If you’re into the NFL draft for flash and YouTube highlights and potential fantasy points to be scored in the fall, you might want to click off this story.
That’s just not what the league, or its fans, will be getting April 24. And it’s certainly not what the folks on Park Avenue will want to hear as we draw closer to the event in Green Bay, with the draft having grown into the NFL’s second biggest tentpole event, one that brings together all 32 fanbases behind only the Super Bowl.
But if you like meat-and-potatoes players, and team-building, well, then pull up a chair.
“It’s a terrible television draft,” says Todd McShay, the former long-time ESPN draft analyst who now hosts the Todd McShay Show on The Ringer. “Outside of [Colorado QB] Shadeur [Sanders] and [two-way star] Travis [Hunter] and I guess [Miami QB] Cam [Ward] at this point and a couple other guys, it’s just not the same group that we’re used to seeing at the top of the draft. That’s what everyone’s frustrated by.
“But I will say this—and I think it has a lot to do with NIL and the incentive NIL presents to stay in college, and still some leftovers from COVID-19 and then also the transfer portal—this draft is loaded depth-wise. It’s absolutely loaded at certain positions. It’s not all positions, but I laugh, because everyone’s like, It’s a terrible draft.”
Welcome in, everyone, to my annual precombine overview of the draft class.
If it feels like the Super Bowl was yesterday, well, that’s not too much of an exaggeration. The Philadelphia Eagles were crowned just 15 days ago. And just like that, now, all 32 teams, Philly and the Kansas City Chiefs included, have turned the page to 2025, with the league descending on Indianapolis for the next week to set the stage for the offseason ahead.
It’s one of my favorite weeks of the year, and the draft is one of my favorite times of year, because I love seeing the NFL and college football—our country’s two most popular spectator sports—intersect, and also because there’s so much to learn starting now. So, again, I’ve enlisted two buddies of mine, McShay and NFL Network’s Daniel Jeremiah, who I believe are the best in the business to educate me, and you, on the class.
“I summarized this draft by saying this is a starter draft, not a star draft. Go plug holes. Go find starters. You’re going to get really solid. There’s just not a lot of special.” Daniel Jeremiah
Which, again, starts with a lack of sizzle that won’t bother me, but probably will turn off some fans, and force some executives to be creative in building up the event.
“I summarized this draft by saying this is a starter draft, not a star draft,” Jeremiah says. “Go plug holes. Go find starters. You’re going to get really solid. There’s just not a lot of special. There’s not a lot of superstars. There’s a lot of supporting actors and character actors. I don’t know if there’s a lot of leading men.”
And with that, let’s dive in.
It’s combine week, and that means the news cycle is going to start cranking up again—and not just with draft news and notes. So over in the Takeaways, we’ll be covering everything else, including …
• A look at where the Matthew Stafford saga stands.
• Background on the new Tony Boselli-Liam Coen-James Gladstone Jacksonville Jaguars regime.
• Reasons why Brandon Staley was a very important hire for Kellen Moore and the New Orleans Saints.
… And a whole lot more. But we’re starting with your cheat sheet on the 2025 draft class, and what you should be watching when the combine hits your TV (even if this, like McShay says, isn’t a made-for-TV draft) later this week.
If you want to know why the class sets up this way, the past couple years tell the story.
In short, every year can’t be a great quarterback year or receiver year or great year in general. So this is the ebb after last year’s flow.
“Just the sex appeal of the draft is always going to be around the quarterbacks and to some degree the receivers,” Jeremiah says. “Coming off a year where we had six of them, there is going to be a drop-off. College football can’t keep up that level of production to be sending that many kids. That’s the feel of why it’s not like some other years, coming off the heels of last year."
So that’s where we’ll start in going through what you need to know about the 2025 class …
Indeed, this just isn’t a great year to need a quarterback. So if you want to compare it to 2024, you’ll probably find there’s no comparison. But if you insist on doing so, there’s very little question where last year’s first three picks—Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels and Drake Maye—would land in this year’s pecking order.
“All three of those guys would be the top pick this year,” Jeremiah says. “Without question.”
“When you watched their tape,” McShay says, “their traits were different.”
Jeremiah says if he had to clump the two classes together and rank the quarterbacks by grade, it’d probably be those three, then J.J. McCarthy, then Bo Nix together with Cam Ward, then Michael Penix Jr. clumped with Sanders. Similarly, after the top three, McShay says it would’ve gone McCarthy, Ward, Sanders, Penix, then Nix close with Ole Miss’s Jaxson Dart.
