I'm starting to talk myself into CJ Allen at #20.
His scouting report on a Post-It reads just like Tyler Booker's last year - plays a low value position, no chance he's going to outright suck or bust, but where's his ceiling.
But I'm wondering if we've been undervaluing high-floor prospects in the draft, like say Booker or JSN, and overvaluing athletic potential. No question that athleticism matters in the NFL, and it's no coincidence that the game's best players are also often its freakiest natural athletes, but has that pendulum swung too far. Are we discounting the "sure thing" too much.
It's kind of like paying / drafting RBs in a way... it's a lower value position than say DE or QB, but we're leaving the "RBs don't matter" phase as teams have found that you can spend a premium pick on a back or pay a vet a second contract and end up happy about it.
And our defense needs an LB who knows what he's doing in the worst way. I'm not a "draft for need" guy, but our LBs last season were crisis-level bad. How could you not want to add a smart, assignment-sound LB to the mix - and if you have to get him at #20 rather than #30, then so be it.
As far as other LBs, I am a Sonny Styles evangelist. Speaking of RBs, fans always make the argument that their team need to draft this year's shiny RB really early because he's "generational". I'm making that same case for Styles. Low-value position, but he is the best off-ball LB to come out of college in at least five years. His game is already as polished as a second contract NFL vet, and he's 6'5" 240 with top-shelf speed. Dude is sort of like the Zeke of LBs.
