alleycat

For what it's worth, Miller, the FA OT they signed from Louisville, is 1/8 of an inch shy of being 6'8" himself.

Calling it now. Aaron Casey makes the team. For those who don't want to watch the highlights, around 4:20 is a good time to start. What jumps off if his read/react skills, but particularly the acceleration he shows the moment he decides/commits. Led the nation in solo TFLs (Latus was 2nd)? You can see why right here. Zero highlights of pass coverage, but his run stopping and ST skills alone should help upgrade the group.

This was the genius of the FO signing of Trent Brown. We don't now have that dire need. We might need him soon, but Mims is not going to go into opening day with the pressure of having to start, it's something he gets to earn. We also now have a swing backup of a high caliber at both Tackle positions, something we haven't had in what seems like forever.

I've looked at it for a while now, when this looked how the chips would fall (Murphy vs Mimms) as getting a shot to win the Super Bowl this year (with Murphy, and hoping like hell for a healthy Trent Brown) to winning several in the coming years. I'm a patient man. After all, I'm a Bengals fan.

That's not smoke. That's a very clear message: All had a major/scary issue, and the UM medical staff wanted to control it and it seems recommended a course of action that All disagreed with. What the Dr. above is suggesting is that UM didn't give him a lot of choice. The specific mention of "ego" has Harbaugh all over it, I'd say. But regardless, Alt wanted to do something that was almost certainly regarded as riskier, and also may have been rejected by UM medical staff and or All's student/athlete health insurance. But he took the route that he thought would give him a chance to play, and it turns out to have been a smashing success. Trust was broken or bridges were burnt or however you want to say it, however, and so All transferred. Am I the only one that thinks that's pretty clear?

What a bunch of virtue-signaling horseshit. How many of you have watched the grainy video of him running to the locker room after that Tennessee game? Actually watched it? How many of you watched Joe Mixon knock out a woman in a fast food restaurant, was it? How many of you wretched about Joe Mixon joining this team, and then became his fans and defenders once he was a Bengal and (mostly) kept himself out of trouble (despite the odd backyard shootout)? No, that wasn't you? You hated Joe Mixon outwardly, vocally, verbally this last many years no matter how many touchdowns he scored, no matter how many games he helped us win? Child please. In one video, a KID who just lost a game is running through a mob back to his locker room and some overzealous fan (a female), runs in front of him, stops, squats in his face, and clearly says some shit as she passes, and the throws out an arm as she passes. Slap is probably the right word. Swipe might work. Punch? Are you fucking kidding me? Want to see a punch? Watch what Joe Mixon did to some young woman in a fast food restaurant. That's a punch. Neither are commendable. Both are objectionable . One is clearly different than the other, and I would argue that one is reprehensible, the other simply condemnable. But are we in the place in the world now where, because of one grainy God's-eye camera angle (that would never have existed previously), some brush up with someone in an extremely heightened moment when someone did in fact aggressively put herself in the face of another human being, and that person reacts, however inappropriately, is now cause for all of this high and mighty moral bullshit? Really? We have had hotheads on this team who have cost us in big games. You know the last hot-headed play that cost us a major game, even a birth to the Super Bowl? It was Joseph Ossai, arguably one of the most high-character, level-headed players on the team, who, in a highly emotional moment made a bad decision. So yeah, don't talk to me about Vontaze Burfict. Football is a violent game full of highly competitive MF's who put their health and well-being on the line every play for our gratification. It's a brutal sport that results in MANY of these guys having jello for brains - and turning into socio/psychopaths as s result = for YOUR enjoyment. And you want to sit around and moralize about how they should be model citizens and reflect back onto you some kind of picture of how you want to see yourselves? Child please. Especially for the 80th pick in the draft, count me in with Zac, who, in the few words he said to this kid when he called to draft him, said "we believe in you." Maybe I'm old fashioned. Maybe I'm so Old fashioned you can lump me in with the Browns who believe in second chances. But I'm definitely old enough that I cannot support this idea of writing someone off forever because of some dumb shit they did as a kid. When you create a team, it's not all angels. It can't be. You need redemption songs. You need the old and washed out guys who weren't given a chance but found new life here. You need other players who were never given a chance, respect...whatever. It's called a family. And it's what Zac has created here.

I specifically looked for Johnson during the draft, and somehow missed him and thought he had already been drafted when I started suggesting late-round flyers at DE. There was some talk about him rising up boards late in the process. He has insane measurables, but also has a couple in particular that are so bad that it's probably what hurt him: his 3-Cone and SS. If anyone remembers the old Waldo formulas for edge rushers that I used to obsess about, I'm pretty sure he'd qualify as a Low-Risk 1 (Power) rusher.

I just alluded to this in the McKinnley post, but there is an overwhelming theme I see coming out of this draft after watching all of the highlights and interviews. Sure, this is no doubt a home run vs. strikeout kind of draft, but here's why I'm very positive: They have drafted personalities. Characters. Dawgs. So much of the makeup of this team is about drafting good guys, team-first ballers, and one of the thing that permeates this group is high-effort guys who seem very Alpha, for whom beating up the other guy seems like something that they actually take pleasure in (maybe too much, Jermaine Burton - although even Burton, you can see that he's obsessed with he game, obsessed with winning, and despises losing and getting beat). If nothing else, this team continues to build its culture, which I think has been one of our X-factors (along with having a football god as our QB) to our success.

It's in this video, which I watched after his highlights, but I'm going to have to agree that they nailed the thing that really jumped out to me on: his first step. He's off the ball before anyone on either line so often in his highlights, and it's not uncommon for the opponent to literally get shocked by it (the combination of quickness and the heaviness of the land?). I was expecting a big lump of lead in the middle of the line but two of his spin moves for sacks against tackles had me double-taking. And then I read some of the just-posted evaluations and people talk about him having 3-Tech skills? Whelp, I'm confused, but if he can be that guy that they mention in this video, who occupies double teams and shocks/confuses the OL and thereby disrupts their scheme, hard to ask for much more than that. Now McKinnley, with Anthony the Safety, the two players I was the most ho-hum about on draft day are two of the ones who I'm more excited to see how they pan out. I will say one other thing, but I'll save it for the main thread

Highlight reels are just that but one thing that really comes out here is his read-react skills and his demeanor. Reminds me some of Mike Hilton in that way. Just looks like a tone setting kind of player, which is as much as you can want with a late round pick.

I had the strongest feeling they were going to do this. Take the swing for the fences guy who will at least go on Pup and then one more. Now if only we would take a IOL guy. And a LB. And another corner. And a safety. And a RB….

Here's a guy I'd take a late round flyer on: https://www.nfl.com/prospects/myles-cole/3200434f-4c15-3169-e8c9-638b5cf60e05

I keep seeing him talked about as WR4 in this draft if not for the off-field. WR4 was the 23rd pick in the first round (Brian Thomas, a guy lots of pundits had us taking).

They went to LSU. Quite likely the school is flying them to some event.

Two of our picks this year (NT, and now the CB from TCU) were top 50 guys in the preseason. I’ve always been a fan of looking at guys who dropped from one year to the next, because it usually means an injury or off year or bad testing numbers contradict the good tape they created the original buzz with. Interesting...