00:00:00
Speaker 1: I think his play style matches what we've heard solely in half talk about coveting.
00:00:05
Speaker 2: He's tough and physical.
00:00:06
Speaker 1: I think Jarvis Landry with the ball in his hands, but bigger and stronger and faster. What is up, Dolphans and welcome to the Draft Time Podcast. On today's show, we have four more free agents to assess, and in the light of the Jalen Waddell trade, I want to kind of reopen the wide receiver capsule from a draft perspective and sort of go through that group again. As it's timely today with another pick at the back end of the first round, let's get right to it. Ye, off the top, I am, once again, as a father of three, sick as a dog, so I apologize for the congestion, the nasally voice, and the fact that I tend to talk a lot faster than I already do when I can't breathe out of my nose, So apologies for that. We are going to break down four free agent additions on the show, including the player that I think my tape study he surprised me the most on and the tape that I most enjoyed watching. Besides the quarterback that I've expressed my admiration for and that's with Darryl Baker Junior, because I wasn't familiar with his game. Pull up the old Shaquille o'neial meme, right, Sorry, young man, I wasn't familiar with your game, and I dug in on this guy and first of all, interesting career path. He was granted an extra year of eligibility at Georgia's Southern after the twenty twenty season was cut short due to COVID, so he finishes with a sixth year in college football in twenty twenty one, then goes on to the draft, doesn't get picked, signs to the Arizona Cardinals, doesn't make their roster, but catches on with the Colts practice squad and gets elevated in week fifteen, signed on for the last game of the season, and presses them enough to earn a contract for twenty twenty three. Then he plays fourteen games, he starts six and finishes a second on the team in PBUs. That year, they re sign him for a year, but once again the training camp doesn't make the squad. He's immediately claimed, this time not signed to a practice squad, claimed by the Titans, where He goes on to play all thirty four games over the next two years, starts nineteen of them, defensees twelve passes, and has ninety five total tackles. I wanted to run through all of that because he's under the radar signing. Like, you know, he wasn't a guy that was leading NFL dot COM's top one hundred free agent list, right he was a guy that you didn't know much about before he got here. And I'm gonna tell you about this guy because I really had a blast watching his tape and I can see the upside on this guy's film. And he's played a lot of football in the NFL already. That's also six years worth of college experience. And to that point, he does turn twenty eight next week, So the question becomes, can he reach his full potential and kind of, you know, put a bookend on his career and be a long term solution here for the Miami Dolphins.
00:02:45
Speaker 2: We'll find out.
00:02:46
Speaker 1: We're worried about twenty twenty six right now. But when I watched his tape, that's kind of where my brain went, was like, can this guy go into his early thirties and be like a long term solution here for the Dolphins. He has more tape than a lot of the guys I watched, so I wanted to go through it and get a better feel because you know, Malik willis limited reps and a lot of these guys in this list were like that, but not for Del Baker. He's played thirteen hundred and fifty snaps over the last two years, and we talked about it on an earlier podcast, all those big physical defensive backs, Baker's six foot one, two hundred pounds, and watching some cutups of him every snap that I saw on a highlight reel, he's up in press, he's up in guy's faces, he's challenging them with the line of scrimmage, and a lot of those are man. But the thing that jumped off that reel, aside from the aggressive nature of the game, was the feel for space and playing in zone coverages, which we've been over this a million times. I'm going to point to Pete again, right the old moneyball trope. Teams play zone eighty percent plus of the time in the league these days, except for a couple.
00:03:43
Speaker 2: Of outliers like the Detroit Lions.
00:03:44
Speaker 1: The Minisuta Vikings are two teams that play a lot more man than everybody else, but by and large, it's about eighty twenty split for zone versus man. And I've told this story before, so humor me once more. One of those random things that sticks with you forever. I will never forget, and I've got a point here, Stay with me. I'll never forget my high school basketball coach taking us through an end of game scenario at practice one day and explaining how if we're trying to kill the clock, but you get access to a free layup, you should take it. And he compared it to a football game where if a player caught a pass with nobody behind him, you know, in front of the end zone, you wouldn't just step out of bounce. Although I do kind of find flaws in the analogy because if they have no timeouts left, and we have seen before when guys go into the end zone and then the opposing team gets the ball back and makes a comeback, at that point, you could just go down and kill the clock that way. But that wasn't the thought in two thousand and five, because we've just advanced as a sports society in terms of how we approach game management, right but that's besides the point. And also we've seen a lot of guys that have gone down and change that perspective. So no, not not quite so fast. Their coach rose, that's not how it goes. But I tell you that story because I watch these reps of him in zone where he peels out of his zone and goes and makes the play.
00:05:01
Speaker 2: And it's like the.
00:05:03
Speaker 1: Robot program brand that our coach was trying to get us out of back in high school, to think like just you know, kill the clock and don't go for the free layup. It's the same thing when it comes to playing in zone coverage. Don't just stand there and cover grass, because yeah, you are the cloud quarantine the field, so you should be playing that kind of curl flat zone. But if there's nobody there, go find some work, you know, go find somebody to hit, Go find somebody to cover, and make yourself part of this coverage scheme here and you know, not cover grass. And that's why I saw in Darryl Baker Junior's tape feel for Zone Football Intelligence FBI, which again tracks with the things we've learned from Jeff Haffley in this short amount of time. But man, the man coverage aspect of all of it. It's interesting because the Packers played a lot of again, more zone than man. It was seventeen percent man coverage last year for that Packer's defensive backfield. They didn't press a whole lot either. But watching Baker and again I wasn't familiar with his game going into the tape study. There's pop and doing just that as well. There's length. He's six foot one, He's got long arms, thirty two inch arms. He's aggressive, he plays downhill in a hurry with purpose. He is disruptive with the catch point. He can you know, twelve pass breakups over the last couple years. He can get his hands in there and break the football clean. I mean even just the measurables. Thirty two inch arms, forty one and a half inch vertical. He was a state champion long jumper in high school. Eleven foot four inch broad jump. Those are both ninety ninth percent tile among cornerbacks. By the way, we're talking like Byron Jones, territory of his ability to jump, which is your back pedal, your drive, your explosiveness, you're clicking clothes.
00:06:34
Speaker 2: He's explosive as hell.
00:06:35
Speaker 1: Those vertical and broad skills are so evident when he gets back downhill on hitches, on comebacks, or triggers down the field for a swing or a screen or a flat, and then the length obviously when he's up and press. It's funny because he goes to these new places as a waiver claim or a practice squad signing, and by the end of the year he's starting. It's happened three times in his career. Now he's played over eighteen hundred snaps thirteen to fifty the last two years in Tennessee. He was the guy in Tennessee pretty easily their top cornerback. So I think you know you can say that he's he's been the face of a room in Tennessee, a young room and a team that wasn't very good, but that's experience that's well earned for him, and a room that has the young Juju Brentans and even the younger Jason Marshall Junior with those same skill sets. The prootype this having experienced in those molds of playing football and being in this league and going through some hard times, I think that presents value. And his play style is evident in the running game as well. He is a hitter fourteen stops last year. Those are the tackles that constitute defensive wins. It's a percentage of yards to gain to the sticks. Essentially, if it's a good play for the defense and you make the tackle, that's called a stop.
