To many, the Senior Bowl is just another game with college players. Maybe if you're a fan of one of the players because of your affiliation with a school, you tune in to see that guy play with his college team's helmet on one last time. For NFL scouts and internet draftniks it's a multi-day scouting process that starts with the weigh-ins on day 1, progresses to the practices and then culminates with the actual game (which many scouts don't even attend). In today's NFL draft news cycle every part of this process is televised in some fashion with NFL Network's Mike Mayock guiding you along the way.

It's sort of an odd scouting experience. Some of the best players choose to skip the whole thing (although this seems to have become rarer) and other top prospects can't be invited because they weren't seniors. So, you end up left with a hodgepodge of top talent mixed with players that could go anywhere from day 2 of the draft to potentially undrafted. Nevertheless, it's still the best collection of talent put together where players run real NFL drills, get coached by real NFL staffs (this year it was the Redskins and Vikings coaching staffs) and play in a somewhat competitive, slightly modified (some rules match the Pro Bowl), NFL-style (College-specific rules are not used) game.

Leading up to the game, those with boots on the ground in Mobile, Alabama keep an eye for which team's scouts are talking to which prospects. The great guys over at DraftCountdown.com track all this at the Senior Bowl Headquarters page. You can either click on those links to find out what they saw or check out the list here after the jump.

A lot of the media focus at the Senior Bowl is bestowed upon the quarterbacks. They are easy to watch and fun to project. However, this year a lot of the buzz was on a postion the Chargers need: Pass Rushers. The big three of Quinton Coples, Courtney Upshaw and Melvin Ingram got a lot of attention at practices and in the game. They all seemed to impress enough that I'm pretty confident they will now all be gone by the time the Chargers pick barring a bunch of teams reaching for bigger needs. However, there still was some love thrown around for guys like Marshall's Vinny Curry and 3-4 experienced Cam Johnson from Virginia. Both could be targets for the Chargers on Day 2.

Getting back to 1st round possibilities, Ohio State's OT Mike Adams impressed many in practices. The buzz seems to be that he's now in the 1st round mix. That being said, the game tape from this season isn't all that impressive and makes you wonder how he can be so good in practice, but not as good in games. If there is something to be fixed, the Chargers are a good landing spot since he can apprentice Marcus McNeill and maybe play some OG as a rookie. Also, on the offensive line there is Georgia's Cordy Glenn who I talked about in this earlier article. He showed scouts that he can handle the LT position, but most still see his best work in the NFL coming at OG or RT.

Continue reading this post »

I know that after my detailed coverage of all the bowl games you would probably expect me to give you a report on the every player in the East-West Shrine Game (and later, the Senior Bowl), but I'm not going to do that. Everyone in these games is draft eligible, so our scouting eyes should be on everyone. Now, the Shrine Game does not get the attention of the Senior Bowl and rightly so. There are no projected first round picks in this game, but it's still worth checking out.

The West team is coached by former Vikings Head Coach and Eagles Offensive Coordinator Brad Childress. He runs a Bill Walsh style west cost offense, so that might put us at a very slight disadvatage when looking at his offensive prospects, but I won't worry too much about i. His team has a number of prospects we've covered here before. CBs Shaun Prater (Iowa) and Keith Tandy (West Virginia), DL Tyrone Crawford (Boise State), LBs Jerry Franklin (Arkansas) and Tank Carder (TCU), OT Matt Reynolds (BYU), S Aaron Henry (Wisconsin), TEs George Bryan (NC St) and David Paulson (Oregon), WRs Jarius Wright (Arkansas), WR Greg Childs (Arkansas) and Junior Hemingway (Michigan). The top prospect in all that is Jarius Wright (3rd round) and I'm interested to see his old teammate Childs go to work as well. Childs needs a big week to reclaim his once vaunted status. Aaron Henry is still a depth guy a S I like and I'm convinced George Bryan will be a good red zone threat in the NFL. Tank Carder has to use this chance that he's more than just a hustler if he wants to start at LB in the NFL. The West also has Fresno State WR Devon Wylie on the team. Rumors say that the Chargers have been watching and talking to him. The National Football Post also printed that he'd be a good fit for the Bolts as a slot WR.

The East team is coached by former Chargers Head Coach Bobby Ross. That might be enough to give some of you a rooting interest in this game. However, his team doesn't seem to have the same kind of NFL talent. The only guys from his team that we've covered are DE Kyle Wilber (Wake Forest), DE/LB Brandon Lindsay (Pitt) and WRs B.J. Cunningham (Michigan St), A.J Jenkins (Illinois) and LaRon Byrd (Miami). At least those guys are at positions we're interested in. LaRon Byrd seems like an interesting one to me. Miami is a team that could best be described as dysfunctional so it'll be good to get him out of that environment.

I'll give you the scouting reports for the players I've mentioned after the jump. If you're looking for the team needs chart, it'll be there as well.

