14 Packers Prospects to Watch at Scouting Combine

With on-the-field workouts at the Scouting Combine beginning on Thursday, a scout listed 14 first-round possibilities that mesh with the Green Bay Packers' needs.

GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Scouting Combine began on Tuesday, meaning Green Bay Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst, his scouts and the coaching staff will get to watch and meet more than 320 NFL prospects this week.

Quarterbacks, receivers and tight ends will work out on Thursday. On Friday, it’s the offensive linemen, running backs and specialists. The focus shifts to the defense on Saturday with the defensive linemen and linebackers. The Combine will conclude on Sunday with the defensive backs.

Workouts are just part of the Scouting Combine. It’s a chance to get all the top prospects in one place for medical checks. Plus, teams are allotted 45 formal interviews. Many of those will be used on juniors; senior prospects often are interviewed at all-star games, so the annual “Player A met with Team Z” stuff can be irrelevant.

While personnel people like Gutekunst love to talk about taking the “best player available,” the best player available tends to mesh with need – especially in the first few rounds.

“I’ve always felt your needs subconsciously kind of factor in,” Gutekunst said last week. “The way we’ve always done it, the way Ron (Wolf) and Ted (Thompson) always taught us, is we’re scouting for our football team, not the league in general. We’re scouting for our football team. If you have some needs or maybe some weaknesses on your football team, as you’re looking at players, you’re looking at how they fit into our football team. So, naturally, you’ll probably evaluate those guys a little higher.

“Especially during this early part of the process, we try not to focus in like that. We try to look at everybody and evaluate them as we can. As we get closer in April, we start strategizing with the draft: where it’s strong, where it’s not, where you maybe need to move to to accomplish what we want to try to accomplish in the draft. Ted would always warn against even that. You’ve got to let it come to you because, if you’re trying to move around to accomplish goals in the draft, sometimes you can bypass really, really good players.”

So, what are those needs that could combine with first-round talent? The immediate ones include receiver, defensive line and outside linebacker (assuming the Packers release Za’Darius Smith). Depending on free agency, the Packers could use a linebacker (to replace De’Vondre Campbell) or cornerback (to add to Jaire Alexander and Eric Stokes). Looking ahead, safeties Adrian Amos and Darnell Savage are entering their final season under contract, as are versatile offensive linemen Billy Turner and Elgton Jenkins.

With that as a backdrop, a veteran scout listed these 14 players as potential first-round prospects for the Packers, who own the 28th pick of the first round. He left out players he believed would be taken within the top 15 selections. The players are grouped by position, then listed in alphabetical order.

Fourteen Potential First-Round Picks for Packers

OT Trevor Penning, Northern Iowa

Penning allowed only one sack during his final season to earn FCS All-American honors, according to Pro Football Focus. There are obvious level-of-competition questions but, in its draft guide, PFF notes Penning “is out for blood.” A strong week at the Senior Bowl, where he measured 6-foot-7 and 330 pounds, was a big boost.

Northern Iowa has never had a player selected in the first round. Penning could change that.

“That would mean a ton,” Penning said in December. “UNI’s a legendary program so it would definitely be amazing to be able to do that. There’s been some great players to come through here like Spencer (Brown), David Johnson...It’d be insane to be able to be the top guy at the school ever.”

His position coach, Ryan Clanton, was an offensive lineman at Oregon and had to block the likes of DeForest Buckner and Arik Armstead on the practice field. So, he knows what NFL talent looks like.

“I’ve been around a lot of top-10 draft picks playing and coaching and he is by far the most physically and mentally geared for the NFL,” Clanton said. “He’s one of the nastiest linemen I’ve ever seen in my life. I’d put him up with any NFL offensive lineman on the nasty scale. ...Trevor doesn’t force that, it’s just who he is. It’s how he plays the game, but he’s the nicest guy ever off the field and the whole team loves him.”

OT Bernhard Raimann, Central Michigan

A native of Steinbrunn, Austria, Raimann caught 10 passes as a freshman and 10 more as a sophomore. As a junior, he moved from tight end to left tackle and found his home. As a senior, he was named first-team all-MAC and earned some All-American honors. According to Pro Football Focus, he allowed one sack during those two seasons at offensive tackle and didn’t even allow a pressure during his final six games.

Raimann grew up playing soccer in Austria. One day when he was 13, he saw some kids playing football. When he watched “Friday Night Lights,” he was hooked. He signed up to be an exchange student and landed in Delton, Mich.

