Transcript 0:01 Welcome on in to another action-packed and a live edition of the Between the Hash Marks podcast. 0:06 As always, I'm Matt Lombardo, joined by my friend, colleague, mentor, and the purveyor of the Two Deep Zone, Mike Tanier is here, and Michael, the finish line is within sight. The NFL Draft is roughly 36 hours away. 0:19 I am so ready for this to get underway. I am so ready to see how this plays out, and to break it all down here with you and all the good people, my friend. How you doing? I, I'm, I'm doing great. 0:29 I'm happy the finish line is happening too. There... Usually there's anticipation of can't wait for it to start. This year is a little bit of an anticipation of I can't wait for it to end. 0:39 We have not been shy about saying this is not the strongest draft, draft class in the world, yet we endeavor to persevere. Of course. 0:45 A- a- and there's a, there's a treat waiting at the end of Saturday night every year at Casa de Lombardo- Okay... and that is a heavy pour of scotch and a cigar on the deck. 0:55 Hopefully, weather permitting, we can pull that off, but that's how I celebrate getting to the finish line of the NFL Draft, which as you said, it's not just us saying it, it's people we talk to, it's people I speak to inside the league. 1:07 Not a lot of excitement about the players in this draft, but I still think it might be an exciting weekend, as it always is. It can be fun. 1:14 There's gonna be trades, there's gonna be trade speculation, there's gonna be quarterbacks, there's gonna be surprises. 1:19 I, I do have a warning for you, but I think we wanna take care of the housecleaning before I get into the warning. Yes, let's get into the housekeeping first. 1:25 If you enjoy the podcast, please go ahead and subscribe in the Apple Podcast store. Leave us a five-star rating and review for the Between the Hash Marks podcast. They really do help grow the show. 1:34 Leave the five stars, let us know what you like, what you don't like, maybe a guest or a former player, current player that you'd like to hear from. We'll try and bring them on. 1:41 But we read every five-star review on the show, Mike. That's right, and no one has given us a five-star review and then ripped us. Or you rip us gently and e- everything. We will do that. 1:52 I have no pride, I have no shame, I am desperate for attention. You can call me out in a million different ways, and I will, I will stand here with a smile and say it, because w- we crave those five-star reviews. 2:03 A- and I'll just beat you over the head with a hammer like the whack-a-mole games in the arcade- [laughs]... if you come and rip us, especially if you rip Mike, 'cause that's my boy. But, you know- [laughs]... 2:10 yes, leave us the five-star reviews, tell us what you like, rip us a little bit in good nature, uh, whatever the case may be. But we do appreciate the feedback and those reviews. 2:18 If you enjoy Mike's brand of storytelling, the sarcasm, the dad jokes, the analytics deep dives, the scouting deep dives into the bottom of the barrel of the prospects in this year's class, go subscribe to the Two Deep Zone on Substack. 2:31 If you enjoy my insider reporting, analysis, and some of the features that we put together, subscribe to Between the Hash Marks on Substack as well. 2:39 We appreciate you tuning in here on the live shows, and you can also check us out on YouTube at MattLombardo975. And Mike, you said you had a bit of a, bit of a warning for me? Little cautionary tale? 2:47 Yes, I have, I have a, a cautionary... Not so much a cautionary tale, but, like, some dad advice, a warning. This kinda crept up on me. I know it was announced a while back. I hadn't thought about it. 2:58 The first round, every team only has eight minutes to pick this year, not 10. Now, for fans, that's a great thing, because it's less bibble babble, more picks. 3:10 For you and I, that could be a problem, and I'm worried about you, because I think you try to overdo it on the first, in the first round. Don't you, Matt? I, I try to multitask a bit too much. Yeah. Yes. 3:22 You know, I, I try to get in touch with a, a, a friendly scout in a building who sometimes helps me out with letting me know the picks ahead of time so I can give them to my, my followers on BlueSky and on Threads. 3:34 Uh, I, I break down the pick by pick, "Hey, here's a key thought," on every pick, while also posting on social media about the picks as they come in. 3:43 It's a lot of balls being juggled up in the air like a circus act over here. Um, [laughs] it, it might be a little more difficult to do all of that this time around. It'll be a lot more difficult. 3:54 Now, I remember there was a year where the Vikings got their pick in w- didn't get their pick in on time, 4:00 and, like, three teams, it was the Ravens and somebody else, I think it was two teams, ran up there with the pick, and there were three picks within a 30-second, uh, timeframe. And I was doing live pick-by-pick analysis. 4:11 I almost bursted to tears. I almost bursted. You know, I was very lucky. Actually, I got, like, a, a, a text message from my editor saying, "Take your time. This is unusual. Everybody's going to be behind." 4:22 I actually needed to be talked down from the, the, from it at that point. Eight minutes, something's going to give way. And of course, you're, you're also writing an article for Friday. We both write articles for Friday. 4:31 Yes. So you're going to have to do that as well. Are we doing... Are you going to host a chat on Thursday night? I, I will host a chat. 4:39 We will have the chat open and available both to Between the Hash Marks subscribers or, uh- Yep... Two Deep Zone subscribers as well, especially come on board as a free subscriber. We'd love to- Yep... have you. 4:50 We'll open up the chat. Bring your people to hang with my people. Um- Yes... I, I'll be in there. I'll pop in there from time to time as I'm juggling all of the balls and, and like the- Right... 4:59 the little, uh, circus act here. Friday, are you gonna host the chat on Friday? I will host the chat on Friday with the big caveat being I gotta write for Saturday morning. 5:08 So what I'm doing is organizing my thoughts, being a gadfly on the social media, putting together the draft grade articles for Monday so it's not on high rotation. 5:17 Hopefully having a cocktail, uh, very quietly, surreptitiously. So I will be there, and you are certainly welcome to stop by, and it's super informal, because Fridays should be super informal, especially in this draft. 5:28 I don't anticipate there's gonna be, like, a run on quarterbacks at the start of the second round like there was, I believe, in 2011. Um, but th- through all of this, folks who join us, we will be there. 5:38 We'll be happy to, to, to be there, chat amongst ourselves, et cetera. Could be a little crazy-'Cause as, we're not used to, like, 9:00 PM rolling by and being on pick 20, which is what we might be looking at. 5:51 Usually it's like, "Oh, you're on pick nine," and you are half asleep and you're wishing it would go a little faster. We're gonna be in be-careful-what-you-wish-for situation on Thursday night. 5:59 Yeah, and it's gonna be wild because you might have a backlog of, like, three or four picks that are made- Yeah... 6:05 before they're announced on TV because the interviewing the prospects after they give Roger Goodell the bro hug. Mm-hmm. Uh, there's commercials that have to play. You know, the- Mm-hmm... 6:14 the, the TV broadcast holds Roger Goodell, you know, going to the podium to announce them, but that does not stop the picks from being made- Yeah... in the inter-league system. 6:24 You know, so everybody knows what the pick is when it gets announced into the war room. You might be three picks behind on the TV by the time people see it. 6:30 So if you wanna find out what's happening, I'm going to try- Yeah... I'm going to try to tip the picks this year because people seem to enjoy them. Yeah. 6:38 No promises it'll happen, but if I can, you might get a few picks ahead of what they're saying on TV. Right, and, uh, so that's also, like, a spoiler warning. If you do not like that experience, then come in- Bang boat? 6:49 Yeah, a lot, a lot of people prefer that. It's like they know that there's TV fake manufactured drama going on, and that's not that exciting to them. So a- and again, uh, and also you're not 100% fl- You're not Shefty. 7:02 You get some of them, but you don't get all of them, so it's not like everything's gonna get picked. But you might get a few if you come and, uh, hang out with Matt and I. Exactly. And you know, we talk about drama. 7:12 There was certainly a lot of drama in the Delaware Valley this week. Uh-huh. 7:15 As, as part of ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter's annual draft notebook, uh, the, the biggest nugget that grabbed the headlines and set social media ablaze on Monday, uh, the expectation is that A.J. 7:27 Brown will be traded post June 1 to the New England Patriots. I have reactions, but what's yours? Um, w- it, it looked like it were, we were heading in that direction. 7:38 Now, I'll admit I was super skeptical early on in this process because what turned out to be a reality sounded a lot like connect the dots initially. You know, to, to, to have dots connected on... 7:48 Sometimes the dots connect themselves. Now that you look at it, it's, it's, you know, uh, I wanna see the compensation. It looks like a necessary evil for the Eagles. It looks like a smart move for the Patriots. 7:58 Um, a- and the Eagles have been heading in this direction for weeks, which is why they trade for Drop Tavian Wicks and they bring in, uh, Hollywood Brown. I have to stop calling him Drop Tavian. 