Tag: mac jones nfl draft

NFL Draft 2021: How Many Alabama Players Will Be Drafted In the First Round?

NFL Draft 2021: How many Alabama players will end up being drafted in the first round? What are the over/under odds?

NFL Draft 2021: How many Alabama players will end up being drafted in the first round? What are the over/under odds? 

[mm-video type=playlist id=01f1343a1wt7q817p7 player_id=none image=https://collegefootballnews.com/wp-content/plugins/mm-video/images/playlist-icon.png]

NFL Draft 2021: Alabama

– Contact/Follow @ColFootballNews | @PeteFiutak

It’s really, really, really, really hard to get multiple players taken in the first round of an NFL Draft, much less three, or five, or six.

LSU had 14 players drafted last year – one at every non-kicking position including long snapper – and had five selected in the first round.

Ohio State had five players taken in the first round in 2016, and Oklahoma had four selected in the first of the 2010 draft.

The over/under on how many Alabama players would go in the first round last year was 5.5, and four – Tua Tagovailoa, Jedrick Wills, Henry Ruggs and Jerry Jeudy – were selected. It wasn’t all all that close on the over, with Xavier McKinney going with the fourth pick in the second, and the sixth Tide player – Trevon Diggs – not going until the 51st overall pick.

In other words, it’s almost impossible to get past 5.5 going in the first round no matter how good the team was the year before.

Alabama has never had more than four players taken in the first round, much less five, and this year, the oddsmaker types are setting the line at 5.5.

Even for a historically great 2020 Alabama team, good luck with that.

[lawrence-related id=434326]

Just like last year with the four that ended up being taken, Alabama has a few sure things to set a good base.

There’s no question that – in some order – QB Mac Jones, CB Patrick Surtain, WR DeVonta Smith and WR Jaylen Waddle will be selected in the first round. Now, work backwards.

OT Alex Leatherwood should be a relatively early pick, but it’ll take a bit of a shocker for him to go in the first, and the same goes for C Landon Dickerson, LB Dylan Moses and OG Deonte Brown. All of them will go after the top 32.

You still need two more to get past 5.5 Bama players selected.

Just like McKinney was the wild-card last year to get to five, Najee Harris is the one who could get Bama past four.

First, take another moment and realize the historic nature of even thinking this is possible – again, Alabama has never had five players selected in the first round.

Harris could absolutely go on Day One – he’s one of the 32 best players in this thing – but running back is so devalued now in the draft process, and Clemson’s Travis Etienne could be the first and only back off the board.

But let’s say it happens. Let’s say Harris is taken somewhere between the 23 to the Jets to the 32 with Tampa Bay. That’s still five, and you need six to go over, so …

How Many Alabama Players Will Be Drafted In the First Round?

Five.

I’ll call it that Harris makes it five Alabama players going in the first round, but even that’s a bit of a reach. So let’s say I’m right, then it comes down to …

DT Christian Barmore.

I think he’s easily the best defensive tackle in a weak draft for the position, and there’s certainly a chance that someone thinks there’s value in drafting him a wee bit early to take the best one off the board, but if it happens, it’ll come late.

And that’s where the sweating will come in.

Barmore is the exact right guy for Tampa Bay to take at the 32 to add more to the defensive interior, but the defending Super Bowl champion will have an abundance of great prospects to choose from.

So it comes down to this. Do you like Etienne to go before Harris? If so, assume under on the 5.5.

Do you believe in historical anomalies with Bama not only getting to five in the first round, but six?

The value might not be there on the under, but you’re asking for something wild to get the over. If it happens, tip your cap, and marvel in the greatness of the talent on that amazing 2020 team.

Prediction: Under
BetMGM line: 5.5, Over +130, Under -165
2021 Alabama Schedule Analysis

CFN 2021 NFL Draft Prospect Rankings
from the college perspective …
QB | RB | WR | TE | OT | OG & C
DE & Edge | DT | LB | CB | Safeties
Greatest Draft Picks For Each College
ACC | Big Ten | Big 12 | Pac-12 | SEC
32 Greatest Draft Picks of All-Time

[protected-iframe id=”361699434b6d70baf15f631ed2408ac1-97672683-92922408″ info=”https://www.googletagservices.com/tag/js/gpt.js” ]

Alabama QB Mac Jones believes he’s more than just a pocket passer

Alabama quarterback Mac Jones, who may be going to San Francisco, said Monday that he can do much more than just throw from the pocket.

Ever since the 49ers traded up with the Dolphins last Friday to acquire the third overall pick in the 2021 draft, Alabama quarterback Mac Jones has probably had a burning feeling in and around his ears — because everyone’s talking about Jones and that potential fit. On the most recent version of Robert Mays’ podcast for The Athletic, Daniel Jeremiah of the NFL Network said that of the texts he received after the trade, most NFL decision-makers believed that the move was made to acquire Jones with that third overall pick.

It’s an interesting discussion, because from an outside view, it’s not a great fit at all. 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan, who will join general manager John Lynch at Jones’ Tuesday pro day, has generally preferred quarterbacks with the ability to run boot-action and play-action, and those quarterbacks who can make second-reaction throws. And for all Jones did for the Crimson Tide in 2020, that was never really Jones’ thing.

I recently evaluated the four sub-Trevor Lawrence quarterbacks in this draft class for their fits in what Shanahan has historically preferred, and as great as Jones was from the pocket in 2020, he ranked last in the piece precisely because of the lack of tape in which he was able to successfully boot and get outside the pocket against pressure to keep the play alive.

I asked Jones about this perception of him as a pure pocket passer, and how that run against what most NFL teams prefer today, and he was quite certain that he can do more at the next level than people (like me) might assume.

“Well I ran a 4.7 40, so that should help out,” Jones said with a laugh. “I know what you’re saying in terms of wide zone boot and stuff like that. And actually, going back, that’s one of my favorite plays to run. I know we didn’t do a lot of it this year because we didn’t have to, but if you ask [former Alabama offensive coordinator] Coach [Mike] Locksley about that, I was always like, ‘Hey, can we get a naked [bootleg play] right here?’ We’d start the scrimmage off with a naked bootleg play, which is the bootleg you’re talking about.

“So, we didn’t do a lot of it, and I don’t know if it was because I inherited a little bit of Tua’s stuff and what they were doing there [referring to former Alabama quarterback Tua Tagovailoa], but I can do it all. Obviously, there’s not a ton of tape on it, but in high school, I ran the Wing-T, so there was a lot of moving and throwing on the run. It’s all stuff I’ve done in the past, and it’s something I’m working now, and it’s something I’ll get to show tomorrow as well. It’s just something that we didn’t do a crazy amount of with the scheme we had, and what we wanted to do this past year.”

Alabama QB Mac Jones: Throwback or dinosaur?

Jones is right in that there isn’t a lot of tape with him throwing on the move. In 2020, per Sports Info Solutions, Jones had just 21 dropbacks in which he eventually left the pocket. On those dropbacks, he completed just nine of 19 passes for 99 yards, 71 air yards, one touchdown, no interceptions, two sacks, and a quarterback rating of 80.8. Every single one of those dropbacks came under pressure; that is to say that the Crimson Tide called no plays whatsoever in which Jones left the pocket intentionally.

That said, and with the 49ers’ top brass in attendance to see what Jones can do on Tuesday, you can expect a boot-heavy script as Step One in the process of proving the naysayers wrong.