Players To Watch In Rivalry Week

Hello, hello!

I’m excited to report that I booked my travel this week for both the Shrine Bowl and Senior Bowl in late January. I love making the trip every year to both games, back-to-back, in order to get eyes on over 200 prospects live for the first time. Seeing players on tape is obviously important, but getting a chance to see them up close is paramount, especially to get a better handle on their body types, future growth potential and more, especially when compared to their peers. It’s a great apples to apples type of situation for all of the prospects involved. I can’t wait to kick things off in Dallas in just a few weeks, but we have a lot to get to between now and then!

One prospect that, at least based on an early survey of other analysts in the media, I’m a bit lower on than most is LSU CB Mansoor Delane. The thing is … I still like him!

A senior who transferred to the Tigers from Virginia Tech over the offseason, Delane has really good eyes in zone coverage, is a good tackler and has the physical, competitive spirit I look for at the position. If you listened to last week’s ALL NFL Draft Podcast, you know that’s checking a lot of boxes on the priority list for me at that spot. All that said, I am a touch worried about the overall athletic upside. I studied Delane early in the season in the team’s Week 1 victory over Clemson, and waited a few weeks before going back to the tape to see if I’d feel better about it after some time away. After a couple of more games, I still feel the same. I don’t think Delane is a bad athlete, but I think his fluidity and recovery speed are just okay. That caps his ceiling for me. There’s a chance I feel a bit differently after seeing him in person, but as of now, that’s why I am not as high on him as others. Still, he gets a Top 100 grade from me.

I’m not breaking any news here, but I studied Notre Dame RB Jeremiyah Love (again) this week and he is, confirmed, awesome. I’ve written you my spiel on position value and everything that comes with that in a previous email, but I really have a ton of faith in his ability to come in and be one of the most dynamic players at the position in the NFL. It’s strictly an ‘evaluation’ vs ‘valuation’ conversation for me when it comes to Love.

Last week, our friend Dane Brugler over at the Athletic read between the lines of a coach press conference to get a potential update on one of the top prospects outside the Power 4, Boise State LT Cage Kasey.

Kasey currently has my third-highest grade for a non-Power 4 player right now, behind only Toledo S Emmanuel McNeil-Warren and San Diego State CB Chris Johnson. You can check out his entire report over in the Diehard Draft Guide, but here’s the skinny on the 6-foot-5, 311 pound left tackle. 

Right now I project him as more of a long-term swing backup. He’s scheme-specific in that I don’t think he’s a powerful road grader in the run game, but he’s a solid athlete with a solid anchor and good flashes with his hands as both a run and pass blocker. I thought there were absolutely qualities for a player that would make it in the NFL, I just didn’t see one specific physical trait that I’d grade him an ‘A’ with. Right now I’d envision him somewhere in the late Day 2 or early Day 3 range of the draft, but there are some that believe that he will absolutely go higher than that. 

Speaking of Dane, he and I were texting about players late last week, and Ohio State WR Carnell Tate came up. Tate has had such a great year, and Dane asked if I had a player comparison that I liked most for him. 

Tate is an awesome player, but finding a player comp for him can be somewhat tricky business! That’s especially true right now since we don’t have confirmed measurables on him from a height / weight standpoint. Tate has good size. He’s not a burner, but he has enough speed to work all three levels of the field. He’s also a really sound route runner and is super reliable at the catch point. These are all data points I try to take into account when coming up with the comp. 

Coming into the season, after watching him in the spring, I had former Ohio State WR Michael Thomas written down. I’ll give a tip of the cap to NFL Films’ Greg Cosell on that one, as he pitched that to me after we first talked about him this offseason. I was buying what he was selling, and they are built similarly. The thing is, I think Tate has shown a bit more verticality this year than what Thomas showed during his time in college (and certainly in the NFL). So I’m glad Dane asked me this question, because it got the wheels churning. 

The first thing I do when coming up with a player comp (unless one hits me while studying a player, which definitely happens from time to time), is find comparable body types. I keep a spreadsheet that tracks measurables and data points (testing data and key specific metrics) on every player drafted at every position over the last ten years. So I go to that spreadsheet to start the search. 

