We’ve reached the final episode of our divisional draft & roster review series for 2025! And we’re closing things out with the AFC West, who just sent three teams to the playoffs and saw the other one make some drastic changes to the key figures of their organization!
We’re entering the final week of our divisional draft & roster review series, as we head West, starting off on the NFC side with the Cardinals, Rams, 49ers and Seahawks!
(This was recorded prior to the 49ers trading for Bryce Huff, hence why he wasn’t mentioned at all)
Once again, switching conferences as part of this extensive video series, we’re taking a deep look at what the Texans, Colts, Jaguars and Titans did in the draft and the offseason as a hole to improve their rosters!
We enter the second half of our divisional draft and roster review series, where today we’ll taking a look at the Falcons, Panthers, Saints and Buccaneers. I’ll break down every single player they drafted, their roles on the roster, incorporating all the other offseason moves, and share my perspective on what they did overall.
Closing out the first half of our divisional draft and roster review series with the Bills, Dolphins, Patriots and Jets. We’ll once again break down every single player they selected in the draft, their projected role on their new team and the overall construction of those rosters throughout this offseason!
Entering week two of our divisional draft & roster review series, we’re headed East and start on the NFC side with the Cowboys, Giants, Eagles and Commanders.
We’re now about one-and-a-half weeks removed from the 2025 NFL Draft, and after sharing all of my overarching thoughts – biggest winners, losers, steals and reaches – in a big recap piece I want to continue with the annual tradition of shining a light on a few players who didn’t actually hear their names called over the course of that weekend, but could be factors for the teams they signed with afterwards as undrafted free agents.
Once again, I chose six players on offense and defense respectively, but added one more name to keep track of for all 32 franchises at the bottom of the list. First, I will give some basic information on the prospects coming out of college, discuss some of their strengths and weaknesses, before I finish by explaining how they fit from a schematic sense and in relation to how those rosters are currently constructed, to provide an opportunity to earn a spot. Obviously, this is an uphill battle for all of these players because of the minimal resources invested in them, but they now have a chance to earn the attention of their new coaching staffs and carve out pro careers for themselves. A few noteworthy names that have made my list in the past – Bryce Huff, Ar’Darius Washington, Reed Blankenship, Tyson Bagent and Ivan Pace Jr.
Let’s get into this year’s version!
Another draft cycle comes to a close, as we started with all 32 teams being in control of their first-round pick for the only time in the common era, yet it only took until the second overall selection for us to get a major shake-up, when the Jaguars’ new regime moved up three spots with the Browns to add two-way superstar Travis Hunter. And Cleveland would be the ones to end one of the most prominent draft slides we’ve ever seen, which ended up being the biggest storyline of the weekend.
To recap everything that happened, I will once again outline who I believe were the biggest winners and losers, steals and reaches across those three days. As always, my thoughts are purely based on evaluating the skill-sets of prospects at this moment and without access to all the information about medical reports and potential character/off-field concerns. However, I will disregard some names for the “steals” category if either one of those clearly applies based on the reporting out there.
If I don’t talk about your favorite team specifically today, in just two weeks I’ll start my divisional draft and roster review series, where I give the spotlight to all 32 teams in podcast form, discussing every single player they selected, their projected role and how it all fits with the other roster moves they’ve made. And of course, I have scouting reports on over 130 prospects here on my site, as part of my positional draft rankings, if you want to dive deeper into individual names.
Let’s break down the biggest storylines and selections today!
We’ve arrived at the final segment of our positional draft rankings and as always, we’re closing out with the quarterbacks. Of course, this group is always getting the most attention and as someone who doesn’t put his full thoughts out there until this point, it’s funny to listen to narratives changing throughout each draft cycle when there’s no actual football being played, other than for the guys who partake in all-star game weeks.
I have thought all along that the name at the top of this list was in a completely different tier to the rest of the class – and it seems like that’s become general consensus as we’ve gone along here. After that, I believe there are four names who I’m personally much more comfortable across day two, even though I understand that a couple of them will probably get pushed up into the first round. Beyond those, I see a lot of disagreement between people I respect and the order looks different for me than what consensus boards would suggest, but ultimately I don’t feel great about any of them becoming legit starters at the next level, even though I believe there qualities worthy of investing some capital into.
So one more time, let’s dive into this:
In our final defensive segment of this positional draft rankings series, we’re looking at safeties. With the modern NFL being so much more against spacing the field with interchangable skill-sets and being in two-high looks at the snap, differentiating between free and strong safety is obviously an antiquated view at the position. Instead, I will reference the different roles certain players are capable of filling – do they profile as someone who can extensively play in the high post, as part of the box, be a big nickel in three-safety packages, etc.
Personally, I wasn’t particularly high on this group on the surface, but as I started to dive into names lower on consensus boards, I did find some guys with redeemable qualities down the line. To me, there’s one standout who simply isn’t being discussed enough and ultimately will end up in my top-ten overall prospects. The order of the next few names is rather different to what you generally see because one other guy has simply been forgotten about it seems like. And while ten seems to be pretty much the ceiling of safeties we’ll see selected over the first two days, there are plenty of role players and potential core special teamers beyond that, who’ll probably make active rosters.
This is my list:
Halil's Real Footballtalk 