After talking about why I think Marshal Yanda is the best guard in the today’s league, I want to take a look at the biggest weapon of the number one scoring offense of last season and analyze him. Ever since entering the league as the sixth overall pick in the 2011 NFL Draft, Jones has worked his way into consideration as one of the best receivers in the NFL and right now I would put him above anybody else. Here’s why:
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What makes Marshal Yanda the best offensive guard in the NFL today:
A couple of years ago, I started analyzing the game’s top players at their respective positions and explaining what makes them that good. With the major parts of the offseason in the books I decided to go back to that format and look at another premiere player. This article is about the Ravens’ offensive guard Marshal Yanda and why I think he is the number one option at his spot and one of the best overall players in the league. Let’s get to it.
(Usually I add clips to emphasize my points for the respective players, but that’s not as easy with offensive linemen. Therefore, I recommend to just put a Ravens game on and watch number 73 go to work.)
NFL Top 100 Players of 2017:
Once again NFL players voted for their peers to be named among the top 100 for this upcoming season. I want to reiterate that once more. The list might be based on what you saw from these athletes last year, but you project how well they will play in the 2017/18 season. I like the whole idea of it, but players seem to get confused with fellows who missed time or simply didn’t play at the level they’re capable of. Sure, you have to take availability into account, but as long as they’re cleared medically you aren’t supposed to project to them to be injured. At the same time you need to bump players who are suspended for a certain amount of games (like I did with Brady a year ago) or if there still are legitimate health concerns. I didn’t put offensive linemen as high as I would if the list was solely about the best players, since the question is how much value they present and that unit consists of five guys.
Now that we’ve cleared up the parameters, here’s my list. It might look pretty different to the official one, but I tried to really create it based on value.
Biggest roster holes for each AFC team:
After talking about the weak-spots for each team on the NFC side, I’m switching to the other conference. Once again, I’m going to start discussing each team’s starting line-ups and what moves they have made so far in the offseason before coming to the conclusion of what their biggest need is. I didn’t use this article to discuss depth or future plans, it’s just about starters for this upcoming season. Oh, and no quarterbacks. NFL people talk about them enough already.
Biggest roster holes for each NFC team:
Two weeks ago I talked about newly formed position groups that aren’t talked about enough. Now I want to look at one spot for each team that has to be improved. This article is not about adding depth or planning for the future, but rather where a team needs help this upcoming season. You could make a case for multiple teams having to upgrade their quarterback play, but there aren’t many solutions out there. That’s why I focused on other positions.
I wanted to give an overview on each team and discuss why they need to improve at that specific spot. This week I talk about the NFC teams.
Appealing qualities for last year’s rookie class:
A lot of qualities young players show early on won’t be the same five years from now, while others might not even have come up properly yet and the player is just scratching his surface. I want to use this article to point out the one quality for the rookies from last year heading into the 2017 season, that will help them make a living in the NFL. These are traits that give them a very good shot at being able to perform at a high level for a long time. I’m not going to put Ezekiel Elliott’s name up because he is widely considered one of the premiere running backs in the game already and was talked about all year. Neither will you see the Bear’s Jordan Howard or Michael Thomas, because they were number three in rushing and number nine in receiving yards respectively. And one more name you won’t find is Tyreek Hill, since he was on the highlight reel almost every week.
I listed those ten second-year players according to the spot they were drafted in.
Newly formed position groups not talked about enough:
Through the offseason all 32 NFL teams have looked at their roster and tried to improve it, whether that is through free agency or the draft. That has resulted in some much improved position groups in combination with the pieces those teams already had. I want to point out six of those newly formed units, who I think will be a strength this season and help their respective teams win football games after hurting them to some degree last year. Here they are:
Biggest winners, losers, steals and reaches of the 2017 NFL Draft:
The 2017 NFL Draft is in the books and every team got better last weekend. Yet, some teams did a better job than some others and a couple of players got help via the draft. On the other hand, there are a few prospects who saw their draft stock drop and they had to wait longer than expected to hear their name called, while a bunch of them did not have their phones ring at all. Here’s a recap of what happened in Philly:
Sleepers in this year’s draft:
The 2017 NFL Draft is only a couple of days away and while everybody’s discussing what will happen in the first round, I wanted to shine some light on the prospects that not everybody might know about, but that I really like. Most of them will be selected on day three, even though they are really good players. There’s no actual criteria for what is defined as a sleeper. I just looked at where these guys are listed on the big boards if the major networks and compared it to my rankings.
First Round Mock Draft 2017:
With the 2017 NFL Draft less than a week from today, I finally put up my predictions for the first round. It is basically impossible to predict all the picks, because of the crazy things happening on draft day every year, whether that be trades or last-minute information coming up, which led to Laremy Tunsil sliding pretty far last year. I decided to leave the order the way it is and try to mock the first round that way. The number one pick should be easy, but nobody really knows for sure what will happen from there on. Each pick can have a domino-effect on the entire draft and things could shape up completely different. Here’s what I came up with:
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