“For me back (in Austria), it was like high school football was going to be huge,” he said at the Senior Bowl, where he measured 6-foot-6 and 304 pounds. “At that time, it was like, ‘This is awesome. This is the goal. I want to play it. I love the sport.’ But then coming over here and actually watching college football games, I was like, ‘Whoa, this is even better than high school football. You kidding me? OK, now this is what I want to do.’”

He graduated from Central Michigan with a 3.80 GPA with a double major. He’s 24, having served a mandatory two-year stint in the Austrian military.

“He obviously had the frame and the feet to be successful at that position,” Central Michigan coach Jim McElwain said. “And not only that, he had the intelligence to learn it. I think of all the guys that I’ve seen go out, this guy’s upside, I really think he’s going to be way better in Year 4-5-6-7 than he was in Year 1, because he’s still kind of learning the position.”

WR Jahan Dotson, Penn State

Dotson ranks in the top four in school history in receptions (183), receiving yards (2,757) and receiving touchdowns (25). He caught 91 passes for 1,182 yards and 12 touchdowns as a senior. For added appeal, he averaged 17.8 yards per punt return for his career, including 24.6 with one touchdown on eight returns in 2020 and 13.0 yards on eight returns in 2021.

“I think he has the best hands in the draft,” NFL.com’s Daniel Jeremiah said in a pre-Combine conference call. “He really attacks the football. He's got outstanding ability to adjust. He can catch it back hip, above the rim. You name it, he can do it. So, he's a really intriguing player to me.”

Asked about his hands at the Scouting Combine, Dotson said, “That's just something I've been working on my entire life. Been catching the football since I was about 3 years old, so really, when I think about it, catching the football is pretty much therapeutic to me. It's something I really enjoy. So, growing up, catching contested passes is something I've been doing my whole life.”

He measured 5-foot-11 and 184 pounds at the Combine. He figures to be one of the fastest players in Indianapolis.

“Size obviously is not a big factor to me," he said on Wednesday. "Just because it was something I was born with, God-given. God has led me to be able to play at a high level. I'm not really focused on just my size. Obviously, getting bigger in the weight room is always something I'm trying to do, but just excelling in my football skills, learning from vets and, like I said, making my game work.”

WR Chris Olave, Ohio State

In four seasons, Olave (6-1, 188) caught 176 passes for 2,711 yards and a school-record 35 touchdowns. His breakout game came as a freshman, when he scored two touchdowns and blocked a punt vs. Michigan. He emerged as a star as a sophomore when he hauled in 12 touchdown receptions, then scored seven times in seven games during the COVID-impacted junior season and recorded career highs of 65 receptions for 966 yards and 13 touchdowns as a senior.

He possesses speed, route-running and excellent hands.

Basketball was his first love, but football was the family game. His brothers played at UC Davis and Azusa Pacific.

“I talk with my brothers nearly every day,” Chris Olave told the San Diego Union Tribune. “We’re best friends. My brothers play defense, but offense came more naturally to me. So, when I had a chance to play receiver, I jumped at it.”

Ohio State coach Ryan Day went to Mission Hills High School to recruit Olave’s quarterback. Someone needed to catch the passes, so coach Chris Hauser grabbed Olave – who was ineligible to play that season as a transfer student – out of class.

“I was saying, ‘Coach Day, that kid he’s playing catch with is special. I know I can’t prove it yet to you based on tape from last year, but I’m telling you that’s a special young man,’” Hauser told Buckeye Extra.

“I don’t know what he was thinking. He could have been thinking, ‘this Hauser guy is bananas,’ or ‘here’s one of those guys again, trying to sell me on somebody else.’ Because that happens. Most high school guys coaches are going to advocate for their kids. I rolled the dice, but I believed in Chris and in my heart I knew he could play at that level and be very, very successful.”

“It was kind of the perfect storm,” Day said.

WR Jameson Williams, Alabama

Williams (6-2, 189) suffered a torn ACL during the national championship game on Jan. 10, an injury that could send him deep into the first round. The early signs of his comeback look promising and he’s hopeful to be ready for training camp. If he really is that far long, he will go a lot closer to No. 8 than No. 28, but the injury does mean the potential for an extremely low-impact rookie season.