The other thing that McShay and Jeremiah agreed on was that Ward is this year’s top guy.
“It’s almost like watching an electrical storm in the summer,” McShay says. “It’s exciting and it’s different. You’re also like, What did I just see? He’s so f---ing chill. He’s so laissez-faire. There are certain plays where you’re like, Does he know we’re in the middle of a game? Does he think it’s a 7-on-7? But sometimes your greatest strength can be your fatal flaw. He tests the water too much, and he’s casual. … And of the guys we’re talking about, the ball pops out of his hand.”
Ward’s the biggest riser of the group—he actually pulled his name out of the draft last year after getting word he’d have been a Day 3 pick. The difference this year versus the previous two at Washington State (or before that at Incarnate Word) is that Ward’s flashes became way more consistent at Miami (Fla.), and keep trending the right away. That underscores the potential he carries at a time when having upside, particularly if you’re an AFC team such as those with the first two picks, is pretty important, given the competition at quarterback.
Which played into why both Jeremiah and McShay had Ward as the top signal-caller.
“You got all the cyborg quarterbacks in the AFC,” Jeremiah says. “That’s why I believe in the top of the draft, especially in the AFC, you have to chase ceiling. If you get it, you’re golden. If you don’t, you’ve got to keep trying to get it. Settling for floor in the AFC just seems like a losing proposition. The growing list of cyborg quarterbacks, it’s ridiculous.”
Jeremiah adds, “I think Cam is the ceiling guy and Shedeur is the floor guy.”
And it’s not that Sanders can’t play. He clearly can, but it’s that he doesn’t really have a trait you’d consider a superpower.
“He has the best feel and natural instincts and ball placement as a passer,” McShay says. “He does not have the arm of Cam Ward or [Tyler] Shough or even Dart. What’s interesting is he creates a lot. A lot of the tape you watch of him, he’s rolling left, he’s rolling right, he’s bailing out. The creativity is so much of what he can do, and we’ve said this with a lot of different quarterbacks, whether it’s Lamar [Jackson] or [Patrick] Mahomes, learning to refine and utilize that when appropriate and putting a cover on these things is critical.”
After those two, there’s Dart, who, like Ward and Sanders, is tough as nails, and is a big, thick athletic kid with ability comparable to Sanders. Because he’s coming out of Lane Kiffin’s spread offense, he might be best served to sit a year or two, but fundamentally, per McShay, he actually may be further along than Sanders and Ward—in how he navigates and climbs the pocket.
Shough was raised to me by McShay as a guy who’s become more intriguing. Through a bunch of injuries, and the bonus COVID-19 year, he spent seven years in college. His first two, in fact, were as Justin Herbert’s backup, and his third was as Herbert’s successor at Oregon. He then played three years at Texas Tech before finishing up at Louisville. From a talent perspective, he’s got what teams would want. And if he were 22 and without health issues?
“I put on the tape,” says McShay, while pointing out his clavicle injury is the one NFL teams will want to take a look at. “He’s bigger than the other three. He’s not as mobile in terms of alluding initial pressure as Cam. When he takes off and runs, to me, on tape, we’ll see what he runs, but he accelerates. When he goes, he goes faster than the other three as a runner. The ball pops off his hand. Really good placement. He’s got some magic in his game, too.”
He also has four degrees, which is pretty wild.
McShay also mentioned Texas’s Quinn Ewers and Alabama’s Jalen Milroe as intriguing. The question on Ewers he had was how much the injuries last year impacted him—because he didn’t play the same after the Longhorns’ win at Michigan. And with Milroe, McShay says he understood some of the Jalen Hurts comps, but emphasized how rare the progress Hurts made was, and how much it was a result of Hurts’s uncommon drive and work ethic.
The one name Jeremiah added to that was Oregon’s Dillon Gabriel, a good, productive, experienced player who happens to be 5' 10". D.J. says he saw some Tua Tagovailoa in Gabriel’s style of play.
“With Tua’s success and with Bryce [Young] finding it in a little bit in the second half, that’s the model for what he can be,” Jeremiah says. “He’s probably a third-, fourth-round pick. To me, he’s going to be in the NFL as a backup forever. … . I’ve joked that I want the Saints to pick him so that I can tweet out the Spiderman meme for Kellen Moore.”
So there is some depth here, too. And plenty of intrigue in how high these guys go—Ward may be the only player not at risk of falling at least a little bit down in the draft order.
