multiple years in college because we've seen a player like Trey Lance who didn't have a lot of reps and then it's really hard to get reps if you're not good right away at quarterback. It's really hard to get reps at the NFL level because they're going to bench you because they want to win games. And so I think that that's one of my biggest questions. Concerns about Simpson. We know his, his year was really split in two halves. And I said something earlier in the week of, you know, there seems to be two pretty strong camps and it's split between, I think people that watched Simpson's first half first or watched his second half first. And like having those strong first impressions is kind of what I think is going on with Simpson a little bit.
- [16:16]
A
That's a very real thing. But let's talk about the next guy on here, Jeff. And this was our RB2 before the combine. He's everybody's RB2 now. Mike Washington Jr. Again, we talk about relative athletic score. A perfect 10.00. The best relative athletic score of any running back dating back to 1987. You talk about the size adjust speed score. That was second best as well. Of course there's a big asterisk next to this relative athletic score. He did the bare minimum to qualify for relative athletic score. He ran the 40 yard dash. He did the broad jump. He did the vert jump and with the 40 yard dash, you also get the 10 and 20 yard splits. But he didn't do the three cone, didn't do the shuttle, didn't bench press. So as I wrote in an article after the combine, I said he went out there, he got his 10.0 relative athletic score and then put his sweatpants on and called it a weekend. So we're obviously very excited about Mike Washington because he did what we expect. But he's not actually the most athletic running back ever to enter the NFL, right?
- [17:10]
B
No, he's the biggest, fastest running back to enter the NFL basically. But as a combine standards go. But I, I think it's, it is speed that did show up on his tape. There's one that particularly sticks in my mind against Texas where he got the edge and he got the edge in plenty of time and he cut it up field for a big run. And that's really when you're doing that against defense like Texas. Texas has got, they, they lost a bunch off their team last year, but they're still going to have a lot of guys drafted. They're still going to have, they still have high, high level athletes there. When you're getting the edge, the corner on those or when you're doing that, when the other team knows that what's coming, that's where I think the real speed and the athleticism stands out. And so I do think that that was on Washington's tape. And it's a lot different than, you know, we talked our running back episode about Caleb Johnson. A lot of his runs would kind of be like basically break three tackles and then run away from a safety that has a bad angle to begin with. I don't think Washington was that at all.
- [18:12]
A
Yeah. So we'll see if this moves him up. You know, I've heard comps anywhere from Derrick Henry to Isaac Garendo. You know, we'll see how NFL teams view this size adjusted speed, but reason to get excited. And you know, Jeff, we were there before the combine with him as our RB2. I didn't really see anybody else there except I do want to shout out Garrett Price. I saw he was there as well. He has also been banging that drum for Mike Washington. So our buddy Garrett over at Dynasty, nerds, sharp guy. He has been there as well, but I think he's kind of the consensus RB2 at this point. Moving on to the next running back here, this will round out round one. We've got Jadarian Price and I marked him as a Faller. But again, Jeff, it kind of feels like silly to call Jadarian Price a faller because I think we all had expectations that he was going to go out there and just be one of the fastest running backs in the draft and, and that didn't happen. But he still had himself a pretty good weekend overall. Again, we talk about relative athletic score, it's on this percentile, 8.37, which means he's an 83rd percentile athlete. Like, this guy's way above average. He still ran a 4, 4, 9. Well, like, yeah, he wasn't inside the four threes like we had hoped. There's no reason to like panic about Jadarian Price and what he did in Indianapolis, is there?
- [19:25]
B
No, I think he looked good. I thought he looked. He definitely, like, physically he's there. So, I mean, I, I don't think they're overly concerned at all.
- [19:33]
A
You know what? I think both him and Carnell Tate, what I saw is they didn't look like they had like prepped for the 40 yard dash. You know, there's a lot of guys, like, as soon as the season ends, it's like all of my focus and training is going on this 40 yard dash and I want to do this and I want to impress people. And I think Jadarian Price and Carnell Tate were both just like, you guys have seen the tape. Like, I'm not going to train for a 40 yard dash. I don't want to be the best at exercising. Like, I'm just going to go out there and do exactly what I do on a football field. And we know like that was Jadarian Price, like if you watch him with simulcast along other guys, like, he didn't have the biggest jump, like his 10 yard split wasn't great, but once he got up to speed, like he is just as fast as anybody else out there. So technically a faller, but you know, only because we had expectations that he would come out and run in the four threes. Now we're on to round two.
- [20:22]
B
Jeff. Yeah, yeah, just, we're going to talk about it in a minute here, but I do think it's to your point of players that practice and prepared for certain things, it was interesting to me that the Miami and the Indiana guys like basically sat most everything out and they were like, well, we were just in the national championship. It's like that was six weeks ago. Like, you know, you still had some time to prep and that tells you the amount of prep that if they didn't feel comfortable with Six weeks of run up time. Time that some of these players are putting into very, very specific drills.
- [20:53]
A
Yeah. And then even players that like, we had word that like, just weren't 100 were like healthy, but not 100. Like, people were just ducking out of drills and doing whatever they could. I think that, you know, relative athletic score, it's something that people talk about a ton and NFL teams focus on and a lot of people realize that, like, I can only do more harm than I could good at this point. And that's why Mike Washington Jr had he gone out and run a bad 3 cone, then he falls from 10.0 to 8.3 and then all of a sudden he doesn't get all that same buzz. So people, I, I think these players nowadays, they have agents and managers in their ear telling them what to do. And a lot of guys, you know, it might not be good for the product of the fans who are watching the combine, but are smartly doing what they can to make themselves look as good as possible for these teams before the NFL Draft Round 2. The guy that we've got at the top of round two, our 201, Chris Brazil, no movement at all. And that's just because, like, did what we expected. He is very tall and he's very fast and he's a very fluid athlete and all of that was on display. So we didn't move him up or down. Anything to add on Brazil or do we want to just move on to the next guy who's a pretty big guy?
