NFL Draft Newsletter: Battles You Can’t Miss At The Shrine Bowl and Senior Bowl

Hello, hello! 

I’m sending you this from my hotel room down in Dallas at the East-West Shrine Bowl! Excited to get draft season underway with this trip, which I enjoy as a back-to-back. I head to Mobile for the Senior Bowl first thing on Monday morning, but I’ve got six practices to take in beforehand.

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OK, onto the newsletter!

Shrine Bowl Matchups To Watch

On the ALL NFL Draft Podcast this week, I went through players that I am most excited to see up close here at the Shrine Bowl and picked the brain of Eric Galko, the director of the event. I also have a piece up right now with a quick position-by-position preview of what I expect to see down here, so be sure to check those out! 

For you, I wanted to highlight five potential one-on-one battles that I’m excited to see during the week of practice, starting with the Shrine Bowl.

• EAST RB Eli Heidenreich (Navy) vs LB Harold Perkins (LSU)
  • Here are two players that play extremely hard, excel in space and are looking to clarify what position and role fit them best in the NFL. Of all the running backs on this roster, Heidenreich is the savviest in space. He can run routes like a receiver, and Perkins has the tools to match it. Likewise, Perkins’ value as a blitzer will be put on display. Heidenreich has the toughness to match up with him. This will be a good-on-good matchup if they get pitted against each other.

• EAST C Jager Burton (Kentucky) vs DT Darrell Jackson (Florida State)
  • Jackson is my highest-graded prospect at the game at this point. He’s a big, strong, powerful nose guard who engulfs people in the run game and can walk blockers back as a bull rusher. Burton is one of the most highly-regarded centers at the event, with potential to be a plug-and-play type at the position sooner rather than later. If he can shut down Jackson, that will only further support those who believe that. This could be a good one to track.

• EAST TE Jack Endries (Texas) vs S Dalton Johnson (Arizona)
  • Johnson is my top-rated safety and Endries has a lot of fans around the league, with some seeing him as a Day 2 talent. I’m not QUITE there, but I see the appeal because of his fluid athleticism, competitiveness and soft hands. This is a good litmus test for Johnson, who I think has some athletic limitations but makes up for it with his toughness and instincts. He has a feel for playing in coverage and he makes plays at the catch point. This could be a fun battle. 

• WEST RB Demond Claiborne (Wake Forest) vs LB Eric Gentry (USC)
  • I think Claiborne is one of the most dynamic runners in this class. He’s quick and fast and can pull away in space. Gentry is a tall, lanky, developmental SAM linebacker, but he’s more athletic than you would think for a guy that size. I wouldn’t expect him to cover Claiborne every time they get matched up, but if he has a rep or two where he keeps stride that will be impressive.

• WEST EDGE Malachi Lawrence (UCF) vs RT Fa’alili Fa’amoe (Wake Forest)
  • Lawrence has a legit chance to be the highest-drafted player here. A productive pass rusher with real skil at the top of the rush, he has violent hands, NFL size and traits to win in multiple ways. Fa’amoe has played a ton of ball. He’ll be looking to prove his position versatility, as he’s really only been a right tackle in college, so there’s the potential that he has some ugly reps on the left side against a guy like Lawrence. If he’s in his natural spot, however? He could put up more of a fight.

Senior Bowl Matchups To Watch

I have a new episode of the ALL NFL Draft Podcast dropping first thing on Monday morning previewing my trip to Mobile next week, and Director Drew Fabianich stopped by to help me break down some of the top players going to the game, amongst other topics surrounding the event, so stay tuned for that! 

In my discussion with Drew, he not-so-subtly hinted at an incoming announcement for Miami EDGE Rueben Bain JR. Sure enough, on Wednesday, the ferocious pass rusher announced that he was heading to Mobile, along with Miami Nickel Keionte Scott, Miami T Markel Bell, Indiana CB D’Angelo Ponds, and Indiana RB Kaelon Black. Time will tell if all of those players stick to those commitments (word is that there will be a handful of big names NOT in Mobile), and obviously all of this is EXTREMELY fluid, but here are some of my favorite potential matchups that I’m antsy to watch.

