Note: This is a full Day Three list and basing membership of the list on which players are trading out of the top 100 on PlayTheDraft.com. That gives a better measure of who is likely to actually be available that deep in the draft and it makes it easier to just cross-reference it with my own board. There are still prospects I need to watch and get a better feel for so the list is still evolving. And of course the trading on PlayTheDraft is happening daily so which players are 'likely' to slip into Day Three is also evolving. Day Three Diamonds QB: David Fales, Aaron Murray, Connor Shaw, Keith Wenning, Brock Jensen RB: Lache Seastrunk, Andre Williams, Terrence West, Marion Grice, Devonta Freeman, Charles Sims, James White, Zurlon Tipton, Storm Johnson, Branden Oliver WR: Bruce Ellington, Robert Herron, Jeremy Gallon, Devin Street, L'Damian Washington, Cody Hoffman, Quincy Enunwa TE: A.C. Leonard, C.J. Fiedorowicz, Crockett Gilmore, Gator Hoskins, Xavier Grimble, Nic Jacobs FB: Roosevelt Nix (position switch) OT: Billy Turner, JaWuan James, Cornelius Lucas OG: Trai Turner, Wesley Johnson, Dakota Dozier, John Urschel OC: Russell Bodine DT: Beau Allen, Justin Ellis, Caraun Reid, Brent Urban, Kerry Hyder, Daniel McCullers, George Uko, DE: Ben Gardner, James Gayle, Larry Webster, Aaron Lynch PR: Jonathan Newsome, Tyler Starr, Shaquil Barrett, Derrell Johnson LB: Christian Kirksey, Jack Tyler, Eddie Lackey, Kevin Pierre-Louis, Marquis Flowers CB: Dontae Johnson, Ross Cockrell, Chris Davis, Phillip Gaines, Shaquille Richardson, Nevin Lawson, Terrance Mitchell, E.J. Gaines, Antone Exum, Aaron Colvin, Jonathan Dowling (position switch) DS: Alden Darby, Kenny Ladler
I think Phillip Gaines may sneak into day 2. Some team is likely to fall in love with his size/speed/athleticism combination. He was pretty effective too, albeit Rice does not play an SEC type schedule. He gets his hands on a lot of passes. There are only 4 sub 4.4 corners, going by combine times, and of the 4 he is sort of the sleeper. The #1 sleeper corner in this draft though IMO is Rashaad Reynolds. He is basically a 4.5 forty version of Verrett IMO.
Right nut for Donald. What a baller. http://collegespun.com/acc/pittsburgh/aaron-donald-nfl-mock-draft-projection-profile#
That's a good list. Lot of guys I'm in full agreement with. Ditto about your third sentence. God I've been so behind this year on watching players. Been flat out lazy is what I've been. Not sure if it's because the draft was moved back even further or b/c I've just been plain inexcusable lazy.
I understand that feeling. Outside of the position groups I've been studying, I haven't watched a single damn snap of an offensive lineman save for like 1 game of Morgan Moses last night. I know the names of the OGs and OTs, but couldn't describe any of their play styles. Same with safeties and ILB. I feel like I need a crash course in these offensive lineman because I'm so busy with my other ****.
What's most annoying about it, is it leaves less for discussion b/c I only comment on or give opinions about stuff I've had a chance to watch considering I refuse to parrot back what others say. Not that I don't trust or respect others' opinions, but I'd rather live and die by my own sword so to speak. I had high hopes to really get my fingers dirty this year and actually had the time to do it, but there was just no motivation. IDK, maybe the Miami crap/drama including the late season let down left me despondent. In your defense though I don't see how you wouldn't get burned out immediamente if you expanded your list to all positional groups given how time consuming your work is for just one player. It's pretty admirable how diligent and thorough you are with your work if we're being honest here. Even with how OCD'ishly I can get wrapped up with the draft, I'm not sure I'd have enough mental energy to be able to do what you do.
Charles ross is the REAL DEAL. He explodes on contact and runs through tackles, with ease. He is a bigger zac Stacy. The thing you will see with zac Stacy from his college tape isnthat he very rarely goes down atnfirst contact, and always was moving forward after contact. He would be a STEAL in the later rounds. I'd bet money he becomes a good back in the NFL.
Hadn't seen that highlight vid til now. Wow. Best one I've seen of any prospect, some of the stuff in there is just amazing, the explosion, the violent hands, the quick-twitch. Damn.