00:07:43
Speaker 2: You don't get a stop for a tackle beyond the sticks.
00:07:45
Speaker 1: Right, he's outside exclusive, at least he has been ten snaps in his career inside in the slot. And I just want to get into the film in depth because I'm very intrigued by what I saw on the film. I watched all of his targets against him last year, and I keep seeing this things very clean technique that makes him play faster than his test times, which you are very good. And a quick aside, did any of you guys see the Makai Lemon Pro day footage the USC receiver, You know, the podcaster asked rhetorically of his audience that is literally incapable of answering. But it was a big controversy, I suppose, for lack of a better word, about how he was landing heel to toe on the ground. And I learned a little bit about sprinters here, which they're taught the opposite you can project forward and accelerate with your toes. You can't do it off of your heels. So he's not timing well in this controlled environment. But that's not replicatable of football speed. Football speed is cutting and widening your defender and changing directions and attacking leverage. You're almost never running in a straight line. And Lemon is plenty quick on game day and he's one of the best run out for the catch receivers in the entire country. And I tell that story because Baker, Yes, he timed really well, so it's not like he's a bad athlete.
00:08:55
Speaker 2: Quite the opposite.
00:08:55
Speaker 1: Actually, But I watched we had Cody Alexander on the show back when we hired Jeff Haffley, and he was talking about technique, technique and principles excuse me, from the cornerback position and how that's a big, big deal for Jeff Haffley, as it is for all coaches. But he's really big on the technique aspect of things. And he has a video breaking down Darryl Baker, Darryl Baker Junior's movements and these quick movements in transitions, they happen fast with him. He triggers out of that cloud position and closes on the flat and bang, he puts a big stick on the tight end of the back catching the football like that's the first rep I clipped. He's to the field, pressed up on the one, but he bails and zone turns, which is getting your butt to the sideline eyes and the quarterback. And then the one the furthest route out which he's he's capped over the top of that, he runs a vertical clear out, and the two, which is the slot, runs a speed out, a little five yard out route, and he sees the zone, and they see the zone rather the offense, and they want to run that cloud corner off and just open access to that curl flat zone that's going to be pushed off by the corner carrying that vertical route because the matched up slot has already indicated based upon his pre snap leverage, he's gonna play the hook zone and not chase out to the curl flat. So you see bo nicks his hands in this play separate and Baker's foot is in the ground and driving back downhill as he drives his shoulder pad through the back of the wide receiver before the ball. As the ball gets there, akin to a Bill Goldberg spear circa nineteen ninety eight. Another aside when Kevin Nash by the way and the nWo knocked out the ref and used a taser on Goldberg to take his belt at one of those big pay per view events back in like two thousand and three.
00:10:28
Speaker 2: I cried, I was a big Bill Goldberg guy back then.
00:10:31
Speaker 1: Someone on Twitter posted a highlight reel and again, you gotta be careful because you want to grade the flashes, but you also want to see the downs and balance the take accordingly. But I wanted to make a point that damn near all the plays in that highlight reel are him and man coverage. Then I pop on the tape and the Titans are just like everybody else. It's a four to one zone to man split. And the targets you saw were in man coverage, which tells me that they largely avoided him when he was in zones and chose their battles elsewhere. I think that's telling. I remember when he was in man, this is our cornerback one, so he was matching up on Stefan Diggs, Alec Pierce, Courtland, Sutton, Lad McConkie and Nico Collins go down their schedule and just pick the best receiver on the opposing team. Those are the guys that he matched up against the most. I've watched him shut down a slant playing underneath and digging at the hands short of the sticks on Stefan Diggs. I've seen him run down Alec Pierce, who just got what twenty eight million dollars a year for the Colts on a go ball. Now, Pierce did pull down one contested catch against him for an explosive play. He got beat on a double move against the Broncos, and those types of plays can derail the passer rating against statistic because you know a sixty yard play is going to change that number dramatically, but consistently, down and down out clean technique, physicality, recovery speed, He's springing his hell, he's competitive. I've learned my lesson against making promises for what a player is going to do.
00:11:47
Speaker 2: But I'll say it this way.
00:11:48
Speaker 1: I think a year from now you're going to be looking back at a multi year deal for Darryl Baker because I think he has the tools to develop into a known name and potentially a plus starter at a cornerback and What a who that would be to uncover this guy at this stage of his career. Let's go ahead and stay in the defensive backfield and move back to safety for Zane Anderson, who it feels like he was signed three weeks ago at this point, but it was just last week. You're gonna find the term special team's ace attached to his name just about anywhere you read about him. He did step in on defense in twenty twenty four with the rash of injuries in the back end of the Packers defense, and actually had a pick in that year. He's a six foot two, two hundred and six pounds safety who came out of BYU and he plays his butt off. Just one hundred and sixty five snaps on defense over his first five seasons, but seven hundred and eighty four on special teams with twenty four career tackles. Last year was his best. He flies down the field as a gunner and brings the punch with a trimmed up linebacker body. I pulled up his combined results in draft profile, and Lancer Lyin wrote about his experience in multiple coverages, and there it is right. The Jeff Haffley specialty in the last two years with half and coach Duggan and coach Downard, makes perfect sense to bring him here and kind of have him be a conduit between coach and player on the field and also just be a guy that kind of sets the tone in the kicking game. He came down and covered the slot in college too, But just watching him on defense teams, pro or college, he is one hundred miles per hour all the time. Hustle plays Charlie Hustle, Jim Ratt, howe you want to describe him. He fits the tee or fits the mold in all those descriptions. He was a high school sprinter, so that tracks as well. He also was a gunner and kickoff man in college. He was the one that put foot to ball at BYU. This man was born to play special teams. He's a four to four to forty guy, eighty seven percent tile among safeties, and he shows it off every time he goes down and covers kicks on special teams. Let's go ahead and pause for our first break right there. Come back and talk about the receiver board, the receiver market, the draft. You know at the position after the Jalen Wattle trade, and kind of assess where that is right now. That's next Draft Time podcast, brought to you by AutoNation. So we opened yesterday's show with the Jalen Wattle move and the I guess immediate ramifications of that, but I wanted to spend some more time and just pause on the free breakdowns for just a moment and look more at the fallout of that move, the reactions and what might happen next. And obviously this opens a need at the receiver position, and it adds a pick where there's a lot of really good receivers that have been selected in this league in the back end of the first round, but it also makes that eleventh pick more interesting in terms of receivers that could be on the board at that spot. When I did the receiver capsule, I talked about three guys that kind of fall into that range in this class, being Jordan Tyson from Arizona State, Cardnell Tate from Ohio State, and Makai Elevin from USC And I like all three players, but all three of them have elements of their game that I think take them out of that blue chip area, like the very top of the draft category for instance, Jeremiah Smith, who's going to come out nextra from Ohio State. He is the favorite right now to be the first non quarterback off the board, and I would be very surprised if that changes and things do change, But he is that dude. He's like a Jamar Chase, a Leak Neighbors type of talent in terms of their pro specks coming out. Chase was the first non quarterback that year, Neighbors. I believe it was Kayleb Williams, Jaden Daniels, Drake May. There was Marvin Harrison in there as well, and then Joe All and then Malik Neighbors. I don't think this year's class is like that. But Emika, ever since Gronk said his name wrong, I can't get it right, Mecca Egbuka, Gronk said, Amika ag big boo. I just it's stuck in there. But he lasted until the nineteenth pick that year. That was one pick before Jackson Smith and Jigba heard his name called in twenty twenty three.
