Well based on our current WR room you aren't necessarily saying a lot
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The 2026 Draft Thread - 1st Round - 7th overall
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Watched some Ohio State games. Just the defense. First off... There are a few other good defensive players on the roster. Jaylen McClain is pretty good. I like Lorenzo Styles' tenacity - doesn't make plays on the ball very often, but I looked up his stats and I saw he had 2 kick returns on the season, one of which was a 100 yarder for a TD against UCLA. That's interesting.
I wasn't watching any one player in particular.
Reese is the stand out for the games that happened in the first half of the season. Like... dominant... especially against Penn State and Texas. Then he kinda disappears in games in the second half of the season - this is backed up by his stats falling off of a cliff. But if what you're getting is how he played against Texas or Penn State? Yeah.
Styles is pretty consistent through the year - he still takes some bad angles but he is a physical freak and moves real well. Against Texas he honey hole drops from a damn near on-ball LB alignment into the deep middle in a Tampa 2 call. So fluid. He definitely needs development in his angles.
Both he and Reese were total non-factors against Miami.
Downs doesn't really make many standout plays. Earlier I said he was a rich man Kam Curl and... yes. He is. He gets around the ball, occasionally takes bad angles, but he is around the ball alot. He doesn't really find the ball in the air. But against Miami he forced two fumbles and that stood out.
It's weird because I feel like each of them was kind of the best player at different times in the season.
I don't know that my opinions really changed on any of them watching them like this versus focusing on any one of them.
I think Arvell Reese took a forward jump for me, but those poor games do stand out and hold me back a bit from how much I liked him in the earlier games.
Downs is a damn good chess piece, but nothing that makes me say, "WOW WE NEED HIM" but it's enough for me to keep him on my "yes, please." list.
Styles is still a bit raw, but he has everything you want in a guy with some positional versatility that can still wear the green dot.
I wasn't watching any one player in particular.
Reese is the stand out for the games that happened in the first half of the season. Like... dominant... especially against Penn State and Texas. Then he kinda disappears in games in the second half of the season - this is backed up by his stats falling off of a cliff. But if what you're getting is how he played against Texas or Penn State? Yeah.
Styles is pretty consistent through the year - he still takes some bad angles but he is a physical freak and moves real well. Against Texas he honey hole drops from a damn near on-ball LB alignment into the deep middle in a Tampa 2 call. So fluid. He definitely needs development in his angles.
Both he and Reese were total non-factors against Miami.
Downs doesn't really make many standout plays. Earlier I said he was a rich man Kam Curl and... yes. He is. He gets around the ball, occasionally takes bad angles, but he is around the ball alot. He doesn't really find the ball in the air. But against Miami he forced two fumbles and that stood out.
It's weird because I feel like each of them was kind of the best player at different times in the season.
I don't know that my opinions really changed on any of them watching them like this versus focusing on any one of them.
I think Arvell Reese took a forward jump for me, but those poor games do stand out and hold me back a bit from how much I liked him in the earlier games.
Downs is a damn good chess piece, but nothing that makes me say, "WOW WE NEED HIM" but it's enough for me to keep him on my "yes, please." list.
Styles is still a bit raw, but he has everything you want in a guy with some positional versatility that can still wear the green dot.
Did watching them change your thoughts at the beginning of the draft, like are moving any of them down your board? Or maybe let you more easy to move up Love, Tate, maybe, Delane, Bailey or Maugoa?
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Nah. No real movement at the moment. I'm sure I'll keep watching film and have some adjustments as we get closer to the draft.
But my current list (excluding Bain because I don't think he's an option) is:
1. Jeremiyah Love
2. Sonny Styles
3. Arvel Reese
4. Carnell Tate
5. Caleb Downs
6. Mansoor Delane
7. Makai Lemon
8. Jermod McCoy
I think the Ohio State grouping can switch on any given day right now. Literally into any order. If you guarantee me that the Reese we get is the one from the Texas and Penn State game he is my number 2 without hesitation.
Tate I actually feel is a step below the defensive Ohio State guys - but I think his value allows him to be above Downs - for now.
Jordyn Tyson being healthy might allow him to break onto this list for me.
If we're talking trade back guys I'd add:
David Bailey (He won't be there, there are too many intriguing traits, he is going top 10 for sure, if not top 2)
Jordyn Tyson
Keldric Faulk
Kenyon Sadiq
Olaivavega Ioane
I didn't list Mauigoa or Fano here, but they could creep in if "Player that shant be named" isn't extended soon.