As we’ve said in this space previously, Hunter and Penn State edge rusher Abdul Carter represent a very small blue-chip corner of this class—but D.J. threw me a bit of curveball in sneaking a third name in there: Boise State’s Heisman finalist, Ashton Jeanty. Now, of course, because of the positional value dynamic, that does not mean Jeanty is going with the third pick, or even in the top 10.
But after a year in which investing in running backs paid off handsomely for the Eagles (Saquon Barkley), Packers (Josh Jacobs) and Ravens (Derrick Henry), it’s fair to wonder if some team picking high simply looks at Jeanty as the best player, and takes him.
“I think he’s clearly one of the 10 best players in the draft. I don’t think he’s as polished in terms of pass catching that Saquon [Barkley] was coming out or Bijan [Robinson] coming out. He’s not as big as those guys. He is as gifted as a runner,” Jeremiah says. “His contact balance is as good as anyone I’ve ever seen. When I was looking for comps, his comp is the plinko chip from The Price Is Right. Guys just bounce off him. He keeps going.
“He’s got vision, burst, balance. All that stuff is elite. When you get all that background stuff in terms of intelligence, work ethic, all that stuff is off the charts. He’s a great kid.”
There are questions about the mileage he’s put on his legs, and an associated fumbling issue, but, Jeremiah continues, “In terms of a natural runner who can do dirty work and hit home runs, in this draft, there’s value in knowing exactly what you’re buying as opposed to some uncertainty with other dudes. I know exactly what I’m getting with him.”
Jeanty’s problem early on might not just be positional value, but the strength of the draft at his position—some teams will look at the group, and simply decide to wait for Day 2, with the promise that so many good backs will still be on the board. And we’ll get to that in a bit.
This will be the 20th draft I’ve covered (I first got on the NFL beat in August 2005), and Hunter is probably the most interesting prospect I’ve come across. Hunter will get to Indy on Monday classified as a defensive back. But as we reported last week, the decision to do that, for the combine folks, was simply logistical. The first three days would be the same for him either way. And going with the DBs would allow for him to have the option that the combine gives him—to work out with the corners Friday, and the receivers Saturday.
As for what he is exactly, there are names of guys such as Charles Woodson, Champ Bailey, Chris Gamble and Adoree' Jackson who played both ways in college. But there’s been no one in recent memory who did it at the level that Hunter has, to the point where, if isolated as a receiver or corner, he’d be a high first-round pick on either side of the ball.
The question from there becomes to what level he can do both as a pro,
“I thought he was more impactful offensively just because he’s touching the ball so much,” Jeremiah says. “I saw that for two years. Last year, corner-wise and doing him over the summer, there was a little more raw, not as consistent. He was more on the impactful side offensively. … He’s improved drastically coverage-wise from last year to this year.”
“I think he’s a more advanced receiver and better receiver than he is a corner,” McShay says. “But I don’t see a scenario where he’s a full-time receiver that you’re working in packages as a corner. I think it’s the reverse. I think he’s rare. You have to have a plan. My plan would very likely be let’s develop him as a corner and put in installs every week where we utilize him at wide receiver.”
That, in fact, is what Colorado did with him—and answered what will be a big question for NFL teams in how you manage his work during the week. The Buffaloes had him in defensive meetings, and spending most of his practice time at corner, while putting in packages for him on offense, and signaling routes into him on game day when needed.
The reason is you really can’t have a “package” player on defense, because the offense dictates play. So to play corner, you need the practice time, and meeting time, to have the answers necessary for game day within the structure of the defense, whereas offensive coaches can build out a plan just for a single player.
There’s also the fact that it’s harder to find a great corner these days than it is a receiver.
But he has a rare ability for either position.
“His body control, flexibility, the ability to contort, adjust, all that stuff is rare,” McShay says. “When he gets the ball in his hands, it’s like a different animal comes out. Everything’s under control. He’s so smooth.”
McShay compared Hunter’s receiver skills to the New York Jets’ Garrett Wilson. Jeremiah’s comp was Philly’s DeVonta Smith on offense, and Darius Slay Jr. on defense, which is incredible. His football character is also off the charts—as is his ability, mental acumen, toughness and endurance to play both ways would indicate.
If there’s a question? It will be how much he’ll weigh in Indy, which could impact what teams believe they can do with him from a workload standpoint.
Carter is a great prospect in a vacuum—but also perhaps part of a trend that fellow Penn Stater and No.11 jersey wearer Micah Parsons has set. We can start with Carter the prospect, one that many see as the very best in this year’s class. And one that reminds a lot of folks of Parsons.
