The Best NFL Draft Prospects that Nobody Talks About.

The Best NFL Draft Prospects that Nobody Talks About.

talking about top 10 picks is boring to me so we’re not doing that today and for those of you that are longtime watchers of this channel you know by now that I do this kind of video every single year where I talk about guys that are probably going to go on day two in some cases day three that I don’t really think have the national media paying attention to them as much as they should and in some cases they’re going to be day two picks that probably should have gone on day one once upon a time not too long ago Nico Collins Osa Diggizua Kobe Turner and Creed Humphrey were all in a video that I made just like this one as kind of overlooked talents that I thought were uh I don’t want to call them diamonds in the rough but let’s just say underrated so you know sometimes I hit on these guys and sometimes I miss really really big but I’m just going to conveniently ignore all of them anyway we’re going to get right into it today i’m not going to waste any more of your time here is number five on our countdown of the top five underrated prospects in this draft [Music] class this offensive tackle class ended up being not as deep as I was hoping for early on in the process and there’s really not a whole lot of good names to pick from after you get past day one but if you do need a potential starting tackle on day two Charles Grant I think is a pretty good option he did play a quote unquote lower level of competition at William and Mary but if you’re just looking at the tools he’s 6’5 311 with nearly 35 in arms and unbelievable movement ability he’s built like an NFL tackle i don’t really want to call him raw because he’s not raw but he still can play high at times he’s still trying to learn the position after all he just started playing football about halfway through high school so I guess we can consider him a late bloomer of sorts but despite only playing football for about 6 years of his life he went from being an all-state wrestler to an underrecruited football player to then having his freshman year disrupted by COVID but then finally as a red shirt freshman he started then became allconerence as a sophomore then became all-American and a team captain i mean the linear line of development and progression here is really really encouraging he gets better every single season and when you combine that with the fact that again he’s really toolsy and you can evidently see his wrestling background and how he plays because despite playing high he still has really nimble feet and balance through contact and still somehow just gets guys on the ground through sheer torque alone i think the upside here is massive as far as pass protection goes I do kind of want to adjust this for competition level because let’s be real the William and Mary schedule doesn’t really have a whole lot of high-end edge rushers on it but even so he is so long and he’s so explosive that he just dominated pretty much everybody that he faced he only had a 2.4% pressure rate allowed which is incredibly strong even going back to his 2023 game against Virginia he only really allowed two pressures in that game so he does have some pretty high-end tape against high-end competition it’s just few and far between but at the end of the day I mean results are results in the entire 2024 season he only allowed the quarterback to get touched twice the whole year and one of those was a missed cup block by the way so again like we’re talking about somebody who was locked down in pass because he has true NFL tools and he showed that he has NFL tools combine all that pass tape with in my opinion some of the best runb blocking tape by any tackle in this class and you have a really strong candidate to be a top 50 pick especially for teams that come from like the Shanahan cinematic universe I guess you can call it all the teams that major in wide zone and and that kind of run scheme they’re going to love Charles Grant because just his cutups on backside cut off blocks on wide zone is outright disgusting like he and Chase Lunt from Yukon are the two best in this class at doing exactly that and of course this goes back to his wrestling background too because this is all about footwork and balance and torque and I you could just see all these cutback lanes that he opens up on these backside cut offs like he is ridiculously good at this so again if you’re a wide zone team or at least a team that loves to use wide zone runs Charles Grant’s going to be your guy again we’ll have to see where he ends up at as a pass protector because we just don’t have a whole lot of tape against you know NFL competition but I mean the tools are there so again I really do think he’s going to be a top 50 pick he just had his pro day last week and 29 NFL teams showed up it’s not often that 29 teams go to a William and Mary proday so believe me everybody is interested in Charles Grant he’s going to go way higher than you think and he deserves it now next up instead of a pass protector we have a pass rusher and the dirty secret of this draft class is that it’s very thin at the top and very wide in the middle so the difference in grade between the player that’s probably going to go at like pick 20 to 25 and the player that’s going to go at pick 45 to 50 is very minimal you could argue for a massive amount of guys to be late one to early two draft picks and one of those names is an edge rusher that’s kind of got lost in a sea of good edge rushers in this class and so I want to take the time to spotlight him and maybe argue a case for why he should be a firstround pick that’s LSU’s Braden Swinson longtime viewers of this channel know that I love power rushers that was what made me put Jared Verse as my edge one last year which ended up paying off I would say and that same mentality is why I have Braden Swinson as a top 40 pick in this