8:09 I know, I know, Dontayvion Wicks, and they bring in, uh, the, the other guy, uh- Elijah Moore... Elijah Moore, uh, who's, like, a slot guy. They've been feathering nests as best they can, and I kinda left it at that. 8:20 You, you, you were in, you were, uh, in the front lines of all the conversation about this and how toxic they got? Yeah, mostly with fans. Uh, a- and Eagles fans- Mm-hmm... 8:32 you can, you can, you know, blast me, throw it in a five-star review you wanna leave for the podcast. [laughs] Rip me, @mattlombardoNFL on Threads, @mattlombardo on Blue Sky, whatever. But you know- Mm-hmm... 8:42 you and I chatted, uh, I believe it was Tuesday morning. 8:45 But every morning after I drop my son off at daycare, I pop up the phone, I start scrolling through Blue Sky a little bit, scrolling through Threads, try to get the lay of the land in the news- Mm-hmm... 8:54 how fans are reacting to it, and it just seemed, it seemed like Eagles fans were so joyous to be dancing on A.J. Brown's grave as a Philadelphia Eagle and posting- [laughs]... 9:06 you know, cut clips of all the dropped passes that he's had or- Uh-huh... questionable effort on routes last year and Kevin Patola's offense and- Mm-hmm... blasting A.J. Brown. And the, the thing is, you said it. 9:18 We've kind of been trending in this direction for a long time. Yeah. And I go back to, uh, the, the hours after the Eagles lost to the 49ers. 9:28 I wrote in four downs talking to an executive in a different building, "The Eagles may need to trade A.J. Brown." Mm-hmm. 9:34 And that might be what needs to happen because you've seen Jalen Hurts and Nick Sirianni and Kevin Patola try to force targets into A.J. Brown during the season. 9:42 That might have derailed some of the offense, held them back, and you know, people like me, it was, "Oh, they're never gonna trade A.J. Brown. They won't trade A.J. Brown." [laughs] "Why would they do that?" Right. 9:52 And then you have the reports from Dan Orissini and Mike Garafolo and Ian Rapoport of, "Oh, A.J. Brown might be on the move. He could get traded. Uh, talks are intensifying. The Rams are involved." 10:04 People are blasting Dan Orissini and Mike Garafolo and Ian Rapoport and me. And I just- [laughs]... 10:09 find it interesting how all of in the snap of some fingers, all the vitriol and all the anger that was directed at- [laughs]... the media and reporters and analysts about suggesting that A.J. 10:20 Brown would be traded is now, like, all of a sudden, forget the fact that you won a Super Bowl in that, in that organization. Right. Forget the fact that he was instrumental in getting the two Super Bowls. 10:30 Now that he's getting traded, all this anger is directed at A.J. Brown, and you know what, Mike? I'm gonna do something. I'm gonna chug some copium. Oh my God, what are you ta- what are you drinking? The... 10:40 It, it's copium. What? It's, it's copium because fans are just coping with the outrage of the player getting traded. My, my copium doesn't come in liquid form. It don't come in bottles that look like that. What was that? 10:51 It, it used to... It, it's just water now. It used to be a small batch imperial stout. Oh, okay, okay, cool. So, so it is homeopathic copium. It was just a little gag. You were just... Yeah, it was, 11:03 it's copium and it's also tribalism 'cause once he's gone, you have to suddenly flip the switch and the person who was the hero two years ago undoubtedly now must be, like, the super villain. 11:14 Um, but, uh, you know, a lot of the conversation around this leading up to it was, and somebody actually sent a mailbag, uh, a couple of weeks ago from me, it's like, "Why do we keep hearing about this when it's completely impossible because of his cap number?" 11:27 And it, well, one of the answers is Carson Wentz was untradeable because of his cap number. We're all old enough to remember that, and also for being bad. Um, and, and yet the Eagles m- were able to manufacture a trade. 11:39 And the one thing I could say about it is, like, as bad as the cap situation will be, everybody wanted it.Brown wants out, Eagles want him out. It sounds like Sirianni was, is going to be happy to see him go. 11:52 Patriots want him, other teams probably were interested in him. Where there's a will, there's a way, and I think that's where we landed on all of this. 12:01 But another part of this I heard, by the way, 'cause I wrote something a, like, l- a week or two ago, and it's like, "Boy, the Eagles have brought in Moore and Wicks and, and Hollywood. 12:09 It sure sounds like they're going to be moving on." And, and people were very cleverly, like, adding up their receptions and saying, "Well, that, that doesn't add up to A.J. Brown to me." 12:19 It's like, hey, no, you know what? Great analysis. It's never going to add up to A.J. Brown, right? 'Cause, 'cause A.J. Brown, when he's motivated, is a, is an All-Pro player, one of the best receivers in the league. 12:29 But when he doesn't want to be here, you have to create some kind of semblance of a plan for moving on from him, and that's what the Eagles were doing. Not simply replacing him, "Oh, we'll, we'll be fine. 12:38 We'll just put Hollywood Brown out there." N- no one was thinking that, and I don't think no one's thinking that moving forward. 12:43 No, and I think it's just a complete restructuring of that offense generally, and that's one of the reasons why you bring in someone like Sean Mannion. Because- Yeah... w- we talk to Packers fans all the time. 12:52 We break down Packers film. We've seen the Packers passing a game and Matt LaFleur's offense and, by extension, Sean Mannion's scheme. It, it's not having that number one alpha dog. I mean, Tucker- Right... 13:03 Graf might be as the tight end, but it's having three, four, five serviceable 1A/wide receiver type of 2s. And it seems like the Eagles are collecting wide receiver type of 2s to pair with- Yeah... 13:16 DeVonta Smith, because they're going to be spreading the football around. 13:20 I mean, people talked about last year, what was the biggest concern, what was the biggest issue in that passing game in Philadelphia, and it was the predictability. And the predictability- Yeah... 13:28 a lot of the time is, "Hey, we're gonna chuck it up to A.J. Brown, and he's gonna go get it." That was the predictability. When you have- Mm... 13:33 four or five competent wide receivers, then you can send them different route concepts. It changes the philosophy of the passing game, and I don't know that A.J. Brown is fit for that type of a system. 13:43 I think you put him in New England, who when they were at their best, it's when they were explosive. It was when- Mm-hmm... they were pushing the ball vertically with Drake May. 13:51 He fits that scheme ideally, in my opinion, with Josh McDaniels, and I think he's gonna do, do terrific there. 13:57 The Eagles, I think, are reshuffling the deck and reimagining the passing game and trying to figure out what works for Jalen Hurts, figuring out what works for Dallas Goedert, figuring out how to keep DeVonta Smith involved, and how to keep unpredictability, it, with those other receivers. 14:13 What do you think the compensation's gonna look like for the Eagles? See, that, that's... I, I, I struggle with that because- Mm, same... it's, it, it's, it's a one-man negotiating team, right? 14:23 You're not drumming up a bidding war for A.J. Brown at this point if you're this deep into the conversations. Mm-hmm. May- maybe a second and a third-round pick. Uh, do- does that sound reasonable? 14:33 May- uh, maybe you get a one, but that seems like that would be a real stretch if you had to wait until after the draft- Yeah... 14:42 and you had to basically narrow it down to you're negotiating with one team rather than negotiating with three, five, or 10 different teams to, to spark a bidding war. 14:50 Yeah, I, I think, 'cause Shefte said something like it could be a first-rounder, but he didn't know in what year, which tells me it's 2028. Yeah. 14:58 That, that Howie wants the first-rounder, wants to be able to say he got the first-rounder. 15:02 And of course, you push past this draft, and then you push past another one, and y- you get the, a, a team saying, "Wait, we're getting A.J. Brown's services for two years. 15:11 And then it's like a layaway plan, and then we pa- we pay at the end, [laughs] end of it." And you'll get teams that are willing to do that. 15:17 That's possible, but if it's anything like a first-rounder, it's like that kind of deferment plan situation where the Patriots can say, "Look, that's, that's so far in the future, really, for planning purposes that, like, 15:28 i- if things work out as planned, have the pick. It's gonna be the 31st or 32nd pick in the draft that year. 15:34 And we'll have done all these other things and gone to another Super Bowl, and, and we're happy to pay that way." Yeah, I, I could even see the Eagles insisting on a second-round pick in 2027 only because- Uh-huh... 15:45 it's supposed to be such a deeper NFL draft. It's supposed to be- Right... far more talented overall. There's gonna be a deeper quarterback class. Mm. 15:52 Not if the Eagles are in the market for a quarterback, but depending on where you wind up picking, may- maybe you become part of a trade situation. Yeah. But I, I... 16:00 If, if they can get a first-round pick, I think that Eagles fans sh- should be thrilled with that, especially- Mm... um, when you look at A.J. 16:07 Brown, he had the 1,400-yard year in 2023, just over 1,000 yards each of the last two seasons, seven touchdowns each of the last three. 