“I’d go with Abdul over Travis because I know definitively what I’m getting,” McShay says. “When you set the bar that high with Micah, it makes it easier in same jersey number, same school. It’s the combination of his ability to change directions, the body control, he’s violent with every move, with his hands, he’s explosive. He’s just a damn good football player.”
“Abdul Carter, I have up on a tier by himself,” Jeremiah says. “I don’t think he’s quite as firm and strong as Micah. Crazily enough, I think he plays as fast as he does. He has a really good feel and he can bend like crazy at the top of his rush.”
Then, there’s the position flexibility that made Parsons one-of-one four years ago.
Parsons was seen by many in 2021 as elite both as an off-ball linebacker and as a pass rusher at the end of the line of scrimmage—which actually crossed some teams up in wondering how he’d be best utilized in the pros. And he wound up becoming elite at both with the Dallas Cowboys, almost right away, and now is one of the NFL’s most feared, and most difficult defenders to deal with.
Since, we’ve seen more players deployed that way.
Carter, obviously, is one, having played primarily off the ball as a freshman and sophomore before, this past year, moving to more of a traditional defensive end position for his junior season. Georgia’s Jalon Walker is another who’ll probably go in the top 10 as well, and the blueprint, through Parsons’s success, has been drawn in how they can be maximized.
“You’re seeing a different role for these players in college than what they’re going to be in the NFL,” Jeremiah says. “It’s as simple as these are full-force athletes, freak-show athletes, and it’s dealer’s choice of where you wanted to play them. It always helps when you have recent proof of concept of how something could work, and Micah provided that.”
And paved the way for a fellow Nittany Lion to being seen now the way that Carter is, but as quite possibly the best prospect in the entire class.
If you’re looking for Eagles copycats, look no further than the strength this year’s class carries in its edge rushers and defensive tackles. Philly, of course, was so loaded on its defensive front this year that it could withstand the retirement of Fletcher Cox, absorb big-ticket free agent Bryce Huff not working out, and still have the position group dominate Super Bowl Sunday with six sacks on Mahomes.
The good news for everyone else? This year’s class, both with its edge rushers and its defensive tackles, has plenty of supply for a willing group of imitators.
“If you really go study the organizations that have had success, when they have their quarterback, they spend like drunken sailors in the draft with draft capital on defensive front guys,” McShay says. “The Chiefs, the [Baltimore] Ravens, the Eagles, the [Buffalo] Bills—there’s a reason that these organizations stay at the top. You got one guy that can make up for a lot on offense, so you better have a great defense to match that quarterback, and that’s the recipe.
“There’s opportunity for the [New England] Patriots, the [Denver] Broncos, the [Atlanta] Falcons. This would be the year, if I’ve got three or four picks in the first three rounds, I’m using two or three of them on defensive linemen, because I don’t know if I’m going to have another opportunity to get difference-makers in rounds two and three in future years like I did this year.”
The edge-rusher group starts with the aforementioned Carter and Walker, but goes well beyond those two hybrids. Carter’s Georgia teammate Mykel Williams and Texas A&M’s Shemar Stewart look like they were built in pass-rusher labs, with all the requisite size and length, if not quite the polish. Tennessee’s James Pearce Jr. isn’t quite as big as them, but may be better on tape. Marshall’s Mike Green, Ohio State’s Jack Sawyer and J.T. Tuimoloau, A&M’s Nic Scourton, LSU’s Bradyn Swinson, Boston College’s Donovan Ezeiruaku …
All merited mention for the first round and close to it from McShay, and he was afraid he was forgetting some—“I’ve got 20 guys I think are worth drafting in the first three rounds, and a few guys after that, on the edge. It’s absurd."
And the defensive tackle class, led by Michigan’s Mason Graham, might be even better.
“How I do it, the grading scale, is ‘potential starters’—I’m not saying slam-dunk starter, but these guys have the chance to be potential starting D-tackles,” Jeremiah says. “Last year, I had 12 in the draft. This year, I had 20. It’s literally twice as many guys. You got different fits. But I don’t remember a year where this many guys were over 300 pounds. It’s not like we’re talking, Oh we got some penetrators here. There are a boat load of 300+ pounders."
Along those lines, Graham might be as sure a thing as there is in the class, even for what he lacks as a prototype. “His tape is excellent,” Jeremiah says. “He’s got unbelievable leverage and balance. I just wrote block destruction more on my paper with him than I have in a long time. But I don’t think he’ll test like an elite athlete. He’s got short arms. He’s made for the fall, not for the spring.”
