As we said at the outset of the combine, one never wants to read too much into the results. Football is a game played in helmets and pads, not shorts, and the grades for most teams are still going to be based largely what they saw on tape during the season. That said, there was a lot to chew on coming out of this weekend’s combine in Indianapolis.
Couple of general points. First, it still doesn’t look like a great QB class this year. There are a number of good prospects at the position including Kenny Pickett, Malik Willis and Matt Corral, but there clearly is no sure-fire can’t miss elite franchise QB in the mold of Andrew Luck or Trevor Lawrence. Otherwise, though, the buzz one hears is that this year has the potential to be a really good draft with a growing number of potential elite blue-chip prospects at a number of key positions. There also appears to be some really talented depth at a number of positions this year including WR, OT, DE, and CB, such that teams may be able to add potentially useful players at those positions well into the third day of the draft.
In addition, one of the senses that one has coming out of Indy this year is that there were far more players who improved their stock than saw their grades take a hit. Let’s start with the good.
The gold medal guys: Certainly if history remembers one thing from this year’s draft, it will be the dominating performance of Georgia’s national championship defensive line and, in particular DT Jordan Davis and DE Travon Walker. It may have been that as scouts, we tended to overlook the individuals on the Dawgs’ DL because the collective was so good, but it’s not hard to imagine that teams around the NFL aren’t starting to ask themselves whether both guys should be in the top 5 conversation. Heck, should they even be in the discussion to go first overall. Stay tuned.
We see a second group of players who were already reasonably well established prospects but who really helped themselves this weekend including in no particular order Ohio State WR Garrett Wilson; Iowa State RB Breece Hall; Alabama LB Christian Harris; Georgia DT Devonte Wyatt; Wisconsin LB Leo Chenal; Ole Miss DE Sam Williams; Texas-San Antonio CB Tariq Woolen and OTs (four of ‘em) Ickey Ekwonu of NC State; Mississippi State’s Charles Cross; Northern Iowa’s Trevor Penning and Central Michigan’s Bernhard Raimann.
There is a third group including players who weren’t necessarily that highly rated coming into the combine, but will have scouts at least going back to the tape for another look including, again in no particular order, RB Pierre Strong of South Dakota State; WRs Tyquan Thornton of Baylor, Notre Dame’s Kevin Austin and Christian Watson of North Dakota State; OTs Braxton Jones of Southern Utah and Zach Thomas of San Diego State; Tennessee-Chattanooga C/G Cole Strange; Maryland TE Chig Okonkwo; DE/OLB Amare’ Barno of Virginia Tech; ILB Troy Andersen of Montana State; CBs Kalon Barnes of Baylor and Zyon McCollum of Sam Houston State; and safeties Nick Cross of Maryland and JT Woods of Baylor. Just to name a few.
On the other hand, the list of prominent prospects who were probably hoping for a better weekend in Indy include Notre Dame safety Kyle Hamilton, South Carolina DE JJ Enagbare; WRs Treylon Burks of Arkansas and Purdue’s David Bell; Texas A&M DL DeMarvin Leal; and G/Ts Kenyon Green of Texas A&M and Kentucky’s Darian Kinnard.
However, let’s also not lose sight of the fact that a number of prominent prospects chose not work out this weekend for one reason or another including Ole Miss QB Matt Corral, Texas A&M RB Isaiah Spiller; WRs Drake London of USC, John Metchie and Jameson Williams of Alabama, and Justyn Ross of Clemson; Alabama OT Evan Neal; Iowa C Tyler Linderbaum; TEs Trey McBride of Colorado State, Isaiah Likely of Coastal Carolina and Ohio State’s Jeremy Ruckert; DEs George Karlaftis of Purdue, Cam Thomas of San Diego State, USC’s Drake Jackson, and Arnold Ebiketie of Penn State: Georgia ILB Nakobe Dean; LSU CB Derek Stingley, Andrew Booth of Clemson, Derion Kendrick of Georgia; and safeties Jalen Pitre of Baylor, Verone McKinley of Oregon and Illinois’ Kerby Joseph. Of course, some of those guys, like Alabama’s Williams are injured and likely won’t be able to work out at all before the draft. So its on to the pro days which get underway later this week.
