Star game sched gets underway … The key part of the post-season college all-star game schedule gets underway this week with both the East-West Shrine and NFLPA games set to start practices on Monday. The Shrine week goes in St. Petersburg with the game scheduled for Saturday the 21st at 3 PM ET on the NFL Network. Meanwhile, the NFLPA game is scheduled for Carson, California with that game set for Saturday at 4:15 PM ET with coverage by FS1. Of course, both games are preliminaries of sort to next week’s Senior Bowl which returns to Mobile. And while the Senior Bowl has the best prospects for the upcoming draft, there are some quality players in both Shrine and NFLPA games, especially the former. Heading the list of players to watch in St. Petersburg include QBs Cooper Rush of Central Michigan, Cincinnati’s Gunner Kiel, Zach Terrell of Western Michigan and small-school star Alek Torgenson of Penn of the Ivies. Other players to watch at the Shrine game include RBs De’veon Smith of Michigan, Utah’s Joe Williams and Elijah McQuire of Louisiana-Lafayette; WRs Gabe Marks of Washington State and Billy Brown of FCS Shepherd; OTs Dan Skipper of Arkansas and Texas A&M’s Avery Gennesy; DEs Bryan Cox of Florida, Deatrich Wise of Arkansas, Pitt’s Ejuan Price, Utah’s Hunter Dimick and Darius English of South Carolina; LBs Hardy Nickerson of Illinois and Colorado edge-rusher Jimmie Gilbert; and UCLA CB Fabian Moreau. In addition, as always, the Shrine game has a couple of Canadian players on the roster and this year Laval TE Antony Auclair and 6-6 Manitoba G/T Geoff Clark are the pair that gets to spend a free week in the sun!Here is the full roster for the Shrine East and West teams. And, as usual, the GBN will be on the ground in St. Pete as GBN Associate Editor Pigskin Paul Guillemette will be journeying south to report on the week’s activities. Meanwhile, the NFLPA includes more late round or free agent type prospects, but still has players pro scouts would ;like to see in these kinds of settings. Included in players in Carson worth an extra look or two are QBs Bready Gustafson of Montana, Ryan Higgins of Louisiana Tech, Mitch Leidner of Minnesota, and Houston All-american Greg Ward; WRs Dareus Rogers of USC and Dontre Wilson of Ohio State; the LSU trio of OG Josh Boutte, DE Lewis Neal and OLB Tashawn Bower; Rutgers DT Darius Hamilton; Michigan State ILB Riley Bullough; CBs Des Lawrence of North Carolina; and Oklahoma S Ahmad Thomas. For some reason, the NFLPA do not appear to have published a full roster, however, our Larry Parker has compiled a list of players who reportedly accepted invites to the NFLPA game (and did not subsequently decommit) here.