16:15 If you're moving towards a multiple target type of a scheme and you don't have- Y-... that alpha dog, first-round pick is a great asset to keep building around. 16:24 First, uh, round pick, and there's not gonna be a first-round pick who can replace Brown in this draft. You know, you could talk about, oh, yeah, Denzel Boston or somebody like that would be there. 16:33 He would fit into the committee. So for Eagles st- fan standpoint, what we, what, what fans would love is A.J. Brown from two years ago or whatever year, whatever the good years were where he was really with the program. 16:44 That's not coming back. You're n- never gonna get that. 16:48 I- if this all falls through and you get him in 2026, uh, barring some amazing, like, emotional counseling group therapy or something like that, you're not getting that, so look at what you can get. 16:58 What you can get right now is, yeah, the reshuffled deck. You might get a high pick in a future draft. 17:03 And look at the resources being reallocated in other places to try to keep the Eagles team together and to make them look and feel different, 'cause I think all of us here in the Philadelphia area would like to see the Eagles look and feel different than they did last year. 17:14 And I think it's one of these things that it works out for both sides because the Eagles, as you said, they get to reshuffle the deck. They get to hit the reset button. They get to rechange their identity- Yeah... 17:23 adjust their identity on offense. A.J. Brown goes a- and he plays with a quarterback who was the runner-up in the MVP voting last year. Plays in an- Yeah... 17:30 offense with Josh McDaniels where he can be that true number one. He could be that 12 to 1,400 yard receiver in New England opposite, uh, uh, uh, Keysh- uh, Keshan Boody in a system- Ri-... where you're gonna... 17:41 TreVeyon Henderson is gonna be a guy who runs the ball, becomes the, the force multiplier as the running game. It just seems like he's going to be a guy who you... 17:50 What he thought he was going to be in Philadelphia, he's now going to be in a better system in New England.You got Romeo Doubs too And Romeo Doubs. 17:59 Yeah And, and McDaniels likes having the opportunity to send a bunch of guys deep. Uh, when he has a quarterback that can throw deep, he does that, and that was May a lot of last year. 18:08 He was throwing to Butte, who was good at it, more pretty good at it, and then he was throwing to Mack Hollins, who's Mack Hollins. 18:14 You know, and he was throwing to Stefon Diggs when Diggs was with the program, which was actually a pretty high percentage of the time last year, but that clock was ticking [laughs] as we reached the Super Bowl. 18:22 So yeah, you can build this, and, uh, the Patriots haven't done anything splashy this off-season. It, you know, Doubs is not a spl- a splashy pick. 18:30 This is the splashy one, where you look at them and say, "Hey, we're not just banking on, uh, last year's success or taking a lateral step because we knew we still had rebuilding to do." 18:40 This is the thing that says, "Here we are, we're the defending champions in the AFC. We're going to act that way, and you have to come at us that way." 18:47 And you look at how they were shut down by the Seahawks in the Super Bowl, it was twofold. Mm. It was bringing pressure- Yeah... and it was the secondary winning on the perimeter- Yeah... 18:55 eliminating the deep ball opportunities, other than some garbage time in the fourth quarter to Stefon Diggs and Mack Hollins. Yeah. You now have A.J. 19:03 Brown, who's the legitimate take the top off of defense, well with secondary, uh, behind him. 19:08 Uh, you know, you, you, you have a guy who can take the top off and be that big-play threat that they were missing in the, the biggest game of their season, the grandest stage in sports. Right. 19:16 Well, one thing we just, the only caution to throw out here is this hasn't actually happened yet, 19:22 and probably isn't going to hap- We're, we won't know anything until June 2nd, unless there's anybody involved in this who has a hard time keeping secrets. I can't think of anyone off the top of my head. 19:32 Um, but the, so, like, a little bit of caution, but it definitely feels like, like you said, you were reporting it for weeks. Other, the insiders, the, the top alpha-dog insiders reporting it for weeks. 19:42 Looks like it's happening. Looks like it's gonna happen, and before any of that happens, it is the NFL Draft, and that's why a lot of people are here. Yeah. 19:49 Kicks off tomorrow night, inside of 36 hours, before Fernando Mendoza becomes a Las Vegas Raider, and then all the uncertainty begins. And, you know, each year I put together one mock draft. Right. 19:59 I'm not a fan of putting together five, six, seven mock, weekly mock drafts. Uh, if, if I fill out a March Madness bracket, I fill out one. I don't see the need to fill out 15. 20:09 But I spend time on it, and, and I, and I ask- Yeah... around to agents who I trust, I ask around to people in front offices, I ask around to assistant coaches to get some insight into the mock draft. 20:19 It's up at Between the Hash Marks right now. Um, and, and it's, it's one of these things where they're my predictions, and it's, it's formed with the insight gleaned from conversations with people inside the league. 20:30 But I don't know if you have this feeling, Mike, it, it feels like this draft, there's more unpredictability about it, less certainty about it than ever. 20:37 Because we don't even know for sure what the Jets are going to do at number two, and there are so many dominoes that could be falling inside the top 10. 20:45 And then after the top 10, it really is anybody's guess, because you talk to people around the league and there's this feeling that two-thirds, according to an assistant general manager I spoke to- Yeah... 20:54 two-thirds of the first round are non first-round graded prospects. This just isn't- Right... a very talented, deep class overall. 21:03 I think that leads to a lot more unpredictability than we've seen in a lo- in a long time. That's the impression I got reading your mock draft, is that your sources are like, "I don't know," or, "Eh." 21:13 [laughs] You know, like, like, they're in that place, so it's hard for us to drum up business. 21:16 'Cause when you're really talking to people in the know, they're like, "Yeah, yeah, a bunch of teams are gonna try to trade down because they don't like what they see." And it's like, well, everybody can't trade down. 21:26 Somebody's gotta be willing to trade up. Now, what, what happens sometimes is you make an offer you can't refuse, and some team trades up. But it was a, it was a very cool mock draft. 21:34 I'm gonna go through a couple of the pieces with you. Yeah. I don't wanna go through all of it. People can check it out, some Between the Hash Marks. Mendoza, number one. 21:41 I mean, there's no, there's no nothing to be said about that. Right away at the second spot you have the Jets, like I mentioned, you have the Jets taking Arval Reece number two- Yeah... 21:49 which is not a big surprise, and you also have them taking Omar Cooper later in that tr- first round. Yeah, I think Arval Reece, uh, to me, he's the number one defensive prospect overall on the board. 21:59 Six and a half sacks last year, 10 tackles for loss. Mm-hmm. Disruptive in the back field, gets to the back field in a hurry. I think what the Jets would like about him is the versatility. 22:09 Line him up as an edge rusher, move him to the inside as an inside linebacker from time to time if you want to. Kinda that chess piece, that Swiss Army knife. You need that kinda player in Aaron Glenn's defense. 22:21 They don't have a lot of playmakers on that side of the ball, which is kinda shocking given that Aaron Glenn is such a defensive-minded, you know- Yeah... head coach. Need to get one of those. 22:31 And the Omar Cooper pick, that just comes from talking to people who say, you know, their biggest need on offense is they need, they need receiver help. 22:37 And I think there's going to be a run on receivers from about pick maybe five, but certainly- Mm... from pick six through pick 11, I think you're gonna see a run on receivers. 22:48 And I, I, I just have this sense that Omar Cooper might be one of the last men standing with a first-round grade for the Jets to get a receiver when they go on the, the clock the second time at 16. 22:58 What, what I like about Cooper for a, a team with, like, not the best plan at quarterback right now, is that he's a catch a short pass and yak guy. That he runs his l- the, the little slants and things like that. 23:10 He'll rumble forward for yardage. It's not n- it's no nonsense. It's not nifty-shifty. He's gonna try and make one guy miss and get as many yards as possible. Geno will appreciate that. 23:19 I love Arval Reece's versatility, but I hate Arval Reece's versatility for the Jets. 23:25 Not saying they aren't gonna take him, not saying they really shouldn't take him, but the Jets, it's kinda like, uh, you know, I have to give my, my elderly mother a jitterbug phone. She can't... 23:36 Y- old, old folks can't use the cell phone, the smartphone you and I use with all the features, 'cause if it has more than the 10 numbers and one button, they're done. 23:45 The Jets are like an elderly person trying to use a smartphone. You have to give them the least possible options, because they will break it, they will get themselves into the wrong mode. 23:55 It's like the remote control and they get into the mode where they're on satellite as opposed to on, uh, cable, and then that's it. They have to ha- y- you get the phone call and you have to go over there and help 'em. 24:04 And I worry Arval Reece on the Jets will be a guy that, like, okay, Glenn will be like, "Okay, I'm gonna use you as a Swiss Army knife." 