- [21:59]
B
I mean, no. He saw that speed, you see it on tape and it showed up 4, 4, 3, 2. And with a true 64 player.
- [22:08]
A
Yeah. So easy to get excited about that. Omar Cooper will mark him as a riser from the weekend. Tested very well, looked very good. We got a new mock draft out today. Oh my goodness. I should know this off the top of my head. I forget if it was Daniel Jeremiah. Somebody mocked Omar Cooper to round one, saying that he was a lock to go in round one after the combine. And Jeff, this has been a steady riser, you know, throughout the entire off season. The more anybody watches about him, the more they like about him. Do you have any concerns at all about like some gadgety usage here? Do you think that he is a guy who can just go out and just beat man coverage and be a wider receiver one for his team?
- [22:46]
B
No, I, I don't view him as a gadget in that sense. I think he's got great physicality and I, I was pleasantly surprised by the athleticism. Because a lot of what I see when I watched him, it would be, you know, he, he kind of would have these plays against like a downtrodden team that's just been hammered by Indiana all game long and somebody would make a business decision or he'd break a tackle or something there. It wasn't like he was ultra twitchy to my eye and coming out here and testing very, very well. That solidified some things for me.
- [23:20]
A
Katrin Allen at the 203, a faller for all of us just because he had questions that needed to be answered about his speed and then didn't partake in any measurables, didn't do the three cone, the shuttle, the 40, nothing at all. So this was a guy that like we, we talked about like, we like the footwork, we like the vision, we like the rhythm that he runs with and all these things. But we were saying like, is this, is this a 47 guy? Is this a 45 guy? Like we really had no idea. So shows up much lighter than his listed weight at Penn State and then also doesn't run the 40. So he's going to run a 40 at Penn State and hopefully we'll get a time there. But that, you know, they don't have the laser timing and we know those scouts are a little bit quick with, with calling an end of the 40 there. So we kind of have to take that with a grain of salt. I got to be honest, as somebody who's really caped up for Kay Trail a lot this offseason, wasn't crazy to see that he didn't test.
- [24:12]
B
I think the argument really, when you're looking at Cateran Allen, when we dive into some of these running backs coming up here is basically the ceiling outcome there. He is built to be a three down back in the NFL and he can handle volume. And so I think that when you're looking at relative to maybe some of these backs that are more of that gadget type of a back, the, the ceiling outcome case for a guy like Katrin Allen is a player that is 300 plus touches in a season. So that, and we do see players like that that end up being maybe later. Day two, day three players, they fall in the just the right situation and they go in and they do handle volume.
- [24:52]
A
Next up we've got Nick Singleton and we're not marking him as a riser or follower, but if I'm being honest, he actually did move up a spot in my running back rankings just because I, I knocked the Guys Jonah Coleman and Katrin Allen who didn't test at all. Nick Singleton also didn't test, but not because he didn't want to. He's dealing with a broken foot suffered at the Senior bowl, so he missed all that testing. He's going to miss Penn State's pro day as well. But this is kind of like if the guys around him are falling, he just by doing nothing is naturally moving up those rankings.
- [25:21]
B
And you know, I, I give credit to you, Dave, because I thought I was being aggressive on my Nicholas Singleton take because I looked at it and I said, you know, none, I don't, none of these guys really inspire me. So why are we ignoring the guy that might be the biggest twitched up guy out there that I think NFL teams are going to love when it comes down to it. And I understand the foot injury, but it's like if we're not in love with any of these other running backs, then at some level are we just overthinking this dramatically of what an NFL team is going to be looking for the position? So that's where I was pretty aggressive in moving Singleton up. He's my player 14 and then I get into the sheet and I see he's your player 11. So you got me Dave and good call there.
- [26:03]
A
Which we're really splitting hairs. I mean we both say that he's a guy who should be going at the 12 turn. So I think like yeah, 11 to 14, when we're talking inside these tiers, it's really pretty marginal at that point. But I think that's where Nick Singleton deserves to go is that 12 turn because we know the ceiling is so high for him. Jonah Coleman alluded to it. A faller also didn't do any of the testing. Only came out for a bench press where he surprised nobody by doing very well in the bench press because he is a very muscular big guy but just like Cater now. And another guy that we have huge question marks about the speed ducking the 40 yard dash doesn't give me the warm and fuzzies here. So I'm sure he'll go out and run a speed at Washington's pro day that's about 0.1 better than the time that he actually runs out there because that's why these players don't run at the combine and run at their pro days instead.
- [26:51]
B
Agree.
- [26:53]
A
Zechariah Branch, Was he a riser for you, Jeff? I mean, I feel like I did do a little bit of double counting here. If I'm being Honest, I liked Zachariah Branch a lot. And then he had himself a very, very strong combine and I bumped him up a little bit. But that's kind of who, like Zachariah Branch's problem wasn't that he wasn't a good athlete. We knew he was going to be a good athlete. He just came out and confirmed that he is a good athlete with one of the best relative athletic scores of the class. Was I maybe a little foolish to move him up after the combine? Now that I'm saying it out loud, I think I might have been.
- [27:26]
B
No, he was. And I had made this comment when I was compiling the full rankings for the wide receivers that to me, it felt like there was a little bit of a tear break at wide receiver eight. He was in those eight wide receivers, so he didn't really move in my wide receiver ranks. It was that when I got into, like wide receiver 9 to wide receiver 22, it felt like there were just a lot of very, very similar type players. And so he didn't move a ton for me. I think we saw things that we would have wanted to see. He did look better as a downfield receiver. It means running out there in short, so what's really going on there? But at the same time, I kind of had him really where he's sitting now and in a little bit of a tier above the other wide receivers.
