Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of the NFL
Speaker 1: Draft Triple Take, presented by U P m C. Mike Pursued, A,
Speaker 1: Dale Lolly and Matt Williamson. We've still got the pedal down.
Speaker 1: We are still plowing through the prospects to get you
Speaker 1: as ready as possible for the NFL Draft. Only the
Speaker 1: Steelers scouts guys are gonna be more prepared than the
Speaker 1: people who have been with us since day one. And
Speaker 1: that's only if they've been among the people who have
Speaker 1: been with us. They have to watch them all, not
Speaker 1: just the first take, but the second take as well.
Speaker 1: And the second take. UH, as you may or may
Speaker 1: not know by now. If you don't, this will be
Speaker 1: news to you that the second take is not a
Speaker 1: top five at the position. It's a riser, faller and sleeper. UH.
Speaker 1: Just trying to get the conversation, UH a little more
Speaker 1: nuanced and UH maybe throw some more names out there
Speaker 1: for discussion than you would get in a standard top five. UH.
Speaker 1: I noticed that uh, Dale and Matt, who conspire the
Speaker 1: drive on s n R and have conspired to be
Speaker 1: in complete agreement more often than not on these programs,
Speaker 1: both of you guys are agreement on your riser. Who
Speaker 1: would like to take the floor first to discuss the
Speaker 1: great Trayvon Walker. Go ahead, Matt Sin we apparently share
Speaker 1: a brain. Yeah, I'm gonna call kind of an audible
Speaker 1: here too. I mean, I think this one's just so
Speaker 1: obvious with Trayvon Walker, and I'll let they'll talk about
Speaker 1: him mostly, but since we're talking edges and linebackers, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna include the other Walker from Georgia as well as
Speaker 1: an off the ball linebacker, Quay Walker. Travon is almost
Speaker 1: like a combination athletically not production. And this goes to
Speaker 1: their combine numbers of J. J. Watt and Von Miller.
Speaker 1: And I know that sounds remarkable, but that's exactly the
Speaker 1: kind of numbers he posted. But Quay the linebacker, I
Speaker 1: think he's rocketing up boards as well, because you can
Speaker 1: do so much with him. He has extreme length, he
Speaker 1: can cover tight ends out of the slot, he can blitz,
Speaker 1: he can play off the ball. His numbers were tremendous too,
Speaker 1: So two Walkers from Georgia. Yeah, you know, I think
Speaker 1: Walker Trayvon Walker. Um, I know everybody raved about some
Speaker 1: of the big guys running. This guy came in a
Speaker 1: six five to seventy two and ran a four five
Speaker 1: to forty at two hundred and seventy two pounds. It's
Speaker 1: his three coundrel was six point eight nine. Uh. It
Speaker 1: just really easy change of direction for him. And he's
Speaker 1: got thirty five inch arms long there. I mean, he's
Speaker 1: just a physical freak. Uh. And so I think you're
Speaker 1: seeing a lot of of of movement for him up
Speaker 1: the draft boards here. You know, I know he was considered,
Speaker 1: you know, an easy first round draft pick, but now
Speaker 1: I think you're talking top five with him. And that's
Speaker 1: why I had to put him as my riser at
Speaker 1: that position. There's even some talk that he could be
Speaker 1: the top overall pick in this draft, and I don't
Speaker 1: think anybody would blink an eye if that happened. So
Speaker 1: really freakish athlete and to Matt's point, kind of a
Speaker 1: combination you could. You could have him put on ten
Speaker 1: pounds and playment defensive end and not you know, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be a problem. You could have him stay at
Speaker 1: two seventy two and and play outside linebacker in a
Speaker 1: three or four defense and it wouldn't be a problem.
Speaker 1: There's just so much that you can do with a
Speaker 1: guy like that. Some talk about him being first overall
Speaker 1: on this very program, well not this specific one, but
Speaker 1: our last mock draft mocks three point Oh, you guys
Speaker 1: probably recalled that I mocked him number one to the
Speaker 1: Jacksonville Jaguar. So I couldn't include him as my riser
Speaker 1: because there's nowhere to go. He's he's at the top
Speaker 1: of the list. You can't go higher than the first overall.