With Tate being listed 6-foot-3 and 195 this year, I limited my search to receivers between 6020 and 6037 (so no taller than 6-foot-4 and no shorter than 6-foot-2), and I’m looking at any receiver under 211 pounds (I wanted tall, but not thick!). There were a lot of players (33) to pick from, so I tightened the scope. How about all players that run between a 4.40 and a 4.50 in the 40-yard dash within that size specification? 

That narrowed the list down to 19 names and, admittedly, it was a mixed bag. Some names that caught my eye:

Some of those names made sense, and others not so much. Iosivas played faster and was more of a true vertical threat. Same with Alec Pierce. Those guys were pure ‘outside the numbers’ types in my eyes. Doctson and Marshall didn’t fit for me because of how raw both were; Tate is far more advanced. Reynolds had a better career than both of them, but was similar when he came out of school. Pickens was such a pure ‘above the rim’ player, and while he was a better technician than some of those other guys, I don’t think he’s quite the same type of guy that Tate is. 

So the two names that really stuck for me were Harrison and Davis. It makes sense that Harrison would be on there; coaches tend to have ‘types’, and those guys share a lot of qualities on the Venn Diagram, but I actually like the alternative better. My new working comp for Tate now is Corey Davis, who went in the Top 5 back in 2017 coming out of a Group of 5 program in Western Michigan. I loved him as a prospect. I know it didn’t work in Tennessee, but he was a hell of a player coming out of school. They’re similar body types, they’re cut from the same cloth with their physicality and technical refinement, and they were both consistently productive. 

So there’s a peek inside my mind as I’m trying to sort through comparisons for players. Some evaluators HATE the idea of player comps, but I enjoy them as long as you understand their limitations and don’t go overboard! I’m thankful for Dane; having someone that you can bounce these types of things off of routinely is always extremely helpful! 

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If you’ve been paying attention to the NFL this season, you’ve surely heard about the increase in multiple-tight end sets throughout the league. As more teams are trying to dictate to the defense and force them into heavier personnel packages, one of their ways to stay versatile from a run-pass standpoint is to attack out of those heavier groupings. This chess match has been going on for the last couple of years, and many defensive coordinators are calling offense’s bluff by saying ‘we are still going to dare you to run the football.’

That’s where the blocking tight end comes into play. 

I mentioned earlier how much data I keep looking at draft history and trends from the last decade, but I’m also always looking at certain things around the league to see what’s happening now and trying to project forward. One of those things I track, because of how it dictates my Big Board, is player salaries. 

One of the things that happens whenever I look at my board is that there are players and position archetypes that instantly stand out as outliers when compared to my peers. Subsects of positions that, on their face, seem to be considered over or undervalued. In reality, all I’m doing is following the money. One position where this is most apparent is the true blocking specialist at the tight end position. These guys are often viewed as afterthoughts during the pre-draft process, and I think it’s one of those positions on the margins where teams really find surplus value come draft weekend for that reason.

When I look around the NFL right now and pinpoint the veteran tight ends who, despite not being starters, are given fairly significant contracts, it shocks me that we don’t see that same value placed in the draft. 

Vikings TE Josh Oliver tops the market out at $7 million per year - that is more than Steelers starting RB Jaylen Warren makes. 

The 49ers are paying Luke Farrell $6.8 million - that’s more than the Ravens are giving WR Rashod Bateman. 

Will Dissly is getting paid $4.7 million by the Chargers, that’s more than Panthers backup QB Andy Dalton. 

Brock Wright (Lions) and Charlier Woerner (Falcons) are both in the $4 million club, getting more on the open market than what the Raiders and Vikings paid for starting cornerbacks Eric Stokes and Isaiah Rodgers, respectively. 

My point is, teams are using more of these types of players, and these guys have been getting solid contracts on the open market the last couple of offseasons. And I have news for you … more are on the way. AJ Barner from the Seahawks, Darnell Washington from the Steelers, John Bates from the Commanders … the list goes on. 

This is why I was so high on Bills rookie TE Jackson Hawes, who finished as my TE7 last spring despite catching just 16 passes for Georgia Tech in 2024.

That was from just over a year ago. Nearly to the day, I posted about a guy cut from the same cloth.

I had a higher grade on Hawes than I currently have on Hardy, but the NC State tight end is my favorite pure blocker at the position in this class. His presence certainly allows the Wolfpack to open up their usage of fellow prospect Justin Joly (my current TE2 this year). I don’t know that he’ll ever have more than a handful of catches a season in back-to-back years … but this guy gets after people in the run game. That’s enough that he should be taken seriously as a prospect. 