• AMERICAN T Max Iheanachor (Arizona State) vs EDGE TJ Parker (Clemson)
  • Parker was billed as a high first-round pick entering the year, which was a bit rich for my blood at the time, but now I feel like I’m the one trying to convince people that he’s a good player! Maybe he isn’t elite, but I think he’s a well-rounded pass rusher. He’d give Iheanachor, who didn’t play football until Junior College, all that he can handle. Here’s the thing about Iheanachor, though, the guy’s physical tools are rare at his size. This could be a fun one. 

• AMERICAN WR Ted Hurst (Georgia State) vs CB Julian Neal (Arkansas)
  • Both of these guys are big, tall, and rangy with surprising speed for their size. This has the chance to be one of the best ‘good-on-good’ battles we get for the week in Mobile.

• NATIONAL G Emmanuel Pregnon (Oregon) vs DT Lee Hunter (Texas Tech)
  • This is a straight up hoss fight, with nearly 700 pounds of mass going 1-on-1. Both guys are brawlers in a phone booth. I hope we get to see a handful of these, whether it’s in pass pro drills or if they can get isolated in team sessions. That will be worth the price of admission.

• NATIONAL TE Justin Joly (NC State) vs S Deshon Singleton (Nebraska)
  • I’m excited to see Joly, a converted receiver who can provide immediate help to an NFL passing game while also being a competent enough blocker out in space. Singleton is one of my favorite potential ‘matchup’ safeties in this class, I think he’s a player that teams could look as a guy they can place against tight ends on pass downs in the league. That makes this one a fun battle.

• NATIONAL RB Nicholas Singleton (Penn State) vs LB Kendal Daniels (Oklahoma)
  • Singleton leaves something to be desired for me as a pure runner, but on pass downs I think he brings real value to the league as a blocker and as a useful receiver, where Penn State got fairly creative with him over the last couple of seasons. I hope we get to see the big back out in space against Daniels, a converted safety with great size and range for a linebacker. These guys have impressive physical tools to put on display.

MY ALL-STAR GAME PROCESS

Over the years I’ve been asked by several of you what it’s like to cover these All-Star Games, and while my approach does change depending on things like my content plan (I’ve had some years where I’ve prioritized daily podcasts, some where I’ve interviewed dozens and dozens of player interviews, and some where I’ve produced no content at all) and the practice schedule (which changed this year for the Senior Bowl; we’re back to afternoons!), there are some things that are pretty universal year-to-year. 

• I’m here to watch practice and learn as much as I can about these prospects over the course of a few days. This is one of my only opportunities to see these prospects up close and to try and replicate any type of advantage that area scouts and front office personnel get when they see them on the road during the year. If I’m not doing everything I can to leverage every ounce of information as I can from these practices, then shame on me! That’s my general approach to the entire week, first and foremost. 

• I usually aim to be about 45-50 minutes early for practice, and typically earlier than that for day one. That gives me plenty of time to exchange pleasantries with people I haven’t seen, get one of the limited number of roster sheets handed out by the Communications staff, and start to get my eyes on the first players to hit the field for warm up.

• There are some things you can see on film, but being able to properly gauge a player’s body type is not one of them. As most of us know, 6-foot-1, 215 pounds can look very different from one individual to the next. Before the first practice, we already have the official measurements (height, weight, hand size, arm length and wing span) recorded from that week, but there are other aspects to the body composition that are important, and it changes from position to position. For linemen, I’m really focused on their base. How big are their glutes? Simply put, if they have a flat butt, it’s going to be really hard for them to generate power. Do they have really skinny knees and ankles? That could determine future growth potential. For smaller players, are they high-hipped with really long legs? That likely affects their change of direction. What is their muscle definition like? Are they completely maxed out? Is there room for growth? Is it a bad reflection of effort in the weight room? Does that match with things I’ve heard from sources in the industry? The list of these factors goes on and on, but it’s one of the most important takeaways for me, and I try to take those notes for every single player in attendance over the course of the three days of practice. The best times for this include pre-practice warmups, stretch periods, walk-throughs and special teams work. 