“Recovery is going well,” he said at the Scouting Combine. “I’m about six weeks out of surgery. Have been walking well. Walking without the brace for two weeks. Walking without the crutches for three weeks. Been doing well. Just recently been getting running motion. Everything has just been going good really.”

A first-team All-American, Williams is a big-time big-play threat. He led the nation with a school-record four touchdown receptions of 70-plus yards and had 11 touchdowns of 30-plus yards. He caught 79 passes for 1,572 yards and 15 touchdowns during his final season. He also scored two touchdowns on kickoff returns.

In high school, he set the Missouri state record in the 300 hurdles. That record had been held by Ezekiel Elliott.

“Whatever the fastest 40 time here, I’m faster,” Williams said at the Combine.

Williams transferred from Ohio State, where he was lost in the shuffle of a loaded depth chart, and immediately became a star for the Crimson Tide.

“I’ve been very fortunate. I’ve coached a ton of great receivers,” Alabama offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien told Sporting News, alluding to his history with the likes of DeAndre Hopkins and Julian Edelman.

“Excellent speed, excellent route-runner, very competitive guy. He’s a very instinctive player. He’s a very smart player. And I can’t say enough about his competitiveness. He’s a player that goes out and practices every day like it’s a game.

“I think that’s something that the great ones have – those traits. Everybody’s a little bit different. Everybody’s built differently. Everybody has different skill-sets, different speed, things like that. But the best ones that I’ve been around, and Jameson’s in that category, they all have that competitive spirit that’s really hard to find sometimes.”

S Jalen Pitre, BDT DeMarvin Leal, Texas A&Maylor

As a junior in 2021, Leal was a first-team All-American and a finalist for the Ted Hendricks Award, which goes to the best defensive lineman in the nation. Leal started 12 games and tied for fifth in the SEC with 8.5 sacks and tied for ninth with 12.5 tackles for losses, leading the Aggies in both categories.

Leal was a five-star recruit and deemed the Aggies’ best prospect since Myles Garrett.

“All my life, football has been the thing that brings me complete comfort,” Leal told the San Antonio Express News. “It’s my way of living; it’s what I live for. I love the ins and outs, the hard times and the good times. I love the game and the purpose behind it.”

Listed at 6-foot-4 and 290 pounds, he’s so athletic that he can do a backflip.

“He’s at home on the football field,” Aggies coach Jimbo Fisher said. “Everybody says that, but this guy loves practice, he loves lifting weights, he loves running. When you love something that much and you love all the things you have to do to be good … everyone wants to play and play well, but he loves all the things that go with having to play well. He has a joy of being on the football field. He really does.”

DT Devonte Wyatt, Georgia

The 6-foot-3, 307-pounder was first-team all-SEC and a second-team All-American as a senior. In 14 games, he had 39 tackles including seven tackles for losses. While he had only 2.5 sacks, Georgia’s coaches credited him with 24 quarterback hits. He had a strong week at the Senior Bowl, as well, to solidify his standing as a first-round prospect.

Wyatt got on recruiting radars during his junior year in high school in Decatur, Ga. He competed in the shotput and discus on the track team. When he saw who was running in the 100-meter dash before one meet, he asked the track coach if he could compete.

“He was, like, ‘Hey, I can beat those guys,’” Dr. Brian Montgomery, his football coach, told Dawg Nation. “His coach says, ‘Why don’t you go ahead and win the shot put first and we’ll see what we can do. If you do, we’ll go over there and put you in the 100.’”

Wyatt won the shot. Then, he won the 100. Montgomery sent the video to some of his college recruiting contacts. And the rest is history. He landed on Bruce Feldman’s renowned “Freaks” list before the 2021 season. He’s perhaps the most explosive defensive line prospect in the draft.

Montgomery was a key part in Wyatt’s path beyond the football field. A talented athlete who perhaps was leaning the wrong way in life, Montgomery delivered an ultimatum. “You’re gonna choose me, or you’re going to choose the street.”

OLB Arnold Ebiketie, Penn State

Ebiketie (6-2, 250) spent his first four years at Temple before transferring to Penn State for his final campaign. It was a great decision. He had 9.5 sacks, 18 tackles for losses and two forced fumbles in 2021 to earn second-team All-American status. He finished second among Power 5 defensive linemen in TFLs, with 14.5 of them coming in conference play.

Ebiketie was born in Yaounde, Cameroon – the same hometown as NBA star Joel Embiid – and moved to the United States when he was 12. He didn’t play football until his sophomore year at Albert Einstein High School in Kensington, Md. As a senior, he had 21.5 sacks. When he arrived at Temple, he weighed merely 202 pounds.