24:10 Then Glenn'll get fired in October-And then the next coach will come in and say, "You're a linebacker," or, "You're an edge rusher," or, "You're a running back," or something like that, and Reese will be another first-round pick that the Jets trade in two years, like Sauce, and like Quinnen Williams, and like Quincy Williams, or whichever Williams they traded, and everyone else you can name, Jamal Adams, 'cause they couldn't handle him. 24:29 That, so that's not an indictment of Reese, but that's a general feeling about the Jets. Yeah, and that they certainly have the track record of mismanaging top picks and not- Yeah... 24:38 being able to develop homegrown talent, or at least developing them into mere lottery tickets that you trade for future first-round picks. Mm-hmm. Re- Reese feels like one of the guys that could stop that trend. 24:48 That if you're- Okay... 24:48 serious about rebuilding and you have the two first-rounders this year, you have the three first-rounders next year, one of them you're hoping, at least one of them, is invested in a quarterback, that the hope is that you're gonna be drafting a whole bunch of up-and-coming defensive players to put around Arval Reese. 25:05 So, that gives you- Yeah... that fluidity, and it gives you the peace. Okay, he's a cog in the machine, but I'm building a machine. 25:11 He's not going to be Sauce Gardner, where, like, I'm the one lockdown cornerback- Yeah... on a defense of, of no names. You know what I'm saying? Right, right, and they have Damario Davis, they had Minkah Fitzpatrick. 25:21 They've ma- they've spent some money getting maybe a little too old on defense, but they're guys who know what they are talking about, and will get guys into the right position, and will create a good opportunity for Arval Reese, or if it's somebody like Bailey, they'd be in a similar situation. 25:35 Now, I, I... Let's, let's skip a couple of the meh teams here, 'cause you get to the Giants. 25:39 Now, I need, I need to be in the war room with you as you are putting the finishing touches on this, which I m- imagine took several days, 25:49 and Saturday night comes around, and you wanna relax and hang out with the kids, and maybe have some of that, uh, stout porter there, and the Dexter Lawrence trade comes in, 26:00 and you had the Bengals taking somebody, and you did not have the Bengals taking Carnell Tate, who I see the Giants taking. How much rewriting did you have to do when that trade came in? 26:09 Yeah, so just to set the scene, Saturday my wife and daughter are at a Girl Scout camp out. Uh-huh. So I have my son, who's three, it's just him and I the whole day. 26:19 So we have a whole day of, like, we went to the car show, took him to two of his- Oh, nice... favorite playgrounds, played outside with his best friend who lives next door. 26:28 Put him to bed, and I'm thinking I, I'm, I had a great day, but I'm also like, "Okay, the Flyers are on. It's a playoff game." [laughs] "Let me crack open this..." Oh, no. 26:37 [laughs] Do, do you re- do you remember, do you remember the media party for the Super Bowl in Minnesota when Alex Smith got traded? Yes, yes. To, to the- We were both three drinks in. We were both three drinks in. 26:50 I was an Eagles beat reporter, you were a national reporter, and so many of the Chiefs and 49ers reporters were like, "Oh, man, I gotta go back. I can't go over to the Mall of America for the, the, the party. 27:02 I gotta go write." Uh-huh. And I'm like, "Oh, God, I got, I can't, like, sip this beer. I gotta write, I gotta put it all together." 27:08 Uh, but, but fortunately, inside the war room, the, the pick that the Miami Dolphins wound up making- Yeah... at number 11 wasn't all that dissimilar to what I thought that- Okay... the Giants would do at number 10. 27:24 So I could kinda slide- Okay... down, make a couple switches there. But when the trade went down, my first thought was, "Okay, great trade for the Giants, great trade for the Bengals, but oh, my God- Yeah... 27:33 I have to, like, rework this mock draft that I spent four days working on." Yeah, yeah, and those big, you make one, so yours really, really counts. 27:39 You're not somebody who just spits them out and makes a mock draft simulator do most of it, 'cause that's what a lot of the folks do. 27:45 And, and for years, I only had to do two at Bleacher Report, and one was, like, in, like, before the combine, and then one was this Monday. But the this Monday one is the big one, 'cause it sits for a couple of days. 27:55 It's a big, it's a big cornerstone. I, I don't remember ever the Saturday night top 10 guy. 28:02 Because the higher up, obviously, it is on the draft board, the more likely the knock-on effect makes it harder for you to, like, like, rewrite it suddenly and not create, like, an obvious implausibility somewhere along the way, where some team just takes, "I'm just gonna throw a guy out there." 28:19 And, like, you try to hide it in, like, the Cardinals pick or something, where no one's gonna read it. 28:24 Th- there was no opportunity for that for you, except I guess the Dolphins had a guy that you could move around a little bit. 28:29 Yeah, I, I, I thought that the Cardinals were either going wide receiver/cornerback or cornerback/wide receiver- Yeah... um, because I think those are the two biggest needs. 28:39 So you had to shuffle a couple of teams as far as corners go to make, to make it work. Um, but I, but I wound up moving, uh, Carnell Tate from the, the Dolphins at- Yes... 11 to the Giants at 10. Uh- Yeah... 28:54 but the thought process was I had the Giants taking, um, a, uh... I, I thought the Giants would want a wide receiver. I would think that- Yeah... 29:00 if you have two, two picks in the top 10, one of them has to be a wide receiver for Jaxson Dart, and it just so happened, okay, that makes sense to move him there. Let me just ship- Yeah... 29:10 a corner from a different team and put him with the, the Dolphins. And that's kinda what they might have been thinking in the room a little bit. 29:16 Like, "We gotta get up to the point where we can get one of these wide receivers. Let's do this." Talking briefly about, about the Dexter trade, this was another necessary evil. He wanted out. 29:25 He, he wanted out and money in almost pretty much that order. That's clearly what was going on there. 29:32 Yeah, I think so, so too, and he also not only got the chance to get out and get money at $28 million for that one-year extension at the end of the deal that makes him the second-highest-paid- Yeah... 29:41 defensive tackle i- in the league behind Chris Jones, he gets the chance to go and, and meaningfully contend. And we can all talk about the Giants being on the rise. 29:50 Maybe they're a playoff team this year, maybe they're a year away. 29:54 It, it isDeep playoff run or bust in Cincinnati because you have an impatient quarterback in Joe Burrow, that you've invested half a billion dollars in on his wide receiving corps, the weapons on offense. 30:05 You had the worst rushing defense in the league. You go and get an All-Pro nose tackle who specializes in stopping the run and creating pressure on the quarterback up the middle. It's a win-win-win for everybody. 30:16 The, the Bengals get arguably the best player currently available anywhere in the league, draft or otherwise- Yeah... 30:23 and the Giants get a second top 10 pick to keep building out an elite, not, not elite, but an ascending roster, and there's kind of this fork in the road for them, right? Because they can either sit there- Mm-hmm... 30:35 take two blue-chip players, one at five, one at 10, or you package five and 10 together, and if you have to get Jeremiah Love, who you absolutely love and adore, and you have to have him- Oh, God, no... you go get him. 30:46 Do, do not. I'm not arguing to do that. [laughs] I'm not arguing to do that. [laughs] But I could see the Giant- I could see the Giants doing something like that as a divergent path. 30:55 I, I think Harbaugh looked at this situation and said, "I start- I gotta start getting my guys in." He wants the two blue chips. 31:02 He was looking around and saying, "How many other Dexter Lawrences have gotten very comfortable with all the substitute teachers that have been hanging around here?" 31:09 It's like, "Well, give me more money or whatever, or let me go." And like, "Let me get my guys in." I think he wants the two blue chips there. 31:15 I think the Bengals were looking at the draft class and, and you have that early run on receivers. People can go check it out. 31:21 They were looking out and saying, "What happens if there is no early run on receivers, if it's all defense, and we come to the 10 and it's Cardale Tate, Mekhi Lemon, and the one position we do not need anyone at, wide receiver, is, is there, and we try to trade down and we don't get what we want?" 31:35 So they say, "Let's turn it around right now for a blue-chip defensive player. 31:39 Then we don't have to play, uh, g- cross our fingers that we aren't sitting there saying, 'Oh, I, I guess we can have the greatest wide receiver corps in history and no defense. I guess that's a thing we can do.'" 31:50 Yeah, we've tried that and, and- [laughs] Exactly right... we go eight and nine every single year, right? And we- Right... we split with the Ravens and lose the Ravens game that matters in, in the- Right... 