The top of this draft has me more baffled than others in recent years. I really don't feel like any of the players fit top 5 picks besides the obvious QB.
I do still like Bailey more than all of the others
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The 2026 Draft Thread - 1st Round - 7th overall
- Thread starter Canadian Hog
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I do still like Bailey more than all of the others
That's quite the list of guys I liked pre interviews! It is amazing that many of them improved their status at the Senior Bowl as well
I asked a few teams for one guy that has taken advantage of the interview process after these first few nights of meetings: • Texas Tech iDL Lee Hunter• Ohio State LB Sonny Styles • Pitt LB Kyle Louis• Notre Dame WR Malachi Fields• North Dakota State QB Cole Payton• Texas Tech LB Jacob Rodriguez• Texas LB Anthony Hill Jr• Navy RB Eli Heidenreich• Oklahoma EDGE R Mason Thomas
Faulks size allows him to get away with some stiffness over a player like Bailey but he does have different techniques that move him up. I do think people are sleeing a little on Faulk and Woods potential. I think they both end up going top 20 and have steady good careers.
I mentioned weeks back, judging by stats and style of play Jacob Rodriguez seems to fit the Flores scheme, I got a little pushback, I was told by some not really him but these Lbs are a better fit.
Well, in Keim's podcast, he said this team met with Rodriguez. So clearly at a minimum they see him as a fit to the scheme.
I am a little behind on studying prospects this off season, I need to catch up, but I spent a lot of time studying the Flores scheme so I think I got a decent handle on it.
With that in mind, I am backing off a little of not Styles at 7. I've always liked the player but 7 feels rich. It still does for a LB. But his intangibles and athleticsm are out of this world so lol I'll be fine if that's what they do. Also in Flores scheme, often in zone they just have 2 guys playing underneath versus the typical 3, so those 2 players need to be very rangy and Styles fits that.
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Yes Styles really impressed me through OS's playoff run, he is going to be an extremely good NFLer. I however do understand your point on, oh lets call him JRod lol, He plays quicker than his clocked time and fits better into whatt we believe will be our new look D.
The other LB that impressed me this year was Kyle Louis, different player than JRod but all three of these LBs being in the very short list posted is shocking and in a way a bummer as it draws more attention to them
Another thing that makes me pause about Styles is this LB crop is loaded. Yeah Louis killed the Senior Bowl. Jake Golday is a fun watch, and can do it all. Anthony Hill who I know you like, etc.
Dlts20
The Starter
This is the sleeper pick that no one is talking about. Edge receiver, LT, and corner are the 4 premium positions and it is sad that Jones wants great corners so then he can basically do anything he wants on defense
Dlts20
The Starter
The bottom line at the end of the day is that there will be a highly rated player on the board at 7. Pick 5 would have been great and Moore coming out would have been any better but there are definitely 7 big names in this draft so we will get one and if a lineman or 2 goes like they should then that's even better
If Jones adopts the Flores scheme, less burden on the corners than other spots. But it never hurts to have of course great corners, it always helps.
Dlts20
The Starter
I'm still not sold that he will. Of course it's moving parts and he changes with talent but at LSU he used a hybrid 4-3 base. If we don't get Bailey or Reese then I could see that still being the case
Yeah forgot Keim also mentioned Downs, no shocker
I am pretty sold it will have strong elements of the Flores defense based on what Jones has discussed. What Jones ran in 2021 is irrelevant, though ironically by his own admission it had elements of Flores' defense today. But in short the Flores defense in recent years is very different from what Flores used to run. It's a new formula. Here's a long article about how Flores defense changed and why and Jones part of it. I include snippets of it here.
How adopting a college defense has fueled Vikings' turnaround
Minnesota got into the playoff picture behind incorporating a novel defense used at Pitt that NFL offenses are not used to seeing.
...His thoughts began to shift, however, during the year he spent with the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2022 as their senior defensive assistant/linebackers coach. The Steelers share a practice facility with the University of Pittsburgh, and Flores said he frequently visited with Pitt assistant coach Tiquan Underwood. The pair watched film together, and Flores said he "kind of got enamored" with a portion of Narduzzi's defense that had been in use since Narduzzi took over as the defensive coordinator at Miami (Ohio) in 2003.