• Athleticism and movement skills are certainly important to take note up close. Obviously the play from drill-to-drill is important, but – honestly – I’m going to watch all of the film of these practices later in the day. So trying to take in all of the detail live doesn’t make a ton of sense. So I try to keep short-hand ‘play by play’ notes of each drill I’m watching, but then try to add color to every rep with something I can’t necessarily take from the tape. So let’s say it’s a 7-on-7 period, and a receiver from LSU wearing the number 18 catches a deep ball on the third play, my notes will read: “3. LSU18 deep ball.” If it’s a notable play, like a one-handed catch or something that I want to make sure I highlight later, I had some *** to it on the sheet. Then I’m trying to add color wherever I can. Did the receiver come up with fire and excitement afterwards? Was the coach yelling at the cornerback to fix a technique issue? Did another receiver from Georgia, who happened to break the position group down in individual periods earlier, come running off the sideline to congratulate his teammate? These are all little tiny nuggets, but I take it all down; as much as I can. It could be important later.

• For one-on-one periods, I typically stay laser focused on one position group. If I try to bounce my eyes back and forth from receivers to running backs to linemen, it’s a futile exercise to take it all in. I try to be as detailed as possible in my live note taking on these drills, particularly because then I don’t have to watch them back later. That usually means that I spend my time at practice watching the tight ends work against the safety group, or the running backs and linebackers working together in the middle of the field. That way I can spend more time and not miss one minute detail in the receivers vs defensive backs or O-Line / D-Line one-on-one sessions. 

• Practice ends. I may try to grab a player or two to talk to. I may catch up with a friend or three. If the practices are in the morning, like they are here at the Shrine Bowl, I’ll run and grab a quick lunch. In Mobile, with practices being in the afternoon, I will go grab a quick dinner. Then it’s back to the room to get to work. Any media hits I have scheduled I usually try to book for this window. 

• When I was younger and newer to the process, the night life was a big part of these trips. Not necessarily for the fun (although, that certainly helped), but for the networking. Networking is still a big part of these trips, but I generally try to get that done before practice begins upon first arrival or over coffee or meals. Outside of getting a quick dinner, my nights are spent in the room going through tape, finalizing my notes, catching up with people in the industry and/or producing content for you!

• It’s easy to get swept up in the week, and if I don’t make it a point to get all of my notes from my pad onto my laptop now, while it’s fresh, my mind will dump it the next day once I have a whole new day’s worth of practice intel. So it’s imperative that I get all of my notes transcribed. The most efficient strategy for me is to go back through the film of every period, add any notes to my notepad from each of the team sessions that I may have missed and take in any of the one-on-one drills that I passed over. Then, in a separate sheet, I have a section carved out for every single player in attendance. At the end of every night (or the next morning for Senior Bowl, since practice isn’t until after lunch), I get all of my notes from the previous practice into those player specific sections. 

• By the end of the week, all of my notes for every player are all in there, and I’m able to write a two- or three-line takeaway from the entire week. That’s the line that goes into my ‘official’ scouting report, and it will be visible to you in the Diehard Draft Guide as soon as I input it! In my notes, typed out in red, bolded, and underlined, I have it written “GET YOUR TAKEAWAYS WRITTEN NOW!”, because – again – if I wait until Monday, there’s a good chance it falls through the cracks as I start preparing for the Combine. This is why I’m here!

Dive Into The Diehard Draft Guide!

Fran’s in-depth profiles on the prospects of the 2026 NFL Draft!

WHO THE HOOSIERS WERE

In the aftermath of Indiana’s victory over Miami on Monday night, I was startled to see so much of the reaction essentially be summed up as ‘well, anyone can buy a team now.’ To me, that opinion really misses the mark of what we all saw over the last two years.

Did Indiana pay players? Of course. You have to in today’s College Football. Did they bring in players through the Transfer Portal? Of course. You have to in today’s College Football. 

But go back and look at the players that were IU’s impact performers this season. Who did Indiana beat head-to-head for these guys? 