“I would say I really didn’t know anything, but you could tell I had potential,” he said in a story by 247 Sports. “The biggest thing for me initially was to figure out what position would fit me the most. Because when I was back in high school, I was a skinny, athletic kid.”

He added another 20 pounds between his final game at Temple and his first game at Penn State.

“My confidence was always there because I’m one of those guys who believe that the game is won in the offseason, starting with the winter workout, transitioning into the spring ball, summer workout,” Ebiketie told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “The combination of the work I put in during that time kind of led me to be confident during the game.”

OLB Boye Mafe, Minnesota

Mafe was a breakout player as a senior with seven sacks and 10 tackles for losses. At the Senior Bowl, where he measured 6-foot-3 and 255 pounds, he was the National Team’s player of the game with two sacks, three tackles for losses and one forced fumble.

His mom died of cancer in 2018 before he played in his first collegiate game. Before each game, he pays tribute to her. As detailed in the Pioneer Press:

Wherever he finds it, Mafe will use American Sign Language to express, “I love you” and “mom,” and the Hopkins native will share another message to Bola, who passed away from pancreatic cancer on Mother’s Day 2018.

I know you are watching over me.

I know I’m going to go out there and perform for you.

I miss you every day.

I think about you every day.

Mafe’s father was born in Nigeria. Adeboye means the “king meets with dignity.” Boye spent eighth grade at a boarding school in Nigeria.

“It was very interesting,” he told Pro Football Network. “It was something that, for me, you never really understand it until you look back, and you don’t realize the blessings of it and how beneficial it was to me. In the moment, I was like, ‘Wow this is crazy! I’m leaving everything that I knew and everything I’m comfortable with.’ But, I enjoyed that time, I met new people and made new relationships. I grew up and matured, you learn how to grow up really fast.”

A member of Feldman’s “Freaks List,” he should do nothing but help his stock at the Combine.

OLB David Ojabo, Michigan

A second-team All-American as a junior in 2021, Ojabo was a one-year wonder. Sometimes, that’s a negative. Not in this case.

Ojabo (listed at 6-5, 250) was a scout-team player in 2009, had one tackle in six games in 2020 and 11 sacks in 2021. He’s got a tremendous get-off but will be a work in progress – not unlike another former Michigan player, Rashan Gary.

Ojabo was born in Nigeria, grew up in Scotland and moved to the United States in hopes of taking “the next step” as an athlete. At Blair Academy, a private school in New Jersey, a fellow student persuaded him to try football. That student was Odafe Oweh, who wound up starring at Penn State and was a first-round draft pick last year.

“I had seen his success,” Ojabo told The Michigan Daily. “In just one year of football he played, he got like 25 offers. I said, ‘Why not me?’ So, I played my one year and got 35.”

It wasn’t an easy path.

“I remember one kid laughing at him,” his high school coach told MLive.com. “This little freshman said, ‘What are you doing on a football field if you don’t know what a hash mark is?’”

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ojabo went back to Scotland for what he thought would be a few weeks. Instead, he was stranded there for three months. While his teammates worked out at the school, he worked at home with dumbbells. It gave him time for self-reflection, having not really seen the field to that point in his career.

“When I got stuck, I was like, ‘Wow, something from three weeks can turn into three months.’ You don’t know when it can be taken away from you,” Ojabo said. “I felt like I flipped that switch, like, when I get back, I’m trying to be on a do-or-die wave. Every day could be my last. … I applied that to the field as soon as I came back.”

LB Christian Harris, Alabama

Harris (6-3, 235) started all three seasons with 63 tackles in 2019, 74 tackles in 2020 and 79 tackles in 2021. His playmaking ability was at the forefront of his game during his final season, as he added 5.5 sacks, 12.5 tackles for losses and two forced fumbles. Three of those sacks came in the national championship loss to Georgia.

Harris played all over the place at University Lab High School in Baton Rouge, La. Harris lined up at cornerback, receiver, running back, tight end. He even returned kickoffs and punts. What he didn’t do was play linebacker. His first taste of that came at the All-American Bowl. He was so good that he started as a true freshman with the powerhouse Crimson Tide.

