Tag Archives: NFL Offseason

NFL Draft

Top 10 offensive tackles in the 2022 NFL Draft:

Two weeks into my positional draft rankings, we have arrived at the big boys! Today we’re looking at the best offensive tackles, before we get into the guys coming off the edge later this week. If you enjoyed reading my detailed analysis of this class, feel free to always read up my top running backs, linebackers, wide receivers and cornerbacks.

Back to this group – I believe there is clear top three, which at this point all seem like top-ten locks – and deservedly so. After that, there’s a significant drop-off, before we get to four other names, that I have graded in the late first to late second-round range. Rounding out my top ten, I believe the three remaining prospects are worthy of later day two picks, before we get into a bunch of guys, where either they can give you quality snaps early or have the talent to develop into starters down the road, but they all have certain limitations or questions.

And as a quick side note, there may be a few names that you feel like are missing here, because they qualified as interior offensive linemen for me, which I’ll break down next week. Some notable players that pertains to: Tyler Smith (Tulsa), Sean Rhyan (UCLA), Darian Kinnard (Kentucky), Andrew Stueber (Michigan) and Zach Tom (Wake Forest).

Let’s get into these tackles:

 

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Two weeks into my positional draft rankings, we have arrived at the big boys! Today we’re looking at the best offensive tackles, before we get into the guys coming off the edge later this week. If you enjoyed reading my detailed analysis of this class, feel free to always read up my top running backs, linebackers, wide receivers and cornerbacks.

Back to this group – I believe there is clear top three, which at this point all seem like top-ten locks – and deservedly so. After that, there’s a significant drop-off, before we get to four other names, that I have graded in the late first to late second-round range. Rounding out my top ten, I believe the three remaining prospects are worthy of later day two picks, before we get into a bunch of guys, where either they can give you quality snaps early or have the talent to develop into starters down the road, but they all have certain limitations or questions.

And as a quick side note, there may be a few names that you feel like are missing here, because they qualified as interior offensive linemen for me, which I’ll break down next week. Some notable players that pertains to: Tyler Smith (Tulsa), Sean Rhyan (UCLA), Darian Kinnard (Kentucky), Andrew Stueber (Michigan) and Zach Tom (Wake Forest).

Let’s get into these tackles:

 

Continue reading →

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NFL Draft

Top 10 cornerbacks in the 2022 NFL Draft:

Switching back to the defensive side of the ball, after breaking down the draft’s best receivers earlier this week, we are now looking at the guys covering them. So this group includes outside and slot cornerbacks, where the boards among NFL teams can vary a lot depending on the defensive scheme they run and what they ask their CBs to do.

As always, I will break down my top ten overall prospects, regardless of scheme fit, and I have three more guys in the “just missed the cut” paragraphs”. Just like the receivers, there’s five names worthy of going in the first round in my opinion and there’s several potential diamonds in the rough, with a large amount of small school prospects with intriguing qualities.

Here’s what I ended up with:

 

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Switching back to the defensive side of the ball, after breaking down the draft’s best receivers earlier this week, we are now looking at the guys covering them. So this group includes outside and slot cornerbacks, where the boards among NFL teams can vary a lot depending on the defensive scheme they run and what they ask their CBs to do.

As always, I will break down my top ten overall prospects, regardless of scheme fit, and I have three more guys in the “just missed the cut” paragraphs”. Just like the receivers, there’s five names worthy of going in the first round in my opinion and there’s several potential diamonds in the rough, with a large amount of small school prospects with intriguing qualities.

Here’s what I ended up with:

 

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NFL Draft

Top 10 wide receivers in the 2022 NFL Draft:

We’re entering our second week of positional draft breakdowns. After talking about the best running back and linebacker prospects, it’s time to highlight the wide receivers and cornerbacks, once again starting with the offensive side of the ball.

Right off the bat, I cheated a little bit, by having two guys tied at number ten, but this time I didn’t add some names that just missed the cut, but rather decided to mention a wildcard name at the end. As always, this is 90 percent based on film study, with advanced statistics and testing numbers helping me make my case or just separate names, which I had very closely bunched together.