It began as a way to stop the run with six-man run pressures, and then to overwhelm quarterbacks if they threw against it. The front turns into a blitz in those situations, with coverages -- known as "three under, two deep" or "two under, three deep" -- that college quarterbacks couldn't often beat. In an interview with ESPN, Narduzzi called it a "changeup" that "has been kind of our equalizer" over the years.
"If you're looking at it on paper," Narduzzi said, "you're saying it's unsound. But if you play it the right way, and understand the why and what we're trying to do, you understand why we use it."
It was so unusual, Narduzzi said, that some college coaches have barred their defensive coaches from using it. When he worked as a linebackers coach at Northern Illinois, then-coach Joe Novak "wouldn't let me do it," Narduzzi said. Later, Georgia coach Kirby Smart told Narduzzi that Alabama coach Nick Saban turned away the ideas when Smart had been the Crimson Tide's defensive coordinator.
But when Flores began discussing the concepts with his Vikings staff, he had an ally in Jones, the passing game coordinator who had sampled it when he was LSU's defensive coordinator in 2021.
"It looks like the secondary is just by themselves," Jones said. "There's no post safety. There's no Cover-2. It's looks like it's just one-on-one everywhere. But it's not. It's an illusion."
...Defensive pass game coordinator/defensive backs coach Daronte Jones, meanwhile, has suppressed smiles during pregame warmups when approached by opposing coaches. Several of them, Jones said, have offered sympathy for the amount of man coverage the Vikings had seemingly asked their defensive backs to play.
"And the truth," Jones said, "is that we're really not. Flo's mind just works differently."
The Vikings lead the NFL in frequency of zone coverage (69%), according to ESPN Stats & Information. They have also used their six-man front in ways rarely seen at the NFL level. Flores' defense has the league's highest rates -- by a wide margin -- in two philosophical opposites: blitzes and three-man rushes. They have more than twice as many six-man rushes as the next-most aggressive team, largely because Metellus and Smith have rushed the passer more than six times the NFL average for defensive backs, and they have utilized personnel groupings that complicate the blocking schemes of offenses and reduce the "menu" of plays or formations they can use.
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Sounds like a recipe for miscommunication disaster without the right players being coached well. I’ll believe we can pull that off under Quinn’s staff, which kept mainly the same DB coaches, when I see it with my own eyes. I guess it starts with player personnel turnover, we’ll see how much there is
To your point, I am hoping we see a little more staff turnover as well!
Absolutely. I've talked about it. Harrison Smith in particular was supposedly the master communicator as to getting players aligned. So it makea me think Caleb Downs would really help a defense like this.
You also need underneath defenders (LBs and safeties) with range and versatility. Even though its not a sexy signing, Eric Wilson, could be a target, apparently he has the versatilty and communication skills.
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Only thing about putting Downs in that role is that we are asking a lot out of a rookie no matter how smart he is. There’s have to be a lot of things to align damn near perfect for him to be able to control the entire defense communication wise day one.
Might be. Might be also for a linebacker. Smart veterans might be the better road.
Downs though specifically is supposedly a savant through the roof as far as understanding a scheme, dissecting opponent's offenses, etc.
The Obsession That Built Caleb Downs — and Made Him College Football’s Top Defender | FOX Sports
Ohio State's Caleb Downs isn’t just talented — he’s relentless in dissecting greatness itself, and it’s this obsession that has carried him to where he is today.
www.foxsports.com
Upon returning home one afternoon, Caleb vaulted into a two-week binge of internet videos and marathon practice sessions until he, too, could conquer the cube. He performed the puzzle faster and faster with each passing day, dazzling his brother and sister by once completing it in 60 seconds. "It was crazy," Tanya told me. And then once that particular task had been perfected, Caleb put down the Rubik’s Cube and shifted to his next fixation.
"Some things just catch his eye," Gary told me, "and all of a sudden he wants to know about it and wants to master it."
elying solely on instincts and athleticism, as Caleb had done for most of his freshman and sophomore seasons, would only take him so far.
That’s when father and son devised a plan inspired by the following words: "Put before your eyes that which you want to be," meaning if Caleb wanted to embody the top-ranked safety in the country, he needed to become an expert on players who fit that mold. His new list of study subjects included Ed Reed, Sean Taylor, Brian Dawkins, Troy Polamalu, Ronnie Lott and Eric Berry, a handful of the best safeties in NFL history. Caleb pored over highlight tapes, interview footage, feature stories and documentaries — anything and everything from which he might glean bits of what made those players into stars.