- [28:10]
A
Yeah. And you know, a guy that we knew was going to be fast and then came out and ran fast, so no huge expectations there. Max Claire. I bumped him up a little bit in my rankings just because he was one of those guys that just jumped off the screen when you're watching the drills. Just a very fluid athlete. Tested exactly like we want to see. I don't have the, the testing. I was looking for it. I don't know why this got lost in my spreadsheet somewhere. I don't have his testing off the top of my head. Maybe he didn't test for whatever reason. I, I, I misplaced Max Claire's testing. But a guy who looked good, he ran the gauntlet.
- [28:43]
B
I don't think he did anything else. Yeah.
- [28:45]
A
And, and that was it for me. I told you, like, I put a lot of weight on how these players look in the Gauntlet, and he looked good in the Gauntlet, so bumped him up a little bit, but nothing too dramatic there. Number 20 overall in our rank.
- [28:56]
B
I have something to say about Max Claire. Max Claire looks like he might be some relation to a Kluge somewhere. Dave, I'm Just saying that there. I, I got, I got some Kluge vibes off of Max Claire when he was out there on the gauntlet.
- [29:09]
A
Yeah, we'll lump him in with Mitch Trubisky and Tim Tebow and all the other guys that we hear look like potentially Kluges. Emmett Johnson, biggest faller of the draft off of the draft board, can't even be drafted at this point. Of course, I made a little tongue in cheek here, but, Jeff, as I often am, my contrarian take here is that I actually like Emmett Johnson more coming out of the combine than I did going into the combine because he was the only guy who participated in every single drill. He was the only running back who ran a three cone. So everybody's out here. Yeah, he had the worst relative athletic score of all the running backs who tested, but I give him major props for showing up there and competing. Like, even when he already had a bad relative athletic score, he is not a power guy by any means. He still showed up Sunday and bench pressed, which hurt his relative athletic score. But this guy, you said he was one of three players, I believe, who did all of the testing here. So shout out Emmett Johnson for participating in all the drills. And then even when you look at it, he had a 5.85 relative athletic score. That means dating back to 1987, when this database starts, he is still above average in the 58th percentile among all running backs. So I think anybody dropping Emma Johnson in the rankings is just way too overreactionary.
- [30:26]
B
Well, I mean, dealing with tears, again, we, you know, I did drop him because there were tears, and he was kind of sitting in towards the beginning of the running back tier. And now I moved him to the back of the. That running back to here. But I think it's. It's something that I was talking about a little bit before the show on just the combine in general of being the entire thing's a test and.
- [30:46]
A
Right.
- [30:47]
B
I brought up when I was leaving college, I was interviewing with large companies and they would bring in a whole group of students from around different universities. And it was kind of basically a social experiment. Let's see how these kids interview what they do when we take them out to dinner or hockey game or something like that. And I think that the combine, that's really what it is. You're seeing who's going to handle themselves as a professional, who's going to be a mess. Like, you know, it's. You're learning things about everybody that, how they're. They're Conducting themselves. And that's what teams are getting out of it, even more so than the how the testing is performed. And I think when you look at Johnson, it's almost the inverse of the Mike Washington Jr. Of basically, hey, you hung up 433. Let's get out of here. Like, let's ride hot high. And it's the. When you run out, go out and run a 4 6, you got nothing else to lose. Like, you may as well just go out and just keep going and. But you're showing your something about yourself by doing that. You're showing that, you know, I, I, yeah, that wasn't time, wasn't what I wanted it to be. But I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna try to do the next thing, and I'm gonna keep showing you that I'm gonna keep, Keep at it. Instead of, you know, the. It can be all over the spectrum on. Somebody doesn't show up to the combine or somebody. How they connect, interviews, anything throughout it. All of it is information gathering.
- [32:08]
A
As you were talking about that, I recalled a story and I don't know if you remember this or not. Two years ago, the Bears had the number one overall pick. Washington was sitting at number two. And they took Jaden Daniels, Drake May, J.J. mcCarthy and Michael Pennix. They just took him to Topgolf. That was it. Like, no plans, no testing. They weren't making them run sprints up and down the aisles or anything like that. They just took them to topgolf and that was it. That was the test. Like, they were sitting there watching how these guys interact, interacted. And I'm sure they wanted to see, like, who's the leader of this group? How do these guys talk to each other? Who's the one that's being nice to the servers? Like, I'm sure there were a million factors that were going into that, but you talk about how this whole weekend's a test. Yeah. So, like, well, Emmett Johnson, his measurable numbers might not be elite. I still think he passed the test just by competing when nobody else wanted to. So I, and, and truthfully, I did have him at the back of that tier anyway, so that's why I can't move him down any further. And I didn't move him up. But, you know, he, he wasn't a mover for me, but, yeah, faller for most. Jeremy Bernard, another guy who tested very well this weekend. We have him as our team 21st overall pick. Jeff, was there any major takeaways from. From Jeremy Bell? I'M sorry. From Jeremy Bernard this weekend.
- [33:22]
B
He's a player. He, he did a lot of the testing and for me I had questions about the overall athleticism. And so for him coming in above, I think it was above a nine relative athletic score. Doing a lot of the testing. That was. That was what you want to see out of it.
