DCOrange

I mentioned this in my updates of the schools that we've sent scouts to throughout the year; seems significant that we are one of 4 teams that are publicly known to have made a trip to Lenoir-Rhyne (obviously to see Dugger specifically). Seems like it might be something to keep an eye on, though his inclusion at the Senior Bowl suggests the cat might be out of the bag in terms of teams sleeping on him too much. And I wish we could justify taking a DT again so that we could take Kinlaw, but I suspect he might be out of our range anyways and I can't see us taking another first round DT even though he looks like a great one.

I think he's a lock to get in, but I think the Hall of Fame should be more exclusive than it is, and in such a world, he would not be considered a Hall of Famer.

He definitely came up big in the playoff game. Like I said, I wouldn't be cutting him immediately, but I would bring in competition to see if you can do better. We could certainly be in a worse spot as far as kickers go, but again, if you can't trust them 50+ yards out, you should be looking for a replacement IMO.

I wouldn't draft anybody, but I think we should try to replace Bojo. As far as Haushka goes, my philosophy with kickers is that if you don't trust them in the 50-60 yard range, you have a kicker problem. We clearly do not trust Haushka. We should be bringing in competition for him and be prepared to cut him if the competition beats him out.

Yeah, I think one of the NFL.com writers mentioned earlier in the year that NFL Scouts refer to Love as this year's Patrick Mahomes or Patrick Mahomes 2.0 or something like that. I definitely remember it being talked up ahead of his national TV game earlier in the season when Utah State got dominated. I haven't watched enough of him yet, but I've definitely seen some of the good #DraftTwitter guys breaking down some of the extreme highs you get with Love. He's got the physical tools for sure. I can't imagine my grade for him will be anywhere near Mahomes though, who remains my highest graded QB of the past 4 years.

Chris Godwin was the #1 rated WR by PFF this year; they have two elite WRs in place for whoever the QB is. Two talented TEs. Their offensive line blossomed this year after seemingly a decade of being among the worst in the league. Ali Marpet has always been a stud, but the rest of the group all played average or above-average this season. The defense as a whole was above-average, and was particularly good down the stretch with Vita Vea blossoming into one of the best young DTs in the league, Jamel Dean playing at an elite level the second half of the year, Shaq Barrett obviously having a monster year, and LaVonte David being his usual elite self. They have a lot of talent on that team; just too many turnovers or they probably would have been in the playoffs.

It really only makes sense if Tampa is looking to cut costs at the QB position or wants to draft a QB and view Rivers as a better mentor. Rivers is almost certainly a downgrade compared to Jameis and is obviously like 12+ years older too. At any rate, Rivers reportedly moved close to Panama City; that's a very long commute to play for Tampa. Nashville, Atlanta, New Orleans and Jacksonville are all closer.

Collin left a major impression on me a few years back when he first burst on the scene. Seems like he never really made the leap after that unfortunately but he's still a WR I'd be interested in.

A couple WRs I'm keeping an eye on this week:

I've only seen a handful of his games and have been kinda lukewarm on him in general; you think he might be able to be like a Vincent Jackson type maybe if he develops the right way?

I wouldn't be shocked if he declines to run the cone/shuttle after what happened to DK.

I think I read somewhere that those details generally come out at the end of Senior Bowl week. For now, we only know that he, Ashtyn Davis, and one other player were flagged and are now out for the week.

Brandon Aiyuk dropped too; got flagged in the physical.

NFL teams expect him to run in the 4.45-4.50 range

It's not a perfect comparison by any stretch, but I like Reagor for many of the same reason that I liked DJ Moore a couple years ago. He's probably the WR I'm realistically hoping for if we take one in the first round. And I'm similarly high on Ruggs; I wouldn't be all that shocked if he was ultimately the #1 or #2 WR off the board.

I think pretty much everyone would agree that he's a good returner.

Yeah I think you and I are in alignment with him. His YAC skills are undoubtedly great but I think that’s maybe the only thing he has right now that is great. Won’t be surprised at all if he slides out of the first round, and I won’t be sad if he ends up getting taken ahead of us instead. I’m confident there will be WRs I prefer available in both the first and second round.

Along these lines, his scoring numbers against those 3 power conference teams were extremely good. 25.6 points per 40 minutes on over 70% TS%. If that somehow isn't a fluke, that is totally game changing for us (though I imagine it was more likely just a hot streak for him as he couldn't even keep that kind of production up against the Ivy League teams). Still, he appears to be able to catch passes and dunk the ball, which would be an upgrade over our current centers.

Yes immediately eligible, and presumably so that he can do what he's doing now: take visits to schools and basically treat it as a recruiting process all over again. Also might be saving himself an additional year of eligibility? I'm not sure about that part; I've been asleep at the wheel on this one. Without even looking at video, his rebounding numbers are concerning to me. In his games against major conferences last year: Boston College: 3 rebounds in 27 minutes Rutgers: 4 rebounds in 28 minutes Northwestern: 4 rebounds in 23 minutes Roughly 5.5 rebounds per 40 minutes (for comparison's sake, Sidibe and Edwards are averaging 10.9 and 12.8 in conference play respectively). Again, haven't looked at video of him at all, but unless he's a Brook Lopez-style guy where he just boxes out and lets his teammates grab the rebounds, this guy looks to be unbelievably poor on the glass when he isn't playing against other small schools. He did play for our coaching staff this summer though so we know this kid very well/he knows us very well.

Not going to guarantee he's a Bill or anything silly like that, but I will just point out that Buffalo is one of 4 teams to make the trip to Lenoir-Rhyne to check Dugger out. That seems significant. And they didn't scout either of these guys, but I think Amik Robertson and Levonta Taylor are two guys to keep an eye on for us. Taylor now has experience playing a CB/safety hybrid similar to what Hyde sometimes does for us (though this was more of a thing in Green Bay for him) and Robertson just sounds like the type of guy that McDermott would love to coach.

Quick follow-up: He now says we had scouts at the Syracuse-Clemson game at the beginning of the year.

I was relatively low on him, but I still had him graded as a mid-to-late 1st round pick (just happened to be the lowest of the big 5). Unfortunately for him, he's ended up with two teams that bring out the worst in him. He was legitimately horrible whenever there was pressure in college; he was then drafted to a team with the worst offensive line in the NFL and subsequently traded to another lackluster offensive line in Miami. I never believed he had the potential to be a great QB, but I definitely think he had the potential to be better than he's been so far. Like I said, he desperately needs a team that can protect him. If Miami decides to just dump him elsewhere (can't imagine they'd get much in return at this point), teams like Pittsburgh, Indy, New England, Tennessee, and New Orleans might make sense. Those teams can all protect him and could be searching for a potential future starter.

We both agree he does his job well. We'll have to agree to disagree on whether or not his job is relatively worthless.

Having other players that are a waste of a roster spot doesn't change whether or not Roberts is also a waste of a roster spot. At the end of the day, just looking at the WR position alone, we had 6 of them and basically 4 of them were worthless this year. That's obviously a pretty big problem, of which Roberts is a part of.

I think that's really the point though; being against the idea of having unnecessary specialists. No doubt Roberts is a good returner, but we have a roster that literally had 2 or maybe 3 useful WRs and part of that is because we had to use a roster spot on a guy that basically gave us a couple extra yards the couple times per game he touched the ball. It's just not a good use of limited resources in my opinion. Obviously to that same point, we had 5 or 6 WRs on the roster and only a couple of them could really do anything, so there's just as good a chance that the guy we replace Roberts with would have been relatively useless too, but I'd rather just have the extra roster spot personally.