Speaker 1: But I do want to mention all the points you
Speaker 1: guys made about his physicals and how he played and
Speaker 1: where he played. There was a play in the National
Speaker 1: Championship game and nobody on the broadcast noticed this because
Speaker 1: it was just after Jamison Williams got hurt for Alabama,
Speaker 1: and the freshman kid came in number eighty four, and
Speaker 1: he made a catch a crossing route and then he
Speaker 1: stopped and made the Obie Dean miss and wound up
Speaker 1: getting a twenty four yard gain out of it. Guess
Speaker 1: who made the tackle. Traymond Walker, lining up at defensive tackle,
Speaker 1: started to pass rush, didn't get there, saw the ball, release,
Speaker 1: looked around, located it. Chase down a wide receiver from
Speaker 1: well behind the play. Now the guy was running sideways
Speaker 1: a little bit to start, but the kind of football
Speaker 1: instincts and football i Q and the effort and the motor. Uh,
Speaker 1: he checks every box. And Uh, if I was Jacksonville,
Speaker 1: I'd take him number one this year. Uh, particularly if
Speaker 1: I had the roster that is currently comprised in Jacksonville.
Speaker 1: That said, I couldn't make him my riser, So I
Speaker 1: went with Arnold Ebakte of Penn State. Uh. He's been
Speaker 1: rising for a while now. Uh, good move transferring to
Speaker 1: Penn State. He went from second team All American Athletic
Speaker 1: Conference to first team All Big Ten, going from Temple
Speaker 1: to Penn State. And another one of these guys who's
Speaker 1: really got a physical skill set. Uh he was. Uh
Speaker 1: he's not an a Native American. He was born in Cameroon.
Speaker 1: Family got here when he was twelve, picked up the
Speaker 1: game in high school. He's still figuring all this stuff out,
Speaker 1: but really an intriguing guy, uh, coming off the edge,
Speaker 1: at least initially as a past rusher, and then as
Speaker 1: he figured some more stuff out, maybe he could do
Speaker 1: a whole lot more. He was one of the guys
Speaker 1: dale at the combine that they had to do the
Speaker 1: conversion drills. Uh, some of the past rushers asked to
Speaker 1: drop in coverage and uh, not a chess piece yet,
Speaker 1: but a vers little guy for sure. Yeah, he definitely
Speaker 1: has a skill set to do those kind of things.
Speaker 1: And this draft, I mean, there's there's a lot of
Speaker 1: those guys that that you look at and say, boy,
Speaker 1: you could do some things with this guy, if you know,
Speaker 1: I remind people all the time that you know, t J.
Speaker 1: Watt was the ninth edge rusher taken in his draft night.
Speaker 1: There were nine. There were eight other guys edge rushers
Speaker 1: taking at him. Some of them have worked out, some
Speaker 1: of them have not, but he was the best one.
Speaker 1: So I mean you you had a similar kind of
Speaker 1: depth in this one in this draft as well with
Speaker 1: some of his edge guys. Matt Dale and I are
Speaker 1: the ones who agree on the fall or you're the
Speaker 1: outlier with my J Sanders of Cincincinnati. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: to his credit, he's helped the Bearcats get where they
Speaker 1: are over the last couple of years. And it was
Speaker 1: a good college player. But you know, we're not giving
Speaker 1: credit for what they did in college. You gotta project
Speaker 1: these guys to the pros. And at six five, he
Speaker 1: looks like Mike Evans to me not an edge defender,
Speaker 1: and he's just really, really lean, and I don't think
Speaker 1: he's really adept and playing in space or playing you know,
Speaker 1: back and back, you going in reverse. So I just
Speaker 1: don't think he's got enough you know, sand in his
Speaker 1: pants to play on the line of scrimmage. And then
Speaker 1: another thing I've noticed about him the more I've studied him,
Speaker 1: is he has a terrible habit of jumping off sides.
Speaker 1: And in itself, that's definitely bad behind him blowing him
Speaker 1: into the line right right, right, But but it also
Speaker 1: indicates to me that he gets a lot of his
Speaker 1: production by guessing the snap count and winning with speed,
Speaker 1: and that's not gonna fly at the next level. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's funny you mentioned the off side thing. Interesting littlantic though. Here.
Speaker 1: Back when I was in college a hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: I took a class called Football Coaching one oh one,
Speaker 1: and the way they did it was each week a
Speaker 1: different position coach would give the lecture, and then there
Speaker 1: would be a quiz the next week on last week's stuff,
Speaker 1: and then you'd learned the new stuff. And Steve Ferness,
Speaker 1: the old defensive lineman from the Steel Curtain was head
Speaker 1: coach George Peerless defensive line coach at Michigan State at
Speaker 1: the time, so he gave the lecture on defensive lineman
Speaker 1: and and this stuck with me low these many years later.
