This Year’s Draft Class Presents Unique Challenges to GMs

Despite the lack of an unequivocal star, former Vikings GM Rick Spielman explains why the class still might produce gems. Plus, thoughts on the Brian Flores lawsuit, the Brandin Cooks extension and more.

Now, finally, it seems safe to turn the page from the veteran NFL free-agent and trade market to the draft. But before we get there, ex-Vikings general manager Rick Spielman, who’s been following the class a lot longer than the rest of us, has his own thoughts on the chaos.

In fact, he brought it up on his own, as he and I talked just after he’d finished a 25-hour drive to complete his move from Minnesota to the Gulf Coast of Florida, and I asked whether he misses the fray.

“You do miss the evaluation part, especially the draft, putting the board together, working with the coaches and the scouts,” Spielman said. “That part, you do miss. But boy, just watching what’s happened in free agency, and how things are changing, and I’ve talked to other GMs, had numerous calls from GMs in the league, BSing through the free-agency period, it’s a lot different than it was even three or four years ago.”

And for good?

“I don’t know,” he continued. “With all the player movement, the quarterbacks, last year when you saw [Matthew] Stafford get traded to the Rams and they end up winning the Super Bowl, the league tends to be a copycat league. And if you don’t have a franchise-type quarterback, depending on how you feel on this year’s draft class, everyone seems like they’re gonna do whatever’s necessary to get that quarterback.”

Brace Hemmelgarn/USA TODAY Sports

There are plenty of story lines to get to with this year’s draft just three weeks away—and as is always the case, the class of quarterbacks provides a pivot point for that discussion.

It’s just that, this time around, it’s in a different way than you might be used to. In 2022, it’s coming in testing what Spielman’s saying, only in a totally different way than the premise was tested the last month. Where the veteran market, and in particular the chases for Russell Wilson and Deshaun Watson, reinforced Spielman’s point in one respect, the draft could drive it home in a completely different respect.

Simply put, where the former showed NFL teams’ level of determination to find a great one, the latter may well display the overall desperation to get one, period.

This year’s quarterback group unequivocally lacks the star power that the last two brought, when guys with household names entered the league after years of anticipation of their arrival. This year, among the presumed top five at the position, there isn’t a single signal-caller from a blueblood (Pitt and Ole Miss are closest), with two coming from non–Power 5 schools (Liberty and Cincinnati).

But, as Spielman would tell us, that does not mean there isn’t a great one to be mined—even if this sure looks like the kind of year where teams get burned for overreaching to address the most important position on the field. And, as the ex-Vikings GM said, there happens to be an environment present ripe for that kind of thing.

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In this week’s GamePlan, we’ll sort through the news of the day (the addition of two new plaintiffs to Brian Flores’s lawsuit), and get a few other takes and nuggets from the week.

But we’re starting with the draft class, and Spielman’s take on its strengths and weaknesses from a unique point of view—a candid one from a guy who spent the better part of this year’s draft cycle running an NFL team’s scouting department. And yes, he knows what you’re thinking, that the quarterbacks are on the weakness side of that ledger, and he wouldn’t even necessarily disagree with the sentiment.

Spielman got to see most of the top quarterbacks play live in the fall, through the course of doing his job in Minnesota, and worked through tape on all of them. He also started the process of turning over rocks on who each kid was, though he, obviously, never got the chance to put them through the wringer that teams do in the spring.

“Just watching the tape, and watching some of these guys play live, they all have their positives, but they may be getting a few more holes poked in them than previous classes,” Spielman said. “As people go through the pro days, and get all their testing back in place, their psychological testing, their cognitive learning, all that stuff, they get all those answers this time of year, some of the analytics start to come into play, and some of them may pop a little bit more than the media will see.

“But they’ve probably got more holes poked in them than a normal class.”

That’s where I stopped Spielman—last year, you’ll remember Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields (a QB Spielman’s Vikings were said to have liked) hit a home run on the cognitive testing. LSU Tiger turned Cincinnati Bengal Joe Burrow did the same the year before. And so, since he referenced it, I asked Spielman, an NFL evaluator for three decades, how important that testing had become with quarterbacks.

“It’s becoming a bigger factor,” he continued. “Our analytics team when I was there did a great job of weighting certain portions of that test. I think everybody talks about how the quarterback has to be smart, but smarts don’t always translate to success on the field. You have to be smart, but how quickly can you process things? Because I’ve talked to quarterbacks where if they’re drawing it up on the board, and you’re in these meetings, it sounds like they’re an offensive coordinator.

