2021 NFL Draft: Pro Day winners and mock draft sinners

Justin Fields, Tommy Tremble and Jaelan Phillips headline Inside the Draft’s Pro Day Winners. But who are the losers? And why do mock drafts stink?

With no traditional Scouting Combine this year, Pro Days became our only source of prospect information like heights, weights, 40-times, hand lengths and arm lengths; plus viral videos, hype, over-analysis, quasi-informed hot takes about Zach Wilson, Mac Jones, Justin Fields and others, and long debates about whether Pro Day season, draft coverage or life itself really means anything.

Yep, Pro Days appear to be more important than ever this year. They have also been over-scrutinized, overemphasized and a little suspiciously over-impressive over the last few weeks.

This Inside the Draft rundown of “Winners” and “Losers” is hardly comprehensive, but it will catch you up with all of the Pro Day news and notes that matter. Plus plenty of news and notes that don’t matter at all.

Winner: Zach Wilson, QB, BYU

Wilson blew the Internet away with his ability to complete deep passes against air at his Pro Day. That should come as no surprise, since he spent the entire 2020 season completing deep passes against air.

Winner: Justin Fields, QB, Ohio State

Fields called Wilson’s ante and raised him with some impressive rollout-and-throw deep passing of his own, adding a 4.44 second 40-yard dash for good measure. Fields’ impressive Pro Day was important because the “meh, we just don’t like him” vibe seeping down from the NFL scouting community is starting to take on a life of its own.

Loser: Mac Jones, QB, Alabama

While Fields was running like Michael Vick and hitting receivers in stride 50-yards downfield, Jones repeatedly misfired and overthrew familiar targets, prompting  Kyle Shanahan’s face to contort into a mask of bemused horror. But fear not, DraftTwitter! NFL decision-makers will soon signal their preference for the less-talented-in-every-way Jones to the apex predators of the draft media. And they’ll insist those rationales have nothing whatsoever to do with deep-seated implicit bias!

Winner: Tommy Tremble, TE, Notre Dame

There’s no clear-cut second tight end behind Florida’s Kyle Pitts in this class, but Tremble made a strong case for himself by running a 4.59-second 40-yard dash, the fastest by a tight end in Notre Dame history.

Tremble is already one of the best blockers in this tight end class, so seam-stretching speed could make him the second tight end off the board.

Loser: Gregory Rousseau, Edge, Miami

Rousseau opted out in 2020 to concentrate on preparing for the draft (and, you know, not contract or spread a dangerous virus). But he listed at 266 pounds and ran in the 4.7-second range, with unimpressive broad jump results. Those numbers aren’t terrible, but after a year away from the game, Rousseau needed to either be much bigger or much faster to confirm his status as a high first-round pick.

Meanwhile …

Winner: Jaelan Phillips, Edge, Miami

Rousseau’s teammate Phillips ran in the 4.56 range and broad-jumped 10’5” at 260 pounds (on a frame more compact than Rousseau’s).

Phillips produced some impressive 2020 tape as well: he can vaporize blockers with stutter-steps and swim moves, and he hustles in pursuit of plays to the opposite side of the field. A troubling concussion history could still keep Phillips out of the first round of the draft, but if he can stay on the field, he can play.

Winner: Mark Gilbert, CB, Duke

Gilbert looked like a future first-round pick when he intercepted six passes for the 2017 Blue Devils. Unfortunately, his next three seasons were erased by a hip injury, a foot injury and a pandemic. Gilbert’s 4.36 second 40-yard dash and solid all-around workout signaled to the NFL that he’s now healthy enough to pick up where he left off in 2017.

Also, Gilbert is Darrelle Revis’ cousin, which means that even if he is a mid-round pick he will mysteriously earn a $96-million contract.

Loser: Olaijah Griffin, CB, USC

Griffin tested positive for COVID and could not participate in the Trojans’ Pro Day. He’s likely to get an opportunity to work out separately by the time you read this (teams are allowed to host multiple Pro Days this year), but such workouts are more difficult with fewer college teammates around and are likely to attract fewer scouts.

Several other prospects missed their Pro Days due to minor injuries or COVID positives. Ole Miss tight end Kenny Yeboah, an Inside the Draft favorite, tweaked his hamstring running his 40-yard dash and was unable to finish his workouts. Like Griffin, he should get a second opportunity soon.