We’re on the cusp of getting the first round of All-Star Game acceptances, something Eric shares with us exclusively on the show. We talked about my top prospect from outside the Power 4 conferences (Toledo S Emmanuel McNeill-Warren), some sneaky areas of niche strength in the 2026 NFL Draft, and the evolution of the Shrine Bowl’s process over the years since Eric took over operations. I also went through my entire scouting report on Oregon TE Kenyon Sadiq, one of the most dynamic playmakers in the class. 

Shrine Bowl invitations have been out for a couple of weeks (as Eric talked about on this week’s episode), but what about the Senior Bowl? Well, their initial round of invites have officially been shipped out. 

This is a bit later than what we’ve seen from the Senior Bowl in recent years. Executive Director Drew Fabianich went on Good Morning Football recently and shared why, saying that he did not want the invitations to disrupt the continuity and flow of coaches and players in the middle of the season. 

Rivalry weekend is here! We have a ton of great matchups to enjoy with leftovers from Thanksgiving. Here’s where my eyes will be throughout the weekend’s slate.

The Ohio State receiving corps sets a pretty high bar, so any cornerback on the schedule will use them as a litmus test. That’s absolutely the case with Michigan and CB Jyaire Hill. Just a redshirt sophomore, Hill still has plenty of eligibility left, but he’s a player that should absolutely be on your radar, whether that’s for 2026 or beyond. Listed at 6-foot-2, 185 pounds, he has a tall, long, high-cut build but his ease of movement really stands out for a bigger corner. He looks like a prototypical press man corner. He had a pretty volatile year in 2024 as a freshman, which included a down performance against this Buckeyes receiving corps. Hill should see a healthy amount of WR Jeremiah Smith (who is seemingly a lock for the Top 5 selections in 2027) as well as WR Carnell Tate, who we covered earlier in this email. I’m interested to see how Hill responds after last year’s rough outing. It should be noted that both of these Buckeye wideouts are nursing injuries late in the week, but Smith has insinuated that he will be ready to roll, and Tate appears to be trending the right direction as well. The Buckeyes have a score to settle; I’d be shocked if they both weren’t on the field.

Oregon has one final hill to climb before essentially cementing their spot in the College Football Playoff, and that comes against long-time rival Washington. There are a few matchups to keep an eye on here, but I’ll be excited to see how Huskies RB Jonah Coleman looks on tape in this one. A compact but dense runner, Coleman isn’t the most explosive or dynamic athlete out of the backfield, but he’s a guy who grinds out dirty yards thanks to his low center of gravity, slippery running style and contact balance. He’s displayed a great nose for the end zone this year and, if UW stands a chance in this one, they’ll need him to shrine. Charged with stopping Coleman, I’ll have my eyes on the middle of that Ducks defense. Along the front, junior DT A’Mauri Washington is one of my favorite players I’ve studied so far this year. This guy is a brick house in the run game but he’s got plenty of next-level juice to be a disruptor as well with his quicks off the ball. Fourth-year DT Bear Alexander is no slouch either. Count on hearing his name in this broadcast. Lastly, LB Bryce Boettcher is a sound run defender who consistently stays square, sees what he hits, and has the requisite toughness to be a factor against a player with Coleman’s run style. The senior linebacker scored a touchdown last week on offense and responded with his patented ‘baseball swing’ celebration, which nods to the fact that he was a 13th-round pick by the Houston Astros in the 2024 MLB Draft but put baseball on hold so that he could see where football could take him this year.

In the night slate, the big ticket game is the Iron Bowl between Alabama and Auburn. The Tigers are a team in transition after firing coach Hugh Freeze, but they have plenty of talent on that roster, including my current No. 1 player in DL Keldric Faulk. The versatile junior, who gets reps on the edge and from the interior, will get one of his biggest matchups of the season when facing a talented (but volatile) Crimson Tide LT Kadyn Proctor. Proctor is a giant and is a monster in the run game, but lapses in technique lead to inconsistencies in pass protection. A big game for Faulk in this spot could get more buzz building for a player that doesn’t seem to be universally loved by media members. I have a hunch that will change in the coming months. 

Enjoy the last regular season weekend in College Football!

Best,

Fran Duffy

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