QB Fernando Mendoza had one FBS offer coming out of high school, but when he entered the Transfer last offseason there was some interest. He reportedly visited Georgia and Missouri, but neither school officially offered him a spot. His hometown Miami Hurricanes did not bring him in (signing Carson Beck instead). Florida State. Auburn. Florida State. Colorado. Duke. Iowa. Missouri. All of these schools dipped into the quarterback pool in the Portal last year. No one was as aggressive for his services as Indiana was. 

When Indiana blew the doors off of Alabama in the Rose Bowl, do you think the Tide (who had one of the worst rushing attacks in the country this season) would have loved to have either RB Roman Hemby or Kaelon Black on their sideline? Hemby was at Maryland in 2024, Black at Old Dominion. Several playoff-caliber teams signed running backs in the portal last year (including Oklahoma, Oregon, Ohio State and Georgia), but none of them got the impact from their backfields that these two brought.

FS Louis Moore was a backup in 2024 at Ole Miss. Think he could have helped their defense this year? 

CB D’Angelo Ponds, EDGE Mikail Kamara, LB Aiden Fisher, WR Elijah Sarratt, and several others were lightly recruited high school athletes (or sub-FBS players) who signed with HC Curt Cignetti at James Madison and then followed him. Kamara was a 0-star recruit; JMU was his only offer. Fisher had an offer from Old Dominion. Sarratt began his college career at St. Frances University in the Northeast Conference and primarily played DB in high school. Ponds was a 5-foot-8, 160 pound, 2-star recruit in Miami with very little recruiting interest because of his size. Those are players that he and his staff developed. Someone else could have paid them more money. They could have sought out greener pastures. Here at the Shrine Bowl, Cal CB Brent Austin did exactly that, playing at JMU in 2022 and 2023 before entering the Transfer Portal and choosing not to follow that staff to Indiana. 

WRs Omar Cooper JR and Charlie Becker were both holdovers from the previous staff at Indiana and played the best football of their careers this year. It’s unlikely that they go undefeated without the two of them on the team. 

Indiana identified players that fit their ethos. They targeted them, coached them up, and got them to execute at an unreal level to go undefeated in a 16-game season. It’s a great example of phenomenal team building, culture setting and coaching from Cignetti and his staff. It’s unlikely that teams will be able to replicate exactly what we saw this season in Bloomington, but you know they will try.

THE BIG DEAL IN BUFFALO

On Wednesday, in the wake of HC Sean McDermott being fired, the Bills held a press conference with owner Terry Pegula and GM Brandon Beane. In the press conference, Pegula went out of his way to make something very clear. 

There’s a lot to unpack here. I don’t love making this declaration when Keon Coleman is still on your team. I can’t imagine that he is back for the 2026 season at this point, and even if that was always the plan, making this statement publicly does not help any trade leverage you may have had. 

In the hours after that press conference, people have gone through the archives and pulled clips from team-produced access pieces behind the scenes of the draft two years ago, when they selected Coleman. In those clips, which take place both before and after the draft, Beane is seen praising Coleman and talking about how good of a player he is. 

Personally, I don’t see this as some big ‘gotcha’ moment against Beane because, even with these clips, it’s entirely possible that what Pegula said this week is actually 100 percent true. I understand why Beane is under fire. That pick certainly doesn’t seem like it’s set to pan out. That roster had some holes in it, and the way he got defensive about that position, in particular, with the media last summer set him up for this blowback. That roster has other holes on it as well. He has not been perfect (no GM is), but I think the dynamic laid in front of us here is pretty typical. 

While I don’t like the owner saying what he said publicly about the player, he didn’t say that Beane hated Coleman or had a 5th-round grade on im. He said he was not at the top of the list. Beane clearly liked him enough to take him where they did, but these types of debates and compromises happen all the time around the NFL every spring. 

When teams draft players, it’s always nice when there is a consensus opinion from everyone involved. The fact of the matter is, those occurrences are rare. Not to mention, not every GM believes that consensus is ACTUALLY a good thing, because difference in opinion can often lead to constructive debate and is often a sign of a healthy draft room. 