- [33:37]
A
Yeah. I mean by the absolute skin of his teeth. 9.04. But you know, again, size is factored into relative athletic score. So he immediately is fighting an uphill battle when he comes in at 61206. He's an undersized guy but got great marks in speed. Was okay with his vertical and broad jump and then good composite agility ratings as well. So when you add that all together ends up having himself a 90th percentile athlete. We like to see that next guy we'll talk about here. Adam Randall, another guy that we knew was a size speed freak. I talked about Adam Randall and Mike Washington being like my favorite late round gu to target. I don't think these are going to be late round guys to target anymore. Adam Randle came out the heaviest running back of the bunch and then runs a blistering 40 time as well. We talk about that size adjusted speed at the top of the show where Mike Washington was second best in NFL history. Adam Randall was just behind him. He is the third in this class. So we got Mike Washington, Jeremiah Love and Adam Randall. This guy is just a monstrous running back. Comes out and runs fast again. Didn't participate in the agility drills but kind of just confirmed who we knew. He already was a big fast running back with receiving upside.
- [34:46]
B
It would have been fun to see Adam Randall run the gauntlet. That would have been a fun thing to do.
- [34:51]
A
It would have been. Yeah. I mean truthfully, not a great receiver and that's why he ended up making the switch to running back. But still a better receiver than most running backs. Chris Bell, next guy we want to talk about here. We're getting to the end of round two. Jeff. Not a huge riser for us because we were already pretty high on this guy. But he had himself a good combine over the weekend. Trying to pull his up right now. But I know he was one of the the better testers out there.
- [35:18]
B
Chris Bell, I don't think he tested. He got hurt and he was. I'm pretty certain he did not test. Dave, you're thinking of Skyler Bell. Skyler.
- [35:27]
A
I was like again because I was like isn't showing up on my spreadsheet. Yes. Skyler Bell.
- [35:33]
B
Yeah, I've got. I mean, I got Skyler Bell at 17 over. Overall, you guys have, like, Don, like 45. So I'm just saying. Yeah, no, no, Chris Bell did not test. It is funny because we. We like you as we do this. We, like. I'm thinking to myself, like, man, I see so much love for Chris Bell. Like, I'm. I'm definitely way lower than consensus. And then, like, we get into our ranks and I'm, like, way higher than you and Mike on Chris Bell. And so it's. It is an interesting game that we play sometimes in our heads of basically, like, man, I. I'm seeing so much love for him. I don't feel like I'm quite at that place. And then you put it on paper and it's like, well, actually, I'm. I'm higher than other people. Okay.
- [36:10]
A
And, yeah, I've got him a couple spots behind you. You've got him at 20. I've got him at 25. Kishuba has him at 33. So I'm. I'm Switzerland in the Chris Bell debate. I'm right in between you guys. I'll let. I'll let y' all duke it out there. Next guy we're gonna talk about, Elijah Surat. Also not a mover. We talked about it. None of the Indiana guys tested this week, so he stayed right where he was. We are now into round three. Pick number 25 overall. This would be the 301. We've got Le'Veon Moss, and he's a faller, but it doesn't really feel fair to say that he's a faller. But he didn't test like. And the big question mark with Levy on Moss. We talked about this so much, Jeff, over the last couple of months. Like, if this guy could just get healthy, like the athleticism. The upside is there wasn't healthy enough to test. So we still just kind of have the same question marks we had about him beforehand. He said he expects to be 100% for Texas a M's pro day, and he just wants to wait for the pro day to do his testing. But for a guy who has dealt with health concerns, not great to see that. You know, almost two months after the. Or the. The college football season ended, he still isn't healthy.
- [37:14]
B
No. And I mean, I'm still very bullish on him. I didn't really move him down. But yeah, anytime you want to get more data and anytime you don't get more data is what it is.
- [37:25]
A
And. And A lot of these guys are fallers, not because they did anything wrong, but, like, as other guys are surprising us with their athleticism and moving up draft boards, naturally some guys are going to have to move down. So I don't want to penalize Le'Veon Moss because injuries happen, but would like to see a strong Texas A M pro day so I can get him back up to that kind of, you know, sleeper tier right alongside Anna Brandle. Next up, Garrett Nussmeier. We didn't move him at all. Kind of did exactly what he expected. And. And there. There wasn't. I mean, there was really, like, one big mover at the quarterback position, and we'll talk about him in a little bit. But again, so many of the quarterbacks just opted not to test that. It was really hard to take a lot of information away from the quarterback group this year.
- [38:09]
B
Yeah, they. I watched the throwing sessions for the quarterbacks, and I think they did a pretty good job there. But it did seem to be. We're. He's not on our list. Drew Aller seemed to be the talk of the combine on. On a guy that might actually be like. And. And to me, that feels like just the classic of 10 to 15 years ago of basically. Oh, yeah, yeah. My tweet about Drew Aller that. It doesn't surprise me that Drew Aller is a riser out of the combine because his best trait has always been making it seem like he should be a very, very good company. Carter
- [38:45]
A
got him. All right, let's talk about the next guy here, Reggie Virgil. I don't think we had him really as a riser or fall or maybe a little bit of a faller.
- [38:54]
B
He's a faller for me. Yeah.
- [38:56]
A
7.78 relative athletic score. Yeah, we were hoping he'd kind of be like a freak athlete, and he just kind of was average at best.
- [39:04]
B
He's very smooth and I think a very. A good technical receiver. But, I mean, the testing wasn't really there, so it was disappointing. As you're seeing is you're seeing a lot of the wide receivers come in 9 and above, and so he's like 7 5. And it is kind of. Maybe it's not quite the Emmett Johnson conversation, but it's. It's one of those that. There probably was a time that 75 would be completely respectable, but when the players are doing the things that they're only good at and they all go out and do above nine, then kind of like. Well, I mean, I guess maybe he's not the best athlete in the class.
- [39:35]
A
Yeah. So that's a little bit disappointing, like a bit of a faller, but nothing we want to overreact too much to Jeff. Sorry if I look distracted. I just realized that we have a mistake right here that I will need to get fixed before we release version two. We're recording this on Wednesday night. It comes out tomorrow morning.
