Not surprisingly, all 32 teams had reps – including GMs from Miami, Tennessee and Houston – at the Texas A&M pro day, especially given that two of the Aggies top prospects – RB Isaiah Spiller and TE Jalen Wydermeyer, both of whom are considered to be among the top 2-3 guys at their respective positions for the 2022 draft – did not work out at the combine. Unfortunately, neither worked out all that well today. Spiller, for example, was clocked in a rather pedestrian 4.63 seconds for the 40 after posting an equally pedestrian 33-inch vertical. Wydermeyer, on the other did have a pretty good vertical of 35.5 inches, but his 5.03 40 clocking was very disappointing. We wondered if maybe the track at A&M was slow or some such, but there were a couple of former Aggies – G/T Kenyon Green and DT DeMarvin Leal who did run at the combine and whose times today were just a few hundredths off their times from Indy … Spiller’s time pales, in particular to that of Breece Hall of Iowa State, arguably the other top back in this year’s draft class, who ran a sub-4.4 40 at the combine. Ironically, Hall and the Cyclones also had their pro day today where Hall stood on his combine numbers but did do positional drills. Of note, Hall reportedly stayed after the formal part of the pro day ended and caught passes for about 20 minutes for scouts from Philadelphia and the Giants … Jackson State head coach Deion Sanders was in a mood as he called out the ten or so teams that did not attend JSU’s pro day on Monday which also included players from a number of other local HBCU programs. Sanders, though, may have gotten the last laugh as the absent ten missed a show by Jackson State OLB James Houston, who led all of FCS with 16.5 sacks this past season. Houston, who actually put in four rather nondescript seasons at Florida before blowing up at JSU this year, isn’t all that big at just 6-0, 225, but he’s a special athlete who was unofficially credited with a 40 clocking in the 4.6 range after posting an impressive 39-inch vertical … In calling out the ten teams who missed his team’s pro day, Sanders said he didn’t want to see any of them at today’s Mississippi State workout. Oops, as all 32 teams did make it to Starkville today. And from the old we ‘care more about who actually shows up at any given pro day’ than the actual workout, the Giants (apparently one of the ten that wasn’t at the JSU pro day – double Oops) sent their offensive coordinator and both offensive line coaches to check out MSU OT Charles Cross, a career LT whom they had work out at RT as that’s what they’re looking for. At first blush, one wonders if the Giants, who have both the 5th and 7th picks this year, were doing their due diligence just in case both Ickey Ekwonu and Evan Neal, the two top-rated tackles in the 2022 draft class, were off the board when the Giants made the 5th pick. On sober reflection, though we wonder if might be more likely that they want to use the 5th pick on a defensive player and are looking at Cross as a possibility at #7 or lower if they end up trading down … At Nebraska, WR Samori Toure and SS Deontai Williams, neither of whom was invited to the combine, posted decent numbers that might get them a late round or free agent look. Toure, who averaged almost 19.5 yards per catch this fall, had a 40 time listed in the 4.45 range, while Williams posted a 4.50 type forty, along with an especially quick short shuttle just under 4.0 seconds.