Continue reading this post »

Mel Kiper's 2012 NFL Mock Draft (subscription required) starts out the way many of the 2012 variety do these days. Andrew Luck goes first to the Colts. Then predictability the next 3 off the board are Justin Blackmon, Matt Kalil and Robert Griffin III. Those four names are commonly placed in the top 4, in varying orders, but aren't Mel Kiper's top 4 according to his Big Board (subscription required). He actually likes BCS title game participants RB Trent Richardson and CB Morris Claiborne more than Blackmon and Griffin III. So, those two come off the board next. If you remember last year's draft, I had an article that outlined an NFL Mock Draft Best Fit Point System. Players like Trent Richardson are ones you want to get picked before the Chargers pick at #18. He's a RB, which is not a 1st round target position for the Chargers. Some rank him very high, some a little lower and most agree that picking a RB in the 1st round is a luxury item and not meant for the rebuilding teams that pick high in the draft. Nevertheless because Richarson is so highly regarded, it's pretty likely that he'll come off the board before the Chargers, thereby deeping the pool of players the Chargers would actually want to select.

As his mock moves on we see some names that would interest the Chargers come off the board. Picks 10-16 all are players that you could see the Chargers want to sport Blue and Gold. Alabama OLB Courtney Upshaw, who has been mentioned in plenty of comments here, goes to the Bills. Penn State DT Devon Still ends up on the Kansas City Chiefs to play in their 3-4 defense. South Carolina DE Melvin Ingram is selected by the Seattle Seahawks, depriving the Chargers of another pass rushing option. Two Stanford OL go next with OT Jonathan Martin landing with the Arizona Cardinals and OG David DeCastro gobbled up by the Dallas Cowboys. Boston College ILB Luke Kuechly might not be an ideal fit for the Chargers defense and fits better with the Philadelphia Eagles, but he's a talent at a position that need more depth. Alabama S Mark Barron would fill an opening for the Bolts, but Mel has him becoming a New York Jet.

At pick number 18 Mel Kiper has the Chargers selecting a player that has not been linked to the Chargers very often. He's a player we scouted week 1 of the college season for a game he didn't even play that well in. That player is...

Continue reading this post »

Last year, the Chargers drafted DE Corey Liuget. The Illinois defensive lineman made an important decision last January that affected not only his life, but the future of the San Diego Chargers. In 2010, Fresno State RB Ryan Mathews made a similar decision. Both decided to forgo their senior season and declare for the NFL draft. Yesterday was the deadline for prospects to decided if they should do the same. Here are some of the names of the players that we've scouted here at Bolts From The Blue that could interest the Chargers in the draft and have declared:

• Dwayne Allen, TE, Clemson
• Vontaze Burfict, ILB, Arizona St.
• Orson Charles, TE, Georgia
• Fletcher Cox, DT, Mississippi St.
• Dont'a Hightower, ILB, Alabama
• Ronnie Hillman, RB, San Diego St.
• LaMichael James, RB, Oregon
• Alshon Jeffery, WR, South Carolina
• Ronnell Lewis, DE/OLB, Oklahoma
• Whitney Mercilus, DE/OLB, Illinois
• Donte Paige-Moss, DE/OLB, North Carolina
• Nick Perry, DE/OLB, USC
• Mohamed Sanu, WR, Rutgers

Plenty of other players have also declared for the draft, but a few I'm projecting to go too high for us to worry about or I haven't published scouting reports like I did with the players above. You can peruse a complete list by clicking here and checking out Draftcountdown.com. Also of interest are some players who didn't declare that would have been likely Chargers targets. That includes Georgia OLB Jarvis Jones and two LSU DEs that project as 3-4 OLBs in Sam Montgomery and Barkevious Mingo. Jones is interesting because he has experience as a 3-4 OLB and Montgomery and Mingo both had a lot of upside despite only a couple years of college ball.

On ESPN Insider, Mel Kiper went back and re-graded the 2011 draft (subscription required) for every team including the San Diego Chargers. According to the network's long time resident draft guru, the Chargers don't look as good in hindsight as they did at the time of the draft. Part of this has to do with some of the relative optimism that Kiper had for the Chargers draft compared to his colleagues. He liked a lot of the players that others thought were reaches. It also has to do with liking long term potential over short term impact. In any case the grade went from a B+ to a C+.

I can understand this assessment, but I can also note some flaws in its approach. If I'm trying to grade the Chargers draft and I only use the 2011 season, then I'd probably give the Chargers a C. If I start to think that I still like some of the upside of the players, then I'll bump it up to a C+, giving extra weight to the performances we've already seen. However, how many players were thought to actually make an impact this season? I'd argue that most, including Mel Kiper, didn't really think that many of the draft picks would come in a contribute at a high level in 2011. Sure, there was a chance, but it wasn't the expectation. So, if you're trying to grade a draft, that was mostly based on post-2011 potential then why drop the team a letter grade?