- [39:50]
B
So just by the way, and you
- [39:52]
A
know, I'm trying to try to steer the ship right now. I missed it. But we, we have Jacoby Lane getting dragged way down by a. A rogue ranking here. That is very clearly incorrect. But Kobe Lane was a huge riser. He should be inside our top 24. Like Jacoby Lane should be inside the top 24. We missed him for whatever reason beforehand. I should should have caught this on the spreadsheet, but one of the most athletic receivers that we saw at the entire combine, a 9.69 relative athletic score. But it was more than just the testing. Like, this guy looked fantastic. Ran one of the best gauntlets out there. Just looked like one of the smoothest receivers. So, Jeff, I've been a big fan of Jacoby Lane. It feels like, you know, since we've started this process, I had always kind of been the high guy on Jacoby Lane. But I see after the combine you're actually higher on Jacoby Lane now than I am. So I imagine you're putting quite a bit of weight in his combine performance.
- [40:46]
B
Again, it was a big tier of wide receivers that I said when I broke everything down, really wide receiver 9 through wide receiver 22 for me was really, really close. And so getting some of this additional information and it was things like you talk about if just how smooth he looked. And you can see it very profiles very, very well. I think he is a player that I would expect that he's going to be a second round pick in that range. And so that, that's where he's my, my overall player 19. And really when you're looking at a wide receiver that I don't think he can get into the first round, maybe off projection potentially. But when you're looking at a player, a second round pick on a wide receiver, he's going to be a top 20 player in this class probably.
- [41:28]
A
And you know, I think back to like, I feel like we always see these like very athletic big receivers. They always go like the top of round two. T. Higgins, D.K. metcalf, A.J. brown. And those are kind of the vibes I'm getting here. T. Higgins, I think is probably One of the, maybe not a perfect comp, but I see a lot of T. Higgins in Jacoby Lane's game and, you know, measured 6 foot 4, goes out and runs a 4, 4, 7 elite grades in the vertical and broad jump. So. So, you know, we knew he was like a smooth, good, polished athlete, but really just corroborated those feelings after the combine. So a big riser. We talked about him as pick 28, but again, you know, realized in the middle of this recording that we had something a little bit off there. This guy should be firmly inside the top 24. Next up, we got Devon Clayborne. We've got him at pick 29. Another riser for us. Didn't do a ton of testing, but smoked the 40 and we knew Claiborne was going to be a fast guy, but he just came out there and answered the questions about the speed that I don't think anybody really had questions about the speed, but, you know, really fast, had one of the best 10 yard splits as well. So Tomon Claiborne, we know he's a twitched up quick athlete and he showed that and proved that in Indianapolis. So was he a big riser for you, Jeff? Because I know you were already pretty, pretty in on Claiborne?
- [42:41]
B
Well, I'm definitely the low man out of the three of us and I think for me it's probably just a question of what's the overall potential usage ceiling. Is he going to be stuck as a just a receiving back? Is there that role exists right now? The way the NFL teams are structuring, can he profile to a three down back? I think that yes, the speed is there. I think there's still questions overall and on the upside on Claiborne, next up
- [43:05]
A
we got Malachi Fields, one of the biggest fallers here. And this is disappointing because I think a lot of the hope with Malachi Fields, you know, the college production wasn't there, but it was, you know, Notre Dame's offense, they didn't throw the ball that much and he looked really good at the Senior bowl. But then when you come out and like you're an unproductive college receiver and then also test pretty poorly at the combine, I get the red flags here. I will say I think that he's a better player than his relative athletic score would imply. You know, maybe he just had a weird lunch or something like that. You know, we don't want to put all of our eggs in the relative athletic score basket, but at the same time we can't ignore the poor showing
- [43:41]
B
at the combine, he did okay on basically everything but the 40. And, and there was a. I did catch an interview that he gave after the combine and he was basically saying he went to the tape and found a flaw in his form for the 40. So I mean, you know, that's. That's really what we want our wide receivers doing right now is like watching the tape and looking at their, their technique for their 40. So they cannot run a 4 6. But you know that that's what's going on here with Malachi Fields.
- [44:12]
A
Joe Royer was a faller for me only because the other guys that I had in that tier weren't fallers. I moved Eli Stowers up. I moved Max Clara. That means that Joe Royer has to move down. Didn't do anything to really like negatively impact his stock. But I think that again, you know, just when, when you've got these tiers. He was atop the tier for me. Now he's at the back of the tier, so a follower for me. But I don't think that he moved too much in your rankings, did he, Jeff?
- [44:38]
B
No, not. Not greatly. I'm probably lower on most of the tight ends just in general relative. And probably it's because I watched a lot of the wide receivers and it's probably part of the reason why.
- [44:50]
A
Next up we're going to talk about probably the biggest riser from the entire weekend. Taylor Green, who we had talked about, like just a fun player. Shout out to Mike Kishuba for the awesome comp. Here he Compton to Anthony Richardson. Then he shows up like the same exact size, all of the same exact measurables. Like literally looked like a carbon copy of Anthony Richardson. And we saw what the combine did for Anthony Richardson's draft stock. There was a lot of like, oh, he could be a fun day two project. And then he just vaults himself all the way up into, remind me, third, fourth overall, I forget. Exactly. But I don't think Taylor Green is going quite that high. But Jeff, I. I've got to ask, would it surprise you if Taylor Green is the second quarterback off the board in the draft?