Speaker 1: He said, when you play defensive line, it's important if
Speaker 1: it's starting for not to jump off side. That's good advice,
Speaker 1: but you know you gotta take it. I guess it's
Speaker 1: is the point that Matt, did you ever figure out
Speaker 1: why uh Sanders lost so much weight between the combine
Speaker 1: and the Pro Day? I heard some rumblings about an illness,
Speaker 1: but I mean, even just watching his tape at Cincinnati,
Speaker 1: he's very lean and doesn't have a real thick to
Speaker 1: find heavy lower body, and you just get pushed around
Speaker 1: and the least is too physical Dale. You and I
Speaker 1: agree that the faller is David a job, although I
Speaker 1: don't think he's gonna fall as much as you expect
Speaker 1: a guy that tours Achilles on the Pro day to fought.
Speaker 1: This guy is fascinating to me. I think I think
Speaker 1: he is underrated. I know Hutchinson is a great player,
Speaker 1: but I think he I think Hutchinson has been anointed
Speaker 1: to a certain extent for whatever reason. I think a
Speaker 1: job has got miles and miles of upside. He's just
Speaker 1: getting started. I'm curious to see how far he does fall.
Speaker 1: I think he will a little bit, but I'm not
Speaker 1: ready to say he doesn't get out of the first round.
Speaker 1: In fact, in mark three point oh, Matt and I
Speaker 1: had him going to Detroit at thirty two. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: he's gonna be interesting. I had him as number three
Speaker 1: on my original triple take at at the edge rusher position.
Speaker 1: He's not gonna go there. Um, you know, I think
Speaker 1: he ends up being the six or seventh ad dresser taken.
Speaker 1: And so the difference there is that, you know, being
Speaker 1: a potential top ten pick to being somewhere in the
Speaker 1: twenties probably. So that's a pretty big fall, and it's
Speaker 1: gonna cost him a lot of money through no fault
Speaker 1: of his own. He tories Achilles tendon at his his
Speaker 1: pro day workout, So you know, it's kind of a
Speaker 1: cautionary tale. I know some guys since then haven't worked
Speaker 1: out at their pro days because of that what happened
Speaker 1: to him, because they saw it's probably gonna end up
Speaker 1: costing him a couple of million dollars and is unfortunate,
Speaker 1: but it is part of the process here. There's always somebody.
Speaker 1: We've seen this in the past, where guys have gotten
Speaker 1: hurt and fallen out of the first round. I think
Speaker 1: he's too freaky, and I think we know more about
Speaker 1: achilles injuries than we used to, and I think they're
Speaker 1: much more treatable. It used to be a well, if
Speaker 1: you tore your achilles, it was gonna be two years
Speaker 1: before you were back. Now we're seeing guys come back
Speaker 1: the same season. He should play at some point this season. Um,
Speaker 1: but he was a raw prospect to begin with. So
Speaker 1: I do think there's some value to using that fift
Speaker 1: year option with a guy like a job. I as
Speaker 1: opposed to taking him in the second round and then
Speaker 1: you've only got him for four years and the first
Speaker 1: year is kind of gonna be a wash to a
Speaker 1: certain degree. So if you get that fifth year option
Speaker 1: with him, I think it makes a big difference. Again,
Speaker 1: I think the upside for this kid is almost Uh.
Speaker 1: He's a one year player at Michigan, really, and so
Speaker 1: there's a lot there's a lot of untapped potential there.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stay in a Big ten conference for my
Speaker 1: sleeper bully ma Fe of Minnesota who's making a lot
Speaker 1: of noise, and a guy who kind of started figuring
Speaker 1: it out, uh in the latter stages of season that
Speaker 1: he had a great senior ball and then he had
Speaker 1: a really good combine. Matt, we're talking to a previous
Speaker 1: episode and Dale mentioned this as well, about how some
Speaker 1: of these guys are afterthoughts where in any other quote
Speaker 1: unquote normal year, they'd be stars. But they were just great.
Speaker 1: They weren't freaky. But Uh, this kid seems to have
Speaker 1: a knack to me, He's figured out how not to
Speaker 1: run ten yards behind the quarterback and take yourself too deep.
Speaker 1: He's figured out how to attack with his hands when
Speaker 1: he gets there. Uh six floor to sixty one. I
Speaker 1: don't know if he's gonna sneak into the first round
Speaker 1: or not. Probably not, but somebody's gonna be great, great value.
Speaker 1: I think he has a chance. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: they're again bringing up t. J. Watt was a ninth
Speaker 1: edge rusher taking in two thousand seventeen. It wouldn't surprise
Speaker 1: me if we see that many edge rushers go again
Speaker 1: this year, eight or nine. So there's a shot that
Speaker 1: a guy like a boy could could find his way
Speaker 1: into the first round, UM, and he typically you know,
Speaker 1: if if those guys are going in that later part
Speaker 1: of that, they're they're going to a team that made
Speaker 1: the playoffs last year, and so it ends up being
Speaker 1: a pretty good situation for them. Yeah, situational, maybe not
Speaker 1: as much pressure. You don't have to get thrown right in.