I think I've actually covered quite a few prospects this year. I have a chance at being able to get through most of them by draft day.
For those into this sort of thing, I'll keep this post updated with pass rush efficiency as I finish up charting pass rush snaps. PRR represents total snaps/ pressures and PRR+ includes passes defensed Donald: PRR = 6.4, PRR+ = 6.1 Clowney: PRR = 10.6, PRR+ = 9.46- 246 snaps, 19 hurries, 3 sacks, 1 knockdown, 4 passes defensed - RDE, 85% snaps, PRR = 12.2 - LDE, 10% snaps, PRR = 4Ford: PRR = 10.4, PRR+ = 10.04- 251 snaps, 13 hurries, 9 sacks, 2 knockdowns, 1 passes defensed - LDE, 100% snaps
Do you know who is responsible for driving the daily stock of the players? All I could find was a repeat of the site's statement below: Ok, so pricing is dynamic and changes daily as new information becomes available, but who is it who's interpreting the information? Is Kiper's opinion involved at all? BTW, I can't believe I didn't notice PlayTheDraft until your post referencing it. Definitely would've had more motivation to get an early jump on players in order to be well ahead of the curve and boost my portfolio. Ticks me off that I was in the middle of buying my designated list of players when the site stopped briefly for maintenance. The five I was able to buy in time netted me 48k which I'm pleased with, but I missed out on a little over 300k on the players I didn't get to before the update. Guessing I'll be lucky to sniff half that total in a day from here out.
Yeah I'm going to keep that post as a place to hold the data as I go through the players, but I'll type a little on Clowney. Aaron Donald's pass rush rate of 6.4 is ridiculous. That means he got to the QB once every 6.4 snaps. I've only dealt with college pass rush efficiencies, but I'm sure CK could tell you how insanely well that would rank compared to what NFL players put up. Clowney's PRR is pretty steady around 10, even when adding in passes defensed. For an edge rusher in college, my experience has it that they'll usually range from a Pass Rush Rate of 6 to 14. 6 is a Aaron Donald/ Dion Jordan where 14 is a Sam Montgomery or Damontre Moore. A PRR of 10 is about average for a college pass rusher between sacks, pressures and knockdowns. You can see that although he only played 10% of his snaps as left defensive end he was around 3x more productive doing so. I don't know if that's a function of facing weaker RTs or playing to the fact that Clowney is left hand dominant. His total 246 pass rush snaps isn't low like Dion Jordan's was last year, but most full time pass rushers are looking at 300+ pass rush snaps in college, so he definitely played a little less than average.
Thanks for fleshing that out for me. I do appreciate it. So Donald is a beast and we should trade up get him.
I only found the site a few days ago. I think today was my third or fourth day of trading. I'm up to $12.3 million.
I think the NFL will put him on the left side for what it's worth. Theories abound on why he'd be more efficient there. It could be dominant side stuff but it could also be that he seems to only move to that side either opportunistically or as a change or pace and so a tackle that has been facing some other guy all game suddenly faced Jadaveon Clowney and he's at a disadvantage. Also there's a discernible difference in average and elite level pass rushing efficiency from left end to right end, even in the NFL where everyone is good. In college, the best tackles tend to play left tackle overwhelmingly. So it would make sense if the disparity were even more pronounced. Probably a combination of all of the above, hence the wide (3x) difference.
I can't say I'm too terribly fond of Dee Ford. I'm not through the entirety of his games, but I haven't found that he's forcing a ton of pressures. And per my sack study (whatever relevance it has), most of his sacks were really coverage sacks. He seems to get run wide often and gets locked up if his initial pass rush is beaten (outside of his coverage sacks). He'll definitely show really good power at times even getting Ogbuehi off balance at times (who had stoned him bad on some plays), but doesn't seem to be consistent in that. We'll see, more games to go maybe I'll see something more. I've definitely spoken too soon before.
