Michael Penix Jr. is the Round 1 wild card

Also, inside: The one prospect that Jim Nagy loves and final draft-day thoughts from the Packers' top pick to the Lions' turnaround.

Tyler Dunne

Apr 25, 2024

It’s Draft Day, a holiday on the pro football calendar.

Hope — for all — is in the air.

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In the meantime, here are a few final thoughts from the pre-draft notebook.

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Re-thinking Penix

Every quarterback under first-round consideration has been rendered a frog in seventh-grade biology. All have been poked and prodded by NFL GMs, scouts and coaches. And by now, we’re all under the assumption that Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels, Drake Maye and J.J. McCarthy are head of class. For good reason. There’s a lot to like.

But should this be the case?

I had a conversation with one scout last week that made me view Washington’s Michael Penix Jr. in a different light.

His college numbers were obviously stellar. Last season, Penix completed 65.4 percent of his passes for 4,903 yards with 36 touchdowns. He led the Huskies to the national title game. Yet, it’s also true that he doesn’t move nearly as much as the aforementioned top four. His platform was clean. He wasn’t creating, wasn’t doing much at all out of structure to deliver those deep shots.

Thus, most credit in Washington has been given to his playmaking receivers: Rome Odunze, Ja’lynn Polk, Jalen McMillan.

This scout watched Penix closely and admits the quarterback is a very tough evaluation for all scouts in this area.

But he’s a big fan. He envisions Penix flourishing.

He believes the narrative around Penix has been wrong, and uses the 2023 offensive rookie of the year as a parallel.

“I know people talk about the receivers around him and the offensive line, which is completely fair,” the scout said. “But let’s not forget: C.J. Stroud had the same thing. C.J. Stroud had a bunch of receivers a couple years back, had a couple offensive linemen, Paris Johnson, Dawand Jones. Not comparing the two of 'em from a player standpoint, but comparing the situations. I know some people are like, ‘Well, Michael had this guy, this guy, this guy, this guy. Well, C.J. Stroud had the same thing. From Penix’s standpoint, what I appreciate most about Michael was is his arm strength, the quickness of his release and his accuracy.
“Man, I know his receivers are all really good. And I know sometimes people say that his receivers made him look better. I would argue the opposite. I think Michael had a lot of balls in very tight situations. When you look at Rome, Rome’s not this separator. Ja’lynn Polk is not this elite separator. And Jalen McMillan is an elite separator, but he was hurt for most of the year. So when you look at those two, I don’t know if I would put them in the ‘excellent separator’ categories, so Michael had to really throw into tight windows, and he did that pretty effectively, in my opinion.”

This scout did not reach his conclusion overnight. He needed to dig deeper because all parties involved helped each other through Washington’s pyrotechnic season. They averaged 36 points per game.

The closer he studied Penix’s specific throws under the microscope, the more he appreciated his accuracy and timing.

It all could make Penix’s floor the Las Vegas Raiders at No. 13 overall. New offensive coordinator Luke Getsy will want a quarterback who’ll embrace his scheme — unlike his last QB (Justin Fields) — and Penix absolutely prefers to stay in the pocket. It’d be risky for the Raiders to wait for Round 2. Here’s thinking Penix would be gone by then. A playoff team picking in the 20s could easily draft Penix as their own Jordan Love. The L.A. Rams, for one, make a ton of sense with Sean McVay’s big-play offense and Matthew Stafford’s age (36).

But the Raiders can’t screw this one up, right? The Raiders surely know they cannot play pat-a-cake at quarterback with the likes of Gardner Minshew and Aidan O’Connell. Not in the same division as Patrick Mahomes and Justin Herbert.

Some scouts still can’t get Penix’s sloppy Indiana tape out of their head. As one told our Bob McGinn: “It was real bad.” But just as we’ve seen quarterbacks like Tua Tagovailoa drastically improve at the pro level, the extra year granted college athletes from Covid gave quarterbacks time to reinvent themselves at the college level.

Daniels improved from Arizona State to LSU.

Bo Nix improved from Auburn to Oregon.

Penix became a deadly passer at Washington.

“People think about the Indiana tape,” said the scout in our convo, “and sometimes it’s hard to see past the fog and say, ‘OK, let’s take the most recent two years and let’s see what they've done now versus focusing on the past.’ Because people can improve and people can change.”

If Denver’s Sean Payton shares the same belief, don’t be surprised if he takes Nix at No. 12. Podcast co-host Jim Monos, who used to scout under Payton with the Saints, cited this as a fit back on this March 2 episode. Nobody has ever played more college games at QB than Nix, and that experience is something Payton’s mentor (Bill Parcells) valued immensely.

When asked which fits make the most sense to him, Senior Bowl director Jim Nagy pointed to Drake Maye and the Vikings because the Vikings’ new QB coach, Josh McCown, coached the North Carolina prep in high school. Next, he cited the Broncos as an ideal landing spot for Nix.

“Because Bo is wired very much like Drew Brees in terms of being a student of the game and hyper-competitive,” Nagy says. “So, I think that’s a fit. Just between head coach and quarterback, that’s a good fit.”

We know at least half of the QBs will probably bust.

Fit is everything.