class if not a top 32 pick when all said and done i will concede he’s not the bendiest guy ever he only had a 7133 cone which is about at the threshold where you want it to be i mean preferably you want somebody who can do a sub 73 cone but he is a little stiff in the hips there i think he’s only got average bend his 433 shuttle is average as well and that shows up on tape so you’re really not taking him because he’s this super fluid bendy malleable edge rusher you’re taking him because when he drops his pads and gets his length into a tackle’s chest they’re going to go backwards he’s 6’4″ 255 with 33 and 1/2 in arms and just under 10in hands so it’s not even like he has overwhelming length and size but it’s the strength that he has pound-for-pound that really pops on tape usually the best edge rushers in the NFL are the ones who can win with power and then they have finesse moves that they build off of that power and Braden Swinson is that kind of rusher he has devastating pound-for-pound power then he has a whole bunch of finesse counters that he can work in and start to win the edge more quickly but I love his pocket compression ability i love his versatility and I mean the statistical profile is pretty damn impressive too because he’s such a versatile edge rusher he had a 32.6% pass rush win rate against true pass sets meaning nonrpo non-screen non-play action like just a real dropback pass that was sixth best in this entire draft class for reference he’s right below Abdul Carter who was about 33.3% so to be in the same neighborhood as Abdul Carter is really impressive and he was also fifth in pass rush productivity which is a formula that PFF has where they take kind of a combination of sacks and then weighted quarterback hits and hurries they divide that by the number of snaps that are played and it’s a way to measure efficiency for a pass rusher based on the sample size of snaps right and 17.4 is a really really high number again that’s right in between Abdul Carter who is at 17.6 and Mike Green who is at 17.3 both of those guys obviously are going to be first round picks and Braden Swinson did that in the SEC he was going against really good competition i love his hand usage i think he’s got a really good first step not an elite first step but a really good one so he can threaten you with speed and then convert that to power and I think that strength shows up as a run defender too so he’s not even just a third down player he’s an every down player now the knock on him of course beyond just kind of his average bend in agility is he’s a fifth year guy who didn’t do a whole lot at Oregon and then you know didn’t do a whole lot in his first year at LSU and then he popped finally as a fifth year guy but you have to remember this is the last draft class that was really impacted by COVID his freshman year was the COVID season so that didn’t really help in his development it just kind of took him a little while to get off the ground but he’s here now and he’s one of the best players in the country so whether he popped as a junior or he popped as a fifth year senior I don’t really care because the tape is really really excellent this is a great edge rusher who’s not going to go in the top 20 to 25 picks so if you’re picking late in the first round or early in the second round and you have to get an edge rusher I think Braden Swinson might be the guy like if I was any of the teams from 27 to 32 Baltimore Detroit Washington Buffalo Kansas City or Philadelphia if I wanted to make my pass rush better and I wanted five years of contract control I would take Braden Swinson at any of those picks and sleep like a baby and speaking of sleeping like a baby I do don’t know why [Music] i think the cat might be out of the bag about Omar Norman lot at this point but I don’t care i’m putting him on here anyway i think that the general consensus mock draft value for him right now of being somewhere in like the 70s to 90s is flatout wrong i think he’s going to go way earlier than that and I wouldn’t be shocked if again just like Braden Swinson he starts to get talked about as like a late first round pick as we get closer to the draft now is he an every down player absolutely not he is a designated interior pass rusher which is again sometimes a position that doesn’t really go in the first round but he is so damn good at it that I wouldn’t be shocked if he did he has the highest pass rush win rate of any interior defensive lineman in this class at 26% which is just crazy absurd he had a pass rush productivity number of 12.9 which I can’t find any other interior lineman with over a 100 snaps in a season having that in the last decade not Quinnon Williams not Christian Barmore not Kijijah Cany even definitely not any of the Michigan kids this year like he’s over doubled Mason Graham in that number just to kind of put it into context and it’s not like he’s playing bad offensive lineman like he’s in the SEC and just murdering everybody he is explosive off the ball he’s really got great power for his size he’s only 6’2 290 so again he doesn’t have a whole lot of weight behind him but as far as pound-for-pound strength he is way up there he’s really really strong but he’s got great hips great feet love his balance when he’s kind of turning the corner like he just kind of contorts himself and and stays up at really weird angles to finish the rush so I love his balance and body control i also love his hands too he has a habit of just grabbing the offensive lineman’s wrist and using a forklift to control his arm and kind of hold it away from his chest while he just barrels into them and caves in the pocket and they all freak out because they don’t know what to do they don’t have control of their own hand and he just takes advantage of it like he just takes away their punch and they they got nothing else now I will say it’s not all sunshine and rainbows i mean he’s not really