After flashing game-breaking ability and elite athleticism despite never truly earning a featured role during his time in college, Trey Benson showed enough potential for the Arizona Cardinals to use an early third-round pick on him in the 2024 NFL draft. With James Conner producing career highs in both rushing yards and yards per carry for Arizona last season, the addition of Benson could be…...

Heading into the 2024 NFL draft with six of the top 100 picks, the Washington Commanders were in a prime position to rebuild their roster in a hurry. To the delight of fantasy owners, the team decided to kick off their rebuild by using four of their top 100 picks on the offensive side of the ball. With the second overall pick, the Commanders selected…...

Few players have been as breathtaking, mind-bending, and enigmatic in their rookie season as De’Von Achane was in 2023. A four-star recruit out of high school, Achane stayed in relative proximity to his suburban Houston upbringing, committing to Texas A&M and sitting behind Isaiah Spiller for the bulk of his first season, excelling in a limited role. By the time he made it to the…...

Full disclosure: I have been a fan of Dallas area sports teams since I was a kid in the early to mid-eighties and grew up in the northern suburbs of the DFW Metroplex. It’s been a pretty good ride for Dallas in terms of sports lately. As frustrating as they are, the Cowboys made the playoffs, a Dallas-based golfer has maintained his two-year stranglehold on…...

Ladd McConkey probably isn’t what most people think of when envisioning a University of Georgia WR recruit in the Kirby Smart era. A three-star recruit listed as low as 158 pounds heading into college, he played high school football in a small town called Chatsworth, GA, near the border of Tennessee, and his only other offers, according to ESPN’s recruiting information, came from Army, Georgia…...

After waiting his turn for the opportunity to lead Texas’s backfield, Jonathon Brooks showed signs of being the next great running back to emerge from the Longhorns’ storied program. Then disaster struck on November 11th against TCU, as Brooks’ breakout season ended prematurely due to a torn ACL. The injury was not enough to scare off the Carolina Panthers, as the team traded up to the…...

Caleb Williams and Drake Maye have been inextricably linked for years, set on a collision course at the top of this 2024 draft class almost since setting sail out of high school. Both were Top 4 QB recruits in 2021 according to 247. The two have been brought up together ad nauseam since 2022, usually as the anticipated first and second pick in the 2024…...

In most years Malik Nabers would have been the clear-cut WR1 in rookie drafts, while also being in contention for the overall 1.01. But 2024 is definitely not most years. Sporting the deepest quarterback class in recent memory, in addition to a wide receiver group that rivals the fabled class of 2014, the value that can be had in the first round of Superflex rookie…...

J.J. McCarthy, the National Championship-winning QB of the Michigan Wolverines, wasn’t tasked with much passing volume in the Jim Harbaugh system but finished with a 27-1 record in two seasons as a starter, his only loss coming in the 2022 semifinals against TCU. In large part due to a lack of counting stats, McCarthy started the draft process as a second-tier prospect in the minds…...

After committing to LSU ranked as a four-star recruit and 68th overall player (WR9) in the 2021 draft class according to 24/7 sports’ high school rankings, it took Brian Thomas Jr. until his junior season to fully deliver on the promise he showed coming out of high school. But when he did break out, Thomas didn’t hold back. In 2023, Thomas led all of college…...

Years ago it was fashionable to argue about whether NFL prospect scouting should rely on film-based evaluation, or on the analytics and “box score scouting.” If the “analytics wars” don’t seem as contentious now, it’s mainly because most people are tired of arguing. But it’s also because those who championed film-based scouting have in many ways come to see the value of the advanced analytical…...

After being heralded as the best true-freshman WR of all time, we have had to wait two long years to find out which NFL city Xavier Worthy would call home. Although Worthy’s projected draft capital has fluctuated since his historic freshman season, he saw his stock rise substantially after breaking the NFL combine record in the forty-yard dash. With the trauma of the Bengals’ infamous…...

The running back position continues to be undervalued in the real-life draft. It’s even more challenging for undrafted RBs to make an impact in their rookie seasons. Since 2014, we’ve only had 14 RBs (6.5%) drafted in the first round out of 217 players. For context, 147 of the 217 running backs went on Day 3 since 2014. Over two-thirds of RBs (67.7%) went in…...