Category: 2023 NFL Combine

Houston Texans’ best sleeper pick: Solomon Byrd, EDGE, USC

USC edge-rusher Solomon Byrd could be a surprise rookie in Houston’s edge-rush rotation.

This offseason, the Texans got that much closer to a Super Bowl defense by adding Danielle Hunter to their edge-rush profile with a two-year, $49 million contract with $48 million guaranteed. Hunter is a perfect complement to Will Anderson, the reigning Defensive Rookie of the year, as Hunter’s game is about speed and bend, while Anderson is all about power to the pocket.

To double down on that speed/bend thing, Houston also selected USC end Solomon Byrd with the 238th pick in the seventh round. That pick could pay off far past its value. Last season for the Trojans, the Wyoming transfer totaled seven sacks and 41 total pressures on 320 pass-rushing reps. There’s not much to say about Byrd as a run defender, but then again, the Texans probably won’t line him up inside 20% of the time in 3-man fronts as the Trojans did for whatever reason.

With Byrd, you put him on the outside in a rotation and let him hunt… or you let him use his formidable gap quickness on stunts and games. No reason to overthink it.

Secret Superstars of the 2023 NFL draft: The best underrated prospects

Who are the best underrated prospects in the 2023 NFL draft? Doug Farrar runs down the sleepers who could make surprising differences in the NFL.

Several NFL executives have already made it clear that they’re struggling to find as many as 20 prospects in the 2023 NFL draft class deserving of a first-round grade.

That may look like a pull quote, but it’s not entirely uncommon. Drafts like the 2023 one, which starts Thursday at 8:00 p.m. EST, are wider than they are tall, which means that while there aren’t a ton of obvious first-round guys, there are second- and third-day players who can make a difference on an NFL roster right away.

And that’s why it’s so important to have your scouting go all the way through all seven rounds and beyond. Ask the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs, who got their eventual starting running back (Rutgers’ Isiah Pacheco) in the seventh round. Or the Seattle Seahawks, who bagged starting cornerback Tariq Woolen out of UTSA in the fifth. And of course, there were few more interesting rookie stories in 2022 than the tale of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy, the most relevant “Mr. Irrelevant” in pro football history.

Looking ahead to the most talented sleepers in the 2023 draft class, there are prospects who have been pushed down in loaded position groups, those who need a bit of finishing work to fully unlock their NFL potential, and those who don’t have a total skill set, but who do a few things very well. They are all more than worthy of NFL consideration, and just because they’ll probably hear their names called in the late second or early third day of the draft, don’t automatically discount their NFL potential.

That’s a mistake the smartest NFL teams never make. Here are my most gifted sleepers — the “Secret Superstars” of the 2023 NFL draft.

The Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar: Greg’s 2023 NFL Draft All-Underrated Team

In this week’s episode of “The Xs and Os with Greg Cosell,” Greg names his favorite underrated prospects in the 2023 NFL draft.

Every week, in “The Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar,” Doug Farrar of Touchdown Wire talks with Greg Cosell of NFL Films and ESPN’s NFL Matchup about the intricacies of the game. With the 2023 draft just around the corner, Greg gets into six of his favorite underrated players in this draft class — guys who won’t be taken in the first round, and maybe not even in the second round, but Greg just enjoyed watching their tape, and he believes them to have impact potential at the next level.

In addition, Greg and Doug get into concepts about the draft, and current positional value, that are highly relevant to the NFL today.

Here are Greg’s All-Underrated players:

  • Tank Bigsby, RB, Auburn
  • Eric Gray, RB, Oklahoma
  • Xavier Hutchinson, WR, Iowa State
  • Riley Moss, CB, Iowa
  • Jartavius Martin, DB, Illinois
  • Trey Dean III, S, Florida

You can watch this week’s “Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar” right here:

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4-Down Territory: The biggest questions for the 2023 NFL draft

In this week’s “4-Down Territory,” Kyle Madson and Doug Farrar get into the four most important questions as we near the 2023 NFL draft. 

In this week’s “4-Down Territory,” Kyle Madson of Niners Wire and Doug Farrar of Touchdown Wire get into the four most important questions as we near the 2023 NFL draft.

  1. Do the Houston Texans HAVE to take a quarterback with the second overall pick?
  2. Is Texas running back Bijan Robinson worthy of a top-five pick, regardless of positional value?
  3. Beyond Aaron Rodgers, how many current NFL quarterbacks will be taken before (or during) the draft?
  4. Who are our underrated prospects who will make big impacts on their NFL teams, regardless of their Day 2 or Day 3 status?

You can watch this week’s episode of “4-Down Territory” right here:

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2023 NFL Draft: The top 50 prospects

Doug Farrar’s final Top 50 big board for the 2023 NFL draft features analysis, hundreds of tape examples, and advanced metrics.

The process for evaluating prospects is any draft class beings years before — for coaches moving from the NCAA to the NFL, it can start with players they tried to recruit out of high school, and watched all along the way. In an NFL sense, it begins with the area scouts, who are watching and rating all their prospects from season to season, with an obvious increased focus as those prospects prepare for their coming-out seasons.