Braden Fiske is a lock to produce

He scouted for a trio of perennial contenders — Seattle, New England and Green Bay — winning four Super Bowls through 18 seasons on the road. These days, Nagy runs the Senior Bowl.

We chatted about the wide receiver class for Part II of “Smash the Window.” Nagy explained why he’s all-in on South Carolina’s Xavier Legette as a fit in Buffalo.

At the end of our chat, Nagy was asked for the one prospect he loves.

He could’ve raved about Braden Fiske for hours. After five years at Western Michigan, the defensive tackle had six sacks with Florida State and both dominated all Senior Bowl week in Mobile, Ala., and shined at Combine with a position-high 9-9 on the broad jump.

White defensive tackles are not exactly a common sight. Which is why Nagy believes anyone comparing Fiske to former Buffalo Bills DT Kyle Williams is being “lazy.”

“He’s not Kyle Williams. And Kyle Williams is in the Senior Bowl Hall of Fame, so I'm not saying anything disparaging,” Nagy says. “But Braden Fiske is super twitched up. He’s the first guy off the ball every snap and he just wreaks havoc. He doesn’t have long arms, but he’s on you so fast that it just totally negates that. He knows how to use his hands. He just creates for other people. His impact doesn’t always show up on the stat sheet. He’s going to blow it up and guys are going to clean up around him. So none of the Combine stuff surprised me. And he’s wired the right way. He’s relentless. He plays his butt off. He practices his butt off. It’s important to him. He’s got a chip on his shoulder.
“So he’s got all this talent and he's got that overachiever, ‘I’m going to prove you wrong’ mindset to him. And I just love how he’s attacked the process. I think that people are going to discount him like, ‘Oh, try-hard white guy.’ That's not it. If that's what you think Fiske is, you’re barking up the wrong tree. I don’t know what would not make him a really good NFL player now that I’ve spent time around him and watched him. He’s legit.”

The 6-3 1/2, 293-pound Fiske is projected to go in the second round by McGinn. For more, here’s what the scouts said.

Extras

Is Cooper DeJean a Green Bay Packer yet? GM Brian Gutekunst tapped into the Iowa well last year in Lukas Van Ness, and he may do it again with the ultra-versatile corner/safety/returner. Still think the smart play is to trade up for one of the premier offensive tackles — especially when you’re about to make Jordan Love a rich man — but this would be solid value. Tennessee running back Jaylen Wright, profiled here, would be a home-run complement to Josh Jacobs in the second or third round, too. Gutekunst is high on left tackle Rasheed Walker. Maybe he is confident in Walker’s long-term prospects.
I’d be surprised if Brandon Beane doesn’t trade up in the first round. That’s been his M.O., and the Bills have no choice but to emerge from this draft with wide receivers who can contribute immediately. If it’s not Odunze, Texas’ Xavier Worthy may be the threat this group’s missing. If the Bills pass, you know Andy Reid is bound to pounce for the closest thing this draft has to Tyreek Hill.
How many first-round picks is too much for the New York Giants to move from No. 6 overall to No. 3 if the draft goes chalk and Drake Maye is available at the New England Patriots’ spot — Two? Three? There’s no telling how long you’re ever around as a GM and head coach. Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll are going to make the Patriots think long and hard about staying put. Maye would be Daboll’s own Josh Allen project in New Jersey. It is noteworthy that Patriots head Jerod Mayo told NFL Network that there’s six prospects New England would be comfortable drafting. Seems like a specific number. Hmm.
The scouts were excellent again in McGinn’s series. Be sure to use all nine parts as a reference these next three days. One thought: Nasty, old-school defenders are hard to find. Even though the sport is changing, it sure helps to have one or two such players on your side of a rock fight. Loved what the scouts said about Missouri defensive lineman Darius Robinson: “This sucker might have the highest ceiling in the whole draft. The build, the talent. You watch him in the SEC, they line him up over tight ends in a 6-technique and he beats the shit out of that tight end. Kind of like Wayne Simmons back in the Brent Jones era. You say, ‘Holy smokes, they might throw him in prison for that.’ He is physical and violent.” Robinson can rush off the edge, play DE in a 3-4 and rush inside. His vertical (35 inches) and hand size (10 5/8 inches) are tops amongst all D-Linemen.
Detroit’s remarkable turnaround is on full display this week, and I’m not talking about the pomp and circumstance associated with hosting the draft. GM Brad Holmes re-signed right tackle Penei Sewell (four years, $112 million) and wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown (four years, $120 million). No longer are the Lions in desperation mode on draft day. The colossal errors of regimes past have been cleansed. This is a team built to contend in 2024 and beyond from the top-down.
The Dallas Cowboys met with Ezekiel Elliott. Somehow, this is real news. Not satire. Round ‘n round we go in Jerry’s World. This team has gone 12-5 three straight years but doesn’t feel any closer to reaching their first NFC Championship Game since 1995. Jerry Jones is again botching contract negotiations with star players (Dak Prescott, CeeDee Lamb). They need to come away with an immediate starter or two this week.

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Istanbul Jake

Apr 25

Thanks for giving key Go Long fans a few predictions, Tyler (GB, Buff, NYG). Still would've loved just one mock to compliment it all but that would've been like making you and Bob eat a hamburger at a seafood place. I think Monos' would've eaten the burger though.

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