- [45:33]
B
No, it really wouldn't surprise me. And pardon me, really wonders, had Anthony Richardson worked out in a big way? Like, would we be looking at Taylor Green as a top 10 pick right now because of the. Just the way that the league tends to be copycat. And I do think it's. It's really interesting because I think you look two, three years ago and especially I guess maybe two years ago when three years ago at this point I don't even remember anymore. When Anthony Richardson was coming out, there was really a push towards, you know, we wanted those, Lamar Jackson, those, those Josh Allen quarterbacks that can impact the game on the ground and everything. And now it's like Sam Darnold won the super bowl and it's like it feels like there's a little bit more of a swing back towards some of a traditional quarterback blend. And I know I saw Sigmund Bloom had, was talking about how there was a window where we really wanted these quarterbacks that had played in the Air Raid and had played in these spread offenses because they threw a lot of pass, they saw a lot of looks and then how, and it used to be before that that those guys were radioactive on what teams wanted. They wanted that traditional quarterback and it's really kind of swung hard back towards wanting that traditional quarterback because of the push pull that what we're seeing in between defense and offense and moving towards more of a traditional, you know, having two tight ends out there having power run game, having two outside receivers like type of an offense as opposed to having basketball on grass and throwing four wide receivers out there. It's crazy to me how much it's rubber banded back because you remember back that Rams Chiefs Monday night game with Goff and Mahomes when it was like 56 to 53 or something like that and we were like, oh my God, this is what every game is going to be like now. This is so much fun. And now it's like feels like the exact opposite. But I think Green, it really is kind of the. A couple years ago. What's the, you know, like everybody's looking for this guy now. It's like, well, maybe we're not quite figuring out how these quarterbacks work right now and. Or maybe defensive have adjusted to take this out. And I did think it was. To me it was kind of ridiculous watching how quickly it went to switching him to wide receiver because it's like you have a guy that is like rare trades the most important position. Yes. There are just concerning things on his tape and there are a lot of sale balls and everything else. But if he were to hit at quarterback, that's such a bigger hit than hitting as a converted wide receiver that's never played wide receiver. Yeah.
- [48:09]
A
And I think because like, you know, again, relative athletic score, Rastat football, you can do this fun thing where you can change positions and when you change Taylor Green's position to wide receiver, you see that there's one guy who is more athletic than him in NFL prospecting history and it's Calvin Johnson. So I mean like I understand the excitement here about the prospects of a 6 foot 6 guy who can jump out of the gym and run in the four threes. I understand why we would get excited about him at wide receiver. But Jeff, I feel like all the conversations that we're having right now about Taylor Green, we kind of had this conversation last year about Jalen Milroe where we were saying like Jalen Milroe 5 years ago Would have been in consideration as a top 10 pick. But we kind of had this, these toolsy quarterbacks that were getting pushed up and we just had a lot of misses there. You know, Justin Fields, Anthony Richardson, Trey Lance. And because of the bad hit rates that we saw early in round one now these other guys in future drafts get penalized. And that's why we see Jalen Milroe falling in around two last year. And I think that's why we're going to see Taylor Green fall a little bit. But like five years ago, if we were looking at Fernando Mendoza and Taylor Green in the same draft class, it probably would have been which of these guys is going to be the 101. But I think that NFL teams have just gotten a little bit more risk averse with those early round one picks than they were when everyone was looking for the next Lamar Jackson.
- [49:28]
B
Well, they were looking for the next Josh Allen and then they basically said okay, there's, there's one Josh Allen. Never mind, we're, we're going to get fired a lot of times if we are looking for the next one.
- [49:37]
A
Next guy we want to talk about here. Pick 33, Caleb Douglas had himself a very, very strong showing 9.45 relative athletic score, 6 foot 3 and a half, runs a 4, 3 9, 40 yard dash. Didn't do great in the vertical jump, but still just the same speed. The broad jump, the height, all the things we want to see here. Caleb Douglas was a, a big riser coming out of the combine.
- [50:01]
B
He. So at the end they, they kind of do that huddle at the end and then the guys like run and, and he hit like a cartwheel into like a back like double handspring like big flip in the air and like. Yep, okay. Like you throw that out there.
- [50:17]
A
He's an athlete. He is definitely an athlete. Another guy who had himself a. Well he, I'm sorry he looked good in the drills but Justin Jolie didn't do any of the testing but this was one of those guys that like we, we would have liked to see it because we know he's a good athlete but can't really take too much away from Justin Jolie's combine. I didn't get a chance to watch all of the tight end drills closely. Jeff, did you see how he looked out there on the field?
- [50:44]
B
The my one one takeaway on Justin Jolie who I know our guy Cash is really, really high on. They, they did the, the sled, the blocking sled and some you know, guys are doing okay and like they were showing the clips of like Darnell Washington manhandling the sled and then Jolly gets up and the sled definitely won against.
- [51:07]
A
Well, you know, maybe this guy can find a role as a big slot in the NFL like a lot of these other move tight ends have. Next guy we have to talk about. This is what I meant earlier when we were talking about Chris Bell at the top of the show. Skyler Bell had himself a great combine. 9.66 relative athletic score. 4.4 40 yard dash, one of the best speeds of the entire combine. Vertical jump, broad jump, both elite marks there, both inside the 98th percentile. So Jeff, Skyler Bell was the guy that I was you know, extremely excited about. But when I see this sort of testing and we're this deep into the rankings, I mean this guy moved up from like a round five rookie pick to around three rookie rookie pick.
- [51:45]
B
For me, I mean he's my 17 overall player and I think it's to me it's tough talk about him and really Bryce Lance kind of in the same conversation because you can see them winning against the competition. He when the UConn and the UConn the competition's kind of not always the best that UConn's going against. And so you see him winning but you're opening up questions of you know what, what is the upside here is is that truly translating is the athleticism definitely there is it that we've got an experienced 23 year old that's really knows the position very very well. And so when you see he was a finalist for the Blitnikov, he was exceptionally productive receiver in his final season at UConn and just really, really strong technical ability. And I think one of the things that as you're looking through those wide receiver relative athletic scores, it's one thing for a receiver that's 6, 4, 2, 15, 220 to have a high relative athletic score because of the way it's calculated. He's not that type of receiver. He's he's, you know, six foot type receiver that can really play 192.