00:15:34
Speaker 2: I think you get the point.
00:15:35
Speaker 1: You could make the case for any of those three to be a true number one at the next level, even if at this point they aren't viewed in that neighbors and chase category. I think Jordan Tyson is the clear favorite to be that at the next level. But his flag is one that you have to consider.
00:15:50
Speaker 2: It's the medical.
00:15:50
Speaker 1: He has two season ending injuries in college, a hamstring that cost him four games before one of those injuries, before one of the season ending injuries. For some teams, that's going to be a non starter. We don't know if it'll be for the Dolphins. But when you watch him, like the suddenness out of the breaks, the way he sets up his routes, the physical profile, very very talented player, but you have to consider their medical history. As we heard from John Eric Sullivan in Indianapolis talking about patterns and players and recognizing what those patterns might mean once they get to this level. Carnel Tate, I think is my favorite of the three, but I go back and forth on this because he's six foot three. He can sink the hips like a short receiver can, and I think this matters. He played for Brian Hartline and do I need to remind you about Injigba Alave, Garrett Wilson, Maserati, marv Agbuka. Even going back to scary Terry McLaurin. It is wide receiver you and that's not just because of their talents. But with Tate, he is a technician with suddenness and quickness to all the rhythm and short quick game stuff required to be the guy the offense is funneled through. You have to win at all three levels to be that guy, and he can do that. He's also basically down upon contact. What I mean by that as once he gets contacted after the catch, he's gonna go down. He's not going to run for big yards after the catch. I wonder if he's more of a great number two than a dominant game plan influencing number one.
00:17:09
Speaker 2: That's kind of the question that I have there.
00:17:11
Speaker 1: And then my eyes always tell me that I love Makay Lemon, but then my heart says, when he has to open it up, he's getting hawked from the back from safeties. But damn it, he is tough, he's savvy, he catches everything and just looks good when I watch the tape. So it's a give and take with all of that. But then you get into the territory of the next grouping, and honestly, the trepidation that I sort of laid out there at that portion of the draft. Maybe I just prefer this portion of the class more. And when you're thinking about thirty versus forty three, where our next pick was scheduled to come in just a couple of days ago, I think there are two players that will for sure go off in that range and maybe even more. But Omar Cooper Junior out of Indiana is a guy that you've heard me rave about and now he's starting to pick up steam across the rest of the draft world, as it were, six foot tall, two hundred pounds, and this is projecting. I think his play style matches what we've heard solely in half talk about coveting.
00:18:05
Speaker 2: He's tough and physical.
00:18:06
Speaker 1: I think Jarvis Landry with the ball in his hands, but bigger and stronger and faster, I mean Brugl. Dane Bruger from The Athletic has him at twenty one to Pittsburgh. Daniel Jeremiah has him at eighteen in his top fifty prospects, but Jordan Reid has him at forty eight, so there is some give and take there.
00:18:21
Speaker 2: Cooper.
00:18:21
Speaker 1: This is from DJ's blurb. Cooper is one of my favorite players to Telli in this year's draft. He's strong, he's reliable, explosive. Back to me, he can defeat press. He's an easy mover. Everything just looks easy to him. Tough catches going off the frame or to the ground. He had a catch against Oregon where he caught it one handed and got contacted before he had secured the ball, breaks the tackle, and then breaks two more tackles. He had the second most broken tackles in college football, behind only Malachai Tony U. Kane's fans will know about that name. He had twenty four last year. Back to DJ, sources at the school rave about his makeup and competitiveness. Overall, Cooper fits the exact model of wide out's finding immediate six in the NFL. Back to me, I like all of that. Cooper was already on my guys list. I might just move him up even further after, you know, reading that and watching him more. Shoot, I could turn this in new entire podcast, and one day we will, because we have a draft, you know, eleven picks, and we've got a month and a half or a month and a week till the draft, and we're gonna be talking about it. But it's worth noting that pick thirty sort of opens up in terms of guys. We could add there that forty third spot a guy like Cooper. The two tackles that I love, Clemson's Blake Miller and Arizona States Maxi hannachor those guys are going to be gone. The two small cornerbacks between DiAngelo Ponds and AJ Terrell, not AJ Trell, sorry.
00:19:36
Speaker 2: Avon Terrell.
00:19:37
Speaker 1: AJ's his brother, Emanuel McNeil Warren, the safety that could be this year's nicky man. Worry, All of those guys are probably long gone by forty three, but at pick thirty one of.
00:19:46
Speaker 2: Them probably will be there.
00:19:47
Speaker 1: You know, I was playing around with mock drafts the other night after the trade was announced and had some crazy combos like taking Caleb Downs and McNeil Warren in that first round to give Jeff Haffley two absolute studs in the back end. Or what if I go the other side and go Vega that the guard from Penn State, who's the best offensive lineman in the class in my opinion, And then Ihannah Chore at pick thirty, And now I get my OG one, my O line one rather and my OT three and all of a sudden Now I've got you know, I've got Patrick Paul, Aaron Brewer, Jonasavit Naya, Austin Jackson, Vega, and he Hennah Chore. Like, I've got six really good offensive linemen this year, and they're all gonna be like pretty young, right. Those guys are Aaron Brewers the oldest of that group at twenty seven, and he's like just blossing me into the best football of his life. Like or in one of the instances, I had a stroke of luck with Ruben Bain falling to me at eleven. I don't think that'll happen, but you never know. And then I scooped up Cooper at thirty. That was my favorite one because I love both those players so very much. It's just so funny to me because every year I text with Kyle Krabs we do the show and we always say, gosh, I wish we just had one more premium pick.
00:20:46
Speaker 2: Well, now we do.
00:20:48
Speaker 1: And to put a bow on this, there's receivers in that range from consensus big boards. Two more guys that kind of fall into that Omar Cooper territory. One that I really like, one that I think maybe's a little bit later on for me. But that latter player would be Washedington's Denzel Boston. He's kind of a bigger, not quite as easy glide mover. And then Texas A and M's case conception is really really smooth and sudden and catches a football and he's got special teams ability, and then of course Omar Cooper. Actually, let's go ahead and shut it down right there, because I again, I could do this for the next hour, but I have five weeks to get to all of it. I just wanted to give you guys an immediate look at kind of a refresher of what that thirtieth pick could offer at that position, at other positions, and just how you might want to stack this receiver's position going forward. But we'll again do plenty of that down the road. We will have Daniel Jeremiah on the show next week. So good way to sort of kickstart the re entry of the draft season with free agency coming to nearly a halt across the entire league. But before all of that, let's finish up today's podcast on the other side and evaluate two more defensive backs that Dolphins signed. That's Next Draft Time podcast, brought to you by Auto Nation. Finishing up here on a Thursday edition of the Draft Time podcast. We are doing five episodes. This week we are breaking down every refree agent acquisition of your Miami Dolphins, and we continue here in the defensive backfield with Marco Wilson, who enters his sixth season after being drafted in the fourth round back in twenty twenty one to the Cardinals out of Florida. He played a lot of those first three years, man over seven hundred snaps each year, then he gets released before the final two games, claimed by the Patriots. He was a starter for the Cardinals until his play began to decrease and eventually got replaced and then released. Then he breaks camp with the Patriots in twenty four The next year, plays ten games, is released again when the team activates. The next hop, we're going to talk about Alex Austin and he immediately catches on with the Bengals but plays thirty six snaps over the course of the final six games. Returns to the Bengals last year, but only plays twenty two snaps over four games and ends the year on injured reserve. As for his makeup, man, you want to talk about Elite tester. He was a nine to nine to nine relative athletics scorecard guy, third best all time among cornerbacks who tested between eighty seven and twenty one. His draft year four to three, five eleven to four broad, forty three and a half vert, my goodness, six eight three cone four h nine shuttle one four nine ten split.
