I heard an incredibly interesting comp for Bryce Young last week, from a coach who’s got pretty good intel on the Alabama quarterback—one that’s, admittedly, unconventional:
Steph Curry.
Yes, really. And it does make some sense, first and foremost in how calmly Young plays, and also in his vision, instincts and feel for the game. Then, there’s Young’s ability to consistently put the ball where he wants it, which, of course, Curry is pretty adept at in his sport. All of which helps both guys overcome their relative lack of stature, and everyman sort of appearance for a pro athlete (or pro athlete-to-be).
Anyway, I thought that’d be an interesting one for you to chew on to kick off Tuesday’s notebook. (And if you need a football comp, Drew Brees is one I’ve gotten relatively consistently over the past couple of months.)
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• It’s time for your annual tutorial on 30 visits. The name of such visits is pretty self-explanatory—each of the NFL’s 32 teams is allowed to bring in up to 30 prospects for predraft visits each year. At those visits, teams can’t work players out, but they can interview them, take them in the film room, put them on the whiteboard and give them a physical.
In some cases, teams will have guys in who have a medical or character question that needs to be tied up at the end of the process. In others, they’ll want to get to know the player a little better. In others still, teams may want to create the illusion of interest (the smokescreen).
And then, you have the quarterbacks, and high first-round picks.
• With the quarterbacks and higher picks, teams will often want to take the extra step of bringing a kid in for a 30 visit, without there being a medical or character concern.
So sometimes, the teams with which such players visit can be instructive.
That’s one reason (and maybe the only one) why agent Drew Rosenhaus wouldn’t have Jalen Carter visit teams—to combat perception that Carter’s falling. It’s also why it’s interesting to see Tampa Bay bringing in Will Levis for a 30 visit this week, and Baltimore’s bringing in Anthony Richardson for one next week. The Bucs pick 19th and the Ravens 22nd, and neither would waste a visit (again, there’s a finite number of them for each team) on one of those guys if they thought there was no shot they’d fall to them.
Which meshes with how I believe the league sees the quarterback class—with Young and C.J. Stroud as locks to go very high, and much more variance where the next two (and maybe three, if you throw in Tennessee’s Hendon Hooker) will land.
• A thing that’s perhaps interesting only to me—there wasn’t a single player on the Ravens’ roster last year that had void years on his contract, and there’ll be a boatload of them this year. Nelson Agholor (four void years), Michael Pierce (three) and Geno Stone (three) signed new deals with void years, while Kevin Zeitler (four) and Gus Edwards (three) had void years added as their deals went into their final seasons over the past couple of months.
The single biggest reason for it, of course, is the big lump-sum, franchise-tag amount due to Lamar Jackson, which brings a cap number over $32 million with it.
But regardless of the cause here (and there’s more than one), it colors the sort of squeezing it took to fit in Odell Beckham Jr.—he has void years on his new deal, too—for a single year at $15 million. Those void years, for those who don’t know, simply push a big percentage of a player’s cap charge off into the future, to be accounted for later (and in the case of the six aforementioned deals, since they’re expiring, that money is pushed into 2024).
Now, that doesn’t mean the Ravens have shifted from a more conservative approach to being all in for a single year. Also, Jackson doing an extension could alleviate some of the cap issues here, and even have Baltimore in position to carry cap space over into 2024 to account for the charges coming.
But none of that changes this—with the team set up this way, there’s plenty of pressure on the organization to get some sort of resolution with its quarterback.
• O.K., so now that we covered where the Ravens veered a little off the path, here’s one thing about the Beckham signing that lines right up with how they’ve been doing business—they’ve long liked the idea of grabbing older, third-contract vets, who typically are really good leaders and program guys, and bring more certainty in performance, in that they’ll be less affected by a payday than the guy who’s getting filthy rich for the first time.
There are tons of good examples over the years, from Calais Campbell to Earl Thomas and Zeitler, to Mark Ingram and Steve Smith, and Beckham becomes the latest in that line.
As for what Beckham’s got left, going on 31 years old?
“I don’t think anyone can say for sure what you’re ‘definitely’ getting at this point,” said one NFC pro scouting director, via text. “The signing has boom/bust potential. His performance in the playoffs and Super Bowl rekindled memories of prior years and his reputation, especially with media and fans. But he’s 31 years old this season, 21 games played from ‘20 onward, with a below 60% catch rate since ‘19.
“You’re hoping for #3 production at best, based off ’19–21. He’s capable of flashes and big games, but we’ll have to see if he can play consistently week to week, and if his production can match his ’21 playoff run. I would guess, they’re hoping for complementary #2/3, as the whole picture is compiled.”
• The Bills’ re-signing of Shaq Lawson nearly a month into free agency is a good example of where they are right now, from a cap standpoint.
Bottom line, there are lots of guys they’d have liked to keep that they’ve had there. But with pretty much all their free agents, and after paying Josh Allen, Stefon Diggs, Dion Dawkins, Dawson Knox and Von Miller, they had to draw lines. That meant saying goodbye to some (like Tremaine Edmunds), and waiting for the market to come down on others (like Jordan Poyer and, now, Lawson).
This, of course, would qualify as a champagne problem.
• Since it came up again Monday, via a report from Adam Schefter, this is a good place to reiterate where the Cardinals are—wanting to move the third pick to build up some more capital, but in a place where they may have to wait until they’re on the clock to do it.
With the Texans’ plans a mystery, the best value for Arizona will likely come when there’s some clarity on what Houston does with the second pick.
(I don’t really think any team values Levis or Richardson to the point where they’d trade up to No. 3 to get them. But I might be wrong on that.)
• I’d expect to hear more and more about the S2 test that we referenced Monday. (Both Young and Levis scored highly, in the 90s on it, which should help them.) As we said, about half the league is subscribing to get their results now, and it’s considered a pretty useful tool to test a quarterback’s processing power.
Josh Allen, Joe Burrow and Justin Fields are among those who’ve scored highest on it as draft prospects in recent years.
• I’d agree with Senior Bowl executive director Jim Nagy’s assessment from Monday morning that the receiver group this year lacks great quality at its top end (though there is depth there), and that Ohio State’s Jaxon Smith-Njigba is seen as the safest prospect.
I think if Smith-Njigba had played this year (he missed all but a handful of snaps in 2022, thanks to a hamstring injury), there’d probably be no question who the top receiver in the class is. And yet, even with the talented Buckeyes prospect, who’s following in the footsteps of Terry McLaurin, Garrett Wilson and Chris Olave, there’s a significant question—is he strictly a slot receiver, or can he play outside?—to reckon with.
• A lot of teams started their last rounds of draft meetings Monday. That means final boards are in the works now, and plans are being set, and we’ll see more active discussions between GMs and coaches soon. Almost there!
