It’s that time of year – the annual “my guys” episode, where I break down my favorite draft prospects at every single position! These are the players I generally just enjoyed evaluating and value higher than where they currently sit on consensus boards.
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.
The 2023/24 NFL season has come to a close, but we immediately transition into draft season, as all 32 teams have their eyes set on which young talent they want to bring in as their quest to Super Bowl 59 starts.
Some key events of the calendar have already taken place, when many of the top prospects tried to impress scouts and decision-makers across the league across multiple college all-star events. I did watch the Hula and Tropical Bowl games, but for the purposes of this article, we’ll be focusing on the Shrine and Senior Bowl. For the participants there, I already had done some background work and could contextualize what I saw across three days of practice plus the actual games.
I’ll discuss the ten players on offense and defense each, who impressed me the most and should be moving up draft boards thanks to their performances – I actually ended up going with ten each for both events. At the end, I listed several other players who helped themselves during the early stages of the process.
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:
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:
Since I invested so much time into my Super Bowl preview and a video on the ten biggest questions heading into the big game, I only got around to re-watching all the practice footage from Senior Bowl this week and with this being the only really meaningful event in this year’s pre-draft process – since the combine has already been canceled and pro days will be pretty limited as well – I think it was certainly worth studying in more detail and point out the college prospects, that impressed me the most.
This has nothing to do with any ranking or who the best players were overall, but rather who helped themselves the most with their week of practice and the actual game down in Mobile. I’m going to work through this position-by-position and explain what these young men did to make the scouts go back and watch what they might have missed originally on tape, showed in terms of something they weren’t really asked at their respective schools or in the case of smaller school prospects – how they proved that they can perform against more talented competition.
Here’s the guys that really stood out to me:
With the NFL season now in the books, we have officially entered the pre-draft process. While the combine and pro days are still ahead, the evaluation period has already started with the three major all-star games for upcoming NFL prospects – the East-West Shrine game, NFPA Bowl and the Senior Bowl of course. I re-watched all the practices and now I can tell you who stood out to me the most.
With that being said, this list is about who has boosted their draft stock the most so far, instead of simply telling you who the best players were. South Carolina defensive lineman Javon Kinlaw for example looked like the baddest dude on the field down in Mobile, but he only practiced two days and didn’t show anything we hadn’t seen, which validated more what most people already thought of him, instead of really taking him to a different level. Other guys might not have been on some teams’ draft board at all because of where they come from, but now scouts will look more into them because of what they showcased against a different level of competition.
One of my favorite weeks in the pre-draft process just passed, as more than 120 four-year college players travelled down to Mobile in order to compete one last time in pads before NFL teams decide to make them part of their organization. While most of these players aren’t used to working together and it takes more than three days for quarterbacks and receivers to get into some rhythm for example, I think these matchups of the best versus the best can be very telling for scouts, especially since everything the prospects do from now on will be in shorts. Therefore I want to point out the guys who „made some money”, meaning they got scouts talking and improved their draft stock with the way they performed in practice and/or the game.
This week down in Mobile, Alabama is one of my favorite ones of the year. More than a hundred of Senior prospects for this upcoming draft are put into positions, where they are comfortable in, but also some they are not used to. The organization’s staff does an excellent job bringing together some of the top talents in the country and it’s not just about these kids from the big-name schools, but rather they give some lesser known guys a chance to show off. This really is a chance for young players to boost their draft stock. Look no further than Temple’s Haason Reddick a year ago, who went from being considered a potential late day two pick, to being selected 13th overall by the Arizona Cardinals. We saw some superstars emerge from this event in recent years and there’s a good chance someone on this list will be in that category a few years down the line.
With an epic Super Bowl taking place in Houston not many people (who aren’t scouts or GMs) have paid a lot of attention to the college athletes entering the NFL. I watched the East-West Shrine and Senior Bowl practices and games for you to catch up to who improved their draft stock the most. Here are the players who helped themselves the most:
It was a very eventful and surprising three days in Chicago and all teams improved their roster. So now it’s time to look at who benefited most from the draft and who had to come out of it with some form of disappointment. The lists include both teams and players and at the end I put up the biggest steals on this year’s board and which players I thought didn’t present a good enough value at the spot they were taken. None of them are ranked in any particular order.
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