00:23:06
Speaker 2: I mean across the board. These are upper upper echelon.
00:23:09
Speaker 1: And he threw the twenty six bench reps of two to twenty five off the bar like that's insane strength for a guy that's that athletic. And then you see that on his tape as well, the click and clothes fire out of a back pedal. That's the movement that stands out when watching him on film, even on an NFL field.
00:23:23
Speaker 2: It looks fast. He's got to find a way to be consistent.
00:23:26
Speaker 1: You get one peer, reperates low in the back pedal, fires and breaks with the arms separate and the receiver, and you see those traits that made him a starter in Arizona pretty much from day one, but the last couple of years have been primarily on special teams where he's been a valuable contributor there. Honestly, watching him play cornerback. His temperament and play style and the athletic ability and like how springy he is kind of reminds me of Jack Jones, but he's a bigger and stronger player than Jack.
00:23:50
Speaker 2: But he just jumps around like a cat. He takes some gambles.
00:23:53
Speaker 1: If I had to say, where the numbers against him kind of come from, its eyes being in the wrong place. That's his own principle that you've got to have right where your eyes have to be right, and if you don't, you can get caught up in the concepts of doing what they're designed to do with just to fool you into a mist assignment. And I saw that a few times on the tape, in those inconsistencies across his game. And then finally Alex Austin, who came over from the Patriots. Marco's a five eleven, one hundred and ninety five pound corner, the only corner in this crop of newcomers who's under six foot, but right on the edge of that he plays, you know, pretty big. But Austin, Alex Austin's another guy that's on the six plus sixty one plus side. He's sixty one one ninety I thought he was a UDFA because he only played three years and that's the UDFA contract originally, but he was taken in the seventh round by Buffalo out of Oregon State Pac two. Stand up, let's go but ah, here's why he was a free agent. He was cut in Buffalo before signing to Houston to start the season as a rookie, got waived in October, returns to the practice squad, and then signs to the Patriots, where he played for three years. Quite a bit down the stretch in twenty twenty three, then twenty two thousand, sorry, two hundred and thirty four snaps in twenty twenty four, and then one hundred and forty four snaps last year. And this has been a theme, right These guys are all super athletic and really smooth movers who have had some success but have experienced some lows as well. They've been cut, they've been challenged in this league. And I feel like the idea of competition, it's looking at you right in the face right here. Let's go get a bunch of guys that are trying to make a life for themselves in this league and put them together and have them compete and may the best man win and we'll go from there and see if we can uncover some pieces for the long term. For the Miami Dolphins with Alex Austin, he actually started the game down here against US last year, and now, in hindsight, I remember talking about him in the preview because they were down Christian Gonzalez and having a backup against Reagan. Walla was like, that's probably the guy you want target, and the Dolphins went after him seven times. So I guess great minds think alike there when it comes to attacking Alex Austin for the Patriots last year. But he held his own, you know, whether it was that game or other games for the Patriots. But when Gonzalez got back out there, he went back into the reserve special teams role, which is another theme these guys have experienced. They've played and then the starter comes back and they go back to the special teams role. Now a chance to kind of get back into the defensive side or the offense side of.
00:26:01
Speaker 2: The football, right.
00:26:02
Speaker 1: But he did play as a core member of the special teams, you know, all the way through the Super Bowl. He did have a stint on IR. So there's a few games where he wasn't out there, but once he got activated, he's back to that core group, which means, you know, a part of every kicking unit. So he's covering kicks, he's chasing punts, he's on the return sides. He's twenty five years old in May, and man, he looks the part. Get off the bus, have him come out there, because he's got long arms, he's tall. He kind of has the imposing look. The length of these guys is almost what stands out more to me than their height. Sure that often goes hand in hand, but length and strength, man like, look at Marco Wilson five to eleven but literally on the leaderboard for all time bench reps among corners, and you see the play strength in his game. But Alex Austin's tall, he's long, he's leaning, he's high cut. He got some run in the Patriots defense, which is a quarters based defense like ours is. He played off with eyes in the quarterback And I just found a quote from the aforementioned Gonzalez who was asked which corner he thinks that fans and media last camp might be sleeping on, and he said that Alex Austin was his guy. The point is, despite some up and down play, there's a play you're in there somewhere, which is how I feel about a lot of these acquisitions. Maybe you haven't seen it on tape all the time, but it's in there. And when you sign guys like that as we have, you get them and in you see how they work, how they approach the job, and if they're true professionals, and maybe through all that they can unlock that consistency and become a part of your core football team. I like his feel from those off positions in quarters match. That's where you're in a zone, but the breaks from the receivers from their side of the field dictate who you match up with. So it's zone that becomes man and then you run with that receiver. And that's why you're processing has to be sharp. You have to be in your playbook because you bust one of those coverages, then you're chasing a receiver into the end zone and they're queuing up the fight. The fight so on the band. I know it's a college reference, but you get what I'm saying. It's touchdown if you blow that assignment. He's a four or five to five guy, and that tracks. What I saw on tape, he needs to reroute and kind of play on top of guys that get vertical. He had a fun matchup with Brock Bauers in Week one last year where Brock would kind of do some subtle, nuanced route type of running that would get a play on Austin. But then I look back at a lot of the catches and plays that made against from you know what it looked like with Brock Bauers included was stemming from the recovery speed that he couldn't get vertical on. He's got to get vertical then guys can throttle it down and he came back to the football once they flipped the hips down the field. They kind of attacked him that way, But limited tape to go off of intriguing a type of player he fits with what you've seen them do throughout the last week and even going back to like Miles Battle who signed a futures deal back in February at six foot three, So common thought process here across the board. We'll come back tomorrow and talk about Charlie Heck and Ben Simms. I want to do an NFL free agent recap that I intended to do last week, also been thinking about just Dolphin's position in the landscape right now in general. But we signed you know, nine hundred players in the process and I'm exaggerating for effect there, but that's why things kind of got pushed back and where we are today. But until then, you all please be sure subscribe to the podcast, leave us a.
00:28:50
Speaker 2: Writing, and leave us a review.
00:28:51
Speaker 1: You can follow me on social at Winkle NFL and the team at Miami Dolphins. Check out the YouTube channel for Dolphins HQ, Media availabilities and so much more. And last button, not least, Miami Dolphins dot com. Until next time, brings up Caroline, Cameron and Willow Daddy.
00:29:03
Speaker 2: He's coming home.