31:59 standings at the end, uh, towards the playoff race. So this is a counterpunch to Derrick Henry. It's a counterpunch to Lamar Jackson. It is a- Yeah... counterpunch in the postseason to James Cook and Josh Allen. 32:09 A- and it's a move that I think helps them tremendously. Mm-hmm. And if you're the Giants and you can come away with a Caleb Downs, who I think that John Harbaugh absolutely loves- Yeah... 32:19 and there's a strong belief inside the league that Caleb, uh, Downs is earmarked for the Giants. Yeah. Back end, thumper- Yeah... good in coverage. They need to bolster their se- secondary in a really desperate way. 32:32 You can get him. Mm-hmm. And then you have the, the luxury then at number 10 to take best available, whether it's the best defensive player or cornerback, or maybe it's a corner. Mm-hmm. 32:41 Or it's the best receiver still on the board to help Jaxson Dart, and you kind of start to build out with Dart, with your incoming rookie receiver, maybe it's Cardale Tate- Mm... 32:50 with Malik Nabers, with Cam Скабелла healthy. You got good bones on offense now. You got young bones to, to build around on that side of the ball. So I love the trade for both teams. 32:59 Yeah, and you have Cardale Tate going to the Giants with Caleb Downs. Downs is kind of unassailable. What I like about Tate is I consider him a very good wide receiver, too. Yeah. 33:08 And if you put him next to Malik Nabers, and Malik Nabers is kind of the guy who really draws the coverage and does what Jeremiah Smith kinda did at Ohio State, and this guy is the pain in the butt who's always getting open underneath and then getting past your number two cornerback, then he looks a lot better. 33:23 And I can see exactly then what the Giants are trying to put together if that's the one-two punch. 33:27 I like Tate to the Giants better than I like Tate to a lot of the other teams who might be saying, "Hey, come fix our offense." So it's like, eh, I'm not really that kind of wide receiver. 33:35 Yeah, and you see Cardale Tate, you know, mocked a lot of times to the New Orleans Saints, and I just, I kind of the same- Sure... argument. Like- Yeah... 33:42 I, I, I like Mekhi Lemon there because you, you hear the Jackson Smith and Jigbook, uh, comparisons- Right... from people inside the league. 33:49 I think he's a great fit opposite of a guy like Chris Olave, but you know, you look at Cardale Tate, to your point, 198 yards after the catch last year. 33:57 You throw him on intermediate routes or crossing patterns or- Yep... slant routes or, or skinny posts because there's that extra room because of the safety is sucked over to Malik Nabers' side. That's- Right... 34:07 that's a yak weapon to move the chains. Giants need somebody like that, so yeah, I agree with you. I think he, o- of the receivers and their best fits, I think Tate and the Giants are, are up there together. 34:17 That's a very good fit, and then you say, well, they have I- Isaiah Likely as well, and that takes pressure off him to be anything but, like, a stream- seam-stretching tight end. 34:24 He doesn't have to be, like, the possession guy. Um, let's skip a couple guys. Go to the Commanders, and that's where you put Jeremiah Love, which seems like a perfectly normal place for Jeremiah Love to go. 34:33 It, it does, and I think that if he's there on the board, I think that they, they're one of those teams that gets to pick in the second go- they go on the clock, right? 34:40 Because you look at Jeremiah Love, you plant him next to, you plant him right next to Jayden Daniels in that backfield. 34:46 Here's a guy, 56 forced, missed tackles last year, averaged four and a half yards after contact last year. 39 explosive runs of 10 yards or more. Mm-hmm. Guy- guys, we're looking up... 34:56 Th- this is year three for Jayden Daniels. Like, we're getting into, like, nut-cutting time for Jayden Daniels making that leap. You know, Terry McLaurin is there, yes, but, but where are the other weapons? 35:06 What, what else does he have to work with? 35:08 With everything they have invested i- in Jayden Daniels, it feels like you need a Jeremiah Love force multiplier to kinda reignite that offense that took a big step back and, and because of a lot of the pressure that he was forced to carry last year and forced to face from defenses, big reason why he was so injury-prone last season. 35:26 I, I love the pick there. I don't know that he's going to be, in reality, on the board that long, though. Now I'm gonna throw a scenario at you. Okay. Okay. 35:34 Now I remind you, the Commanders don't have a second round pick, don't have a fourth round pick 'cause of the Tunzel trade last year. Yep. So they're sitting there, and Jeremiah Love's on the board, and the phone rings. 35:43 Ring, ring, ring, ring. Hello? "Hey, it's the Rams. How you doing?" "Oh, what do you got for me?" "Well, you see, we're in F Them Picks mode, and we have no needs because we're awesome. 35:56 No needs whatsoever, but we thought it would be fun to have a Jeremiah Love."On our roster to just destroy everything in our path and to show the Seahawks we mean business this year. 36:07 So you go down a couple slots, I, I honestly don't have written down how many slots do- down you have to go for the Rams, and we'll throw in a second rounder for you. What do you say? Hmm. 36:20 I, I, I might need a second and a third. Oh, how- Or maybe a little bit more. Maybe a little bit more... Well, you know, we're not... 36:27 Well, you see, while we're in FM picks mode, we're not stupid, so we're gonna throw in a second and a fourth, which I'm assuming without looking at the Rams', uh, total pick package, we have to offer you. 36:37 How about a second and a fourth to move down, uh, to, to... It's only to the Falcons' spot, remember. It's the Falcons' spot, it's not our spot. We traded that pick long ago. That's a Trent McDuffie. 36:47 You're just moving down, down to Falcon land, which is, like, what, 10th, 11th, 12th? What was it? Down at the front? Uh, they are picking at number... The Falcons, come on, big board. Um, th- th- 13. 37:00 They're at number 13 13? So I'm moving down- Four spots... six spo- Six spots. Six spots. [laughs] I gotta, I gotta make sure I have this taped up next to me. Six spots. What do you say? You know what? 37:12 I could probably get me a Jordan Tyson there. I could probably get a number two- [laughs]... wide receiver there. I- I'll, I'll take your second and your fourth. We'll call it a deal. Ex- excellent, excellent. 37:21 Now we're gonna be, gonna be calling Puka's lawyer, so we'll talk to you later. Bye-bye. Um, [laughs] 37:29 but, but, uh, c- 'cause that's one of the things that could happen with a Jeremiah Love scenario, and if the Commanders are there, they do have to listen to the possibility of trading down. 37:36 'Cause not having a second, not having a fourth, and having one of the oldest rosters even now, even though they got rid of some of the old guys, that would be a, a scenario. I think... 37:44 I, I was on a Commanders, um, podcast, and the possibility of trading down, I know their fans are interested in that if it comes up. Love sitting there might change fan interest a little bit, but it'd be a tricky call. 37:56 I think so, too. It, it obviously becomes a conversation in that war room a- and it becomes, okay, how close do we really think we are, right? Yeah. Do we think that we can win the division this year? Right. 38:06 Do we think that Jayden Daniels is going to turn it around? Then I think you almost have to sit there and take Love, the best player on the board, by some accounts the best player in the entire draft- Right... 38:16 at a position that helps prop up your young quarterback, maybe even help him take big steps in his development. 38:21 If you think that last year wasn't just the injuries to Jayden Daniels, wasn't just that you goofed by going all-in- Yeah... 38:27 on older players and increasing your injury risk and that risk coming home to roost, if you think you have real structural needs, then I think you have to entertain the thought of, of trading down. 38:37 Um, well, let me throw one quick question. Do you, do you think that Love slides that far to number seven? Because it really feels like four at the Titans is, is the stress test of Jeremiah Love and where he goes. 38:50 I could see the Titans doing it. The Titans have talked up the possibility of doing it. They need so much help in so many places. So it's very much a, a, a push/pull with the, 39:00 as a analytics person, like, he needs to go down a little bit further to be at his maximum usefulness. He needs to get down into 9, 10, 11, 12. 39:10 But I recognize he's probably the best all-around player, and I recognize that each of these teams along the way who has the quarterback, that's the Titans, okay? That's the Commanders. That is the, uh, the Giants. Yeah. 39:21 Certainly. We have the quarterback, can justify it, and in this draft class, I can't be Mr. Analytics Hardliner and be like, "Well, shame on you for taking the running back too early." 39:31 You might be taking somebody that I have picked as a, the second-best, third-best wide receiver, et cetera, instead. Then you take that. So Love is a vari- variable. 39:41 At, the further he falls, the more likely you do get a team that is in that contender mode saying, "We can, we can add him." Yeah. Okay? 39:49 And the teams that say, "We can add him," are g- probably drive a hard bargain if it comes to that. Yeah. A- a- and it comes down to, is he the guy with all of those forced missed tackles and all of the- Yeah... 39:59 4.5 yards after contact who masks some of your issues on the offensive line while you're building? Mm-hmm. Or is it the contender that says, "I'm, I'm a piece away. I'm a Derek Henry." Right. "I'm a Saquon Barkley. 