Rating The Prospects Based On Vibes
Fuck analysis. Fuck scouting. Fuck game tape. Fuck mock drafts. Fuck data. Fuck mechanics. Fuck college success. Fuck every conventional way to analyze and predict a prospect. There’s more than enough of that shit to go around this time of year. You want that? Go to literally any other site and have yourself a ball. We’re here to vibe.
I’m gonna rank these dudes based entirely by the gut feelings I get when I look at their faces. When I read their names. I’ve read very little scouting about any of these guys because I don’t follow the draft that way to begin with and my philosophy has always been that every prospect can succeed but a lot of factors have to go into it working out, from coaching to talent to management to injury luck and so much more. We don’t know how these dudes are going to be at any point and all of this is shooting finger guns at ghosts in a pitch-black basement. You just root for the dude your team picks and hope for the damn best.
History tells me that as stupid as this post will be, I will still probably be dead on for at least one of these guys. Who that ends up being we will have to see! It’ll be fun to come back to this in following seasons and do the vibe check.
CALEB WILLIAMS – I find it very difficult to believe a guy with the first name Caleb will be an NFL star. That’s a rich white boy lacrosse name. Somehow, Caleb Williams the prospect is a black guy cool-ass zoomer with great vibes. I think he’s got the juice. He already pisses people off by not dressing or acting like a typical guy. He’s got swag, but it’s the good swag. Most of the criticisms I see of the guy feel forced and he doesn’t pass the vibe check for a whole host of people who themselves have bad vibes. To me that’s good vibes. Unfortunately a lot of those people are the exact fanbase of the Bears and I predict a Lamar Jackson-type scenario where Caleb is unquestionably a franchise guy and a star and maybe the best QB Chicago will ever have but a certain subset of fans will still hate him and call for the team to trade for Sam Darnold instead because Sam Darnold is more “traditional”. Caleb is doomed to be a great player on a team that spends most of his career trying to get its shit together. He will drag the Bears to playoff contention on his back but they will routinely lose in the first or second round because everything else is deeply flawed.
DRAKE MAYE – I hate his face. Caleb might be a lacrosse name but Drake is both a lacrosse name AND he has a lacrosse face. I smell bust on Maye. Can I tell you why? No. This isn’t a post about analysis. Drake feels like a guy who will go to whatever team he goes to and look medicore and everyone will blame the team around him and then a couple years in it’ll become clear that no, the problem was actually Maye the whole time. Then he’ll go become a reclamation project for a different franchise. Then he will be a career backup.
JAYDEN DANIELS – My nose sniffs RG3. Talented guy out the ass here but I watched one highlight reel of his and in between electrifying runs he would get obliterated on a tackle. That shit doesn’t last long at the NFL level. I worry about him. I think he comes out of the gate as the best prospect, slinging and scrambling that shit all over the field and then he gets a slight nagging injury and then something goes very wrong and then we spend time 3 years from now sadly wondering what could have been
JJ MCARTHY – Remember Jake Locker? Remember Christian Ponder? Remember Blaine Gabbert? Mac Jones? Ryan Tannehill? Blake Bortles? There’s no way JJ isn’t just the next version of that guy. JJ ain’t got the juice. He’s not the worst in the world, and he will be annoyingly fine at first. It’ll feel like with time he just never improves because instead of being drafted later in the 1st round to a reasonably competent team and allowed to develop he was instead overdrafted by a desperate team who couldn’t get one of the actual 3 good prospects so they hope this guy works out. JJ will never raise the bar above game manager level at best. Whenever you see him linked to a team in the draft it’s because that team really desperately needs a QB, not because JJ is that good a prospect. Thats bad vibes. If the Giants draft JJ I am going to be upset because we already have that guy, his name is Daniel Jones. Hell we have Drew Lock too.
