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Music. Welcome back, everyone to another episode of Beyond the Tape, back for another two-round mock draft.

And today, joined by a very special guest returning to the channel, the co-hosthost of the PFF, college football podcast and the co-host of the PFF NFL podcast, and maybe the man with the best taste in music inside the sports media industry? I'll leave that up to debate. I welcome to the show, Dalton Wasserman, Dalton, dude, one, it's great to see you. I love having you on the show.

You and I, we were just talking about this beforehand.

We are long-form communicators. We like to draw this out. And I was pumped to have you back on the show just because you have a great football mind. But last year, we had you on for a mock that almost stretched out to three hours. So I'm hoping to get us a little bit more condensed down,

but that's the thoughtful analysis you're bringing to the table today.

So I appreciate you card out some time. And hopefully, again, not taking three hours of your time today. As always, we'll see where it goes. TJ, you know, we're just the type of people that like to get our point across, right? And certainly during draft season, everybody likes to do that. So we'll just, we'll explain every last little thing we do.

And if the timer runs over, though, we'll see where it goes, you know. Likes to get our point across. That I think is honestly probably the best assessment I've heard of either one of us. So awesome. All right. So Dalton and I talked beforehand. I'm going to take the Evans, one, because we kind of know where this draft is starting. and that's going to be Fernando Mendoza being the number one overall pick,

but also because Dalton, you're a Jets fan, and now you could take two swings to the bat here inside the first round, and then actually you get to also make the pick at 44 in the second round in today's video, too. So I want to hear your thoughts, and we probably should have talked about it beforehand, but we could do this however you want predictive or what you would do. I'm open to it either way. To me personally, what I've been doing with guests is like the first 20 picks, maybe the first round we're trying to do predictive. But I don't know, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this. It feels like in most drafts you get to pick 50 and then like the tree, it kind of just like all these boards going off in a thousand different directions feels like this year that might happen to pick 20 maybe it's by like pick 30 but it feels like you get to pick 20 it's just it's kind of a craft shoot there so I'll let you make your your mind up here what you want to do predictive versus what what you think the actual jets are going to do here at number two honestly I think in this draft it's only going to be predictive maybe up to pick seven or eight maybe nine with the chiefs i don't i don't think i don't think beyond the top ten there's anything there's not much predictive we can do it all because i think one thing when you go through and there's something something i wrote about um last week it was for every fall 32 teams is look they all have multiple needs, right? And if you think about, you know, just the different directions that most of them could go, there's different options, especially on the defensive side of the ball in this draft. So I think it really starts here with the Jets. You know, I know there's, I know Arvel Reese, everybody's kind of locking into this number two pick, but I do think it's fascinating to watch Reese. And I did one final

watch on him this past week. And I think, look, I have Sunny Stiles as LB1 and Reese's

LB2, right? And then if you're talking about the Jets really looking into an edge player, yes,

there's a ton of potential, but I don't have them right this minute as high as I do Ruben Bain or David Bailey.

So I think the question is, is what do you do have the time to develop Reese into one or the other?

Now, personally, I would take him in a hybrid role as a linebacker first who can sub down and play on the line of scrimmage for, let's say, 150, 200 snaps.

The Eagles did that with Jehad Campbell this past year. But the talent that, you know, the athletic talent is obviously there. It's just a matter of needing to have a plan of development for him. So if we're doing it predictive, it's going to be Arvell Reese. It feels like it just feels like, what are we down to minus like 300 odds or something that this is going to happen. But if you're just taking him to only play on the edge, I think you could consider somebody else like a Ruben Bain. I really do. I think they're going to take Reese. I would have to put some heavy thought into if I was running the Jets, just the process and what we're going to do with Reese. For me, I would take him as a hybrid. I would start him at linebacker. I would probably trade Jamie and Sherwood and get out of the contract and have Reese learn next to DeMario Davis. And then he can kind of be the Joker in your defense. But I think I do, I do want to throw out there that if you're going to use him as a full-time edge rusher like he declared himself at the combine. There needs to be some real thought put into that because he's not all the way there yet, especially as a past rusher. Yeah, no, I'm with you. And I think there's a lot of special athleticism, right? And I can't remember exactly what game it is, but he has this crazy Ben that he puts on display. It might be Northwestern game, but I might be just talking too far away from the tape. But you see a lot of the natural God-given ability there. But like the pass rush plan, the hand usage, I'm with you there. It's going to take some time. And I do almost wonder, yeah, this three-four move as much as I'm like, Nichols the new base in the NFL, is that a way that can kind of facilitate, hey, 50% of your time here, 50% of your time there. So I'm with you. It's definitely awesome flashes when you do see it from Reese, but it's exactly that. It's flashes. So I kind of like your thoughts there about Sunny Stiles. If not for the contract situation, I wonder if they would do that. But if you take Stiles at two, he's like immediately one of the top-aid linebackers in the league.

So I don't know if the Jets are fully there. And also, so I'll make Arvel Reese the pick here at two. And you mentioned to Mario Davis. I wonder if there's a world here, especially why you're cross-streening Reese. Maybe that pick at 44, like if Josiah Trotter or insert linebacker you love here, is still there.

I wonder if you could still double dip at that position

with the long-term plan that Reese will play edge. And I just feel like in the immediate to Mario Davis, R.V.L. Reese, let's just say it's Josiah Trotter. Like that is so much more violence, tenacity, really run defense at the middle of that defense that just gets a huge boost.

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