Once the season is over for NFL teams, whenever that happens, it’s then time for all the area scouts to arrive at the facility to meet with the home staff including scouting directors, coaches, and executives.

At this point, beyond positions rankings, NFL teams start to put together their bog boards — the top prospects for them, regardless of position, with need and internal positional value factored in to whatever degree.

At Touchdown Wire, it’s time to approximate that process in our own way. Beyond the positional rankings we’ve been doing for a while, it’s time for our own big board — the top 50 players in the 2023 draft class, regardless of position, with need and internal positional value factored in to whatever degree.

So, here are Touchdown Wire’s final top 50 draft prospects in the 2023 draft class.

(All advanced metrics courtesy of Pro Football Focus, Sports Info Solutions, and Football Outsiders unless otherwise indicated).

(All prospect measurement percentiles courtesy of MockDraftable.com). 

The Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar: Paths to NFL success for top draft QBs

In this week’s “Xs and Os,” Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar map the paths to NFL success for C.J. Stroud, Bryce Young, Anthony Richardson, and Will Levis.

In “The Xs and Os,” Touchdown Wire’s Doug Farrar is joined every week by the great Greg Cosell of NFL Films and ESPN’s NFL Matchup. Greg has been with NFL Films since 1979, and he and Steve Sabol invented the concept of putting game tape on television with the Matchup show in 1984, so who better to get intricate with the game than Mr. Cosell himself?

Doug and Greg will be discussing all kinds of football things throughout the year, but as the draft is just around the corner, it’s time to discuss the ideal paths for NFL success for the top four quarterback prospects in this draft class: C.J. Stroud, Bryce Young, Anthony Richardson, and Will Levis. Not just where they are right now, but what kinds of offenses their coaches will need to construct at the next level to maximize their attributes, and minimize their liabilities.

You can catch this week’s episode of “The Xs and Os” right here.

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2023 NFL Draft: The top 8 tight ends

The 2023 NFL draft class of tight ends is very deep, and Doug Farrar’s top eight prospects at the position all have a lot to offer.

As much as the modern NFL is a 3×1 league in the passing game, the ways in which teams get to that equation are very different. Last season, the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs, known above all for their explosive passing game, ranked second in the league in dropbacks with two tight ends on the field — their 245 such dropbacks left them behind only the Baltimore Ravens (338 dropbacks with two tight ends), who are far better known for such things.

With two tight ends on the field, Patrick Mahomes completed 166 of 230 passes for 1,707 yards, 831 air yards, 16 touchdowns, two interceptions, and a passer rating of 113.4. The Philadelphia Eagles, who met the Chiefs in Super Bowl LVII, had the highest passer rating (127.1) with two tight ends on the field.

No team had more dropbacks with three tight ends on the field than Kansas City’s 78 (the Houston Texans ranked second with 48), and in those 3TE sets, Mahomes completed 51 of 68 passes for 714 yards, 314 air yards, 11 touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 149.0.

Of course, it helps to have a generational, slam-dunk Hall of Famer like Travis Kelce on your roster when going heavy at the position, but the overarching point is that tight ends are more important to a lot of NFL offenses than you may think — and not just the ones you know about.

So, when we turn our attention to the tight ends prospects in the 2023 draft class — a class as full of talent at the position as we’ve seen in years — it’s crucial to understand that there isn’t just one type of tight end important to NFL teams. The big receivers who don’t block obviously have better stans and get the most recognition for the most part, but it’s about more than that.

Here are the eight top tight ends in the 2023 NFL draft class.

(All advanced metrics courtesy of Pro Football Focus, Sports Info Solutions, and Football Outsiders unless otherwise indicated).

(All prospect measurement percentiles courtesy of MockDraftable.com). 

2023 NFL Draft: The top 9 safeties

2023 NFL Draft: The top 11 cornerbacks

2023 NFL Draft: The top 8 linebackers

2023 NFL Draft: The top 8 interior defensive linemen

2023 NFL Draft: The top 8 edge defenders

2023 NFL Draft: The top 5 offensive tackles

2023 NFL Draft: The top 8 interior offensive linemen

2023 NFL Draft: The top 8 interior offensive linemen

Broderick Jones, Peter Skoronski, and Cody Mauch. Could three of the best interior o-lineman in the 2023 draft class be tackle converts?

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As the great Greg Cosell said in the debut episode of “The Xs and Os,” offensive tackles define the width of the pocket, while guards and centers define the depth of the pocket.

This is an important delineation when projecting offensive linemen from college to the NFL. If you were a tackle in college, but your skill set leans more toward defining the depth of the pocket than the width of it, you could well be in line for a position change, and that’s not a bad thing. Zack Martin and Joel Bitonio are but two NCAA tackles in recent years who became top-tier guards in the NFL — consistently and immediately — because their attributes were more aligned to the interior, and the liabilities that might have limited their potential on the outside are negated.