40:11 I'm a Josh Jacobs away. I'm a Jeremiah Love away. Let me go get him"? Yeah, and there are the, there are the Rams sitting there with the Falcons pick and- Yeah... pretty much zero needs. 40:21 It's a, it, it's a zero need team and a habit of saying, "F them picks," or in this case, we're going to F future picks to get a slightly better pick. You know what I'm trying to say here. 40:32 Moving forward, this was interesting 'cause you wrote about this guy, uh, on Wednesday. You had the Cowboys taking Akim Mesidor, who- Yeah... experts are asking you about. People in war rooms, coaches and- Okay... 40:44 scouts are asking me, "What are you hearing about Akim Mesidor? Which teams are you hearing are interested in Akim Mesidor? How high might Akim Mesidor go in this draft?" 40:55 And when I start getting text messages from scouts and coaches asking these sorts of things- Yeah... that tells me that there are people- [laughs]... 41:02 inside the league really curious, really interested in drafting this guy- Yeah... and somebody's stock is surging. This is a, if you follow the stock market, this is like a short squeeze. This is like- [laughs]... 41:11 everybody is short of the stock, everybody's interested a- and, and it's like off to the races. It's, uh, uh, GameStop from about five or 10 years ago. It's, it is, it is 100% GameStop. 41:21 A- and it is indicative, like, oh, these are the, the most brilliant people and they would never listen to the media, and they're all in that herd. They're, they're all chirping. They're asking you. 41:30 If they're asking you, they're obviously asking Tom Pelissero, and they're obviously- Yeah... asking Daniel Jeremiah, and they're asking Matt Miller, et cetera. 41:36 A- and they're all just trying to, to f- feel their way around. With this particular individual who the tape 41:43 tells you one thing and then the raw biographical data tells you something very different, and that makes him a little bit of a white elephant, makes him a little bit of an difficult, what is everyone else thinking about this guy because we're, we wanna go with the herd. 41:58 We like him, but we wanna know how much, say, this other team likes him before we make the move. Which, which makes him an interesting Cowboys choice.Yes. Yes. Mm-hmm. And, but he also fits a need for the Cowboys, right? 42:09 I mean, if you're- Right... 42:09 talking about edge rushers, and you're the Cowboys, and you're sitting there at number 12, if you're not doing what somebody suggested to me inside my insider reporting notebook up between the hash marks right now, if you're not taking both of your first round picks to go and get Orville Reese or David Bailey, and- Right... 42:28 uh, Hakeem Messador is sitting there at number 12, and he's your third pass rusher on the board, you, you might do back flips to take him. It m- maybe- Right... you take him over, uh, Reuben Bain. Maybe you're- Right... 42:39 trying to move up a couple spots to go and get Bain, but I just think, you know, based on, you and I have talked about this for months, edge rusher is easily the most talented position- Yes... 42:50 group in this class, especially top-heavy at the top. 42:54 If, if, if Messador is both the guy who's gonna get drafted a lot earlier than people anticipate, as I seem to feel, and edge rusher three, edge rusher four in the conversation, I don't know how he slips much past the Cowboys at 12, who desperately need to fill that need. 43:11 The problem is with edge rusher being so deep, and so many Cassius Hal and Malachi Lawrence types, the 25-year-old prospect with the history of foot injuries, the 25-year-old, you don't, you don't know whether you have a absolute maxed out athlete whose maxed out athleteness was being at Miami and being part of a tandem of edge rushers, that you, that you're seeing sort of a false read. 43:33 I, I warn, I warn, I warn about this, and it's like, look how great he was, and he was beating 19-year-old, 20-year-old offensive linemen on some of these reps, and he could come up to the NFL and not be a bad player, but like a what you see is what you get player, where he comes in and, "Yeah, he got five sacks from him as a rookie," and that's all you're gonna get is five sacks from him, and he's gonna be your rotation guy. 43:54 That's my fear, and that's why I would say, man, if you're up there and you're the Cowboys and you got him, look at some of these other edge rushers who are 21, 22, who are tools monsters. 44:04 Look at your Kedrick Faulk, who is an absolute tools monster guy, who has a little bit of a Tank Lawrence look and feel about him. Yeah, he only had two sacks last year. 44:11 I'm a little bit skeptical about him, but man, he's 21. He's a high character guy. 44:16 He's got all that, like the Trayvon Walker, that's another similar guy, who maybe he was overdrafted at one, but now you're down like lower in the draft. 44:24 Those kind of guys are, would be more, make me more comfortable than saying, "Let's take the older prospect." It's almost like are we going to take the guy with the higher ceiling- Yes... or the guy whose- Yeah... 44:34 floor might be higher because he's- Right... developed, he's played more football. Maybe he's more refined in terms of his tools, in terms of, um, h- his edge rush repertoire. Right. 44:45 You know what you're getting, but you, what you're getting is pretty good. Right. And so you're drafting for potential, or you're drafting for known commodity. Right. 44:52 And, and if I'm the Cowboys, I think I almost just have to entertain who's the most complete edge rusher at that point. Because I think- Right... your two top priorities are edge and corner. Because that- Yeah... 45:03 defense, your offense is fine. Your offense is gonna light up- Oh, yeah, yeah... as long as you don't do something stupid like trade George, George Pickens, you're gonna score- [laughs]... 38 to 40 points per game. 45:12 I mean, you- Right... Prescott is gonna throw for 4,000 yards. You gotta stop losing 40 to 37. Absolutely. Absolutely. 45:19 Now, again, news that happened after your mock, you talked about cornerback, you put Akeem Messador in there. 45:24 We all had Germod McCoy rising up the boards because one of the biggest problems with, uh, with him was that he missed his, uh, 2025 season with an ACL tear. 45:32 He showed up as pro day, he ran through everything like the breeze, and we're all like, "Okay, this guy's gonna be a top 15, top 20," 'cause his 2024 tape was amazing and his measurables are great. 45:42 Now there's injury concerns. I think where you had him would've been a great pick for the Cowboys. 45:48 I don't think, I'm not sure it's still not a good pick because I think he still has upside and I don't know what this whole bone plug thing is about. But would you insert somebody else in his place then at this point? 45:59 I think he's a home run pick 10 days ago, if the draft- [laughs] Yeah... was 10 days before now- Yeah... before we know what we know now. Um, but y- I, I still think corner here. 46:10 I do wonder how much of this is information being leaked by other teams trying to- Mm-hmm... get him to slip down to the board, slip down to their range. You know- Mm-hmm... 46:19 teams play that game all the time every single year. Uh- Mm-hmm... you know, if you don't wanna, if you're not comfortable with Germod McCoy, um, at, at 20, what about Colton Hood, if he's still available? Yeah. 46:29 His teammate- Yeah... at Tennessee, uh, physical guy, good ball skills. I know you loved him in the two deep zone rankings. Mm-hmm. 46:36 Uh, I could see Colton Hood being on the board when they go on the clock, and look pretty good with the star on the side of his helmet. Yeah, and Chris Johnson, I think you had 31, 32, maybe going to the Seahawks. 46:46 He could be, he could go higher. I've seen him all over the place in terms of boards. I thought he was a riser, and then it's like, you, the Cowboys could grab a guy like that. 46:54 At the end of the draft board, the Seahawks want to trade out. They wanna trade out. 46:57 They're low on picks on the other end, and it's like, yeah, whoever you put at the Seahawks, that might just be, uh, that's whoever the Titans wanted that they moved up for, or who the Cardinals wanted. 47:07 Um, let's get to the Eagles. Yeah. I like the pick. It makes sense. It's, uh, Max Ihine-Ture, Might, Ihine-Aker from- Right... Arizona, Ihine-Aker from Arizona State. Very Jordan Mailata-esque in a lot of ways. 47:21 Yeah, to me, this is all about picking for the future, and you've seen Lane Johnson miss more snaps in a game. Mm-hmm. 47:28 You've seen Lane Johnson missing because of injury, you know, for, for a couple games at a time over the last couple of seasons. 47:35 One of the most important players on that entire roster, one of the most talented and dominant right tackles in the league. You have to start thinking about life after Lane Johnson, and I just looked at- Yep... 47:45 the board as this was, was coming together. They don't need a cornerback, uh, necessarily as their, their most pressing need. 47:52 I think the wide receivers go off the board early, especially the, the ones that are worth, uh, a top 25 pick. And it just seems like they're in a position, take the best offensive lineman on the board. 48:02 The Eagles should be focusing on rebuilding that offensive line, because I still go back to the conversation I had with a defensive line coach last year when I asked, you know, "What's the biggest difference with this Eagles offense? 