Similar to what we’ve seen in recent years – and a trend that will continue, thanks to all the youth passing camps and wide open college offenses – this receiver class is very deep and I could have mentioned about 30 names here that I look at as draftable players. However, in order to not just list off names, I broke down the twelve guys I already referenced and then put just a few as the “next names up”, that I think are in that next tier. Currently I have first-round grades on five of these and six more in the top-75 or so.

Here’s the list:

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We’re entering our second week of positional draft breakdowns. After talking about the best running back and linebacker prospects, it’s time to highlight the wide receivers and cornerbacks, once again starting with the offensive side of the ball.

Right off the bat, I cheated a little bit, by having two guys tied at number ten, but this time I didn’t add some names that just missed the cut, but rather decided to mention a wildcard name at the end. As always, this is 90 percent based on film study, with advanced statistics and testing numbers helping me make my case or just separate names, which I had very closely bunched together.

Similar to what we’ve seen in recent years – and a trend that will continue, thanks to all the youth passing camps and wide open college offenses – this receiver class is very deep and I could have mentioned about 30 names here that I look at as draftable players. However, in order to not just list off names, I broke down the twelve guys I already referenced and then put just a few as the “next names up”, that I think are in that next tier. Currently I have first-round grades on five of these and six more in the top-75 or so.

Here’s the list:

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NFL Draft

Top 10 linebackers in the 2022 NFL Draft:

Rolling along with my top ten positional rankings for the NFL Draft, after breaking down the top running backs, we’re now looking at the guys on the opposite side of the line of scrimmage, trying to bring them down before they can really cross it.

Once again, these are all my personal opinions based on tape study, while using advanced settings and testing numbers to back my case or mention some of the concerns I may have.

Putting this linebacker class into perspective, instead of a trio at the top of the rankings like we had last year, with Micah Parsons, Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah and Zaven Collins, there’s a clear duo at the top, while LB3 can vary a lot depending on which rankings you look like. However, I believe there’s about nine or ten more names that could arguably arguably within the first two days and even after that, there’s guys I like in specific roles.

Let’s get into it:

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Rolling along with my top ten positional rankings for the NFL Draft, after breaking down the top running backs, we’re now looking at the guys on the opposite side of the line of scrimmage, trying to bring them down before they can really cross it.

Once again, these are all my personal opinions based on tape study, while using advanced settings and testing numbers to back my case or mention some of the concerns I may have.

Putting this linebacker class into perspective, instead of a trio at the top of the rankings like we had last year, with Micah Parsons, Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah and Zaven Collins, there’s a clear duo at the top, while LB3 can vary a lot depending on which rankings you look like. However, I believe there’s about nine or ten more names that could arguably arguably within the first two days and even after that, there’s guys I like in specific roles.

Let’s get into it:

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NFL Free Agency

One free agent to target for each NFL team in 2022:

We are nearly two weeks into the non-playing season and while my main focus right now lies in the NFL draft, I thought it would be a fun exercise to look through all the teams in terms of available cap space heading into free agency, team needs & then find that one player that they should prioritize on trying to sign.

Thanks to overthecap.com for the graphic and cap space information!

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NFL Draft

Biggest risers from the 2022 college all-star events:

With the NFL having added an extra week of regular season football and everything else being pushed back even further, there was even less media attention for the first parts of the draft process. However, now that the Rams have been crowned as league champions, we enter the offseason and for everybody, who didn’t actually keep up with the NFLPA Collegiate Bowl, East-West Shrine game and Senior Bowl, I put together this list of prospects, who have boosted their stock over the course of those events.

So I watched all the practices and the games from those three weeks and picked out 15 names altogether, who I believe helped themselves the most with their performances. This group primarily includes Senior Bowl guys, who partially were called up from the NFLPA Bowl, since I actually watched every single rep of every single drill basically, while I didn’t have that kind of exclusive footage from the other two events.