A lot of the decision involving Chargers draft grades revolves down to 1st round Corey Liuget. Here's what was said about Corey in the re-grade article:

The prize of this class was Corey Liuget early, but, although he had his moments this season, I expected a little more from him in terms of overall production. He jumped off the tape in preseason... If Liuget develops -- and he has a lot of talent -- this class will look better.

I'll give my take on these comments as well as a look at some of the Chargers other picks, after the jump.

Continue reading this post »

People love to create some sort of controversy about this game. Even the people that came up with the idea of the game love the controversy. People want to debate sports and the talking point for this game is "rematch". Sports are full of rematches. Boxing loves rematches and people pay big money to watch those. Most professional team sports are built around rematching teams over and over again. Baseball, basketball and hockey play playoff series' which are basically a set of rematches. Football doesn't plan out rematches like that, but even the NFL doesn't avoid playoff rematches. Next week, all 4 NFL playoff games are rematches of earlier contests. The Super Bowl has had it's share of rematches, the most recent being XLII where the New England Patriots lost to the New York Giants after beating them in the regular season. Even our own Chargers played in a Super Bowl that was a rematch, although in that year the Bolts lost to the San Francisco 49ers twice. The "Greatest Game Ever Played", the 1958 NFL Championship game, was a rematch between the New York Giants and the Baltimore Colts. This is not something new to sport, just something new to the BCS Championship. The bottom line (from an entertainment aspect) is that you have the consensus top team (LSU) playing a team that you know can compete with them (Alabama) and, arguably, should have won the previous engagement if not for a kicker having a bad day.

The other talking point is the quality of the previous tilt. It was a bit of snoozer with the two teams a little afraid to expose their offenses against each other's talented defenses. With all the time given to prepare for this game, I fully expect the offenses to be ready to roll in this one. Neither has an elite QB and only one has an elite NFL prospect (Alabama Jr. RB Trent Richardson), but they can do enough to make sure the same offensive sluggishness doesn't reappear.

However, all that talk isn't important to the scouting department at Bolts From the Blue. What you do have here is a number of players that will be in this year's draft, a few others that will be top prospects in future drafts and a number of good matchups to test all these prospects. Charger fans looking for immediate help for next year should focus on two players. Both play for the Crimson Tide. One is Senior OLB Courtney Upshaw and the other is Senior S Mark Barron. Both are in the first round mix and both play positions of great need for the Chargers. Alabama's 3-4 defense makes a number of other prospects interesting for the Chargers. They have two draft eligible ILBs in Dont'a Hightower and Nico Johnson that could address the depth issues at that position. They have a good Nose Tackle in Josh Chapman. They also have two CBs that will play in the NFL in 1st round prospect Dre Kirkpatrick and 4th round prospect De'quan Menzie. Their second safety, Robert Lester, could be a guy the Chargers look at for Safety depth if both Gregory and Oliver leave and the Chargers find a starter in Free Agency.

The Louisiana State Tigers are a much younger team as far as starters go. There are Seniors on the team that are expected to hear their names called before day 3. However, that doesn't mean the Bayou Bengals don't have other elite talent. Jr. CB Morris Claiborne is a sure fire top 5 pick and will be coming out. Three defensive players have decisions to make about whether to stay or go, but would hear their names called early if they did declare. Sophomores DT Michael Brockers, DE Sam Montgomery and DE Barkevious Mingo are that trio and are a big reason why the LSU defense is so good. Montgomery has stated he's not coming out, but nothing's official until the deadline passes. 6'4 Jr. WR Rueben Randle is a 3rd round prospect. And then there's the "Honey Badger" CB/KR Tyrann Mathieu who emulates 2011 1st pick and current Arizona Cardinals CB/KR Patrick Peterson, but is not draft eligible. Their best Sr. prospect is TE Deangelo Peterson, who could be an interesting pick for the Chargers.

I'll cover the detailed scouting reports for the prospects in this game after the jump. after the jump. First let's take a look at our team needs chart. I justified the most recent updates to the team needs list a few weeks ago when I scouted the last week of the college football regular season.

Continue reading this post »

In case you missed it, I justified the most recent updates to the team needs list a few weeks ago when I scouted the last week of the college football regular season. There's a lot of unknowns until we know the extent of some injuries and any changes in management are made, so I'm not going to say much more about that. Instead let's go to the games.

I'll go over the individual players after the jump.

Continue reading this post »

In case you missed it, I justified the most recent updates to the team needs list a few weeks ago when I scouted the last week of the college football regular season. There's a lot of unknowns until we know the extent of some injuries and any changes in management are made, so I'm not going to say much more about that. Instead let's go to the games.

I'll go over the individual players after the jump.

Continue reading this post »