48:13 H- why have they taken a step back?" And it came down to the offensive line isn't nearly as good as it was. They used to be head- Right... and shoulders offensive line number one in the league. 48:22 It's just not that anymore. It's a backbone to their success. It's a unit that's in a little bit of transition. Get younger. 48:28 Get the young tackle, and I think Ihine-Aker, um, fits the, that bill and checks those boxes for themRight, and Ayden Acre, for, for folks who are not, uh, aware, huge Senior Bowl week, big Senior Bowl riser, was a guy who grew up in, uh, I believe Nigeria. 48:41 Did not start football till late, that's why I made the Jordan Melata comparison. He came to football late. Not as late as Melata, but I think he was, like, a high school senior when he first strapped on his helmet. 48:51 Still a developing guy. Has the demeanor, has the physical tools, and is not, not raw, raw, raw. He's not like, "Oh my God, I don't know what I'm doing out there," but you're still seeing that refinement there. 49:02 Somebody who could be a two-year plan to be a starter either on right side or the left side, so a very good pick. 49:07 I guess, uh, when I was originally looking at things, I was like, oh, maybe, uh, maybe Caden Proctor will be there from Alabama. He is not going to be there. Not going to last that long, no. He is not going to be there. 49:17 I have him lower on my board than most people do. The pure athletic, holy cow, size, traits, can play wildcat quarterback at 340 pounds, whatever. That's gonna go early. 49:29 I was like, maybe Monroe Freeling will be there from Georgia. I don't think he's gonna be there. He's another just... 49:35 Well, he's a Georgia guy, so I'm sure Howie is aware of him, and he's, like, a big, big, just traits, the, you know, took care of business in the SEC, probably not gonna be there. Ayden Acre might be as good as it gets. 49:47 And I don't love the idea of saying, "Oh, we're going to get our A.J. Brown replacement at that pick," 'cause you're not going to get an A.J. Brown replacement at that pick. 49:55 You're gonna get somebody to throw into the committee, and the committee actually has a decent amount of guys at this point. 50:01 Yeah, and, and I look at this, I, I don't think that Ty Simpson is gonna go off the board in the first round. I don't buy that there's this- Oh, yeah... like, overwhelming interest in Ty Simpson. 50:12 I think this is, once again, and this happens every year, it happened last year with Shedeur Sanders, there's always a quarterback or two that the, the media is far higher on than people in the league, right? Yeah. 50:25 Than, than, than executives- Yeah... and coaches are. 50:27 Ty Simpson seems to check those boxes, and I bring it up here because i- if I'm wrong a- and if I'm being lied to by a handful of scouts and a quarterback coach and an executive, if I'm being lied to about Ty Simpson and some team, the Pittsburgh Steelers maybe, uh, if some team really wants- Oh... 50:44 to trade up and go and get a quarterback, the Eagles at that spot could be a trade back, trade down- Yeah... target to pick up an extra draft pick in the second or third round, maybe a pick next year in 2027. 50:59 I, I, I, I don't, I don't dismiss the idea of Howie Roseman and the Eagles trading back- Yeah... 51:04 just because I don't think there's gonna be great value on the board where they're at, um, in this draft, and Howie Roseman doesn't strike me as a GM who reaches all that often. 51:12 A couple of the teams at the bottom of the board, including the Eagles, will probably be looking to trade back, and they might get more enthusiastic about it based on how the runs go. 51:21 Like, oh, some of the receivers are falling, maybe we're more interested, some of the linemen are falling. So it's going to be very, like, fluid as the night goes on. 51:28 In terms of Simpson, let's be clear, nobody's high on him except Orlovsky. No one. No one likes him. 51:36 Uh, y- but yet we all have to kinda do the same, well, you know, well, the Jets could do a thing, or the Cardinals could do a thing. 51:42 And when we go back to putting your mock draft together, see, the, the veteran move was to have Simpson in, in, in reserve, and have some team trade up to get Simpson and stick them in there, and be like, "Well, you never know what the Browns will do, ha ha ha," and you throw them in there. 51:58 And then you grab your, your drink and watch the Flyers game. [laughs] Yeah. 52:00 Which is not the best way to do it, but it is the way it is sometimes done, and I might have been guilty of doing something similar in the past with past quarterbacks like that, like Kellen Bond. 52:10 Oh, wait, no, Kellen Bond really did get drafted by the Vikings. I, I- Yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe if I didn't have paid subscribers keeping the lights on. Yeah, right. 52:17 Maybe if I didn't owe it to my, my, my subscribers [laughs] and my loyal readers who are reading Matt Lombardo and not reading The Messenger, uh- [laughs] RIP. Um, [laughs] maybe I would've pulled off that move. 52:30 Or maybe I would've pulled a Ty, a Ty Simpson out of my hat. Right, right, right, right, r- right, are you saying that I might not have been doing one of the most ethical things? 52:40 [laughs] I'm saying there are people in our business, when they're putting to- together their mock drafts, that are taking the- No, you know-... easy way out by doing this, and I've seen it a handful of times. 52:48 Like, oh- Yeah... Ty Simpson to the Eagles at 21. No, gotcha, Ty Simpson to 21 to a team trading with the Eagles. Trading with the E- And you, and you put them in there for the team that you don't wanna write about. 52:58 To be fair, whenever I wrote a mock draft, there were always a couple of jokes that were in there that were ev- very obviously jokes. Like, it was always a wide receiver to the Packers every single year. 53:08 I think I mocked the Eagles a linebacker every year, because Eagles fans, you know, for years- We're not taking a linebacker... 53:14 they, they were not taking a linebacker, and that people were screaming on YSP, "Why don't they ever take a linebacker?" So I'd always put a linebacker in there, et cetera, et cetera. 53:22 I think I had the Patriots trade out every single year. There were always just these little gags. Because mock drafts aren't real, but we try to give the best possible information. 53:29 But going back to Simpson, no one thinks he's a first-round pick. No one. No. No. And, and I talked to a scout about this on Monday, putting together the insider notebook. 53:39 He told me that, that people that he's been at pro days with from other teams, you know, scouts will, like, go out for a beer afterwards or- Right... 53:46 just walking off the field, like, to their cars in the parking lot, you know, shooting the breeze, comparing notes. 53:51 People he's spoken to on the pro day circuit, he doesn't think that there's gonna be another quarterback chosen until Friday night, maybe round three, after Fernando Mendoza gets off the board at round one. 54:02 This is just not a deep quarterback class, and this Fernan- th- th- this Ty Simpson groundswell is absolutely a media creation. It started with Dan Orlovsky. It ended- [laughs]... 54:12 with every third mock draft that has him going- Yeah... in the 20s or early 30s, or the, the Cardinals trading back into the first round. 54:21 I, I just, I don't see it, especially when you look down the pipe at 2027 and you see the names and the quarterbacks that are coming out next year. 54:29 I think it's shortsighted for a team to invest a first-round pick in Ty Simpson this year. Uh, go, go nuts, go wild, go balls out, take a quarterback in round two or round three. What the hell do I care? 54:38 But to invest a first-round pick and maybe additional draft capital to get him in the first round-It's j- it's just not s- it's not smart team building It's not smart team building. 54:48 It's really something that started in November before Simpson started to play poorly. Yeah. 54:53 And then it's just like he- we're waiting for somebody to come and take number two from this guy, and, uh, then Allar and Nussmeier's like, "No, sorry, gonna get injured. Goodbye. See ya." 55:03 And Carson Beck's like, "Are you kidding? You think it's going to be me? I'll stay in college eight more years. The hell with that." So we're, we're, we're stuck with this, but you're right. I could see third round. 55:11 Uh, the year that it was Kenny Pickett, ugh. And a lot of us had- Well done... yeah, a lot of us had Malik Willis, like, "Oh, maybe he's gonna be a first round." 55:20 Desmond Ritter, some people had him as, as a first rounder. A Matt Corral, uh, guy Sam Howell, and it's like, yeah, yeah. The, and the NFL was like, "No. No [laughs] this is not how it's going to go." 55:32 It was similar years, and years, and years back. The Geno Smith year, Geno was a second rounder. Yeah. E.J. Manuel went in, like, 10th or something like that to the Bills. To the Bills. 55:41 And everybody else was like, "We can't, we can't even with these quarterbacks that y'all have been talking about." Folks, we, we, we do our best. We know you're interested in the quarterbacks. 55:48 The quarterbacks are inherently interesting. We do our best to put them out there, but, like, sometimes it's not going to happen. Right, and, and you had mentioned about mock drafts being fake. Let's be real about this. 55:58 The, the, all of these might be wrong by pick number three. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? 