College football Week 5 draft prospects
Your NFL prospects to watch for today, updates on previous watchlisters, steak news and other sports content you can subscribe to to make your life better. I'm helping your life, dude.
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FOOTBALL
Week 2 prospects:
Iowa St. QB Brock Purdy: Bounced back with an efficient performance against a TCU team that dominated possession (Iowa St. had just 51 passes and runs to TCU’s 84!). Big game tonight hosting #18 Oklahoma on ABC.
Florida St. DEF: Dogrolled by Miami QB D'Eriq King. Program’s in freefall.
Clemson LT Jackson Carman/Wake Forest EDGE Carlos Basham, Jr.: Basham keeps popping off with a sack in each of his first three games. Light schedule for Wake so check back in starting in mid-November. Clemson’s offense is too comprehensive to try and pin down Carman except in these kinds of matchups. Next week against Miami could be another NFL v. NFL scouting opportunity.
Week 3 prospects:
Oklahoma St. QB Spencer Sanders: Injured his ankle in the Tulsa game, but could return here.
Notre Dame ? Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah: Fantastic game against Duke to open the season. ACC schedule a bit of a letdown compared to the stature of their previous runs as an independent, but should get opportunities every other week or so
Miami EDGE Quincy Roche: The Hurricanes’ defense was a team effort against FSU with tons of guys getting in the backfield. Roche was one of them, but not perhaps as a standout. Next week’s primetime game against #1 Clemson is must-see stuff.
Week 4 prospects:
Florida QB Kyle Trask: Went all the way the hell off in the opener against Ole Miss for 416 yards and 6 TDs. South Carolina shouldn’t pose much of a threat in the Swamp today, but #13 Texas A&M and #20 LSU loom the next two weeks.
Texas LT Samuel Cosmi: Great performance in a very very entertaining game (119 points scored!!!). With TCU today and OU next week, he’s got the opportunity to put tape on the resume that could solidify him as a potential first-round prospect.
Miami QB D’Eriq King: Made things look easier than they were last week. Against #1 Clemson next week, every NFL team will have someone taking notes.
Today’s selections:
TCU S Trevon Moehrig & S Ar'Darius Washington
(TCU @ #9 Texas, FOX, 12pm ET/9am PT)
(Photo by Zach Bolinger/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Does TCU have the two best safeties in the country? They might.
Moehrig has the measurables and instincts to disrupt things in front of him. Washington, much smaller, is a pest to try and work around. They’re both fantastic to watch in tandem.
They’ll have their hands full today with Texas and QB Sam Ehlinger.
Texas A&M S Leon O'Neal Jr.
(#13 Texas A&M @ #2 Alabama, CBS, 3:30pm ET/12:30pm PT)
(Photo by Bob Levey/Getty Images)
Ok, so safety day! Let’s do it.
Look, Alabama is Alabama. The way they recruit year in, year out means they’re going to be stacked with NFL talent every single year. So the fact that they might staff a half dozen 2021 NFL Draft first-round picks right now isn’t surprising or maybe even interesting (a la the Boring Aaron Donald Principle). We’ll talk Bama prospects especially those in the Rams’ orbit at some point (either in two weeks against Georgia or the Iron Bowl against Auburn at the end of the season), but let’s key in on O’Neal today.
It should be a fantastic battle in the trenches because of the experience. Bama’s offensive line on the left includes LT Alex Leatherwood, a senior, LG Deonte Brown, a redshirt senior, and C Landon Dickerson, a redshirt senior who transferred from Florida State. A&M’s defensive front seven is laden with seniors and two juniors on the line. That’s a very, very experienced battle. So while Bama QB Mac Jones tries to cycle through a very, very talented crop of wideouts led by WR Jaylen Waddle and WR DeVonta Smith, keep an eye on #9 at the back of A&M’s defense. As experienced as the Aggies are up front, they’re playing a ton of underclassmen at the back. O’Neal might have to carry them to stay in this one (which probably isn’t going to happen, but let us ask the football gods to deliver us enjoyable football against Alabama cause that’s just rare).