Every draft class is different, but for the 2023 class of interior offensive linemen, I decided to take three tackles — Georgia’s Broderick Jones, Northwestern’s Peter Skoronaki, and North Dakota State’s Cody Mauch — and project them inside. I don’t know what their NFL teams will decide; it’s just what I observed after watching multiple games of each player’s performance.

Beyond that, there’s also an intriguing group of interior offensive linemen who did that in college, and project very well to the next level.

(All advanced metrics courtesy of Pro Football Focus, Sports Info Solutions, and Football Outsiders unless otherwise indicated).

(All prospect measurement percentiles courtesy of MockDraftable.com). 

2023 NFL Draft: The top 9 safeties

2023 NFL Draft: The top 11 cornerbacks

2023 NFL Draft: The top 8 linebackers

2023 NFL Draft: The top 8 interior defensive linemen

2023 NFL Draft: The top 8 edge defenders

2023 NFL Draft: The top 5 offensive tackles

2023 NFL Draft: The top 5 offensive tackles

There are a lot of offensive tackles in the 2023 draft class. Here are the five (just five?) that Doug Farrar thinks will be plus-level NFL tackles.

Before we get into this particular list, I would like to state this for the record: The fact that I have just five offensive tackle prospects here, when I’ve had at least eight prospects on every other position list for the 2023 NFL draft, is not based on laziness.

It’s based entirely on volatility.

After comprehensive tape study, there were five college tackles in this class that I felt were slam-dunk next-level players at their positions in the NFL, and that’s taking into account a few fixes for each player.

Three college tackles — Georgia’s Broderick Jones, Northwestern’s Peter Skoronski, and North Dakota State’s Cody Mauch — could be decent-to very good outside, but I tend to think that each of them will work better inside.

To be even more clear, I’m not always in favor of the “Oh, just move a guy inside when you have questions about him” thing. When Rashawn Slater, Skoronski’s predecessor at Northwestern, came out for the 2021 draft, a lot of people looked at his measurables and insisted that he should kick inside. I could not have possibly disagreed more. Slater had the look of a left tackle, and that’s proven out during his time with the Chargers when he’s been healthy.

If you think Rashawn Slater’s not an NFL offensive tackle, here’s why you’re wrong

It’s not a default thing for me, but it’s why the next prospect list, covering interior offensive linemen, will be relatively loaded.

There are other tackles, such as Syracuse’s Matthew Bergeron and Maryland’s Jaelyn Duncan, who may be able to stay outside, but not without a ton of work. In these cases, we may be talking about multi-year projects.

So. With all that said, if you need an offensive tackle in this draft class, and you want him to play pretty quickly outside, here are the five best such prospects for that particular scenario. It’s not the best class for such a need — not by far — but the guys at the top each have a lot to offer, albeit in radically different ways.

(All advanced metrics courtesy of Pro Football Focus, Sports Info Solutions, and Football Outsiders unless otherwise indicated).

(All prospect measurement percentiles courtesy of MockDraftable.com). 

2023 NFL Draft: The top 9 safeties

2023 NFL Draft: The top 11 cornerbacks

2023 NFL Draft: The top 8 linebackers

2023 NFL Draft: The top 8 interior defensive linemen

2023 NFL Draft: The top 8 edge defenders

2023 NFL Draft: What’s the most important skill for quarterback prospects?

Greg Cosell of NFL Films and ESPN’s NFL Matchup tells us why ball location is the most important attribute for quarterback prospects.

In the debut episode of “The Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar,” Greg and Doug discussed the non-negotiable attributes for draft prospect quarterbacks, offensive tackles, edge defenders, and cornerbacks.

When it comes to draftable quarterbacks, it’s a bit like real estate — it’s all about location, location, location.

Greg: “I would say it starts with ball location. If you can’t control the football — if you can’t throw the football where you want to throw it — you don’t really have anything. The word ‘accuracy’ gets used a lot, and that’s a more general term, but if you go back to the Bill Walshes of the world, and some people might say, ‘Who’s Bill Walsh?’ But he was one of the greatest quarterback coaches and teachers the game has ever seen, [and he would tell you] it’s about ball location. I’ve had this conversation with coaches and former quarterbacks. I remember having a great conversation with Troy Aikman years ago, and this was after he retired, and he told me, ‘If you can’t throw it where you want to, then it doesn’t matter what else you can do.’ So, it starts there. Because no matter whether you’re throwing it from the pocket or on the run, if you cannot control the football and place it where you want to, you will not be successful.

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“That is really the No. 1 starting point. You can make a list of 15 different traits, and pretty much every quarterback coach and coordinator would have the same 15 traits, and it would just be a matter of what value they ascribe to each one. But my guess is, they would all start with ball location.”

Top prospects C.J. Stroud from Ohio State, and Alabama’s Bryce Young, each have reams of tape in which their ball location is above reproach, so NFL teams will be starting there when looking for quarterback attributes in the 2023 NFL draft evaluation cycle.