56:02 Like by, uh, when you look up on Friday morning, there might be, if you did a great job, if you did, like, a fantastic job- Right... eight of those picks might be right. Eight out of 32. You're right. 56:12 Right, right down to at number two, we're not, not sure if it's Bailey, Reese, or one of the other defenders. Uh, n- nobody even knows the q- the, the Cardinals could have disbanded by the time we were... 56:21 And no one would be sure what, what they do. They need offensive line help really badly, but I think that's too early for, for Muaga, especially with his injury concerns. Yeah. 56:30 You know, love is in the, love is in the air, so to speak. Jeremiah Love- 100%... is in the air. Uh, a- and so who knows where that's going to go. 56:36 I'm not even gonna do a one, two, three, uh, parlay, like, which I did a couple of years. Like, I would do a parlay, see if I can get it going. Not even gonna bother this year, gonna... 56:45 Es- especially eight minutes between picks, I don't have time to celebrate. We gotta get the, the, the, the content working. Work done here. Yeah, yeah. Gotta get the thumbnail written. 56:52 Uh, but I also do wanna, you know, pump up the Two Deep Zone 96. The Two Deep 96, just tremendous. I love the- Mm-hmm... amount of work that you put into it, the amount of insight. 57:00 You had the longer form profiles broken down by position this year. You had some breakouts. Yeah. It, it, it's well worth the subscription to the Two Deep Zone for the whole year just, just for this, 57:11 this, uh, piece of content. The, the whole package of pro- prospect profiles, rankings, breakdowns. Uh, so go check that out at the Two Deep Zone. We're gonna throw a couple names at you that, that jumped off the page. 57:23 Kevin Rutledge, the guard from Georgia Tech, um, what'd you like about him? A- and, and tell me his cool story. 57:30 It's a, it's a shame I didn't get to his podium when they spoke 'cause we had problems getting down to the combine. 57:35 This is a guy who was in a, uh, like, a major car accident, um, and had to, like, punch his way out of, like, the flipped Nissan, uh, whatever it was, Nissan SUV. 57:44 Now to be clear, just you hear car wreck, he was not drag racing. It was 1:00 in the afternoon on a rainy day, and he was on his way to campus, so it wasn't anything mouth-facing or anything like that. 57:54 He, maybe he was speeding. He's a kid, this thing happens. But, like, he, he, he got out of that. He was a transfer to Georgia Tech. Um, there's all kinds of other interesting things about him. 58:03 I write about it a little bit and provide links so you can read the original, uh, conversations with the young man. Cool, yeah. 58:08 He was in a Georgia Tech offense that is full of counters and misdirection plays where the guard has to pull, the guard has to trap. 58:16 The guard is out on the outside running in front of the running back to try and knock over a safety cornerback. He had to do that hundreds of times, really good at it. 58:24 So if you're in a system, I'm thinking of, like, the Ben Johnson systems, the greater Lions, Jets, Bears systems, it's like, oh, we need interior alignment. They've gotta be ornery, but they also have to be able to move. 58:33 They've gotta be quick guys who can get out there, maybe do a little fold-type block. Rutledge is a guy, I was talking to Benjamin Robinson of Grinding the Mocks, he says that this guy might be on the rise. 58:42 I saw fourth-round grades on him. I put, like, a second-round grade on him. Now I'm hearing he might be a second-round pick. Interesting, fun offensive lineman to learn about if your team drafts him. 58:52 How about, uh, Jonah Coleman from Washington, the running back? Yeah, I threw him in at the end of the Two Deep 96, but he's, like, ranked third or fourth among my running backs. 59:01 Here is a guy with any- everything but the speed. He is not a speed merchant at all, which is can be said about a lot of these running backs. 59:08 But when you watch him, particularly the 2024 tape, you see him breaking tackles at an almost Jeremiah Love-esque rate. So you have a guy who can come in there and be that grinder. 59:18 You're looking for, like, say, a running back two, or he's the running back one, but the running back two is some speedy dude. He's gonna get out there, yardage consistently. 59:26 I was talking to a Broncos, uh, podcast, my good friend Cecil Lammey, who's very high on Coleman, and Andrew Mason, and they were talking about the needs in the second round for the Broncos, and it's like, well, they really want a running back. 59:37 Well, they've got fast running backs. They've got injured running backs. They've got really injured running backs. The Broncos have a lot of guys like that. 59:44 Um, Coleman could be a guy who could get in there and give them consistent yardage, and then they can use Jalen Waddle over the top, and they can do some other things. 59:53 That could be an interesting fit for a really fun-to-watch running back. Pro Football Focus credits him with 32 forced missed tackles, so for a- Mm... plodder, for a guy who doesn't have high-end speed- Mm-hmm... 1:00:03 if you're forcing that many missed tackles, that's telling me that, you know, in the open field you probably have some footwork. At, at the line of scrimmage you probably have a little bit of- Yeah... 1:00:11 little bit of, uh, physicality to your running style. I could absolutely see him somewhere like a Denver, somewhere like maybe a New Orleans as a- Yeah... 1:00:19 handcuff to, uh, a, an Alvin Kamara, kind of a, a thunder and lightning type of look there. Sure. Uh, really interesting. I'll keep an eye out for him as well. 1:00:28 Right, right, and, and he can catch a little too, so he adds that. Awesome, and then New Mexico pass rusher Keyshawn James-NewbyYeah, now I'm going with the flow here. He's not on the 96. Okay. 1:00:39 I've got a group of, of others, some of them are in the p- documents, so if you go to the bottom you'll see eight other guys, like, that's where you'll find, uh, uh, the other Styles brother. 1:00:48 Uh, like, he's down there with that group, et cetera. But I, I didn't get to this guy, he's in my notes to talk about when he gets drafted. A lot of people have him as a, uh, as a riser. 1:00:57 Timed and performed very well at his pro day. You go back and look at the, uh, the New Mexico footage and you can see the translatable skill of first guy off the line of scrimmage. 1:01:08 I was taught this years ago, look for the g- first guy off the line of scrimmage at the sta- snap. He's a step or two into the backfield when the left tackle's still like, "Oh, here I go into my drop." 1:01:18 He is that consistently. He's back there. Yeah, he's back there. He's back there, I better get back there, he's getting around me. Uh, has a lot of s- lot of pressures, a lot of sacks at New Mexico. 1:01:28 He is a long, lean guy, another older dude, so you have a little bit of a Messidor situation here, 'cause he went for, to Montana Tech, which is a JUCO, and then he went to Idaho before he gets to New Mexico. 1:01:39 But we're not talking about the first round anymore, we're talking about the third round, maybe the top of the fourth round where you say, "Okay, I'll take the high floor guy who I can plug in right away, and he's disrupting right away, and I don't have to, like, pay him, like, a first round pick." 1:01:51 This is a guy, James Newby, going up a lot of draft boards, that when I looked at him and it's like, "Oh, I, I over- I overlooked this guy the first time I went through this." 1:02:00 He's somebody who should've been in one of these, uh, second, third round conversations. 1:02:04 So when you're watching the draft on Friday night and certainly Saturday morning, make sure that you have the Two Deep 96 queued up. Yeah. Keep it on your iPhone as your second screen- Yeah... 1:02:13 so you can get the, the feel and the intel, be smarter in the group chat when these guys start coming off the board. [laughs] Yes. Thank you for the hard work that, that you're put in, uh, over the last several months. 1:02:23 I feel smarter having read it and people will as well. 1:02:26 Thank you, and that's the great thing, it's like this will get you the information that you might not get from anyone else, that you're gonna have in your Discord, on your Reddit, when you're talking to guys, when you're hanging around the town festival. 1:02:38 A lot of town festivals this weekend, they're gonna be rained out, but if you're hanging around the town festival, "Who is this guy?" I got stats in there, kinda like the stats you, you put out there. 1:02:45 I got little quotes, little background tips that you're not gonna get from the TV footage. So please subscribe to Two Deep Zone, have the 96 out. 1:02:53 It's links, you just link to it and you'll see the, the guy's profile right there. It, it, it's a one-stop shop for everything, did a great job with that. 1:02:59 Mike, this has been a lot of fun, I'm looking forward to the draft. What the hell, let's come back to it, uh, next week, next Tuesday we'll break it all down, we'll recap the draft, where these guys went. 1:03:09 Uh, if you enjoy the podcast, please go ahead and subscribe in the Apple Podcast store. Leave us those five star ratings and reviews. 1:03:15 You can subscribe to the Two Deep Zone on Substack, you can subscribe to Between the Hash Marks on Substack. Mike, looking forward to seeing how the draft plays out. This was a ton of fun, as I knew it would be. 1:03:25 Thanks everybody for checking in and tuning in on the pod. Enjoy the draft, we'll talk to you next week. Happy drafting, everybody.
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