Georgia S Richard LeCounte III
(#7 Auburn @ #4 Georgia, ESPN, 7:30pm ET/4:30pm PT)
(Photo by Todd Kirkland/Getty Images)
In my head, it’s pronounced “REE-shard” and he’s a French Casanova who travels the countryside wooing ladies of prominence and leaving silk-stocking men flustered in his wake.
Richard LeCounte. THE THIRD!!!
As a player, he’s a fun little missile at the back. As a prospect, his Twitter account is @LilEasy_35 and it’s private. BOTH ARE A HUGE PLUS.
Look, part of this is going to be the QB battle. Auburn QB Bo Nix, perhaps the most Auburn QB of all time because he’s on that list trying to surpass HIS OWN GODDAMNED FATHER, is looking to build on a resilient true freshman season against one of the best defenses in the country if not the best outright. Georgia had more talent on the roster, but life happened. Wake Forest transfer Jamie Newman opted out of the season. USC transfer JT Daniels wasn’t cleared from lingering effects of his ACL injury a year prior. That left redshirt freshman D’Wan Mathis, preferred as a dual-threat QB for an offense that had been geared up to play Newman, and Stetson Bennett. With then starter Jake Fromm leading the way and Georgia bringing in blue chip dual-threat QB Justin Fields, Bennett, a walk-on in 2017, went to Jones County Junior College in Mississippi to raise his profile with some playing time knowing he wasn’t going to get any at Georgia. A year later with Fromm preparing to head to the NFL and Fields transferring to Ohio State, Georgia brought Bennett back in as a backup with experience behind Fromm who they were relying on for a banner year. It didn’t come together with a dispiriting midseason loss to South Carolina and being bounced in the SEC Championship by the fated and fêted LSU train. So Georgia opened the year with Mathis, but a messy start left HC Kirby Smart to turn to Bennett to right the ship against Arkansas which he did to lead the Bulldogs to a comfortable victory thanks to a dominant second half.
So now you’ve got a Georgia team with Daniels coming off his ACL injury, Mathis coming off his poor performance against Arkansas and Bennett, the least talented among them, to try and organize an offense against Auburn of all teams.
Should be fun!
FOOD
Putting this one back in the spin cycle for more response.
Steak! It’s good! We (okay not everyone, but many of us) love it!
What’s your preference? What’s your method? There’s no wrong answer (ok that’s not true), but weigh in!
For some of you, that’s far too undercooked. That’s ok! But drop a note in the comments or @ us on Twitter or IG and talk to us about delicious, velvety hunks of meat. They’re good, and they make life better.
We should talk about that kind of stuff more than the stuff that has populated the hellscape calendar of 2020.
FUCKERY
Random other projects similar to what we’re doing at BTH that I’m really enjoying:
Publication to be Named Later: A bunch of former SB Nation writers putting together a quarterly that’s a “refuge for weird, inclusive and wonderful writing of any origin.” It’s going to be fucking awesome.
The Post Route: Turf Show Times Founding Editor Ryan Van Bibber and former SBN NFL alums Christian D'Andrea and Sarah Hardy have put this Substack together. Great NFL-wide content to get into your inbox.
Moon Crew: The former crew at Every Day Should Be Saturday, Banner Society, and a bunch of other fantastic projects is putting together this college football…thing. You already want this in your life even if you don’t know it.
Letters from Paris on the Genesee: My man Peter Berkes out there in upstate New York offers weekly Tuesday drops on life as a dad, making comfort food galore and the occasional college football take. It’s wholesome as all hell, and I’m here for it.
The Action Cookbook Newsletter: Scott Hines is a trained architect out of Louisville who (a) is one of the most creative minds in this space (hello, architect), and (b) one of the best writers in this space. That’s a deadly combination. Especially if you’re not prepared to engage your emotions.
Thanks for reading.
Be safe.
The taeks on steak give me confidence that I'm doing something mildly correct. I've been told by some that not doing seasoning on steak other than salt/pepper, and then some butter, is not okay but it seems I'm not crazy. Just need to play with the actual cooking part a bit more.