Speaking of the Rebels …

Winner: Elijah Moore, WR, Ole Miss

Moore, another Inside the Draft favorite, burned a 40-yard dash in the 4.35 second range and produced other impressive results. We initially projected him as an excellent nifty-shifty slot prospect with the toughness to bounce back if he takes a shot over the middle. If his Pro Day speed is genuine, he could be a much more versatile weapon and a focal point of an offense, just as he was for the Rebels.

Loser: Chad Kelly, Old Guy Hanging Around Campus

On the one hand, it was great to see Kelly (Jim Kelly’s nephew and an Ole Miss starter in 2015 and 16 who had a checkered college and pro career) throwing to Moore and others. Kelly’s arm was never an issue, and he helped some Ole Miss prospects look as good as they could be.

On the other hand, there’s nothing sadder than a 27-year old returning to campus for Career Day to hand out resumes. Sorry, Chad: if being the nephew of a respected/beloved Hall of Famer didn’t provide you with enough extra NFL opportunities, doing odd jobs for Lane Kiffin ain’t going to make much of a difference.

Winners: Just about everyone

If he’s a prospect you never heard of, chances are he ran a 4.23 second 40-yard dash at 288 pounds, possesses the wingspan of a crop duster and bench-pressed John Lynch’s F-250 in the parking lot. Apparently, the human species took an evolutionary quantum leap forward in the last few months.

Losers: The credibility of the Pro Days themselves

Those 40’s sure seem like they were hand-timed by each player’s roommate on a 38-yard track pitched at a 10 percent decline. The results from some programs (read: Penn State) were so suspiciously awesome that the fishy results could work against second-tier prospects after a few weeks of patented NFL analysis paralysis.

And let’s not get started with private workouts at performance academies. What are we supposed to make of this Virginia Tech CB Caleb Farley “4.28-second” 40 video with the Steven Soderbergh jump-cut at the start of it? I’ve seen better deep-fake videos from suburban dads using Photoshop to make it look like their preschoolers can dunk.

Worst of all, that particular performance academy has a budget big enough to hire Zack Snyder to direct their videos. But then, everything would be in slow motion, which wouldn’t help anyone’s draft stock.

Winner: The Scouting Combine

All the cool Internet draft experts love to scoff at Combine workouts. Bah, the underwear Olympics are mere theater. True draftniks grind film until our eyes bleed! Yet this year’s Pro Day 40-fudging jamboree illustrates the need for the standardization that Combine workouts provide. One year without the Combine and suddenly every punter from Directional State looks like Myles Garrett.

Workout benchmarks are a useful rule-of-thumb for NFL scouting departments. Without those benchmarks blurred this year, look for some teams to veer all over the road when trying to figure out whether the prospects they select are as athletic as they appeared to be in an empty team facility in mid-March.

The Skeptic’s Guide to Mock Drafts

Throughout the 2021 draft season, Inside the Draft chose one of the brightest stars in the 2021 draft class each week and explored the biggest weaknesses in his game and reasons why he might fail. This week, we change things up a bit.

Mock drafts suck.

Mock drafts are just slash fanfic for football fans, except with impenetrable scouting jargon in place of the kinky sex. Mock drafts are the high-sodium, empty-calorie processed chip-shaped reconstituted potato product of NFL journalism, engineered to make you gorge unhealthily upon barrels full of them while leaving you starved of actual nutrients.

Mock drafts are spread ankle-deep like fertilizer all over the sports media landscape this time of year. The most famous NFL personalities on television are expected to publish one. The hungriest up-and-comers at CloisteredDraftObsessives.com produce a dozen seven-rounders per week. Yet few mock drafts contain any information of substance and many even lack entertainment value. That’s because:

• Folks who really know what they are talking about rarely have time to focus on a mock draft; while …
• Those with all the time in the world to devote to a mock draft rarely know what they are talking about.

Do you think Dan Jeremiah or Mel Kiper spends hours sweating over which player the Titans will draft 22nd-overall? Nope. Their mock drafts are written by research assistants. If a TV draft celebrity says “I’m hearing Mike Mayock loves Patrick Surtain Jr.” in a production meeting, a worker bee mocks Surtain to the Raiders, adding some copy-pasta boilerplate rationale. The television expert then looks it over, blesses it like an archbishop, and forgets about it.

What about that film-grinding young draft junkie toiling away on a 25,000-word seven-round labor of love? There’s no doubting his (it’s almost certainly a dude) dedication. But by the time he crafts his 32nd scouting report on a left guard, his brain’s gray matter is cannibalizing itself. He becomes the draft equivalent of an ascetic hermit who has eaten nothing but bullet ants for 40 days and now sees the face of a prophet on every tortilla.

