As has become a yearly custom, Daniel Jeremiah of the NFL Network hosted a lengthy conference call with the media in advance of the annual NFL Scouting Combine.
Jeremiah has been one of the network’s primary draft analysts and is a former NFL scout, as well as one of the hosts of the NFL’s coverage of the combine, which kicks off next week with on-field workouts beginning on Thursday, February 29th.
In two hours of questions, here are some of the more interesting answers and insights from Jeremiah during the course of the conference call.
QBs expected to go 1-2-3
There is a presumption that quarterbacks Caleb Williams, Drake Maye and Jayden Daniels would be the first three picks of the draft in some order. Jeremiah certainly played to that premise with his answers on questions about the Cardinals pick at No. 4 overall and the Giants and Broncos potentially trading up.
He later dropped this nugget,
“I think when it’s all said and done, it feels like it to me that you’re going
to have the three quarterbacks go 1, 2, 3 when we get down to it, whether
that’s with New England taking one or either them or Washington trading out
and somebody coming up.”
Three stars at wide receiver
Jeremiah really likes the three wide receivers at the top of the draft. In fact, he had this to say about Ohio State’s Marvin Harrison, Washington’s Rome Odunze and Malik Nabers from LSU,
“I think if you look purely off of grade and not positional value — I tweeted this out the other day — I think you could make a case those three highest graded players in this draft are the three receivers. They are outstanding. I think they’re all going to be No. 1 guys where they go.”
Enough said.
Brock Bowers is a top-10 talent that likely won't be drafted in the top 10
Bowers lit up the college football world at Georgia and Jeremiah notes, “he’s super easy to grade. He’s one of the 10 best players in the draft.”
But positional value, both in terms of football importance and economics, plays against the consensus top tight end.
“Everything he does, separate easy. He can go get it. He can climb the ladder
and go and get the ball, and really the run after catch stuff is what makes him
special,” Jeremiah said of Bowers.
“The challenge is then figuring out where does he go in the draft, and I think
when you look around the league and you see most of these top tight ends
that have come on day two or even beyond that, teams are now saying, okay,
we can find that other tight end. Maybe we don’t get the top guy, but we can
get a really, really good player who might end up being the top guy without
having to pay that premium.”
The price to trade up to get a top 3 QB looks massive
A couple of questions were asked about the idea of moving up into the top three to select one of the trio of quarterbacks at the top. What would the cost be?
Jeremiah cited the example of the Giants picking at No. 6 overall and moving up to No. 3 to get their desired quarterback from the New England Patriots slot. The cost estimate from Jeremiah:
- No. 6 overall
- No. 39 overall (Giants own 2nd-round pick)
- No. 47 overall (Giants 2nd-round pick acquired from Seattle)
- 2025 second-round pick
That’s three extra second-round picks to move up three spots in the first round. He also stated what he believed it would take the Raiders to move from No. 13 to No. 3 to get a QB,
“Here’s your cost for the Raiders to go up to three. It would be the 13th overall pick. It would be your first-round pick and third-round pick in
’25, and your first-round pick in ’26.”
He offered up a similar cost for the Vikings to move up from 12 to three,
“If you are looking at — if they wanted to trade up, if we put them into that
formula we were talking about to get up to number three, you’re talking about
the 11th pick, the first-round pick in ’25 and a first-round pick in ’26. That
would be the cost for them to get up to number 3 if you are the Minnesota
Vikings if they wanted to get one of the top three guys.”
7 offensive linemen graded in the top 20 overall
Jeremiah is very bullish on the offensive line class. He’s got a plethora of linemen in his top 20 overall players.
“…so that’s Alt, Fuaga, Fashanu, Latham, Fautanu from Washington,
Guyton, Mims. That’s the collection from me. I have all those guys in my top
20 players.”
Later, he also talked up having three centers — Jackson Powers-Johnson, Zach Frazier and Graham Barton — as “plug-and-play starters” who will rank in his top 50, too.
Why teams won't follow the Lions' wildly successful 2023 draft strategy
The Detroit Lions bucked all kinds of conventional wisdom with their draft in 2023. GM Brad Holmes selected a running back, off-ball linebacker, tight end and safety with his first four picks, all in the top 50 of the draft.
All four of them were big hits right away, position value be darned. The impressive yet unconventional draft haul helped propel the Lions to their first-ever NFC North title and a trip to the NFC Championship game.
Jeremiah doesn’t see other teams trying to eschew positional value to simply draft really good players anytime soon. His explanation was more about the Lions and their path to making it work.
“I don’t think there’s going to be any copycat here because I think we’ve focused so much on them taking those, quote, unquote, non-value positions, but we’ve ignored the fact that when you have already built the foundation, then you can go do that,” Jeremiah said of Detroit’s strategy and foundation.
“That draft was successful because of what they did, what Brad and those
guys did previously to build up the line of scrimmage on both sides. They had the quarterback (Jared Goff) in place. They hit a home run on the wide receiver (Amon-Ra St. Brown). The expensive premium positions, they had already built the foundations. That freed them up.
It’s a huge advantage over the rest of the league where you can take the running back. Obviously a tight end hits a home run. You can take off the linebacker. You can do those things once the foundation is built. I still think personally the right thing to do is to build the foundation and then you can go do what the Lions did last year.”