After that, Graham’s Michigan teammate, Kenneth Grant, Oregon’s Derrick Harmon, and Ole Miss’s Walter Nolen are good bets for the first round, and Toledo’s Darius Alexander, Florida State’s Joshua Farmer, South Carolina’s TJ Sanders, Texas’s Alfred Collins and Ohio State’s Tyleik Williams were mentioned by Jeremiah and McShay as being in the top-50 mix.
“Going into the third round, I got 16 guys,” McShay says.
So, again, hopeful copycats should be pumped.
Jeanty isn’t the only big-time running back available. In fact, there’s another one close to him, three more with a shot at the first round, and great depth beyond that. Both McShay and Jeremiah mentioned North Carolina’s Omarion Hampton as being pretty close to, if not the equal of, Jeanty—both are bullish on the Tar Heels star.
“I wouldn’t be shocked if some teams ended up having Hampton as their top running back,” Jeremiah says. “He’s bigger and he’s going to run fast. He’s super explosive. He’s loose for a big guy. When I update my top 50, there’ll be less distance between those two. Hampton’s going to move up for me. He’s just a different body. He can catch the ball, he’s very productive, can make you miss. It’s just hard to find guys that are 223 like that.
“A lot of times, you get the speed, the explosiveness, and that comes with some tightness, some stiffness—he’s not stiff at all.”
So both could go in the top 20, and as many as five backs could go in the top 40.
“The next three guys that teams are going to have in different orders—it’s the two Ohio State kids and the Iowa kid,” Jeremiah says.
You can start there with TreVeyon Henderson, the lightning in the Buckeyes’ lethal combo, and a guy whose versatility and home-run ability will remind some people of Lions star Jahmyr Gibbs. Some believe, in fact, that Gibbs’s success has the potential to push Henderson into the bottom of the first round. Then, there’s the thunder in that equation, Quinshon Judkins, who, like Iowa’s Kaleb Johnson, brings more power and violence to the table.
“Kaleb Johnson, I love,” McShay says. “He’s just athletic. His contact balance, acceleration, he’s got more juice than you would think with an Iowa back. Put him with the outside zone teams, put your foot in the ground and accelerate, he’s going to have a lot of success.”
After that, there may be a bit of a hold, with teams, again, believing they’ll be able to find quality on Day 3, given the depth of the class. And with guys such as Tennessee’s Dylan Sampson, UCF’s R.J. Harvey Jr. (“He’s Aaron Jones all day, to me,” says McShay) and Arizona State’s Cam Skattebo available later, that thought is justified.
“The 2017 running back class, at least for the past couple decades, [Leonard] Fournette, [Christian] McCaffrey, it was absolutely loaded,” McShay says. “There were 30 running backs drafted in that class. I think this is going to be somewhat similar.”
The tight end class is loaded, too, with two top guys indicative of how the position has almost become two different positions. You want fun comps on Penn State’s Tyler Warren and Michigan’s Colston Loveland? You’ll get them here, even if they aren’t perfect.
“I think it is helpful to look at guys like there’s two trees, the Gronk tree and the Kelce tree, stylistically,” says Jeremiah, referencing future Hall of Famers Rob Gronkowski and Travis Kelce. “Tyler Warren, he’s not Gronk, but he’s in the Gronk tree. That’s where his value is, someone that’s on the move. Seams, crossers, keep him on the go. He’s just with the size, the catch radius, the physicality to win, and then the toughness after the catch. Not taking the run game into it, just as a pass catcher. That’s where you want to use him.
“Loveland comes from the Kelce tree, which you can run option routes, whip routes. He can get in and out of breaks. Super athletic, can make you miss after the catch. Those are how I separate that."
O.K., so they’re not Gronk and Kelce but …
“It’s not a perfect comp, but if you’re just talking about guys that shouldn’t move the way they move at their size, have the tackle-breaking ability after the catch, Gronk was a more consistently dominant blocker at times, Warren has shown flashes—I don’t see it as consistently as Gronk. But I don’t think it’s that huge a stretch,” McShay says. “Loveland’s more your traditional F tight end (can play multiple positions), but really talented. If you’re doing elite comps, maybe you throw him in the Kelce, that kind of crowd.”
And then, like at running back, you have depth.