BO NIX – Top Tier name…for a defensive player. Bo Nix plays a mean free safety. Bo Nix the QB has bust written all over him in all sorts of styles because Nike doesn’t let Oregon settle for just one uniform. He’s like if Jayden Daniels stayed somewhat more healthy but sucked and still gets hurt anyway. Bo will get drafted by somebody desperate, look terrible in camp and enter the season as QB #2 or 3, be thrust into the game for gimmick packages where he does jack shit and if he is ever forced to start will immediately throw the dumbest pick or take the dumbest sack you’ve ever seen. In 4 years you’ll see him on the sideline during a game and be like “oh shit I didn’t know (team) picked him up, when did that happen?”
MICHAEL PENIX JR – My irrational affection for a player based on nothing but vibes this year is Penix. I like Penix. I think he’s got the juice. Maybe because I just really want a guy named Penix to succeed because I am 10 years old and want to hear Al Michaels pronounce it as Penis by accident while he’s drunk on TNF. He has a scary injury history and he’s older for a prospect but watching him sling bombs to Odunze just gave me satisfaction. I feel like he’d be a much higher prospect without his injury history. I think he comes out and makes everyone wonder why teams passed on him. I have this secret fantasy where the Giants draft Odunze at #6 and then Penix tumbles to late in the first or early second and the Giants trade up to nab him and we get a Burrow/Chase situation and I finally enjoy watching my team play offense for the first time in a decade. This wont happen, but I can dream.
SPENCER RATTLER – Top tier name. Absolute banger. But that’s all he’s got going for him. He will never sniff a starting job but he’ll be around for a while, and he might even occasionally win a game in relief of somebody good.
MICHAEL PRATT – Now that’s a practice squad name if I’ve ever heard one.
JORDAN TRAVIS – I’d have more faith if he didn’t turn his leg into a fine paste before the season ended. He’s going to get shuffled into some QB backroom, learn, but never get his chance, then go to Canada or the UFL and kick ass.
AUSTIN REED – You will forget he exists by the time training camp starts.
These are my vibes. I don’t care what you think, film watcher. Tape studier. Nerd. Go be a nerd somewhere else. Real men comment what irrational feelings they get when they look at these guys.
Caleb is not a rich boy lacrosse player name, I grew up in a hick ass town in Colorado surrounded by dudes named Caleb.
I’ve been saying ever since I first heard of him that I want Penix to go the Giants solely for what the NY Post would do with the back page every week
If nothing else he’ll finally replace Gilbert Arenas as the go to dick-slang rhyme reference in songs.
I think we need this every year from now on. Simply to combat the over-analyzing we’re bombarded with on these QBs all the time. As a Vikings fan I was originally pumped that we’d be involved in some of the sexy QB draft talk, but it’s just too much now….online communities are all “We NEED Maye or we’ll be awful forever” or “Daniels is a bust, give me JJ”…..it’s the same takes and shuffle of speculation over and over…..I just want it to stop! I need these vibes
Now this is the sort of draft preview I’d look forward to
To be fair to Ryan Tannehill, he is/was way better than those other guys you lumped him in there with. You don’t get to be a starter in the league for a decade plus by accident. Never spectacular, but he had a solid career.
Caleb Williams looks graceful in the pocket in a way I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. Just completely at ease, mind and body in sync. Now Mahomes is one of the greatest of all-time and he looks like a calamity back there just before throwing the most insanely cool pass you’ve ever seen, but it’s worth mentioning.
I get the same vibes as you do from Maye; the only thing that brings me pause is I saw him make more than a couple throws for UNC this year that made me go “Yoooooooooo”. Got that Josh Allen zip. So he’s got the arm for sure, the rest I have my doubts on but for now TBD.
I don’t have any kind of facts or analysis or anything, I just hate _ichigan so much that I hope JJ makes us forget the name Leaf!
Hope you recover from your temporary insanity
Drake Maye is getting slandered like crazy despite mirroring Herbert and Allen, who also got slandered like crazy.
I hope people see the trend
Michael Penix Will be the Patrick Mahomes to Drake Maye’s Mitch Trubisky
It’s actually how I feel almost to a tee. I had a lot of respect for how Penix (and you can sort of play into into it by pronouncing it PEE-nix) hung in there during the bowl game. Getting obliterated but trying to win. Think he has heart.