I think my only surprise on your list is McCoy making your top 8-10 with the health concerns. Otherwise I still say he'd be top 5 for sure. My list would be close, Lemon is lower
Dlts20
The Starter
Umm, you kinda made me feel like I don't really want any of them... Lol
Let's go get the safest bet in Love and be done with it.. Lol
I'm still a big Tyson fan myself. I'd go get him personally. It's still the best value position of the guys I trust. I'm willing to take the injury risk. If he's healthy, Jayden with Tyson is a special duo IMO
BayouBrave86
The 1st Round Pick
How can anyone say they’d take Tate over Egbuka? Egbuka hit the skids a bit but he’s a future number 1 for Tampa. Again, what has Tate proven to be a number 1? I can’t remember the last time a college WR2 went first WR picked in the draft. Seriously guys, think about this. It makes 0 sense for Tate to go number 7. When has a college WR2 been picked in the top 10?
Jaylen Waddle not very long ago is the first I can think of, without actually looking it up
For the record, I didn’t say I would take Tate over Egbuka. I said that I don’t think it’s crazy to think that he could end up better, that there’s a non-zero chance Tate could be better in his NFL role as an outside deep threat.
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Our own Terry McLaurin was a number 3 or maybe even number 4 receiver at Ohio State and became our number 1.
I hope someone sees fools gold and goes top 6 lol
He was expected to test well but not 4.39 fast
Here is one I hadnn't seen. I don't see it occurring but I guess you never know with QB starved teams:
Top Risers at the 2026 Combine
Top Risers at the 2026 Combine
- Ty Simpson (Alabama): Widely viewed as the top challenger to Mendoza for a potential high-selection spot, Simpson is impressing with his blend of arm talent and mobility. He is considered a strong candidate to climb into the top five after entering the combine with a mid-first to early-second round projection.
Sadiq's 4.39 scares me a little. Knowing AP's favorite positions are Edge and TE, I hope he doesn't get bedazzled by it and take him at 7. He has been mocked mainly between 15 and 20 with a few between 10 and 15.
Ed Reed type in ther context of smarts-directing the defense. I gather you are thinking free safety-ball hawk Ed Reed. I am referencing the Bill Belichick conversation where he felt like he had to play chess versus Ed Reed because of his QB on the field prowess.
With 'old soul' Caleb Downs paving the way, Ohio State's defense is off to a historic start
Downs is different from most other players here. He’s 20 going on 40, a college football player destined to one day be a business executive, an athletic freak determined to be a real-estate magnate.One coach here describes Downs as having an “elite mind” that goes well beyond football. For fun, he reads financial and economic literary works, has become an investor in stocks, private equity and property, and is so interested in wrist watches and expensive cars that, instead of owning several, he bought into watch and car companies, says his father, Gary.
You may know Downs most for his on-field exploits as the best safety in college football on, arguably, the best defense in college football. He draws comparisons as the next Ed Reed, an athletic specimen whose physical attributes are only trumped by his mental adeptness.
His versatility extends beyond making a big hit on a running back, covering a tight end off the line of scrimmage or roaming center field in zone coverage.
He sees the field as well as anyone in the country. He’s got “football savviness,” said new defensive coordinator Matt Patricia.
“You don’t find too many college guys like him,” said co-defensive coordinator and secondary coach Tim Walton.
He’s a big reason why the Buckeyes are on a historic season-opening stretch. Opponents have scored two touchdowns in five games — the best mark for any team to open the season in four years. What’s more incredible: Opponents have entered the Ohio State red zone just eight times this season and have scored zero touchdowns — by far the most stingy red zone-defense in the country. No unit has opened a season better in red-zone drives since South Carolina in 2010 (11 straight red-zone drives without allowing a TD).
...At the center of Patricia’s defense is the art of a pre- and post-snap disguise mostly orchestrated by one guy: Caleb Downs.
Downs is Patricia’s moving chess piece, lining up in as many as five positions before the snap. He’s mostly positioned at free safety, inside the box with linebackers or on the slot receiver at a nickel spot. But he’s crept low on the line with defensive linemen and out wide at cornerback, too.
Downs often shows one position and then a second before the snap — or, even, at the snap — shifting to confuse the quarterback about Ohio State’s coverage.
Is it zone or man? Cover 1 or Cover 3?
Downs refers to it as “changing the picture” for the quarterback. Days calls his star safety the unit’s “eraser.” And dad Gary watches from the stands in awe.
“The biggest part is the deception,” said Gary, who played running back for NC State and in the NFL for Broncos, Giants and Falcons. “Caleb might open his hips to look like he’d go one way but he’d go the other. Is he running to the ball? Is he in the zone flat? Is he a spy?”
He’s adapted to the disguise role enough that many believe he’s improved, somehow, his draftability next spring.
With 'old soul' Caleb Downs paving the way, Ohio State's defense is off to a historic start
On the field, Caleb Downs is a moving chess piece on a defense that is demoralizing opposing teams. Off the field, Downs' interests include financial literary works, investing in real estate and listening to Michael Jackson.
