Day 1 Senior Bowl standouts, and their NFL potential

The Senior Bowl is but one step in the evaluation process that eventually takes the best available college players to the NFL, but it is an important step in that there’s several days of practices in which personnel people can see like as like beyond the game tape. In the evaluative sense, the practices are almost more important than the games themselves.

Tuesday marked the first practices for the 2024 Senior Bowl, and here are six players who stood out immediately, matched with their NCAA tape, and some thoughts on their ultimate NFL potential.

(Photo by Rich Storry/Getty Images)

Make all the jokes you want about McConkey being a gritty, gutty, lunchpail guy who looks just like Cooper Kupp — yeah, we know. But on the first day of practice, the 6-foot-0, 185-pond target put some routes on the field that were just about impossible to cover.

Injuries limited McConkey in his 2023 season, but he still caught 30 passes on 37 targets for 483 yards and two touchdowns. He also had eight explosive receptions last season — both after the catch, and straight up the field, right into traffic. NFL teams will start coveting him in the early middle rounds.

Jackson Powers-Johnson, Center, Oregon

(Vasha Hunt-USA TODAY Sports)

Powers-Johnson is the best center in this draft class — perhaps a fringe first-rounder — and those NFL personnel people on hand today didn’t take much convincing based on his practice reps. The 6-foot-3, 320-pound Powers-Johnson is plug-and-play from a technique perspective, and he matches power to agility as well as you could ask. He allowed no sacks, no quarterback hits, and one quarterback hurry throughout his 2023 season.

Powers-Johnson is also great at getting to the second level and sealing things off up there — based on his tape, there isn’t much you could want in a professional center that he…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/day-1-senior-bowl-standouts-025809739.html

Author : Touchdown Wire

Publish date : 2024-01-31 02:58:09

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