As for the folks in between, your typical national NFL generalist or local columnist is expected to cover the playoffs, then free agency, then shift gears to the draft for a few weeks. Most know the quarterbacks, Heisman winners and Kyle Pitts-types well enough. They polish off their mock drafts in between other assignments by grabbing names off lists and hiding their lack of knowledge about the player by focusing on the team. The Bengals allowed 48 sacks last year and need an offensive tackle. And according to his college website, this kid is an offensive tackle.

The more informed a mock draft claims to be, the more skeptical you should be. This is especially true when reading the output of the hermetic extremists, who get lost in scouting minutiae and veer miles away from the actual thought processes of NFL decision-makers:

DRAFTNIK HERMIT: “Edge Rusher X is perfect for Team Y in the third round. His lateral hip torsion and ability to string together dip/rip/punch/snikt moves are perfect for Coach Toasterhead’s system, which emphasizes fire blitzes with a LEO lined up shade 8i and running the Dakota stunt with the Peso linebacker.”

GENERAL MANAGER OF TEAM Y ON DRAFT DAY: “Don’t draft Edge Rusher X. His agent is a pain in the ass.”

Seven-round mock drafts, it should be pointed out, are essentially serial killer manifestos. Any editor who orders some youngster in desperate need of cash and a byline to write one is practically a war criminal. And those who eagerly volunteer to produce them need to get more fresh air.

No one on the Arizona Cardinals really worries about who precisely they will draft with the 243rd-overall pick until about the 230th pick is announced. There’s no reason some poor yutz should spend days on such labor, all for a fraction of the clicks he would have gotten for Russell Wilson to the Patriots? Here’s Why It Makes Sense.

Seriously, Inside the Draft gets it. You love this stuff, Mr. Seven Rounds Plus Priority Free Agents Guy, and you hope to make a name for yourself in the draftnik realm. Try doing ANYTHING else — interviewing more players, introducing yourself to some agents, taking a writing course so your scouting reports don’t sound like they were written by Bill Lumburgh — besides scrawling out litanies of seventh-round long snappers and backup safeties all over the walls of your cave.

Inside the Draft won’t be producing a mock draft for FanSided this year, but of course I have written dozens of them for other outlets over the years. I craft each one according to my own rigid code of chivalry:

• Rule 4: Basic common sense must prevail. (JaMarr Chase isn’t falling to 28th)
• Rule 3: The “team needs” must be accurate.
• Rule 2: The scouting reports must be honest.
• Rule 1: The results must be fun and entertaining.

Everything else is fair game. Imaginary trades? Sure: let’s turn the whole thing into Calvinball so we can get the poor Bears a quarterback. Fanbase trolling? The Packers are never ever ever ever ever gonna draft a wide receiver, LOL. Stanning for our favorite prospects? Can I interest you in Zaven Collins?

Also, because Rule 1 rules, Inside the Draft never looks back and worries about “accuracy.” Going back to determine your number of “hits” in a mock draft is like bottling your own farts so you can smell them later. No one cares about your Madden championships, Pornhub favorites or the fact that you guessed 9 out of 32 first-round picks correctly in the 2017 draft.

“Mock draft simulators” like this one have become increasingly popular, and they may someday render the “expert”-driven mock draft obsolete. Why fret over who the NFL.com on-air personality’s interns think your favorite team will draft in the fourth round when a computer can do it for you? And you can re-roll if you don’t like the results!

More and more mock drafts are being written with the help of the simulators, anyway. If someone creates a mock draft simulator that also generates a scouting report and a Dave Gettleman joke, Inside the Draft will be forced into retirement, and that wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Until we achieve a utopia in which draft coverage focuses on interesting/relevant information about prospects, mock drafts will remain a big part of the ecosystem and business model.

You, Uncle Carmine from Shunk Street, want to be reassured the Eagles will draft DeVonta Smith, or intrigued that they will draft Micah Parsons, or outraged they will draft Trey Lance.

I, a mighty archduke of NFL media aristocracy, will provide you with that endorphin hit, plus some Cowboys slander and the aforementioned Gettleman joke, absolutely free of charge. A colleague will provide a booster shot a few days later. You’ll have fun, we’ll get paid, and it’s possible that some of us might learn something along the way.

Just please, for the love of all that is sacred, don’t take a word of any of it seriously.