Also this for Caleb, his drive to be great, so many fun stories about it. I've read and watched interviews for so many of these prospects. Caleb is a unique dude on that front. I recall saying something similar predraft about Terry who had some critics on ES. But the stuff on Terry wasn't as loud as the stories about Caleb. Like Terry, Caleb talks like he's 50 years old.
www.foxsports.com
The Obsession That Built Caleb Downs — and Made Him College Football’s Top Defender
Asked to locate when the obsession first gained a foothold in his life, wedging its way from fleeting notion to life-defining ethos, Caleb Downs identifies the latter stages of his sophomore year in high school as the likely origin.
It was around that time, Caleb explains, when he began watching videos about Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan and Tom Brady, three of the most famous and most prosperous athletes in American sports. Sure, he’d seen all their highlights looped ad nauseum on social media — which young kid hadn’t? — but for the first time in a life that brimmed with far more promise than most, Downs remembers his fascination gravitating toward the traits and habits that made those players otherworldly rather than the feats of otherworldliness themselves.
"I got to a point," Caleb, a safety at Ohio State, told me, "where I was really trying to seek out how to be great and seek out what other people did to be great. That turned into the deep dive of just looking at whatever I saw success as for other people, figuring out what were the things that they did, what were the things that they believed in that led to their success. People that are, like, the biggest and the best in their fields."
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
Asked to locate when the obsession first gained a foothold in his life, wedging its way from fleeting notion to life-defining ethos, Caleb Downs identifies the latter stages of his sophomore year in high school as the likely origin.
It was around that time, Caleb explains, when he began watching videos about Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan and Tom Brady, three of the most famous and most prosperous athletes in American sports. Sure, he’d seen all their highlights looped ad nauseum on social media — which young kid hadn’t? — but for the first time in a life that brimmed with far more promise than most, Downs remembers his fascination gravitating toward the traits and habits that made those players otherworldly rather than the feats of otherworldliness themselves.
"I got to a point," Caleb, a safety at Ohio State, told me, "where I was really trying to seek out how to be great and seek out what other people did to be great. That turned into the deep dive of just looking at whatever I saw success as for other people, figuring out what were the things that they did, what were the things that they believed in that led to their success. People that are, like, the biggest and the best in their fields."
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I don’t know that you should feel that way. They’re all high potential players who do a lot of the little things right.
Downs is not a “wow” you guy. He just doesn’t pop. Watched some OSU games live during the season and he doesn’t pop there, either. But when you watch he’s always around the ball. He may not make the tackle but when the camera pans 2 is right in the area. That’s a positive trait and speaks to his diagnosis ability.
Reese was an animal early in the season. The way he disappeared really makes me wonder if he had some injury or they shifted his schematic responsibility because the difference was so vast. If early season Reese was the guarantee he’s a top 5 pick. But if late season Reese was a guarantee he’s probably back half of the first. That has to be something front offices do their homework on, but I’m going to look at him as the early season guy until someone with inside knowledge reports something credible as to the second half of the season decline.
Styles is just raw. He’s all over the field. Sideline to sideline. Can line up as an edge, can drop as a safety, can read and react in the box. He has all the tools to be great, but he was a safety playing linebacker. With time he will be a linebacker playing linebacker. A few instances where he turned to scrape over and he looked almost surprised there was an OL at level 2 and he didn’t block destruct with active hands. Those things stood out at times. But then he does the same thing and gets hands on and gets off the block, which is big to me as it shows he is learning.
I started watching Notre Dame O last night and I’m going to post about those guys soon.
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Not really. Rarely does at the top of the draft. The combine for me usually gets me to notice guys that weren’t on my radar before.
If a guy tests REALLY bad and then you go back and watch him play and can see it more clearly that would change things for me.
But for the most part the guys I’ve been watching and have a good feel for stay around where I had them.
Sometimes, because this is a hobby, I’ll see a good workout and go back and watch the film again to see if I missed something or to see if I didn’t watch detailed enough. That’s usually in post round 1 evals, though, but sometimes firsts.
But so far, no. No change.
I am halfway working my way through Omar Cooper. I have every snap. Wow. I love this guy. I'll have him ahead of Concepcion.
I don't think much seperation between Boston, Tyson, Cooper, Lemon. Lemon's weird combine interview might knock him down with me a little.
Cooper probably though a slot in the NFL, a more physical, softer hand version of Conception, not as fast but fast enough.
I don't think much seperation between Boston, Tyson, Cooper, Lemon. Lemon's weird combine interview might knock him down with me a little.
Cooper probably though a slot in the NFL, a more physical, softer hand version of Conception, not as fast but fast enough.
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I didn’t see this Lemon interview, what made it weird?
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