Speaker 1: I think his play style matches what we've heard solely in half talk about coveting.
00:00:05
Speaker 2: He's tough and physical.
00:00:06
Speaker 1: I think Jarvis Landry with the ball in his hands, but bigger and stronger and faster. What is up, Dolphans and welcome to the Draft Time Podcast. On today's show, we have four more free agents to assess, and in the light of the Jalen Waddell trade, I want to kind of reopen the wide receiver capsule from a draft perspective and sort of go through that group again. As it's timely today with another pick at the back end of the first round, let's get right to it. Ye, off the top, I am, once again, as a father of three, sick as a dog, so I apologize for the congestion, the nasally voice, and the fact that I tend to talk a lot faster than I already do when I can't breathe out of my nose, So apologies for that. We are going to break down four free agent additions on the show, including the player that I think my tape study he surprised me the most on and the tape that I most enjoyed watching. Besides the quarterback that I've expressed my admiration for and that's with Darryl Baker Junior, because I wasn't familiar with his game. Pull up the old Shaquille o'neial meme, right, Sorry, young man, I wasn't familiar with your game, and I dug in on this guy and first of all, interesting career path. He was granted an extra year of eligibility at Georgia's Southern after the twenty twenty season was cut short due to COVID, so he finishes with a sixth year in college football in twenty twenty one, then goes on to the draft, doesn't get picked, signs to the Arizona Cardinals, doesn't make their roster, but catches on with the Colts practice squad and gets elevated in week fifteen, signed on for the last game of the season, and presses them enough to earn a contract for twenty twenty three. Then he plays fourteen games, he starts six and finishes a second on the team in PBUs. That year, they re sign him for a year, but once again the training camp doesn't make the squad. He's immediately claimed, this time not signed to a practice squad, claimed by the Titans, where He goes on to play all thirty four games over the next two years, starts nineteen of them, defensees twelve passes, and has ninety five total tackles. I wanted to run through all of that because he's under the radar signing. Like, you know, he wasn't a guy that was leading NFL dot COM's top one hundred free agent list, right he was a guy that you didn't know much about before he got here. And I'm gonna tell you about this guy because I really had a blast watching his tape and I can see the upside on this guy's film. And he's played a lot of football in the NFL already. That's also six years worth of college experience. And to that point, he does turn twenty eight next week, So the question becomes, can he reach his full potential and kind of, you know, put a bookend on his career and be a long term solution here for the Miami Dolphins.
00:02:45
Speaker 2: We'll find out.
00:02:46
Speaker 1: We're worried about twenty twenty six right now. But when I watched his tape, that's kind of where my brain went, was like, can this guy go into his early thirties and be like a long term solution here for the Dolphins. He has more tape than a lot of the guys I watched, so I wanted to go through it and get a better feel because you know, Malik willis limited reps and a lot of these guys in this list were like that, but not for Del Baker. He's played thirteen hundred and fifty snaps over the last two years, and we talked about it on an earlier podcast, all those big physical defensive backs, Baker's six foot one, two hundred pounds, and watching some cutups of him every snap that I saw on a highlight reel, he's up in press, he's up in guy's faces, he's challenging them with the line of scrimmage, and a lot of those are man. But the thing that jumped off that reel, aside from the aggressive nature of the game, was the feel for space and playing in zone coverages, which we've been over this a million times. I'm going to point to Pete again, right the old moneyball trope. Teams play zone eighty percent plus of the time in the league these days, except for a couple.
00:03:43
Speaker 2: Of outliers like the Detroit Lions.
00:03:44
Speaker 1: The Minisuta Vikings are two teams that play a lot more man than everybody else, but by and large, it's about eighty twenty split for zone versus man. And I've told this story before, so humor me once more. One of those random things that sticks with you forever. I will never forget, and I've got a point here, Stay with me. I'll never forget my high school basketball coach taking us through an end of game scenario at practice one day and explaining how if we're trying to kill the clock, but you get access to a free layup, you should take it. And he compared it to a football game where if a player caught a pass with nobody behind him, you know, in front of the end zone, you wouldn't just step out of bounce. Although I do kind of find flaws in the analogy because if they have no timeouts left, and we have seen before when guys go into the end zone and then the opposing team gets the ball back and makes a comeback, at that point, you could just go down and kill the clock that way. But that wasn't the thought in two thousand and five, because we've just advanced as a sports society in terms of how we approach game management, right but that's besides the point. And also we've seen a lot of guys that have gone down and change that perspective. So no, not not quite so fast. Their coach rose, that's not how it goes. But I tell you that story because I watch these reps of him in zone where he peels out of his zone and goes and makes the play.
00:05:01
Speaker 2: And it's like the.
00:05:03
Speaker 1: Robot program brand that our coach was trying to get us out of back in high school, to think like just you know, kill the clock and don't go for the free layup. It's the same thing when it comes to playing in zone coverage. Don't just stand there and cover grass, because yeah, you are the cloud quarantine the field, so you should be playing that kind of curl flat zone. But if there's nobody there, go find some work, you know, go find somebody to hit, Go find somebody to cover, and make yourself part of this coverage scheme here and you know, not cover grass. And that's why I saw in Darryl Baker Junior's tape feel for Zone Football Intelligence FBI, which again tracks with the things we've learned from Jeff Haffley in this short amount of time. But man, the man coverage aspect of all of it. It's interesting because the Packers played a lot of again, more zone than man. It was seventeen percent man coverage last year for that Packer's defensive backfield. They didn't press a whole lot either. But watching Baker and again I wasn't familiar with his game going into the tape study. There's pop and doing just that as well. There's length. He's six foot one, He's got long arms, thirty two inch arms. He's aggressive, he plays downhill in a hurry with purpose. He is disruptive with the catch point. He can you know, twelve pass breakups over the last couple years. He can get his hands in there and break the football clean. I mean even just the measurables. Thirty two inch arms, forty one and a half inch vertical. He was a state champion long jumper in high school. Eleven foot four inch broad jump. Those are both ninety ninth percent tile among cornerbacks. By the way, we're talking like Byron Jones, territory of his ability to jump, which is your back pedal, your drive, your explosiveness, you're clicking clothes.
00:06:34
Speaker 2: He's explosive as hell.
00:06:35
Speaker 1: Those vertical and broad skills are so evident when he gets back downhill on hitches, on comebacks, or triggers down the field for a swing or a screen or a flat, and then the length obviously when he's up and press. It's funny because he goes to these new places as a waiver claim or a practice squad signing, and by the end of the year he's starting. It's happened three times in his career. Now he's played over eighteen hundred snaps thirteen to fifty the last two years in Tennessee. He was the guy in Tennessee pretty easily their top cornerback. So I think you know you can say that he's he's been the face of a room in Tennessee, a young room and a team that wasn't very good, but that's experience that's well earned for him, and a room that has the young Juju Brentans and even the younger Jason Marshall Junior with those same skill sets. The prootype this having experienced in those molds of playing football and being in this league and going through some hard times, I think that presents value. And his play style is evident in the running game as well. He is a hitter fourteen stops last year. Those are the tackles that constitute defensive wins. It's a percentage of yards to gain to the sticks. Essentially, if it's a good play for the defense and you make the tackle, that's called a stop.