Harris’ trail to the NFL was blazed by his brother Tylor and former Alabama linebacker Dylan Moses. Tylor, seven years older than Christian, went through the recruiting process, as well. And Moses, a linebacker for the Jacksonville Jaguars, also went to University Lab. When Tylor was being recruited, he had a list of questions he’d ask those coaches. Sometimes, little Christian butted in with his own.

“Christian started asking his own questions,” his mom, Ramona, told Rivals. “He was like, ‘So, do you tell this to everybody you talk to?’ I could have gone under a chair at that point, but it was good because he’s a child and he was saying the things that we were thinking.

“He was always aware. He could always see through people and can decipher when someone is telling him the truth.”

LB Quay Walker, Georgia

A full-time starter for the first time as a senior, Walker had 67 tackles, including 5.5 for losses, in 2021. He led the Bulldogs with eight tackles vs. Alabama in the national championship game and added a career-high six quarterback pressures.

Walker was one of the top recruits in the 2018 class. The road to playing time was a difficult one, though, and he found himself in a “dark place” at times.

“Quay would just get so mad. I think he thought at times he would never learn (the defense)," Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart said. “There were times that he’s like, ‘I don’t want to go to college, I’m tired of it, I’m frustrated, I’m not playing.’”

One of his favorite football memories came when he was 9. He was late for warmups and his coach was mad. “My coach got onto me and was fussing at me. He said that because I was late, I was going to run the ball the first play, a quarterback sneak. I ran the ball that first play and scored from like 80 or 90 yards. I'll never forget that because I got fussed at and I was pretty nervous. I think me being nervous is pretty much the reason why I scored.”

At 6-foot-4 and 240 pounds, his length and range stand out. “He's kind of a unique package with his ability to play off the ball and rush,” NFL.com’s Daniel Jeremiah said before the Combine.

S Daxton Hill

Hill was first-team all-Big Ten in 2021 with 69 tackles, two interceptions and eight passes defensed.

In 2020, Michigan defensive coordinator Don Brown called him potentially “the best cover guy in the Big Ten.” Mostly a safety in 2020, he was unleashed in 2021 and spent most of his final season manning the slot. NFL.com’s Daniel Jeremiah compared him to Darnell Savage. His size (listed at 6-0, 192) limits his physicality but he is athletic and instinctive.

“Really, I just can fly around,” Hill said early in 2021. “Hustling to the ball, that’s one thing you need — all 11 men to the ball each play. If I can help out as much as I can, that’s what I’d like to do. I feel like I have more room to do that now, so that’s why I was excited I could play more freely.”

His brother is Baltimore Ravens running back Justice Hill, who ran a 4.40 in the 40 in 2019. They raced in 2018.

S Jalen Pitre, Baylor

A consensus All-American and one of three finalists for the Jim Thorpe Award as the nation’s top defensive back, Pitre had a banner final season with three sacks, 18 tackles for losses, three forced fumbles and two interceptions. Lining up mostly in a hybrid slot/linebacker role called the “star,” he led the Big 12 in TFLs and was the only player in the nation with at least two interceptions, three forced fumbles and three fumble recoveries.

“On the field, when I first got here, he was an inside linebacker and we were moving him some to safety,” Baylor coach Dave Aranda, one of the game’s great defensive minds, told the Waco Tribune. “I remember during that time just thinking, this guy looks like he’s a star. And I know (defensive coordinator) Ron Roberts was feeling the same way.

“I think that position is just made for him because it’s a combination of both the linebacker and the safety. It highlights his ability to blitz, his ability to set the edge, and then he has just enough coverage responsibilities that he’s keeping people honest with things. I think the best is yet to come with him.”

He showed a diverse skill-set at the Senior Bowl, where he measured 5-foot-11 and 196 pounds.

“When I’m in the box, I take my role very seriously. Like, I’m going to die in my gap if I have to,” he told Pro Football Network. “It’s always important for me to do whatever I need to do to get in my spot. And when I’m in my spot, I’m trying to make a play as well. I’m not going to let anybody put their hands on me and take me where they want me to go. I think when I have that mindset along with the knowledge of the game, it helps me play a lot faster and helps me make the plays that I need to make.”

Pitre got his degree in 2020 and wants to make his mark as a coach.

“It’s a huge transition for a lot of student-athletes to come to college and be by themselves and make that jump in their life, whether it’s spiritually, physically, emotionally,” Pitre told The Waco Tribune. “That’s a big turning point for a lot of these student-athletes in their life, and I think I could be a great helper for them in that.”