a run defender at all as his size would suggest he’s well under 300 lb but if you’re just using him as a DPR which is what Tennessee did they rotated their defensive line a lot so he had like less than 90 run defense snaps the entire year but if you’re just using him as an interior DPR he is worth it he’s going to be exceptionally productive for you on passing downs so if I’m running a team right now and I want to use that same kind of hockey line philosophy where I have different specialty defensive linemen for different downs and distances Omar Norman Lot’s my guy i’m going to pair him up with big runs stopping defensive tackles that I can typically get later in the draft or you know sometimes in free agency at kind of reduced numbers for whatever reason those tackles just really don’t get paid and you know run stopping three techniques definitely don’t get paid because they’re seen as just first and second down players but that’s kind of all I need them to be i use them to stop the run and get us into third and seven i bring in Omar on third and seven and then he gets us off the field that’s the whole philosophy so I love him for that role again I think there’s an outside shot he goes in the first round just as a DPR but at worst he’s going to be a mid-second round pick because he is so ridiculously historically effective in that particular role next up I want to hit on this receiver class a little bit because I think it’s been uh a little overly criticized at this point like I I know the popular thing is to say this receiver class sucks i don’t think it sucks it’s just different well it’s not as good as last year i’ll say that like I’m not going to you it’s not as good as last year but it doesn’t mean that it’s bad you know there’s not Marvin Harrison Jr Roma Dunay BTJ Malik Neighbors like all back to back to back and it’s not even 2020 where you had uh CD Lamb and Justin Jefferson and Brandon Iayuk in the first round and Michael Pitman in in the second round I think is where he was taken it’s not that kind of class but it doesn’t mean that there’s not good players here even going into day three and there is one particular day three sleeper at least I assume he’s going to be a day three pick i’d be stunned if he gets taken before the fourth round but there is one day three sleeper that I truly think early on in his career is going to be a starting NFL slot receiver and a pretty good one at [Music] that jimmy Horn Jr did line up a little bit everywhere at Colorado about 323 snaps out wide and 371 in the slot but of course in the NFL I don’t really see him lining up everywhere I see him really more being a full-time slot receiver because he’s just not that big he’s only got about 175 lbs in his frame and hell in person I’ve seen him twice now both at the Shrine Bowl and at the combine he doesn’t even really look that big either so he is probably a full-time slot receiver but that doesn’t mean that he’s just going to be running option routes and shallow crosses all day you can legitimately have him be a deep threat from the slot he’s both explosive and smooth which is not necessarily a common combination sometimes the smooth guys don’t have a next gear and sometimes the explosive guys are just all over the place in terms of body control and footwork but he’s got both he just always looks in control but he’s in control while moving at top speed and that showed up at the combine as well nextgen Stats tracks receiver speed through all the drills at the combine and he was either at the top or within the top four of the gauntlet drill the dagger route drill the go route and the slot sail route which checks out because he ran that a lot at Colorado so for me I don’t necessarily pay attention to just the time speed which also was very good for him he did time well but it’s the game speed that I pay attention to the fact that he went through all those drills faster than all or almost all of the receivers in this class really speaks to the confidence that he has in his own hands and feet there were receivers that I was watching go through these drills right before and right after him that I know we’re going to be drafted a lot earlier than him that were straight up loafing it through the drills and not moving that fast simply because I think they were focused more on catching the ball rather than catching the ball at speed and the point of the drill is to show that you can do the football stuff at your top speed because your 40 kind of doesn’t matter if you never run that fast when you have to actually run around and catch the ball at the same time so the fact that Jimmy Horn Jr could do all the football stuff at top speed that means a lot that is the point of those NextGen stats measurements it’s literally measuring game speed against time speed now going back to the tape side real quick he’s also a great route runner and he has much improved hands from earlier in his career plus he’s straight up fearless over the middle so I have no worries about him making a tough catch in traffic it’s going to do a lot of damage to him because he doesn’t have a lot of body armor and that’s the one downsize is lack of size and potential durability but he’s not going to be afraid like he’s willing to take the contact you just have a worry about how much contact he can take while being the size that he is i know a lot of people also bring up production as a downside for him just because he didn’t have crazy numbers this year but you have to remember he was in a really crowded room with Travis Hunter Lejante Wester and Will Shepard all there and he still had big pops on tape and in person so I don’t really rely on just the raw production for him because it was so crowded i more rely on what he looked like on tape what he looked like at the combine and what he looked like when I saw him route people up in person at the Shrine Bowl and he checked every single box so if