Senior Bowl players gathering in Mobile … Participants in this year’s Senior Bowl are gathering in Mobile as we speak for the start of the three-days of practices on Tuesday. And while very few of the very top prospects for the 2024 draft will be in Mobile this week, almost all the leading second-tier candidates will be on hand. That includes QBs Michael Penix and Bo Nix who have as much to prove as anyone this week. The Senior Bowl’s QB group, though, also includes Spencer Rattler, Sam Hartman, Joe Milton and Michael Pratt, each of whom figures to be among the first ten or so QBs selected this coming April. There is a similar story at OT where none of the top 3 prospects at the position – Olu Fashanu, John Alt and JC Latham – will be there, but just about everyone else who is anybody at the position this year will be, including Tyler Guyton, Troy Fautanu, Taliese Fuaga, Jordan Morgan, Kingsley Suamataia, Patrick Paul and Javon Foster. They’ll be dealing with a pretty good group of edge rushers which includes DE Laiatu Latu, the one legit top 10 prospect in Mobile this week. Latu will be joined by the likes of Chris Braswell, Brandon Dorlus and Darius Robinson on the edges of the defensive line, while DTs T’Vondre Sweat, Byron Murphy, and Mike Hall head the list of interior DL. At the same time, expect some pretty good battles in the secondary with WRs Xavier Legette, Tez Walker, Roman Wilson, Ladd McConkey and Johnny Wilson going up against CBs Kris Abrams-Draine, Kalen King, Josh Newton, Quinyon Mitchell, and Ennis Rakestraw, with safeties Kamren Kinchens, Javon Bullard, and Cole Bishop lending support.
Senior Bowl practices get underway tomorrow (Tuesday) with sessions beginning at 10:30 AM ET and 1 PM ET and running thru Thursday and will be covered by both ESPN and the NFL Network. That should be a nice change from the past few years when the coverage was at best spotty. A couple of other notes to note. As of this afternoon, the Senior Bowl has not released the actual rosters for the two teams. Also, again as we have noted in the past, not every player who initially commits to participate in the Senior actually shows; as well, there are always roster changes over the week as players get dinged. One other thing to note, is that in the past the Senior Bowl tended to feature a fair number of small school prospects. This year, not so much; indeed, the last list we saw had just 3 players from the FCS ranks. In addition, the large majority of FBS players are from Power-5 conferences who at the time of writing look like they’ll be supplying upwards of 85% of the Senior Bowl participants.