- [52:58]
A
Both below the 50th percentile.
- [53:01]
B
Yes. And so seeing and seeing that confirmation that the athleticism is definitely there, to me, I think he, he was definitely the biggest riser for me and my wide receiver. And again, it was because there was a big fat tier of wide receivers and he really separated himself. That athleticism being there, I think that he is very, very good. He profiles very well to be a player. He can, I think he can win outside, but I think he can handle a lot of volume in the NFL passing game right now.
- [53:32]
A
You know, I just moved up my rankings just based on what you said right there. I mean, like this was. I got excited by the athleticism, but like I said, he was so deep in my rankings that I was just like, all right, I'll move this guy from like wide receiver 32 up to wide receiver 17. But you know, you make a compelling case here that like once we do get past those top guys, the, the upside there for him is worth noting. Next up, we've got Michael Trigg. Also didn't do any testing, so we can't really say that he was a riser or a faller. Just kind of stays where he is. We know this guy is a fun athlete. Questionable production throughout his college career, but a ton of potential upside. We'll hope that he can test at the, the Baylor pro day and answer some questions there. Next thing I want to talk about. You already kind of alluded to it, Jeff, but Bryce Lance trying to look right now, I believe. Was it a 9.9 something? Yeah, 9.98 relative athletic score. That's seventh out of 3,844 wide receivers dating back to 1987. I liked what you said in the rookie guide about Bryce Lance where you said, have you ever wondered what Trey Lance would look like if he played wide receiver? Because we might get the answer here. And these guys were almost identical sizes, similar testing, and now we get to see this guy play wide receiver in the NFL.
- [54:48]
B
It's wild to me. They are very close in age. I think it's like something like two years age difference. It's like not even two full years. And think about like, like Trey Lance has lived a life now at this point and Bryce Lance is like just getting into the draft and so that's wild to me. So at some point this summer, early in the season, somebody said that Bryce lance was like a 4, 6 player, that somebody had it time somewhere. And this dirty rumor that the entire Internet seemed to believe because to my tracking, I thought Lance was a pretty good athlete. But then I. I see that. And that seemed to be, like the consensus take. And you're watching him in North Dakota State, and you're like, well, I mean, he's. He's pulling away from guys, but at the same time, it's North Dakota State, I don't know. And so to have him come out there and confirm the athleticism in the way that he did, I mean, definitively to me, I think he is my biggest riser out of the combine.
- [55:46]
A
Yeah, he's a guy that you're getting some. Some Tesla vibes. Maybe last year, like a guy that we were like, oh, this could be like a fun developmental guy. And then just such phenomenal testing that you're like, yeah, this guy's probably gonna end up going round three now. Like, teams are going to be so allured by that profile. So with you, Bryce, Lance was a big riser for me as well. Next guy we're going to talk about, Antonio Williams, another big riser, and I gotta give it to him. Another guy who didn't shy away from any testing coming out of Saturday, when the wide receivers do the majority of their testing. He had a relative athletic score above 9, went out and did a measly 10 reps on the bench press on Sunday, which dropped his relative athletic score basically a full point. But props to you, Antonio Williams, for getting out there on the bench and not ducking away from something that you knew was going to hurt your score. So big riser for me as well.
- [56:37]
B
Yeah, same. He was a better athlete than I expected. And the little things as you're watching this, like I said, like the, The. The gymnastics that Caleb Douglas is doing, or there was. It was like very last drill, and Antonio just had a really, really nice play on the ball on the sideline. And it was like little stuff like that. You're like, okay, like, what's going on here?
- [56:59]
A
Next thing I want to talk about. You talk about being way more athletic than you expected. Jam Miller. Wow. Did he surprise me. I mean, I saw, like, very little juice on film when I watched this guy. And I, I will say I wrote in his initial scouting report, I said, he'll need to have a very good combine to move up the draft rankings. That's exactly what he did. He went out and ran one of the fastest 40 times of anybody there to 4, 4, 2. So, you know, I had concerns about Jam Miller, but then when you kind of look at the context. He was hurt the majority of his college career and he was constantly dealing with a heavy workload. So he didn't get a lot of opportunity to, to pop these runs. But showing up to the combine healthy, huge, huge riser for me. We know this guy was productive at a big college. He is SEC tested. So now when he comes out and he checks the boxes for athleticism as well, you know, I'm, I don't want to say that I put like a ton of weight in the combine, but for a guy like this where my only question was long speed and then he comes out and blazes the 40 track. Yeah. Cool. You answer the concern that I had. You're gonna move up in my rankings.
- [58:03]
B
Yeah. We did the running back episode last week and you, you were kind of on me a little bit because I was higher on, on Miller and it's like, well, I mean, I don't know. He's an Alabama running back. He's. They usually don have bad players, right?
- [58:16]
A
So, yeah, mover for me and I don't know, man, I, I wish I saw that juice on date, but I, I must have been watching the wrong games or something. Next guy we're going to talk about, Robert Henry Jr. Ah, this is a disappointing one. Kind of everybody's favorite sleeper. Didn't have the best combine. It's a little bit slower than expected. Didn't have the initial burst in the 10 yard split either. So, you know, not like a huge, huge faller. But when we're Talking about Seth McGowan moving up and Jam Miller moving up and some of these other guys who have looked good, Robert Henry just kind of becomes a natural faller.
- [58:47]
B
Well, in when you're really, it's like the opposite of the Bryce Lance case of when you're dealing with competition levels that you're kind of unsure about and the guy doesn't really back it up, that's where like to me, I definitely, I think Henry was my biggest faller in my ranks overall just because of the, you know, questions. When you're, you really want to see those guys at that lower level that they are, that plus athlete. And when you don't get it, kind of like, well, all right, I've seen a lot of very productive running backs at small schools that just don't really do much of anything.
