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It is important, but you can’t get carried away.
Talking about the Senior Bowl, the practices and the game.
Don’t get me wrong, the Senior Bowl is important, especially this year with no Combine. However some people get a little carried away with putting too much stock in the Senior Bowl.
From what I heard, the Jets former GM, Mike Maccagnan, put a lot of stock in the Senior Bowl. Remember, he picked Fort Hays State defensive tackle Nathan Shepherd in the third round after a strong Senior Bowl week. That probably was a reach. While he plays very hard, he too often struggles getting off blocks against the run. He had a couple of nice plays late in the season, but over his time in green, there are have way too many big runs right at him, where he couldn’t shed the blocker. It is what it is.
So when it comes to the Senior Bowl, it needs to be put in it’s place, as a small part of the puzzle.
And Jets personnel executive Phil Savage made a great point about this year’s Senior Bowl.
“We interviewed one young man whose entire season was canceled,” Savage told newyorkjets.com. “He opted out and decided to not go back for 2021, but this event was the first time he had on full pads in 13 months. You’ve got to temper a little bit what you see here because these guys are working themselves back into football mode and it’s been a challenge for some of these players whether they opted out or their school canceled their season.”
That is such an important point. If a kid didn’t play football for over a year, and then took the field at the Senior Bowl, do you really think you were seeing the best of him? He’s rusty as heck.
Texas A&M QB Kellen Mond won the Senior Bowl MVP Award. He was 13 of 25 for 173 yards with two touchdowns.
So the MVP of the game was a QB who completed 50 percent of his passes. Mond is a QB who has had accuracy issues and needs work on his progressions. To me, any team that gets caught up in him being the “MVP” needs a new scouting director. Jets need a QB in this draft, but I don’t think it’s this player.
A lot of people are saying that Alabama pass rusher Quincy Roche helped his stock at the Senior Bowl. Perhaps, but you need to keep in mind that the Senior Bowl generally doesn’t get elite offensive tackles to attend, especially left tackles. If you told me Roche dominated Oregon’s Penei Sewell or Northwestern Rashawn Slater, that should move him up, but those two, the top two tackles in the draft, didn’t attend the Senior Bowl. So when you hear about dominating pass rushers at the Senior Bowl, take it with a grain of salt. Look, Roche looks like a good player, but you need to keep in context the tackles he’s facing in Mobile.
From my experience attending a number of Senior Bowls, I would say two positions you judge can maybe get a little more out of, are cornerback and wide receiver, do to all the open field match-ups you see between players at these positions. A player who did help himself in the draft, is somebody Jets fans know well – wide receiver Jamison Crowder. Wide receivers like Louisville’s Dez Fitzpatrick and UCLA’s Demetric Felton seemed to help themselves, as did UCF safety Richie Grant.
But any team that buys too much into the Senior Bowl is probably making a mistake.
It’s one small piece to the puzzle. Don’t buy the media type too much on players who supposedly shot up the boards based on one week in Mobile.
February 1, 2021
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