If I picked four of my favorite NFL Draft analysts right now in the media and stuck us all in a room, forcing us to come up with a draft board, there would be differing views on a large majority of the players. If one of us was then charged with making the final call on how the board looked, it is unlikely that they would just go rogue and only pick players that he or she liked more than the rest of us. Compromise is necessary. 

This also brings another discussion point to mind. During the pre-draft process, when these debates happen in draft rooms as teams try to stack their board, it can often lead to a ‘my guy’ vs ‘your guy’ dynamic. However, once you get to late April, and the card is turned in, it’s not ‘my’ or ‘your’, because now it is ‘our’ guy. Many GMs have really strict rules when it comes to this. In this case, if there are people in the building who still harbor negative feelings about Coleman because he wasn’t ‘their guy’ before the draft, then their focus when talking about his struggles can drift from ‘how do we help him improve’ to ‘see, I told ya so.’ That does not help anyone. 

So, after the draft, when Beane sits down with the media, whether it’s internal or external, of course he’s going to speak glowingly about Coleman. It serves no one any good to do anything otherwise. He also can be excited at the Combine that Coleman could fall to them on draft day. The board is nowhere near close to completion at that point in the process. Two months later, he could have him third or fourth in the pecking order when they were on the clock to start the second round while still LIKING the player. 

Regardless, while I don’t think the book is completely written on Coleman yet as a player, the chapter in Buffalo is probably wrapped up. 

A NEW COACHING TREND?

Three years ago, in January of 2023, if I told you that Boston College HC Jeff Hafley (who just went 3-9 that season in his third year on the job) would be named the head coach of the Miami Dolphins three years later, you would have thought that BC went on a Hoosier-esque run. Alas, that is not how we arrived here!

Instead, after going 22-26 in four seasons at the helm of BC (which is not an easy college job), Hafley left to be the defensive coordinator of the Packers, a job he did well in for two seasons before being hired away this week. When Hafley left a head coaching job in college for an NFL coordinator role, it was a bit jarring. We don’t typically see coaches wilfully take what many see as a demotion. Since then, it’s popped up a couple more times.

Chip Kelly left the top job at UCLA to be the offensive coordinator for Ohio State (which soon got him back to the NFL and the Raiders). The following year, Bowling Green HC Scot Loeffler left BGSU to be the QB Coach for the Philadelphia Eagles.

With Hafley’s rise, could this be a more common occurrence? The track record of college coaches jumping right into the NFL is checkered, to be sure, but with Hafley setting a pathway here, I’d leave the door open to this happening again. Hafley’s previous NFL experience (he spent seven years in the NFL as an assistant with three teams before going back to the college ranks in 2019) helps him, but it’s something I wonder about. 

College Football life is HARD for coaches. It’s a calendar that never stops. If you can trade that in for the NFL, which has a much more structured lifestyle, I think many would take the opportunity. We’ll see if it’s something we see more of in this hiring cycle, which is far from over!

PARTING THOUGHT

Before Monday night’s National Championship Game, people got hung up on Miami QB Carson Beck saying that he graduated two years ago and didn’t take any classes this semester, and all of the torches and pitch forks are out to attack the state of College Football. 

Beck got his undergraduate degree from Georgia years ago (most college programs have a path set for their players to graduate in the first 2.5 years on campus), so he has been doing post-grad work since then. He had to take classes in the fall in order to be eligible to play. The spring semester is just now getting underway, and Beck is off to the NFL. 

Admittedly, I’m not as in-tuned with academic eligibility requirements now as I was years ago when I worked for a college team. However, I am old enough to remember former USC QB Matt Leinart taking exactly one class in his final year with the Trojans … in 2005 … and that class being ballroom dancing. 

That was 20 years ago. This type of thing is not new. 

Let’s not make a mountain out of a mole hill here. The problem is that the season bleeds into the spring semester, and everyone is basically in agreement that the College Football calendar needs to be completely re-tooled. Players taking a light course load in the final stretch of their careers as they prepare for the next level is far down the list of reasons why.

Lot of work to be done on my end in the next several days. Be sure to check out the Draft Guide for prospect notes. As I make those changes on every report, you’ll see them immediately!

Best,

Fran Duffy

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