“But they’re doing that over a two-and-a-half, three-minute period of time. Can they do that same sort of processing in less than two and a half seconds? Some guys can. Some guys can’t. Both can be extremely smart, but you’re trying to narrow it down where you can make the right decision and minimize your risk. You can see what you can see on the field, you can see how he performs on a big stage, but adding all this ancillary testing, trying to figure out how quick he processes … you’re just trying to minimize the risk you’re taking.”

So in other words, there’s a decent chance that, over the next couple of weeks, as these results are dissected by teams, Pitt’s Kenny Pickett, Liberty’s Malik Willis, Ole Miss’s Matt Corral, Cincinnati’s Desmond Ridder and North Carolina’s Sam Howell could still take a significant step forward with certain teams. Or a big step back.

Anyway, I thought that part was pretty interesting. And with that, let’s jump into Spielman’s takes, starting with those quarterbacks (but without the benefit of the results of all that new-age testing) …

There is one quarterback Spielman isolated for us. It’s not exactly a curveball, either—in a traits-centric era for quarterbacks (Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, Justin Herbert, Lamar Jackson), he’s going with the traits-y guy. But it’s not just Willis’s wheels and a big arm that’s drawn Spielman in.

“I had an opportunity to see him play live at Syracuse this fall—he did not have a lot of help around him,” Spielman said. “But even if you looked at the previous year, when they played NC State, they played a lot of big schools the previous year, off his junior tape, he gave them an opportunity to win games with not as much talent as some of these quarterbacks have around them. So I always thought he was the most intriguing, because of his athletic skill set, because of his arm strength.

“Now, you bring in your quarterback coaches, and it’s can you fix this or fix that? Technical things, there are things he needs to work on, but he really took Liberty and elevated them.”

And another big part of it for Spielman was the chance to see Willis under the bright lights that playing those schools afforded.

“The stage wasn’t too big for him,” he said. “The previous year, at Florida State … the stage never looked too big for him. And even watching him live, you see some of these guys get that deer-in-the-headlights look; he did not have that at all. Now can he get through his process a little quicker, can he get through his progressions a little quicker? Sure, that all comes. But it wasn’t too big for him.”

Spielman added that, as he sees it, Pickett is the “most ready” of the group, while conceding that the hand size question is an issue—and one he actually had to navigate eight years ago, when his Vikings took Teddy Bridgewater at the end of the first round.

It may better to be picking 15th or 20th this year than first or second. And that’s because what the class lacks in Myles Garrett types it makes up for in guys like, to borrow another Vikings name, Justin Jefferson—really good players who might have a chance to grow into something more.

“There’s a lot of really good players,” he said. “Is there a true, no-questions-whatsoever No. 1 pick in this draft? That’s the thing. The [Aidan] Hutchinson kid from Michigan, he’s a really good player and had a big year this year, but everyone questions his ceiling—how much more upside does he have, if he’ll get better. And then there’s some guys like the kid from Oregon, [Kayvon] Thibodeaux, who, when I watched him, he just didn’t play hard every snap. But he has some unique physical traits as an edge rusher.”

We’ll get back to the pass rushers in a second, but those two really do typify the makeup of the group—taking guys in the top 10 will be about which knock on a guy you’re most comfortable won’t be a big problem for him at the next level.

“I don’t know if there’s someone that’s clean across the board,” Spielman continued. “There are high-character guys that play really well, but they may have a limited ceiling. There are other guys that may have higher upside, but they have a hole poked in their character, or a hole poked in how hard they play. There’s just a lot more of these guys that I think are gonna get holes poked in them then maybe some previous classes.”

Junfu Han/USA TODAY

Hutchinson and Thibodeaux lead one of two positions that stick out to Spielman as the draft’s strongest. And of course, it’s not just those two guys.

“There’s a really good set of pass rushers who are gonna come in. It’s a shame that the kid from Michigan [David Ojabo] tore his Achilles because I thought he had tremendous upside,” Spielman said. “The kid from Florida State, [Jermaine] Johnson, he was at my house, there were about five or six kids from Eden Prairie High School that are playing in the league now that used to come to my house and played with my kids in high school, and he was one of them.

“But he was in a rotation, I watched him a little bit two years ago when he was at Georgia and then he got an opportunity down at Florida State, and he took it up another level, and had a very productive year, played extremely hard. And then he carried that over to the Senior Bowl as well. People are gonna get some edge pass-rush help.”

The other position Spielman likes? Pretty easy to guess. It’s the spot that is seemingly among the best every year.