Speaker 1: There's gonna be all kinds of pressure on Aidan Hutchinson
Speaker 1: Thibodeaux to come out and be stars right away, where
Speaker 1: a guy like my fae or even a lot a
Speaker 1: Jobo at this point they can take their time. They
Speaker 1: let's stick with you and get your sleeper. Uh. Has
Speaker 1: this pick made in honor of Ben Roethlisborger. You know,
Speaker 1: it's the same school Dominique Robinson of Miami of Ohio.
Speaker 1: But he was again one of the guy that I
Speaker 1: didn't know much about going to the the uh the
Speaker 1: Senior Bowl and really had a good week of practices
Speaker 1: down there. Uh six five to fifty three at the combine.
Speaker 1: He weighed in a little heavier than that at his
Speaker 1: pro day UM, but he had a four seven to
Speaker 1: forty forty one inch vertical at six five to fifty
Speaker 1: three I mean I get out of here with that. Uh,
Speaker 1: it is pro day. He had a four one nine
Speaker 1: short shuttle, which was what was up vertical. Again, does
Speaker 1: Kellipari know this? Uh? Somebody on the Miami of Ohio
Speaker 1: basketball team should have known that. Uh. He was a
Speaker 1: wide receiver when he first got there. So his first
Speaker 1: two years on campus he played wide receiver and cut
Speaker 1: twenty seven passes. So there's a little bit of Joey
Speaker 1: Porter going on here. Joey Porter was a wide receiver
Speaker 1: at Colorado State when he got there and converted to
Speaker 1: UH to to outside linebacker, defensive end, and then outside
Speaker 1: linebacker for the Steelers. I see some of that with Dominque.
Speaker 1: Robinson didn't have great production in college. Um, so there
Speaker 1: there is a little bit of questions there. But again,
Speaker 1: that's short shuttle four point one nine. That's ninety second
Speaker 1: percentile for somebody that size. I mean, he can move
Speaker 1: and jump, and he's an athlete very again, very raw
Speaker 1: to position. But you could do some stuff with him
Speaker 1: if you get him into the right program. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: like that pick a lot, man. I got a little
Speaker 1: ahead of myself. I was looking at your selection. Uh.
Speaker 1: Josh Pascal of Kentucky and Dale. That's why I Calipery
Speaker 1: Toll Perry has been known to some guys from other
Speaker 1: schools too. I fall started, I didn't snap out, but uh,
Speaker 1: some intriguing guys matt on both sides of the trenches
Speaker 1: of Kentucky in recent seasons. Yeah, and Pascal is a
Speaker 1: real easy guy to root for too. He's a guy
Speaker 1: you want on your upball team. He's the only three
Speaker 1: time captain in Kentucky's history. Uh. He came back from
Speaker 1: a malignant melanoma on his foot back in two thousand eighteen.
Speaker 1: Has been really productive since he's almost like a shorter
Speaker 1: version of Bud Dupre in terms of body type. He's
Speaker 1: really really thick. He plays extremely hard, really difficult to
Speaker 1: move off the edge. I mean, he's just really easy
Speaker 1: to like. Yeah, that's a good stuff as well. And uh,
Speaker 1: that's one of those positions Dale. How many Uh Well,
Speaker 1: t J. Watt was the ninth guy, the ninth I
Speaker 1: wonder how the tenth one will fare this year. Five
Speaker 1: years now, it seems like there's a lot of them again.
Speaker 1: And uh, it's gonna be really interesting to see not
Speaker 1: only where these guys go, but if they go to
Speaker 1: a good situation if you know, if it's the right fit.
Speaker 1: Presumably that's a team's draft for but sometimes they get
Speaker 1: a little caught up in uh, I think chasing the
Speaker 1: name or the for the recognition as opposed to, well,
Speaker 1: this guy really does what we want to do. But
Speaker 1: a lot of athletes out there, a lot of big
Speaker 1: guys that can run and jump. Good luck quarterbacks moving forward,
Speaker 1: that's gonna do it. For this edition of the Triple
Speaker 1: Taking on her mind everyone that you can get these
Speaker 1: and all other like programs on all the Steelers social
Speaker 1: media platforms. You can catch Matt and Dale conspiring how
Speaker 1: to agree on subsequent Take two reviews of the positions.
Speaker 1: You can catch that on the drive on s n R.
Speaker 1: Thanks to everyone for joining us today, however, and uh
Speaker 1: wherever you found us, thanks for making that happen. Until
Speaker 1: next time for Matt Williamson and Dale Wally, I'm Mike.
Speaker 1: Pursuit of This has been the NFL Draft Triple Take,
Speaker 1: presented by U P m C