The one place I don’t agree is with nailpolish boy. He’s a more talented Dwayne Haskins. All that shit (crying, nailpolish, blabla) is going to get humbled out of him. I wouldn’t draft him because of the moral hazard. PEE-nix all the way!
People like you make me love Caleb Williams even more
Heard the same thing from the Haskins excuse-makers. Oh…who cares that he was taking a selfie with a fan, when needed in the game. Who cares that he said “League done messed up”. Who cares that he charged people to watch his draft party. Who cares that he (with his wife) had his picture taken with his nose up a stripper’s butt. Ended up flaming out of DC and literally (and not how you automatic transmission millenials use that word) getting run over by a truck (out of his stupidity, walking a highway, intoxicated, with a stripper in the car, and out of gas). Oh…but at least the League gave us an A+ when we drafted him. Of course the same talking head idiots were projecting Justin Fields as 2024 MVP last summer!
Give me PEE-nix. He’s got heart. He’s a leader.
As far as I know Caleb hasn’t done any of that stuff and is a significantly more proven and better prospect than Haskins was.
Plenty of players have been a little weird or egotistical and still ended up good, plenty of well mannered LEADER types have busted. It’s strange to project your hate for Haskins onto Caleb. Wasn’t the nailpolish thing even disproven by him as a problem with the courtside lighting? All the hate towards Caleb feels…weirdly directed. None of it seems to be about his play or his skills, it’s almost all just hating on his slightly unusual personality, which doesn’t even seem selfish like Haskins but just a bit more expressive and quirky for your average football player.
Imagine thinking nail polish is a “moral hazard” comparable to drunk driving.
Staying put at 6 for Odunze and trading up into the back of the first for Penix has been my dream scenario for the Giants for months now. I’m just not confident they’ll be able to pull off the latter part as I think Penix will move up into the low teens.
Of all of the top six QBs I’m least enthused with McCarthy. While I could go on about the usual knocks from elsewhere (wasn’t asked to do much at Michigan, Harbaugh’s trying to bait teams into trading up for him, etc.) I’ll admit my issue is 95% on vibes. I just look at him and think that’s the visualization of the word “chode”. I’ll be unhappy if the Giants pick him at 6, but probably try to talk myself into believing “well Daboll’s a QB whisperer, he must have seen something”. But if they trade up to take him I’ll probably throw something at the TV.
I’m not super down on McCarthy but he feels like a guy who needs to be drafted by a team with a good foundation already in place because he can’t carry a team on his own but he might develop nicely in a good position. He’s absolutely going to get overdrafted and yeah, if the Giants trade up for him I’m going to be furious.
Giants are in such a weird spot at 6. at least 3 QBs are likely to go before we draft, and the other two picks are likely to be WRs, so we are sort of guaranteed to get one of the other WRs or the 4th QB. It’s just a question of who it ends up being.
As a giants fan and fellow Odunze believer, I really wish other giants fans would give him the respect he deserves. It seems like the discourse around the wr draft is basically Nabers or bust, but I would have absolutely no issue with them taking Odunze over him if both are available. Odunze just seems like him, and same with Penix. I’ve also been dreaming up the scenario of getting both somehow and I’m still holding onto the hope that it can happen.
But back to Odunze, I wish people (giants fans in particular) would stop treating MHJ, Nabers, and Rome as 123. It’s much more like 1, 2a, and 2b with no clear cut 2a at that. Nabers is the flashier route runner and better with the ball in his hands but Odunze just catches everything within a country mile of him. If Nabers is Davante Adams, Odunze is Deandre Hopkins.
Real men also keep tongue-in-cheek comments as receipts, so as soon as said comments are proven wrong they can come back blowing raspberries and shouting “NANA NANA BOO BOO”
I can’t think of any sports thing that would surprise me more than Drake Maye being a good QB. Like, I’d be less surprised by the Sacramento A’s winning the world series next year. Maybe just FEELS so much like a bust.
I like Caleb. He feels like he could make Chicago competitive at least. I could see him getting blamed for early exits then he goes to a more successful franchise and wins a title ala LeBron or Stafford.
Now THIS is what scouting should be