Tag Archives: College Football

College Football, NFL Draft

Top 10 running backs of the 2025 NFL Draft:

With most of the big-ticket free agents already snatched up, it’s time to fully dive into draft season and begin our series of positional rankings, kicking things off with the running backs! As is the plan with all of these pieces over the next five-and-a-half weeks, I will present my top ten prospects with a compact breakdown of their strengths, weaknesses and context how I personally value them. And we’ll alternate between offense and defense, sort of contrasting their respective counterparts.

There’s been plenty of discussion about this RB class, with people going as far as calling it “generational”. While I believe that’s a bit of an overstatement, we do have an elite name at the top, one that could easily be number one in the rankings for many other years and great depth beyond that.

Let’s break them down:


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College Football, NFL Draft

College all-star game standouts for 2025:

The NFL season has concluded with the Philadelphia Eagles putting on a dominant showing in Super Bowl LIX, when they got revenge on the Chiefs by ending their quest to the first ever three-peat, which started two years ago with a win over the Birds on the big stage. Of course we’ll discuss free agency soon, but we are ready to fully dive into draft season and for people who haven’t paid attention yet – this process has already started.

We’re just over two weeks away from the NFL combine, but the all-star games and preparation for those are in the books. So after watching all of the practice footage and both contests to finish off those events, I want outline the names that stood out the most to me from East-West Shrine and Senior Bowl weeks. I did watch the Hula and Tropical Bowl and we’ve still got the HBCU Bowl on slate, but I want to focus on those two prime showcases of talent.

Therefore, I decided to highlight ten standouts on offense and defense each, also picking the same number from each event. I could’ve easily talked in detail about several other players who caught my eye and am happy to share my notes down in the comment section, but I did at least list a bunch of names at the bottom.


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College Football, College Football Rankings

Top five college players at each position a month into the 2024 season:

We’re four weeks into this collegiate season and it’s time for me to give my annual check-in on who the best players in the nation are currently. My rankings are largely based on the film work I did partially during this prior draft cycle for returning names and studying up during the summer, but also catching up on them in the early stages here. Obviously, I haven’t watched every single FBS game, but a large portion of those, I went through a bunch of the advanced numbers and tried to at least evaluate each of these (and other) guys in one more matchup so far.

Just to clarify, these rankings are concerning the top five players at each position for the college level – so how well they’re performing at right now and how I’d pick them in a team selection-like setting, somewhat detached from their surrounding pieces, as I’m trying to judge them individually. There’s a lot of overlap to how I’d stack the names up projecting forward to next year’s draft already (at least for the guys who are eligible), but I wanted to make that distinction here.

Let’s get into it:

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NFL Offseason, Storylines around the NFL

Second- and third-year breakout candidates for the 2024 NFL season – Defense edition:

In the second half of this annual series, we’re switching over to the defensive side of the ball and outlining young players around the NFL, who I expect to make a leap in 2024.

For the purposes of this exercise, considering it’s tough to set the guidelines for what counts as an actual “breakout”. Therefore, I relied mostly on statistical metrics that exclude players from this category – no front-seven defenders who recorded double-digit sacks or tackles for loss, players who intercepted 4+ passes, earned a Pro Bowl/All-Pro nominations or are just generally considered one of the better performers at their respective positions. Also, I generally stayed away from players who have barely seen action in the pros yet.

Also, in order to not repeat myself, I won’t mention names like 49ers edge rusher Drake Jackson (who had a hot start before suffering a quadriceps injury that ended last season early for him), Broncos edge rusher Baron Browning (who missed the first half of the season but did put up strong pressure numbers from that point onwards) and Bengals safety Dax Hill (whose grading looks worse than his raw production, but I expect to align more now and Cincinnati’s defense generally bouncing back with him in year two as a starter), since they made the list last year.

Let’s begin:

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NFL Draft, NFL Free Agency, NFL Offseason, NFL Trades

Most improved position groups across the 2024 NFL offseason:

After spending the last month reflecting on what the player acquisition process looked like for all 32 teams, with a focus on the names brought in via the draft, it’s now time to take a step back and identify the positional units that improved the most throughout this process, comparing the additions and departures at those spots.

This is purely based on the players that were brought in/let go from the point the 2023 NFL season ended onwards, not taking injuries into account. So you’re not going to find the Jets here for getting back Aaron Rodgers from the torn Achilles he suffered four snaps into his time with New York for example. Along with that, I like to take a broader look at this in terms of which position groups were stocked up best rather than just talking about a singular star performer they acquired.

Let’s dive in:

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NFL Draft

AFC West Draft & Roster Review 2024

This is the final edition of our month-long draft & roster review series, where I break down every single player all 32 NFL teams selected in the draft – one division at a time – discussing the general roster make-up and the roles of the new pieces within it!

And we finish off with a bang, with the reigning Super Bowl champs in the Chiefs, the Broncos with a new rookie QB, the Chargers with completely overhauled leadership and the Raiders, who didn’t draft a quarterback and are entering an interesting year!

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NFL Draft

NFC West Draft & Roster Review 2024

We’ve arrived at the final week of our divisional draft & roster review series, with the NFC West – which includes the reigning conference champions, the team with the largest draft class across the league, a franchise that finally picked in the first round again after an eight-year break and one of my favorite classes overall.

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NFL Draft, NFL Offseason

AFC South Draft & Roster Review 2024

We complete our trip down South by looking at the AFC side of things with the Houston Texans, Indianapolis Colts, Jacksonville Jaguars and Tennessee Titans – discussing all the players these teams drafted, the state of their rosters and how the new pieces fit in!

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NFL Draft, NFL Offseason

NFC South Draft & Roster Review 2024

We kick off the second half of this series with the NFC South – where one team made plenty of noise when the shocked the rest of the league with who they selected in the top ten.

Once again, I’ll be providing scouting reports on all the players selected, talk about their fits within the new team and share my general thoughts on how these rosters have been constructed.

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