00:07:43
Speaker 2: You don't get a stop for a tackle beyond the sticks.
00:07:45
Speaker 1: Right, he's outside exclusive, at least he has been ten snaps in his career inside in the slot. And I just want to get into the film in depth because I'm very intrigued by what I saw on the film. I watched all of his targets against him last year, and I keep seeing this things very clean technique that makes him play faster than his test times, which you are very good. And a quick aside, did any of you guys see the Makai Lemon Pro day footage the USC receiver, You know, the podcaster asked rhetorically of his audience that is literally incapable of answering. But it was a big controversy, I suppose, for lack of a better word, about how he was landing heel to toe on the ground. And I learned a little bit about sprinters here, which they're taught the opposite you can project forward and accelerate with your toes. You can't do it off of your heels. So he's not timing well in this controlled environment. But that's not replicatable of football speed. Football speed is cutting and widening your defender and changing directions and attacking leverage. You're almost never running in a straight line. And Lemon is plenty quick on game day and he's one of the best run out for the catch receivers in the entire country. And I tell that story because Baker, Yes, he timed really well, so it's not like he's a bad athlete.
00:08:55
Speaker 2: Quite the opposite.
00:08:55
Speaker 1: Actually, But I watched we had Cody Alexander on the show back when we hired Jeff Haffley, and he was talking about technique, technique and principles excuse me, from the cornerback position and how that's a big, big deal for Jeff Haffley, as it is for all coaches. But he's really big on the technique aspect of things. And he has a video breaking down Darryl Baker, Darryl Baker Junior's movements and these quick movements in transitions, they happen fast with him. He triggers out of that cloud position and closes on the flat and bang, he puts a big stick on the tight end of the back catching the football like that's the first rep I clipped. He's to the field, pressed up on the one, but he bails and zone turns, which is getting your butt to the sideline eyes and the quarterback. And then the one the furthest route out which he's he's capped over the top of that, he runs a vertical clear out, and the two, which is the slot, runs a speed out, a little five yard out route, and he sees the zone, and they see the zone rather the offense, and they want to run that cloud corner off and just open access to that curl flat zone that's going to be pushed off by the corner carrying that vertical route because the matched up slot has already indicated based upon his pre snap leverage, he's gonna play the hook zone and not chase out to the curl flat. So you see bo nicks his hands in this play separate and Baker's foot is in the ground and driving back downhill as he drives his shoulder pad through the back of the wide receiver before the ball. As the ball gets there, akin to a Bill Goldberg spear circa nineteen ninety eight. Another aside when Kevin Nash by the way and the nWo knocked out the ref and used a taser on Goldberg to take his belt at one of those big pay per view events back in like two thousand and three.
00:10:28
Speaker 2: I cried, I was a big Bill Goldberg guy back then.
00:10:31
Speaker 1: Someone on Twitter posted a highlight reel and again, you gotta be careful because you want to grade the flashes, but you also want to see the downs and balance the take accordingly. But I wanted to make a point that damn near all the plays in that highlight reel are him and man coverage. Then I pop on the tape and the Titans are just like everybody else. It's a four to one zone to man split. And the targets you saw were in man coverage, which tells me that they largely avoided him when he was in zones and chose their battles elsewhere. I think that's telling. I remember when he was in man, this is our cornerback one, so he was matching up on Stefan Diggs, Alec Pierce, Courtland, Sutton, Lad McConkie and Nico Collins go down their schedule and just pick the best receiver on the opposing team. Those are the guys that he matched up against the most. I've watched him shut down a slant playing underneath and digging at the hands short of the sticks on Stefan Diggs. I've seen him run down Alec Pierce, who just got what twenty eight million dollars a year for the Colts on a go ball. Now, Pierce did pull down one contested catch against him for an explosive play. He got beat on a double move against the Broncos, and those types of plays can derail the passer rating against statistic because you know a sixty yard play is going to change that number dramatically, but consistently, down and down out clean technique, physicality, recovery speed, He's springing his hell, he's competitive. I've learned my lesson against making promises for what a player is going to do.
00:11:47
Speaker 2: But I'll say it this way.
00:11:48
Speaker 1: I think a year from now you're going to be looking back at a multi year deal for Darryl Baker because I think he has the tools to develop into a known name and potentially a plus starter at a cornerback and What a who that would be to uncover this guy at this stage of his career. Let's go ahead and stay in the defensive backfield and move back to safety for Zane Anderson, who it feels like he was signed three weeks ago at this point, but it was just last week. You're gonna find the term special team's ace attached to his name just about anywhere you read about him. He did step in on defense in twenty twenty four with the rash of injuries in the back end of the Packers defense, and actually had a pick in that year. He's a six foot two, two hundred and six pounds safety who came out of BYU and he plays his butt off. Just one hundred and sixty five snaps on defense over his first five seasons, but seven hundred and eighty four on special teams with twenty four career tackles. Last year was his best. He flies down the field as a gunner and brings the punch with a trimmed up linebacker body. I pulled up his combined results in draft profile, and Lancer Lyin wrote about his experience in multiple coverages, and there it is right. The Jeff Haffley specialty in the last two years with half and coach Duggan and coach Downard, makes perfect sense to bring him here and kind of have him be a conduit between coach and player on the field and also just be a guy that kind of sets the tone in the kicking game. He came down and covered the slot in college too, But just watching him on defense teams, pro or college, he is one hundred miles per hour all the time. Hustle plays Charlie Hustle, Jim Ratt, howe you want to describe him. He fits the tee or fits the mold in all those descriptions. He was a high school sprinter, so that tracks as well. He also was a gunner and kickoff man in college. He was the one that put foot to ball at BYU. This man was born to play special teams. He's a four to four to forty guy, eighty seven percent tile among safeties, and he shows it off every time he goes down and covers kicks on special teams. Let's go ahead and pause for our first break right there. Come back and talk about the receiver board, the receiver market, the draft. You know at the position after the Jalen Wattle trade, and kind of assess where that is right now. That's next Draft Time podcast, brought to you by AutoNation. So we opened yesterday's show with the Jalen Wattle move and the I guess immediate ramifications of that, but I wanted to spend some more time and just pause on the free breakdowns for just a moment and look more at the fallout of that move, the reactions and what might happen next. And obviously this opens a need at the receiver position, and it adds a pick where there's a lot of really good receivers that have been selected in this league in the back end of the first round, but it also makes that eleventh pick more interesting in terms of receivers that could be on the board at that spot. When I did the receiver capsule, I talked about three guys that kind of fall into that range in this class, being Jordan Tyson from Arizona State, Cardnell Tate from Ohio State, and Makai Elevin from USC And I like all three players, but all three of them have elements of their game that I think take them out of that blue chip area, like the very top of the draft category for instance, Jeremiah Smith, who's going to come out nextra from Ohio State. He is the favorite right now to be the first non quarterback off the board, and I would be very surprised if that changes and things do change, But he is that dude. He's like a Jamar Chase, a Leak Neighbors type of talent in terms of their pro specks coming out. Chase was the first non quarterback that year, Neighbors. I believe it was Kayleb Williams, Jaden Daniels, Drake May. There was Marvin Harrison in there as well, and then Joe All and then Malik Neighbors. I don't think this year's class is like that. But Emika, ever since Gronk said his name wrong, I can't get it right, Mecca Egbuka, Gronk said, Amika ag big boo. I just it's stuck in there. But he lasted until the nineteenth pick that year. That was one pick before Jackson Smith and Jigba heard his name called in twenty twenty three.
