So I know we’ll be consumed with FA stuff over the next ten days or so, meanwhile the pro days are going on. Finding the numbers can be like being a PI but some are starting to trickle in.
Indiana held their pro day and a guy I really like is WILL Jailin Walker. He’s small (6’1, 220), but he tested about how I thought he might. And he eats, sleeps and breathes football, and was graded 17th overall out of 454 qualifying LBs (24th against the run despite his size). Hard to imagine he won’t be on our board.
I’m really only gonna keep up with the freakiest of freaky testers are the guys who are legit prospects (or both, like Walker), or maybe guys who disappoint. I may end up the only one posting in this thread but that’s OK, you’ll all thank me come draft day!
This is the exact kind of speed LB I was talking about when I made my post in the Derrick Barnes thread. We’ve already got the guys with plenty of size and power. We need some guys who can cover the field and help chase down mobile QB’s. Nolan Smith was said to be too small to play LB as well, and look what he just did with Philly. It’s a niche role, but use it correctly and it’s a major weapon.
We absolutely need to add speed to the defense and the successor to Anzalone at WILL is a great way to do it. It’s another reason @CuriousHusker have been advocating for a bigger safety type like Winston who can play WILL on some downs. Gives us much better team speed and also helps against mobile QBs. Winston is one of the best tacklers I’ve ever scouted.
I am all for it. Our defense hit another level when Iffy broke out in 2023. I want Iffy as far away from this team as possible considering he went from broke out, to just broke down in 2024. That being said, we still need to replace that role of having a safety capable of also being a blizting LB to help disguise coverages.
I know there has been a lot of talk about how mobile QB’s are the unstoppable force in the NFL, and the direction offenses are going. I’ve done a lot of studying on why some teams are able to stop mobile QB’s, and why some teams can’t. It’s very generalized, but basically what I’ve seen is the teams that can stop running QB’s all seem to have at least one fast LB. It’s not so much the defensive line, it’s the LB’s that seem to stop the mobile qb’s most often.
Getting a pure speed LB I think would be a huge step up towards helping the defensive line do their thing, and if the QB breaks contain, you’ve got the cleanup guy who can hunt him down.
Yeah, probably not. But I didn’t believe Barron was a legit 4.38 guy either and he still hit it in Indy. Certainly didn’t think Golden was a 4.2s guy. And going back to Nolan Smith, I thought he was around a 4.5 guy on tape as well. Never know how the combine will play out.
Anyway we’re nitpicking, even if he hits 4.5 he’s fast. I thought he was a little more electric than that personally, but then again I don’t always see that right.
I was the same way with Spoon after his pro day. Great player but not a “real” 4.38 CB.
I’m old enough to remember when pro days were handled by adding a tenth or so. Maybe that still happens in the building, I imagine they have some location to location granularity, and they have MPH readings as well. I just think the draft sphere now takes this pro day times as though they’re 1 for 1.
Oh I remember. Though I thought it was half a tenth? Anyway I knew you added to it, but I think the reputation Indy has for being a fast track is the main reason that’s changed. I also know some of these places (though not Miami of Ohio and maybe not Indiana either) are setting up electronic timers, which differs vastly from when everyone hand-timed it.
That could be. I thought it was a tenth. But I remember in the early 2000s, late 90s etc that a lot of draftniks did some conversion from pro day times.
There are teams/scouts that probably rely on their own hand-timed 40’s more than the electronic ones. Shoot, teams / former GMs would even talk about measuring the fields to just how short the team’s track was of an actual 40 yards.
Oh for sure, but just for comparing across events the electronic timing standardizes it more, at least. Obviously it’s still not apples to apples since the playing surfaces are different, weather can be a factor, and even the setup of the electronic timing devices could differ for all I know. (Which is why they should all just test at the combine, but I digress).
