Tag Archives: Football

NFL Draft

Top 10 interior defensive linemen of the 2025 NFL Draft:

Closing the chapter on offensive and defensive line prospects for this draft, we’re taking a look at the interior D-line. Without nearly as strict front dynamics in terms of where players line up on a down-to-down basis, this includes anyone who I project to play from a 0- out to a 5-technique, meaning head-up on the center out to straight over the tackle. I’ll mention where I like them best with some of these, but of course this is no way exclusive for them.

As I asked myself recently how I would stack up the individual positions for this draft class, I basically had IDL and EDGE as 1A and 1B respectively. To me, there are four players worth being selected in the first round and at least the nine other guys discussed here having a claim to be top-100 picks. Yet, even beyond that, there are about 15-18 other names who may make active rosters in a specified role.

Let’s dig into this group:


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NFL Draft

Top 10 interior offensive linemen of the 2025 NFL Draft:

Continuing the trench portion of our positional draft rankings, we’re moving to the inside with offensive guards and centers, who for the purposes of this exercise we’re going to combine, although I’ll specify if I prefer individual players at one specific spot. This group includes several tackle conversion candidates, who based on a lack of length or just a more fitting skill-set to me project better to the interior.

Thanks to the amount of guys who played on the edges in college but ended up in this portion, I actually prefer this class by quite a significant margin. There are four names who I believe you can make a strong case for as potential first-rounders and the other six guys should all come off the board some time on day two. What I liked however is how many prospects I went through that I could legitimately see stick on the back-end of an NFL roster.

This is how they stack up for me:


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NFL Draft

Top 10 edge defenders of the 2025 NFL Draft:

This marks the mid-point of our positional draft rankings and we’re looking at one of the strongest groups yet – edge defenders, meaning defensive ends in a four-down front and 3-4 outside linebackers, although in today’s NFL we see so many hybrid fronts anyway that the distinction isn’t as relevant.

This class is headlined by a player who would be in consideration for the top non-quarterback in most years, but there are six/seven more names who could easily also go in the first round and about the same amount additionally in the second. What’s crazy to me is how many interesting prospects are available beyond that, as I’ll probably end up at 28-30 names with draftable grades.

Here’s how the top ten (plus) looks like for me:


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NFL Draft

Top 10 offensive tackles of the 2025 NFL Draft:

We’ve reached the big-man portion of our positional draft rankings series. This week we’ll be looking at offensive tackles and edge defenders before we move on to the interior. As always, this list is based on the film only and not taking injuries into account, and watching all of these guys who lined up at OT in college, there are several transition candidates to guard or center based on length limitations or simply their skill-set translating better to either one of those spots at the next level. Here are some names you’ll find among the interior blockers – Will Campbell and Emery Jones (LSU), Grey Zabel (North Dakota State), Jonah Savaiinaea (Arizona), Marcus Mbow (Purdue), Wyatt Milum (West Virginia) and others.

So due to that, I believe there’s a pretty steep drop-off from the four tackles I have firm first-round grades on to the seven players I have more so in the mid-to-late day two range personally. Beyond that, there are a couple of developmental prospects with upside but more so quality college performers whose athletic limitations will limit them to potential swing and fringe roster candidates.

This is how they stack up for me:


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NFL Draft

Top 10 cornerbacks of the 2025 NFL Draft:

Finishing up the second week of our positional draft rankings, we’re flipping back over to the defensive side of the ball, going from wide receivers to the guys who will be covering them – the cornerbacks. Once again, I’ll break down my top ten prospects with compact scouting reports for each of them, along with some names who just missed the cut. More than at any other position so far, I feel like I should mention that these rankings don’t reflect injuries but rather purely the talent/film and generally, I don’t love trying to weigh those anyway since we don’t have insight into medical records, like NFL teams do.

This CB class to me is a little misunderstood because it’s highlighted by a player who we don’t have a firm grasp if he’ll primarily play on offense or defense – or potentially both. Three of the next four names for me didn’t finish this past college football season and therefore have kind of been forgotten. And after that, a lot of better prospects are primarily considered nickelbacks. So while this group isn’t as strong as last year’s, I believe if healthy there are five guys worthy of first-round consideration, the other eight listed here will probably find themselves inside my top-100 big board, and even though there are a couple of names that have fallen from grace beyond that, there are also a few with impressive profiles, that’ll be appealing to NFL evaluators.

Here’s my list:


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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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Super Bowl

Everything to know about Super Bowl LIX:

We are here. 284 total games have been played between the regular season and playoffs, 30 teams have been eliminated and two more remain, battling for the right to hoist the Lombardi Trophy this upcoming Sunday.