00:15:34
Speaker 2: I think you get the point.
00:15:35
Speaker 1: You could make the case for any of those three to be a true number one at the next level, even if at this point they aren't viewed in that neighbors and chase category. I think Jordan Tyson is the clear favorite to be that at the next level. But his flag is one that you have to consider.
00:15:50
Speaker 2: It's the medical.
00:15:50
Speaker 1: He has two season ending injuries in college, a hamstring that cost him four games before one of those injuries, before one of the season ending injuries. For some teams, that's going to be a non starter. We don't know if it'll be for the Dolphins. But when you watch him, like the suddenness out of the breaks, the way he sets up his routes, the physical profile, very very talented player, but you have to consider their medical history. As we heard from John Eric Sullivan in Indianapolis talking about patterns and players and recognizing what those patterns might mean once they get to this level. Carnel Tate, I think is my favorite of the three, but I go back and forth on this because he's six foot three. He can sink the hips like a short receiver can, and I think this matters. He played for Brian Hartline and do I need to remind you about Injigba Alave, Garrett Wilson, Maserati, marv Agbuka. Even going back to scary Terry McLaurin. It is wide receiver you and that's not just because of their talents. But with Tate, he is a technician with suddenness and quickness to all the rhythm and short quick game stuff required to be the guy the offense is funneled through. You have to win at all three levels to be that guy, and he can do that. He's also basically down upon contact. What I mean by that as once he gets contacted after the catch, he's gonna go down. He's not going to run for big yards after the catch. I wonder if he's more of a great number two than a dominant game plan influencing number one.
00:17:09
Speaker 2: That's kind of the question that I have there.
00:17:11
Speaker 1: And then my eyes always tell me that I love Makay Lemon, but then my heart says, when he has to open it up, he's getting hawked from the back from safeties. But damn it, he is tough, he's savvy, he catches everything and just looks good when I watch the tape. So it's a give and take with all of that. But then you get into the territory of the next grouping, and honestly, the trepidation that I sort of laid out there at that portion of the draft. Maybe I just prefer this portion of the class more. And when you're thinking about thirty versus forty three, where our next pick was scheduled to come in just a couple of days ago, I think there are two players that will for sure go off in that range and maybe even more. But Omar Cooper Junior out of Indiana is a guy that you've heard me rave about and now he's starting to pick up steam across the rest of the draft world, as it were, six foot tall, two hundred pounds, and this is projecting. I think his play style matches what we've heard solely in half talk about coveting.
00:18:05
Speaker 2: He's tough and physical.
00:18:06
Speaker 1: I think Jarvis Landry with the ball in his hands, but bigger and stronger and faster, I mean Brugl. Dane Bruger from The Athletic has him at twenty one to Pittsburgh. Daniel Jeremiah has him at eighteen in his top fifty prospects, but Jordan Reid has him at forty eight, so there is some give and take there.
00:18:21
Speaker 2: Cooper.
00:18:21
Speaker 1: This is from DJ's blurb. Cooper is one of my favorite players to Telli in this year's draft. He's strong, he's reliable, explosive. Back to me, he can defeat press. He's an easy mover. Everything just looks easy to him. Tough catches going off the frame or to the ground. He had a catch against Oregon where he caught it one handed and got contacted before he had secured the ball, breaks the tackle, and then breaks two more tackles. He had the second most broken tackles in college football, behind only Malachai Tony U. Kane's fans will know about that name. He had twenty four last year. Back to DJ, sources at the school rave about his makeup and competitiveness. Overall, Cooper fits the exact model of wide out's finding immediate six in the NFL. Back to me, I like all of that. Cooper was already on my guys list. I might just move him up even further after, you know, reading that and watching him more. Shoot, I could turn this in new entire podcast, and one day we will, because we have a draft, you know, eleven picks, and we've got a month and a half or a month and a week till the draft, and we're gonna be talking about it. But it's worth noting that pick thirty sort of opens up in terms of guys. We could add there that forty third spot a guy like Cooper. The two tackles that I love, Clemson's Blake Miller and Arizona States Maxi hannachor those guys are going to be gone. The two small cornerbacks between DiAngelo Ponds and AJ Terrell, not AJ Trell, sorry.
00:19:36
Speaker 2: Avon Terrell.
00:19:37
Speaker 1: AJ's his brother, Emanuel McNeil Warren, the safety that could be this year's nicky man. Worry, All of those guys are probably long gone by forty three, but at pick thirty one of.
00:19:46
Speaker 2: Them probably will be there.
00:19:47
Speaker 1: You know, I was playing around with mock drafts the other night after the trade was announced and had some crazy combos like taking Caleb Downs and McNeil Warren in that first round to give Jeff Haffley two absolute studs in the back end. Or what if I go the other side and go Vega that the guard from Penn State, who's the best offensive lineman in the class in my opinion, And then Ihannah Chore at pick thirty, And now I get my OG one, my O line one rather and my OT three and all of a sudden Now I've got you know, I've got Patrick Paul, Aaron Brewer, Jonasavit Naya, Austin Jackson, Vega, and he Hennah Chore. Like, I've got six really good offensive linemen this year, and they're all gonna be like pretty young, right. Those guys are Aaron Brewers the oldest of that group at twenty seven, and he's like just blossing me into the best football of his life. Like or in one of the instances, I had a stroke of luck with Ruben Bain falling to me at eleven. I don't think that'll happen, but you never know. And then I scooped up Cooper at thirty. That was my favorite one because I love both those players so very much. It's just so funny to me because every year I text with Kyle Krabs we do the show and we always say, gosh, I wish we just had one more premium pick.
00:20:46
Speaker 2: Well, now we do.
00:20:48
Speaker 1: And to put a bow on this, there's receivers in that range from consensus big boards. Two more guys that kind of fall into that Omar Cooper territory. One that I really like, one that I think maybe's a little bit later on for me. But that latter player would be Washedington's Denzel Boston. He's kind of a bigger, not quite as easy glide mover. And then Texas A and M's case conception is really really smooth and sudden and catches a football and he's got special teams ability, and then of course Omar Cooper. Actually, let's go ahead and shut it down right there, because I again, I could do this for the next hour, but I have five weeks to get to all of it. I just wanted to give you guys an immediate look at kind of a refresher of what that thirtieth pick could offer at that position, at other positions, and just how you might want to stack this receiver's position going forward. But we'll again do plenty of that down the road. We will have Daniel Jeremiah on the show next week. So good way to sort of kickstart the re entry of the draft season with free agency coming to nearly a halt across the entire league. But before all of that, let's finish up today's podcast on the other side and evaluate two more defensive backs that Dolphins signed. That's Next Draft Time podcast, brought to you by Auto Nation. Finishing up here on a Thursday edition of the Draft Time podcast. We are doing five episodes. This week we are breaking down every refree agent acquisition of your Miami Dolphins, and we continue here in the defensive backfield with Marco Wilson, who enters his sixth season after being drafted in the fourth round back in twenty twenty one to the Cardinals out of Florida. He played a lot of those first three years, man over seven hundred snaps each year, then he gets released before the final two games, claimed by the Patriots. He was a starter for the Cardinals until his play began to decrease and eventually got replaced and then released. Then he breaks camp with the Patriots in twenty four The next year, plays ten games, is released again when the team activates. The next hop, we're going to talk about Alex Austin and he immediately catches on with the Bengals but plays thirty six snaps over the course of the final six games. Returns to the Bengals last year, but only plays twenty two snaps over four games and ends the year on injured reserve. As for his makeup, man, you want to talk about Elite tester. He was a nine to nine to nine relative athletics scorecard guy, third best all time among cornerbacks who tested between eighty seven and twenty one. His draft year four to three, five eleven to four broad, forty three and a half vert, my goodness, six eight three cone four h nine shuttle one four nine ten split.