- [59:23]
A
Next guy we're going to talk about, Cole Payton, wildly athletic here, ran or logged a 9.97 relative athletic score, the best of any quarterback behind Taylor Green. And like I said, you Know, we're talking about this inside of percentiles, we're talking to 99.7 percentile athlete here. But a lot of that was the size. Like he's a huge guy and he was fast, but you know, kind of you can't say he was a riser or a faller because he showed up to Indianapolis and was exactly the player we thought that he would be. He's big, he's fast, and when he throws the ball, he can be a little bit erratic at times.
- [60:02]
B
Yeah. And really just seeing the, again, like we talked about the experience of the depth of experienced quarterbacks in this class and him coming from a smaller school, it's at some level what we're doing right now with these ranks, what we're doing, we're trying to value players is we're trying to project draft capital. More or less is what a, a lot of the exercises and getting players into the correct buckets. And when you've got all these guys and, and you know, the, the Drew Aller think it making you think you can still be a quarterback and trailing Green, you're like, what's, what do we got here? And, and it, you know, we do see those smaller school guys that don't have a high profile tend to get overlooked when it comes to the actual NFL draft.
- [60:47]
A
Got two guys left that we're going to talk about here and both of them our risers for us at 42 overall. So we're in the middle of round four here. Seth McGowan had the best broad jump and the best vertical jump of any running backs in the class. So we get excited about that. But you know, I, I bumped about my rankings a little bit. But my concerns about McGowan aren't that he's a good football player and it's not that he's an aggressive, explosive athlete, which he proved at the combine. Said he's about to turn 26 years old. Like it's the only concern I have with this guy. Like he's gonna be 30 by the time he's off his rookie deal. My, like he didn't show up to the combine two years younger. That, that would have been a, you know, big movement for me. But no, he's the same age that he was and that, that's my really only concern with Seth McGowan.
- [61:32]
B
Yeah. Seeing that he's a plus athlete, I mean we kind of again knew and obviously was a big time recruit coming out. But that age, it's hard to ignore that age. At the same time, I Don't know that. I'm sure super concerned about getting my running backs to their second contract. So much as if. If they can be productive in a window, then that tends to be a win.
- [61:51]
A
But I think the thing with McGowan is like, when we look at running back age curves, this guy kind of has one year and then he is atop that age curve and then we're expecting him to fall off. And of course, like guys can exceed their projected age curves. This isn't a perfect science, but you know, just trying to play within probabilities like we do. Like, the reality is like, this guy could start trending down before he ever really even trends up. So love the athleticism that he put on display. But age still the primary concern here. Last guy we're going to talk about, Jeff. The star of the 40 yard dash, Brendan Thompson, set the best time in the 2026 combine. I guess the question I could ask is like, how much do we care about 40s? Like, is this just a John Ross? Is this Jacoby Ford? I mean, we've seen a lot of guys run really fast at the 40 and then do nothing in the NFL. What are your thoughts on Brendan Thompson? Is he different than those guys or is he just another speedster?
- [62:47]
B
Well, he. He's another broken ranking right now that they're looking at it. But at. At the same time, he. I think he is more of a. More than just a speedster. And in my scouting report, I said I think he is going to be the fastest player at the combine. But in watching him, he's. He's a lot. He trained the same place that Xavier Worthy trained. And I think there's a lot of similarities between Brendan Thompson and Xavier Worthy and we haven't exactly seen it translate at the NFL level with Worthy. But I think Thompson is, He's. He's not like the, you know, the. Dante Thornton can run fast in a straight line and cannot actually play wide receiver. He's a lot more in that mold of a guy that actually there's a lot of receiving jobs here.
- [63:29]
A
Well, that'll do it. We went through 44 players today. We didn't want to give away everything. You know, you can get our top 48 big board@footballguys.com rookieguy. But if you want to see players 45, 46, 47 and 48, you're gonna have to find it yourself on the rookie guide. But even more than that, our positional rankings go much, much deeper. We've got all the combine invites, plus a bunch of guys who weren't even invited to the combine that we're still keeping on the UDFA radar. So you can find that@footballguys.com rookieguide Jeff, any final thoughts before we log off today?
- [64:01]
B
No, it's just fun to be in the process, fun to get more information, fun to really put these players to life and see them out there, see them on the same field together and watch them through the I always enjoy combine weekend because it is feels like an oasis, a little bit of like waiting for real football. And we're, you know, full ample on speculation of what the latest Stefan Diggs has been released means for A.J. brown type season. But I think right now it's, it is fun to see these. These just, these NFL draft is one of my favorite weekends of the year. And so we're getting these check marks going through the Senior bowl, going through the combine and approaching that draft really faster than we realize.
- [64:44]
A
We are going to have some very fun surprises planned over here at Football guys for the NFL draft. So stay tuned. Subscribe on the YouTube feed or I'm sorry, subscribe. What is that? Yeah, subscribe right like that. That's what you do on YouTube. Click the button, subscribe, follow, give us a thumbs up, leave a comment, all that good stuff that you do on YouTube. And if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, please leave us a review as well. We love when you're able to do that. We like reading the the good reviews and the bad reviews. All feedback is important to us and it's all a gift. But Jeff and I will be back next week to talk. We're actually going to take a break from free agency, I think next week, Jeff, you know, it being free agent or a break from rookies. With it being free agency week, it would just feel silly to talk about rookies next week. So we'll be talking about all of the big free agency moves. What do we expect? What's happened? Can't plan it now. We'll talk next week when we figure out what's happened. But we will be talking to free agents next week. Want to thank you all so much for taking the time to tune in and we will see you soon.