“It seems like every year, there’s a ton of receivers that come out,” Spielman said. “This will be another solid draft for receivers. It’s a shame the two kids from Alabama both tore their ACLs towards the end of the year, [John] Metchie and Jameson [Williams]. But there are a lot of receivers, a lot of receivers through Friday that are gonna come in and help.”

There’s good balance in the class, though there’s one position that Spielman says he’d be concerned with if he had a crying need. And the predraft process hasn’t made the outlook much sunnier.

“There are some good players, but the safety position was a little bit that way,” he said. “The kid from Penn State, [Jaquan] Brisker, he’s a solid player. [Notre Dame’s Kyle] Hamilton was a class above everyone, but he didn’t have a great predraft process; he ran, I believe, in the 4.5s. You didn’t see some of the stuff you saw on tape translate to the predraft process, but he is a very good football player and I thought he played a lot faster than he timed.

“Sometimes you gotta make sure you don’t get so tied up in the numbers that you forget what you saw on tape.”

We’ll see how that gets weighed out with Hamilton, who was once viewed as a good bet to go inside the top four or five picks.

Spielman did struggle a bit to pick out his own favorite player. And maybe that’s the beauty of draft weekend this year—with, to borrow a phrase, holes to poke in every guy, everyone might have a slightly different take on who the best one is in the class and why.

“I would say [Hutchinson] is the safest. You know what you’re getting,” Spielman said. “I didn’t see his junior tape. What I saw when I did him, I saw the last three games, so I never had the time to go back and look at the previous tape. But watching him against Ohio State really stuck with me, a lot. I don’t know if he’ll ever be this, but he reminded me some of Jared Allen. He knows how to use his hands, he’s pretty polished, he’s got a little stiffness to him but he knows how to rush the passer.

“And Jared Allen was a freaking long-snapper, and he was a talented athlete, but not the most gifted athlete that ever played at the defensive end position. He just knew how to play football and he knew how to rush the passer; he knew where the quarterback was in the pocket. I saw some similar traits in Hutchinson when I saw him. …

“NC State [OT Ikem Ekwonu] is very solid across the board, from everything I knew. The tackle from Alabama [Evan Neal], is he a right tackle? Can he play over on the left side? Thibodeaux, we talked about, he’s got the most potential, but does he have some bust factor in him as well? Can someone get to him. Probably he has the most potential, but may be a bigger risk than most, harder to feel totally comfortable with him. You see where it’s does he want to live the NFL lifestyle or does he wanna be an NFL football player?”

On the flip side, Spielman didn’t hesitate in identifying a couple of his favorites beyond the top group, when I asked whether there was a player or two he might like more than most. And Spielman, over the years, had a pretty good track record of finding guys late in the first round or into Day 2 who wound up becoming foundation pieces.

“The guy that stuck out to me the most that we didn’t have great grades on as a junior but really popped up was the Boston College guard, Zion Johnson,” Spielman said. “When I went and watched him play against Virginia Tech, I thought he was one of the more intriguing guards, the best guard I saw all year live. He was kind of interesting to me.

“The one receiver, and I know he’s smaller, that I thought made a lot of plays was [Jahan] Dotson, the kid from Penn State, plus he has some return ability. He really stuck out on film to me, and I watched him live vs. Maryland. And it’ll be interesting to see—he may be a slot only. … He’s not talked about as much as some of these other guys in the receiver class, but I thought he was a really good football player.”

Which brought us back to the guys who’ll be getting the Dotsons of the draft the ball.

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The quarterback conversation with Spielman at one point pivoted to what seems to be a rising bar at the position—simply put, when you draft one you need to be sure he’ll be able to swim in the deep end, with so many 20-somethings, like Burrow and Allen and Mahomes and Jackson, likely to be in those waters for a long time to come.

“It’s a quarterback-driven league now,” Spielman said. “All the teams that have success had franchise quarterbacks. In the past, you saw teams that played with good defenses, could run the ball and control the clock. Maybe they had adequate quarterback play but were able to make up for it in different facets of the game. I remember when we went to the NFC championship game with Case [Keenum], Nick Foles is playing, Wentz got hurt in Philly, and we got beat, and Foles went on to beat New England. He just got hot at the right time.

“Where it’s evolved, that was 2017, and where it is now, you got Mahomes, and Josh Allen has really developed into a franchise quarterback, and Joe Burrow, what he did with the Bengals taking them from the bottom of the division all the way to the Super Bowl.”

Which is to say now, you’re probably going to have to beat a few of those guys in a row to get to the Super Bowl. Which, in turn, means you almost have to have one of your own.