00:23:06
Speaker 2: I mean across the board. These are upper upper echelon.
00:23:09
Speaker 1: And he threw the twenty six bench reps of two to twenty five off the bar like that's insane strength for a guy that's that athletic. And then you see that on his tape as well, the click and clothes fire out of a back pedal. That's the movement that stands out when watching him on film, even on an NFL field.
00:23:23
Speaker 2: It looks fast. He's got to find a way to be consistent.
00:23:26
Speaker 1: You get one peer, reperates low in the back pedal, fires and breaks with the arms separate and the receiver, and you see those traits that made him a starter in Arizona pretty much from day one, but the last couple of years have been primarily on special teams where he's been a valuable contributor there. Honestly, watching him play cornerback. His temperament and play style and the athletic ability and like how springy he is kind of reminds me of Jack Jones, but he's a bigger and stronger player than Jack.
00:23:50
Speaker 2: But he just jumps around like a cat. He takes some gambles.
00:23:53
Speaker 1: If I had to say, where the numbers against him kind of come from, its eyes being in the wrong place. That's his own principle that you've got to have right where your eyes have to be right, and if you don't, you can get caught up in the concepts of doing what they're designed to do with just to fool you into a mist assignment. And I saw that a few times on the tape, in those inconsistencies across his game. And then finally Alex Austin, who came over from the Patriots. Marco's a five eleven, one hundred and ninety five pound corner, the only corner in this crop of newcomers who's under six foot, but right on the edge of that he plays, you know, pretty big. But Austin, Alex Austin's another guy that's on the six plus sixty one plus side. He's sixty one one ninety I thought he was a UDFA because he only played three years and that's the UDFA contract originally, but he was taken in the seventh round by Buffalo out of Oregon State Pac two. Stand up, let's go but ah, here's why he was a free agent. He was cut in Buffalo before signing to Houston to start the season as a rookie, got waived in October, returns to the practice squad, and then signs to the Patriots, where he played for three years. Quite a bit down the stretch in twenty twenty three, then twenty two thousand, sorry, two hundred and thirty four snaps in twenty twenty four, and then one hundred and forty four snaps last year. And this has been a theme, right These guys are all super athletic and really smooth movers who have had some success but have experienced some lows as well. They've been cut, they've been challenged in this league. And I feel like the idea of competition, it's looking at you right in the face right here. Let's go get a bunch of guys that are trying to make a life for themselves in this league and put them together and have them compete and may the best man win and we'll go from there and see if we can uncover some pieces for the long term. For the Miami Dolphins with Alex Austin, he actually started the game down here against US last year, and now, in hindsight, I remember talking about him in the preview because they were down Christian Gonzalez and having a backup against Reagan. Walla was like, that's probably the guy you want target, and the Dolphins went after him seven times. So I guess great minds think alike there when it comes to attacking Alex Austin for the Patriots last year. But he held his own, you know, whether it was that game or other games for the Patriots. But when Gonzalez got back out there, he went back into the reserve special teams role, which is another theme these guys have experienced. They've played and then the starter comes back and they go back to the special teams role. Now a chance to kind of get back into the defensive side or the offense side of.
00:26:01
Speaker 2: The football, right.
00:26:02
Speaker 1: But he did play as a core member of the special teams, you know, all the way through the Super Bowl. He did have a stint on IR. So there's a few games where he wasn't out there, but once he got activated, he's back to that core group, which means, you know, a part of every kicking unit. So he's covering kicks, he's chasing punts, he's on the return sides. He's twenty five years old in May, and man, he looks the part. Get off the bus, have him come out there, because he's got long arms, he's tall. He kind of has the imposing look. The length of these guys is almost what stands out more to me than their height. Sure that often goes hand in hand, but length and strength, man like, look at Marco Wilson five to eleven but literally on the leaderboard for all time bench reps among corners, and you see the play strength in his game. But Alex Austin's tall, he's long, he's leaning, he's high cut. He got some run in the Patriots defense, which is a quarters based defense like ours is. He played off with eyes in the quarterback And I just found a quote from the aforementioned Gonzalez who was asked which corner he thinks that fans and media last camp might be sleeping on, and he said that Alex Austin was his guy. The point is, despite some up and down play, there's a play you're in there somewhere, which is how I feel about a lot of these acquisitions. Maybe you haven't seen it on tape all the time, but it's in there. And when you sign guys like that as we have, you get them and in you see how they work, how they approach the job, and if they're true professionals, and maybe through all that they can unlock that consistency and become a part of your core football team. I like his feel from those off positions in quarters match. That's where you're in a zone, but the breaks from the receivers from their side of the field dictate who you match up with. So it's zone that becomes man and then you run with that receiver. And that's why you're processing has to be sharp. You have to be in your playbook because you bust one of those coverages, then you're chasing a receiver into the end zone and they're queuing up the fight. The fight so on the band. I know it's a college reference, but you get what I'm saying. It's touchdown if you blow that assignment. He's a four or five to five guy, and that tracks. What I saw on tape, he needs to reroute and kind of play on top of guys that get vertical. He had a fun matchup with Brock Bauers in Week one last year where Brock would kind of do some subtle, nuanced route type of running that would get a play on Austin. But then I look back at a lot of the catches and plays that made against from you know what it looked like with Brock Bauers included was stemming from the recovery speed that he couldn't get vertical on. He's got to get vertical then guys can throttle it down and he came back to the football once they flipped the hips down the field. They kind of attacked him that way, But limited tape to go off of intriguing a type of player he fits with what you've seen them do throughout the last week and even going back to like Miles Battle who signed a futures deal back in February at six foot three, So common thought process here across the board. We'll come back tomorrow and talk about Charlie Heck and Ben Simms. I want to do an NFL free agent recap that I intended to do last week, also been thinking about just Dolphin's position in the landscape right now in general. But we signed you know, nine hundred players in the process and I'm exaggerating for effect there, but that's why things kind of got pushed back and where we are today. But until then, you all please be sure subscribe to the podcast, leave us a.
00:28:50
Speaker 2: Writing, and leave us a review.
00:28:51
Speaker 1: You can follow me on social at Winkle NFL and the team at Miami Dolphins. Check out the YouTube channel for Dolphins HQ, Media availabilities and so much more. And last button, not least, Miami Dolphins dot com. Until next time, brings up Caroline, Cameron and Willow Daddy.
00:29:03
Speaker 2: He's coming home.