He's pretty good. Whenever I used to watch Corey Lemonier I always used to be drawn to Dee Ford instead because he had the ability to truly bend the arc and come up underneath the tackle's outside shoulder off the edge on speed rushes. At that time no draft media were even rating Dee Ford, he was completely off radar with basically a UDFA grade. But I never thought of him as a 1st rounder (same with Lemonier) and all the sudden he's being rated there. I wouldn't draft him in the 1st round. I believe (from my recollection) that JaWuan James handled him. That happens sometimes. I find myself thinking about a guy, why aren't you talking about this guy? Then all the sudden they swing too far the other way and I'm thinking whoa, I like the dude...but not THAT much. That happened with Kendall Wright at one point. Aaron Donald isn't a good example though because back when everyone were rating him 3rd or 4th round at best, I was saying that he was the best defensive lineman in college football outside of perhaps Jadaveon Clowney and as the season progressed I more than once noted that Donald was even more productive and efficient than Clowney this year. Your numbers seem to back that up. While the public pendulum has swung far on Aaron Donald, with him now trading around #14 overall on PlayTheDraft...it amazingly hasn't swung far enough in my eyes because he's a top 4 talent in this draft at worst. I personally think he and Jadaveon Clowney are the top two talents in this draft.
If that's true about Donald it would be brilliant for us to move up just a few spots to get him. How often can you pick up a special player in the teens?
This happened on Kelvin Benjamin and Andre Williams too. Williams is a fine enough RB and does some nice things for a mid-round guy, but the hype suddenly swung to 2nd round a few months ago and I felt that was way out of line. Dee Ford's interesting, I watched more of him last night and my biggest problem is just inconsistency. I thought he absolutely wrecked shop against whoever UGA's RT was, but then he'll go a whole game or two without even sniffing the QB. Definitely an interesting prospect, just not the consistency I'd want in a 1st rounder. Not totally done with all his games (3 to go), but it looks like his PRR will end up between 12 and 13.
I'm up to $12.2M and a #319 ranking. I did 147k today after the 48k yesterday. Wonder if we'll have enough time to make up ground and crack the top 100.
Here's a chart Justis Mosqueda (@jumosq) made from the Play the Draft rankings breaking each tier down in 20 players. Thought it was interesting to look at it all in one chart.
One guy Miami could look at in order to give Brandon Gibson some legit competition would be Josh Huff of Oregon. If Josh Huff were receiving the same kind of late-hour buzz that Cody Latimer is now getting, that would actually make some sense to me and I'd buy it. Huff is a special slot receiver prospect. He's not one of those guys you peg as a slot receiver simply because you question the validity of using him on the outside and you just assume he can play slot. You KNOW that Josh Huff plays the slot and you know he does it really well. He's built for it perfectly, in terms of his combination of quickness, balance, blocking ability, eyes for the football in the air and ability to adjust to it. As a bonus, he's actually got some compelling speed for the slot. I'm really enamored with Huff's work. He's a very compelling football player and I have a tough time figuring whether I'd rather have Herron or Huff. With Herron you have 4.30 type speed in test settings. With Huff we're talking 4.47 speed. But on the field the two look and play a lot alike, and Huff probably has better skills in several areas such as blocking, adjustments on the football in the air, etc. Tough call. I think Josh Huff would actually remind Joe Philbin a lot of Randall Cobb. VERY similar. [video=youtube;AjuWUUhzZCU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjuWUUhzZCU&feature=player_embedded[/video] [video=youtube;FrGz_jJn2D0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrGz_jJn2D0&feature=player_embedded[/video] [video=youtube;6-cr4TMfooA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-cr4TMfooA&feature=player_embedded[/video] The combination of blocking skills, eyes and pure athleticism/quickness should make him a standout special teams ace from the get-go.
Full Dee Ford statline from the other post Ford: PRR = 10.4, PRR+ = 10.04- 251 snaps, 13 hurries, 9 sacks, 2 knockdowns, 1 passes defensed - LDE, 100% snaps Ford really came on late in the season and caught up to Clowney. I've weighted sacks and pressures the same. Really interesting that his snap numbers are really close to Clowney, but his PRR is based far more on sacks than hurries. Edit: As a note, I kept track of every time the pass rushers were chipped or double teamed. I've got Ford at 14% while Clowney was at 25%. Just something to think about.
I think if Donald were 6'3 or 6'4 he'd be a top 5 pick and there would be debates about who is better - he or Clowney. He's another beast that is not likely to make it out of the top 10, imo. Heck, I'd even take him as a MLB! Ask him to drop 10 lbs in his mid section, play at 275 and I'd put him in at MLB. He'd be a major improvement and we'd have as strong an inside blitz run stopper as there is in the league.