With how things played out, we get a rematch of Super Bowl LVII from two years ago, when the Chiefs beat the Eagles 38-35 in Glendale, Arizona. The Eagles took the regular season battle in week 11 of the following season. Now, they are set to square off again, with a lot of the same faces but especially on Philadelphia’s side, they come in with two new coordinators and a superstar in running back Saquon Barkley.

One side is going for the first three-peat in NFL history, while the other one is trying to get revenge and stand up to another dynasty, just like they did against the Patriots seven years ago.

Kansas City’s only legitimate loss outside of week 18, when they were resting starters since they had already clinched the AFC’s number one seed, came to the Bills. Although they weren’t dominating opponents and ranked just outside the top-ten in overall point (+59), they routinely were able to come out on top of tight battles, even if some might argue that a few favorable calls at least aided them along the way. Still, they were in control throughout their Divisional Round affair against the Texans and were able to avenge that one meaningful defeat when they once again hosted Buffalo in the Championship game.

Philadelphia in the meantime needed a good month to find their groove, as they started off the season only 2-and-2 before winning 10 straight games and all but one of their final 13. Only the Lions ended up with a better point differential (+160) and with those guys losing in the Divisional Round, the NFC more or less went through Philadelphia. In no way would I say the Eagles were particularly convincing against the Packers or Rams, but Saquon delivered multiple break-away runs, the defense stepped up in key moments and they won the turnover battle six-nothing across those two games. Then, in the conference title game, they arguably had their most complete showing against Washington, who previously beat them in walk-off fashion in week 16, and pulled away from them in the second half.

I want to first break down how the two representatives want to operate on both sides of the ball, some of the ways they could attack each other schematically, present a couple X-factors for each team and then give my prediction for the final score, including my pick for Super Bowl MVP.

Let’s dive into this massive showdown:



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NFL Playoffs

Predicting the full 2024/25 NFL playoffs:

The NFL playoff bracket is set and I took on the exercise of previewing/predicting every single matchup, leading up to Super Bowl LIX! I’ll share a few thoughts on each side and how I came to all my decisions!

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NFL Quarterbacks, NFL Rookies, Player Rankings

Checking in with the rookie and sophomore NFL quarterbacks:

Over the last two drafts, ten quarterbacks were selected within the first 33 picks respectively and now that all but one of them have logged double-digit starts, I thought it was time to review what they’ve shown. I will provide my general thoughts, aided by some advanced metrics, and express my level of confidence in their long-time viability at the pro level.

Just to be clear, I won’t be discussing this year’s eighth and eighth overall selections Michael Penix Jr. (Falcons) and J.J. McCarthy (Vikings), who only saw very limited action in mop-up duty and unfortunately got hurt after a promising preseason showing respectively. Therefore, we’ll be looking at four guys from each of those draft classes.

Let’s dive in, going by chronological order of when they got selected:


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Storylines around the NFL

Misery index seven weeks into the 2024 NFL season:

Unlike most weeks where one topic jumps out to me for a video or article I want to write or even there’s a point in the season where it makes sense to do power rankings or mid-season awards, there were several ways I considered going here. However, as I looked a broader view at the NFL landscape, my one grand thought I came away with is the state of affairs for the teams at the bottom of the standings and their gap to the rest of the league. In large part because I currently don’t see a path where those franchise massively turn things around and I don’t want to ignore them until draft season rolls around.

With some teams having already had a bye week, I didn’t want the cut-off to be two wins, but rather I chose to go with the nine squads at least three games below .500 – meaning 2-5 or worse. That also made sense considering the two teams that criteria excludes are the 2-4 Rams and Dolphins, whose campaigns have been heavily affected by injuries and still have some hope to turn things around.

To illustrate that rift between the franchises in question and those in legitimate position to compete for playoff spots ultimately, here’s a number to consider – and I understand of course that it has to exist for this make sense mathematically – but the nine teams I’m about to discuss have an average point differential of -53.1 for the year, meaning the median outcome for them every week is pretty much losing by just over a touchdown. I did not go back to recent years to really dive into how this stacks up, but it feels like quite an extreme line of demarcation – and that calculation includes the Saints’ clearly unsustainable start, where they led the league with a +62 point differential through the first two weeks.

So this isn’t meant to be a way for me to trash the bottom-third of the league, but rather trying take a step back and reflect on how we got here, by going through these teams. And maybe give an outlook for the near future, as we think about how things could be course-corrected.

We’ll go by record first and then alphabetical order:


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