LSU’s Mason Taylor, son of Hall of Famer Jason Taylor, might be next to go, because he’s so polished and ready. But Miami’s Elijah Arroyo’s the guy with perhaps the most upside after the top Warren and Loveland. “He’s a unique talent,” McShay says. “He’s got some durability issues, and his production didn’t match up this year. But he had a great Senior Bowl. He’s not getting out of the second.”
Then, there’s Texas’s Gunnar Helm, Oregon’s Terrance Ferguson and another intriguing guy, in ultra-productive Bowling Green star Harold Fannin Jr. “I’m always a huge proponent when you get guys in the MAC that have huge games in step-up games,” Jeremiah says. “He was awesome against Penn State and A&M. That’s a theory that goes back to Khalil Mack tearing up Ohio State. There’s usually something to that."
And that there’s real potential there, that deep into the class, shows that this position, like running back, could have real value into the draft’s third day.
The receiver group is not what we’ve become accustomed to over the past decade. We’ve become so used to the Marvin Harrison Jr.-Malik Nabers-Rome Odunze-Ja’Marr Chase-Jaylen Waddle-DeVonta Smith-level classes, that when one such as this comes along, it’s pretty surprising—giving the amount of top athletes who gravitate to the position.
But that’s where we’ll be at receiver this year.
The more teams have dug into super-sized Arizona prospect Tetairoa McMillan, the more he seems to have slipped, going from a sure-fire top-10 guy into probably the middle of the first round. Former five-star recruit and Missouri star Luther Burden III isn’t the cleanest prospect, either. And teams aren’t licking their chops the way they have in recent years over the Day 2 talent, either.
“There’s a little area in the receiver position I like,” Jeremiah says. “It’s the [Emeka] Egbuka–Matthew Golden area—in the 20s. I love both those guys. I think they’re both pros, super polished. In a draft that maybe doesn’t have the star power, I’m leaning into the guys that come in with no operating instructions. They’re easy. … super high character, super smart, productive.”
Either guy posting 40s in the 4.3s this week, or at their pro days, would help. But Jeremiah says he sees both, either way, as having potential to be Amon-Ra St. Brown types.
(It’ll also be interesting to see if the dearth of receiver talent in the draft super-charges the free-agent market at the position. Or maybe causes teams drafting higher to look closer at the idea of at least having Hunter start his career on offense.)
The offensive line class has some quality and depth—but there’s no Joe Alt, and there may not be a franchise left tackle. In fact, when I asked what position you wouldn’t want to be looking for in this year’s class, safety (Georgia’s Malaki Starks and South Carolina’s Nick Emmanwori are the guys to watch there) and left tackle were the two that McShay and Jeremiah came back to me with.
“I’d be pissed off if I’m a team like New England where I desperately need a tackle,” McShay says. “Where’s my Joe Alt? [LSU’s Will] Campbell’s a really good player, steady as can be. I think he’ll be a good tackle—I do, despite the arm length. It’s just not the prototype I’m looking for if I have a top-five pick and I got this franchise quarterback that I just unearthed last year and I really need to protect him.”
Asked if someone could evolve into a franchise left tackle in the class, Jeremiah responded, “I think Campbell’s that guy,” adding that it reminded him a bit of Rashawn Slater, who had less than ideal measurables for the position.
Of course, because everyone needs tackles, a bunch figure to go high, regardless. Texas’s Kelvin Banks didn’t have the best junior year, but has a ton of potential. Ohio State’s Josh Simmons is coming back off a torn patella tendon, and has limited film—but may have been better than anyone in the flashes he showed before getting hurt in October. Oregon’s Josh Conerly Jr.’s another left tackle who’s likely to hear his name called in the first round.
“I like Banks—he’s thick and sturdy, he can bend, I wanted to see a little more strength just to finish,” Jeremiah satys. “Campbell, Banks, Simmons, I have confidence all those guys will play and be really good players.”
But whether they become long-term, Pro Bowl–type players as left tackles is another question.
So, in summary, this is what you’d call a scout’s draft—where the key will be plucking the one who’s different out of a clump of good players, and calculating which risks to take.
That, of course, isn’t going to help the NFL fill the street banners in Green Bay this April.
But if you root for a team with a bunch of holes, those can be addressed. If defensive line, running back and tight end are among those holes, even better. And if you’re a football fan who’s in for the intrigue, unpredictability and strategic team-building, there’s a lot in this year’s group for you.
Lucky for me, I like all that stuff.
If you do, too? Well, we’ll have plenty more coming for you here on the site over the next couple months.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as NFL Scouting Combine 2025: Key Story Lines to Watch This Week.