I’m looking for an early to midday3 dedicated slot receiver that can come in and be a contributor and a pro immediately Jimmy Horn Jr is my pick for our last underrated player I’m doing another receiver cuz I’m trying to drive the point home here that this class is not as bad as people think it is i wouldn’t even call it bad to begin with but I am cheating a little bit because this player in my opinion should be a top 25 pick and hearing that you might be thinking “Okay well if he’s a top 25 guy why is he underrated?” Like that makes no sense it’s not like he’s a a day three sleeper like Jimmy Horn or like uh you know Jim DK from Florida who’s also going to go on day three who’s a a legit sleeper especially if you run an offense that runs like 40% crossing routes cough anyone in the Shanahan tree Chim DK by the way watch him he’s really good but it’s not like he’s one of those guys right like he’s a firstround talent so why is he underrated to me he’s underrated because popular media consensus right now especially from people that I respect very much they consider him to be somebody who might like keyword might go in the 40s to 50s and I think he’s going to go like top 25 you know at least top 32 like I think he is that good i think he is arguably the most complete receiver in this draft so to me if I think you’re more complete than all the guys that are probably going to go on day one at this point and you’re going to go on day two by the rules of grammar you’re [Music] underrated when I was watching all the receivers go through the same drills back to back to back to back at the combine Jaden Higgins stood out and he stood out immediately it wasn’t just the size and the length it was the fact that he was so quick and so fluid despite being so big he moved just as well as the small receivers in this class while being 6’4 215 and that time speed of 447 translated to game speed as well i mean he was flying through all the drills and there were other bigname receivers working out that day as well and I’m not going to name names but quite frankly they just looked like they were moving at an entirely different speed and I mean that in a bad way jaden Higgins looked like a true number one at the NFL level and then you go away from just the pure athleticism and you go more towards the production and the analytics and of course the tape and he checks every single box over there as well he had 2.61 yards per route run this season which is awesome he had the 13th most snaps against single coverage this year out of every receiver in this class and yet the third most yards against single coverage at just over 600 he also had the most first downs at 31 and the second most touchdowns at nine and a ridiculous 4.57 yards per route run just against man coverage like that is an obscene number as far as contested catch rate goes he was at 53% which is very healthy but when you consider that that was on 30 contested targets just because of how many go routes they had him run I mean that’s like triple Luther Burton who had 11 contested targets just because they run entirely different route trees but for him to have roughly the same contested catch rate on 30 contested targets that Burton had on 11 that’s just that’s gross i’m not going to lie don’t be fooled though just because he had those 30 contested targets doesn’t mean that he can’t get open obviously he can again really fluid really explosive in short areas it’s just when 29% of your targets are on just go routes like you’re just going to end up with that many contested targets it’s almost unavoidable but it worked i’m not going to lie it definitely worked he had more explosive gains against man coverage than any other receiver in this class at 21 so I’m not going to begrudge Iowa State for using him in that way but I do think that once he gets to the NFL level with a better quarterback play and b probably a more let’s just say creative offense that he’s going to get to play around in like I think the sky’s is the limit for him if you’re letting him do more than just go routes post routes corners and like the odd curl here and there and you let him run an entire route tree like I’m telling you this could be an actual number one receiver that is somehow probably not going to get drafted in the first round it’s happened with AJ Brown it happened with DK Metaf i’m pretty sure Tara McLaren got taken in like the third round once upon a time and Jaden Higgins to me shouldn’t go that late but he probably will and that’s a shame he’s a phenomenal prospect a phenomenal player and if it was up to me he’d go in the top 32 all right that’ll do it for me today a reminder if you want even more draft talk from me especially a lot more frequently then you’re going to get it on this channel we have a bunch of fun draft content live right now over on our podcast channel the Bootleg Football Podcast if you don’t know it already we have prospect interviews we have breakdowns we have our annual 10 gem specials we’ll probably have uh some of our friends come on in the draft industry and do interviews uh pretty soon here as is tradition so again if you want even more draft talk go check that out that is the bootleg football podcast i appreciate all of you for watching to the end because the algorithm gods uh really love that so that helps the channel and uh I don’t have anything else but uh I will have another upload on this channel uh very very soon i know it’s been a while since I’ve been consistently uploading here but trust me uh it it will get better i have a bunch of videos in the pipeline that’ll be coming soon so thank you for watching and I will see all of you uh sometime next week I think probably

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0:00 We’re so back
1:00 Charles Grant
5:20 Bradyn Swinson
11:15 Omar Norman-Lott
15:40 Jimmy Horn Jr
20:30 Jayden Higgins

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