So could someone in this year’s class become one of those guys? It doesn’t seem all that likely at this point, but to say it unequivocally won’t happen would be to ignore not just history, but very, very recent history.

“Everybody’s beating up this quarterback class, but I wouldn’t be surprised if teams see it differently,” Spielman said. “I remember when Mahomes came out, everybody thought he was maybe a late first- or second-round type player. Well, he sat a year behind Alex Smith, and voila, because he has some unique physical traits. So it’ll be interesting to see, one of these guys will end up surfacing as a really good quarterback in this league.

“They have their different flavors, some are more ready, some have bigger upside. But I think in this class, you’ve got potential for a good quarterback or two to pop out of it.”

And the fun of this year, then, is no one seems to have a great idea of which one it will be.

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Former Cardinals coach Steve Wilks :: Rob Schumacher/azcentral sports

MORE FROM THIS WEEK

1) I’ll echo my colleague Conor Orr’s point from Thursday on the latest developments in the Brian Flores lawsuit, with ex–Cardinals coach (and current Panthers) assistant Steve Wilks and ex–NFL defensive coordinator Ray Horton joining up—it’s important that it’s not just one guy on an island anymore. For years, because these jobs are so hard to get and, at the upper levels, pay so well, coaches have been afraid to point out wrongdoing when they see it. Now, thanks to Flores, Wilks and Horton being willing to put their names on it, others will have cover to be more vocal, which, I believe (and would hope), should have a self-policing effect on how business is done during coaching searches.

2) I think Wilks’s case in particular is an interesting one because of how quickly his star faded. During Ron Rivera’s heyday in Carolina, Wilks was very highly regarded as the Panthers’ secondary coach, eventually ascending to replace Sean McDermott as defensive coordinator, and then having to wait only a year in that spot before getting his shot in Arizona. After going one-and-done with the Cardinals, he did a single year with the Browns as DC, then was out of football for a year before resurfacing at Missouri last year. He’s back in the NFL now, as Carolina’s secondary coach and pass-game coordinator, and a high-ranking Panthers official who didn’t know him previously told me a few weeks backs that he was thoroughly impressed with Wilks, even after just a few weeks of working with him, and that he believed Wilks would be a head coach again soon. That may be, but it’s still weird to me that a guy who was as universally liked and respected as Wilks was would have to scratch his way back in.

3) To add to what Spielman said on strengths of the draft class, I think we could see as many as four offensive linemen drafted in the top 10. Neal and Ekwonu are locks, and Mississippi State’s Charles Cross and Northern Iowa’s Trevor Penning are positioned well to land in that range. And yes, it’s a good tackle class. But it’s also indicative of the needs of teams drafting up top. Outside of maybe the Lions and Falcons, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see an offensive linemen go to any team in any spot inside the first 10 picks.

4) Good to see Brandin Cooks get a two-year extension in Houston. There’s been a perception that he’s been available for some time, maybe because GM Nick Caserio inherited him, but I never got the sense that Caserio was looking to move him. Beyond being a good player, Cooks is an excellent worker and teammate, and a good foundation piece for a team that’s going to have a lot of young players coming into its facility over the next couple of years. Concussions were the question before and, knock on wood, that’s been less of a problem for Cooks of late.

5) And as for Stefon Diggs landing a four-year, $96 million extension, it’s a good example of the Bills rewarding a guy who’s not just a great player, but one who’s become a model for what Sean McDermott and Beane have looked for over their five years with the Bills—which is illustrated nicely by the ‘C’ that Diggs wears on his chest.

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ONE THING TO LEAVE YOU WITH

I tweeted this earlier in the week, but it’s worth repeating, with “30” visits—trips prospects take to team facilities ahead of the draft (each team is allowed 30, hence the name)—set to really ramp up next week. When you hear this player is visiting that team, it’s important to understand why these visits happen, and in most cases it’s for one of four reasons.

1) The team has genuine interest in the player.

2) The team wants other teams to think it has genuine interest in the player.

3) There’s a loose end injury-wise the team wants to tie up with the player.

4) There’s an off-field concern the team wants to address directly with the player.

And yes, I know, the easy response to that is, O.K., so it could be anything.

It’s just that while the nature of these visits—interviews, meetings and physicals are allowed, while workouts are not—give you an idea of what happens in them, there’s no way to get a great feel for what they actually mean until everyone’s at liberty to spill the beans after the draft. On top of that, because different teams use them in different ways, players who go on a bunch aren’t necessarily hitting every team for the same reason.

So my advice? Have fun with them. Get excited when you see your team bringing in a guy you like. But don’t get too attached.