Here’s the list I came up with:

 

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With the NFL having added an extra week of regular season football and everything else being pushed back even further, there was even less media attention for the first parts of the draft process. However, now that the Rams have been crowned as league champions, we enter the offseason and for everybody, who didn’t actually keep up with the NFLPA Collegiate Bowl, East-West Shrine game and Senior Bowl, I put together this list of prospects, who have boosted their stock over the course of those events.

So I watched all the practices and the games from those three weeks and picked out 15 names altogether, who I believe helped themselves the most with their performances. This group primarily includes Senior Bowl guys, who partially were called up from the NFLPA Bowl, since I actually watched every single rep of every single drill basically, while I didn’t have that kind of exclusive footage from the other two events.

Here’s the list I came up with:

 

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Fantasy Football

Fantasy diamonds for 2021:

We’re back once again with my fantasy diamonds piece, where I try to give you some names I think are undervalued based on current ADPs (average draft positions) across the three major platforms – NFL.com, ESPN & Yahoo.

I realized this wasn’t posted here until now, so R.I.P. J.K. Dobbins …

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NFL Top 100

My NFL Top 100 players of 2021:  

As I have done the last seven years and as the actual reason I started with my page, I have put together my personal list of the NFL’s Top 100. This was originally designed to be a ranking of the top 100 players in the league, regardless of position, for the upcoming season. And while this has more and more become a comparison of resumes and altered its criteria, in the spirit of what this was intended to be, I listed what I thought were the very best players, in relation to how good they are at their position coming into 2021. What I changed this year was actually putting ratings on these players – sort of Madden style – and one by one incorporating them into the list, while debating back and forth when multiple guys shared the same number.

There are six names to start off with, who didn’t qualify for my list. I believe they all deserve to be on it, but I just didn’t know where to put them, because of how long it’s been since we’ve seen them on the field, how often they’ve gotten hurt recently or because we just don’t know if/when we will see them play again.

I also added the 30 names that just missed the cut. So it’s almost a top 130, because I always have a tough time leaving those names off, but I feel pretty good about the ultimate rankings that I put together here.

For analysis, just click on the video, where I work my way from the bottom to the top!

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The official countdown premieres five days from now, but I’m filming this here on August 4th – just in case any players were to suffer an injury or some other news coming out, that would change the availability of certain players.

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NFL Offseason

Key position battles at 2021 NFL training camps:

With training camps for all 32 NFL teams under way now, I thought it was time to go through every single roster once again and identify what I believe are some of the more key position battles, which I would classify as an actual competition, which could take all of preseason to play out potentially.

I tried to include one example for each position, without repeating teams, and at the end I will mention a few other competitions that I will have my eyes on.


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NFL Offseason

Second- and third-year NFL players ready to break out in 2021 – Defense edition:

Once again, we have reached a part of the offseason, where there’s not many transactions or otherwise important moves to analyze around the NFL. So I took the time to put on the tape of players from the 2019 and ’20 drafts and identify which of them are bound to break out this upcoming season.

To avoid subjective interpretation of which players are or are not eligible for making this list anymore, I already stated that they can’t have made a Pro Bowl / All-Pro team so far or are just generally considered one of the top players at their position already, like a Quinnen Williams or Darnell Savage for example. To go along with that, players that have reached double-digit sacks or tackles for loss, or led his team in another major category, are excluded. Oh, and the players that made my list already last year, won’t repeat doing so.

Defensive Rookie of the Year candidates like Antoine Winfield and Jeremy Chinn did not qualify, Derrick Brown may not be in position to rack up big numbers, but he was already dominant for stretches in the middle of that Panthers defense this past season and Cardinals linebacker Isaiah Simmons was too obvious for me, since he was my number two overall prospect a year ago and should be in much better position to make plays, in a more defined role.

Just like the offensive edition, two of the first three players mentioned here were selected in the middle of the first round, but the other six names all went on day two or later.

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