"What types of plays they were making, what type of work ethic do they have, what did they stand for, who these people were to be considered great, to be considered the top in their field, elite in that category," Caleb told me. "I mean, that’s how I saw myself."
By then, Caleb was already an active participant in devising game plans and scheming up in-game adjustments at Mill Creek, where head coach Josh Lovelady willingly leaned on him for input. The collaborative nature of that relationship was exactly what Gary had hoped for when deciding where his younger son should attend high school. He had pushed aside one program the family liked because, as Gary told me, "I didn’t want him to be under a coach that would be offended by Caleb; some coaches aren’t used to players having any ideas." And for years, Caleb had grown accustomed to working in tandem with his youth coach, Pat Mullins, who made a habit of sending him tape and asking for feedback on certain teams or individuals.
"You’re not the producer or the director," Gary told me, "but you’re acting. And having a director or producer that is willing to take, you know, some inference from you [is huge]. I think in his role as a player, being around the right coaches that recognized [Caleb’s] ability to see football was really important."
Charles Kelly, who became Caleb’s primary recruiter at Alabama, told me he only needed to see four plays to identify the best prospect on the field when he watched Mill Creek live for the first time, so obvious was the talent wearing the No. 2 jersey. Later that evening, Caleb called Kelly to thank him for making the 250-mile trip from Tuscaloosa. Their conversation lasted nearly three hours as the coach drove from Douglasville, Georgia, back to the Crimson Tide’s campus, during which time Caleb lobbed question after question regarding high-level football strategy. They never made it to another topic.
But even when Caleb wanted to talk about football, he wasn’t always talking about football — not in a traditional sense with X’s and O’s and defensive philosophy. He often asked Kelly to describe some of the best defensive backs he’d ever coached, like Brian Branch at Alabama (2020-22) and Derwin James at Florida State (2015-17), eager to learn about what those players did off the field in preparation for games. They went deep on topics like strength and conditioning, nutrition and how the business world worked, how football players could market themselves in college and beyond. The intellectual nature of their relationship reminded Kelly of something his mother used to tell him growing up: "The more books you read," she told him, "the more you increase your intelligence." And by then, Caleb was already an avid reader.
"He would just say [things like], How is this guy successful?" Charlie Strong, a defensive analyst with the Crimson Tide when Downs was at Alabama and now the defensive line coach for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, told me. "And it wasn’t just football players. It was about people outside of football. What do I have to do to be like this person?"
And there was, perhaps, no person who Caleb wanted to be like more than Saban, arguably the greatest coach in college football history with seven national championships and a dynastical run at Alabama until his retirement following the 2023 season. A huge portion of Saban’s messaging to his teams, Kelly told me, was about success being the product of myriad small decisions that are made every day. To someone as regimented and goal-oriented as Caleb, who arrived in the weight room promptly at 6 a.m. each day, those words seemed to validate the way he’d already been living his life.
So Caleb planted himself by Saban’s side during every defensive backs meeting, which he always led given his background with that position. Caleb could ask any question he wanted, as many questions as he wanted, and Saban delighted in having such an inquisitive pupil with an advanced football mind. The two remain in close contact to this day.
"He was the reason Caleb went to Alabama," Tanya told me. "On all the visits we went to, when we would sit and talk with Coach Saban, it was like Caleb was in a trance listening to him, soaking in all of the advice he was giving.
"All of his teammates, they would joke and say that Caleb was like Coach Saban more than anybody else on the team."
Just two obsessive peas in a pod.
Dlts20
The Starter
Well I know the last couple of years Flores was doing things that even the most veteran QBs said they hadn't seen before. Let's just hope that it all works out. I am however have always been a believer in aggression on both sides of the ball and I love to blitz so I'm all for it.
Its also why I am ok with the offensive change but don't want it to go to far. I don't want a conservative run run pass offense when we think that at his best we have a generational QB. I still want to sling it around and go for 4k plus yards passing. I don't want us to have Jayden but play like we have some middle of the pack, game manager.
Its also why I am ok with the offensive change but don't want it to go to far. I don't want a conservative run run pass offense when we think that at his best we have a generational QB. I still want to sling it around and go for 4k plus yards passing. I don't want us to have Jayden but play like we have some middle of the pack, game manager.
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