Building the Beast: All-Rookie Team for the first half of the NFL season
The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL
The Athletic
4.6 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 29 October 2025
⏱️ 70 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We're just about halfway through the NFL season, which means that we know a thing or two—maybe not more, but definitely a thing or two—about this year's rookie class. With that in mind, Dave Helman welcomes Trevor Sikkema from Pro Football Focus to this episode of The Athletic Football Show's Building the Beast to name this season's first half All-Rookie Team.
Rundown (timestamps are approximate)
4:47 Quarterback
10:10 Running Back
17:20 Wide Receiver
23:50 Tight End
27:00 Flex skill player
35:16 Offensive Tackles
40:06 Interior OL
46:34 Edge Rusher
53:33 Interior DL
59:24 Linebackers
1:00:49 Defensive Backs (nickel personnel)
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Host: Dave Helman
Co-Host: Dane Brugler
With: Trevor Sikkema
Executive Producer: Michael Beller
Video Producer: Katy Duffy
Audio Producer: Michael Beller
Social Producer: Scott Krinch
Follow Dave on Bluesky: @davehelman.bsky.social
Follow Trevor on Bluesky: @tampabaytre.bsky.social
Follow Dave on X: @davehelman_
Follow Dane on X: @dpbrugler
Follow Trevor on X: @TampaBayTre
Theme song: Haunted
Written by Dylan Slocum, Trevor Dietrich, Ruben Duarte, Kyle McAulay, and Meredith VanWoert / Performed by Spanish Love Songs
Courtesy of Pure Noise / By arrangement with Bank Robber Music, LLC
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to another episode of Building the Beast. |
| 0:05.9 | I am your host, Dave Hellman. |
| 0:07.6 | I'm going to take a little bit of a detour from the usual format. |
| 0:10.8 | Typically, myself and Dane Bruegler walk you through the 2025 college football season, |
| 0:16.3 | identifying prospects, looking at trends for the 2026 NFL draft class. |
| 0:20.4 | We are taking a brief pause. |
| 0:22.6 | Dane had some other work obligations this week. So we called in a substitute. And who better than our |
| 0:29.3 | guy, Trevor Sycambe, lead draft analyst for pro football focus. Absolutely phenomenal guy to |
| 0:34.8 | talk about draft, to talk about football. And we decided to switch things up. |
| 0:40.2 | We're nearing the midpoint of the NFL season here at the end of October. We wanted to look at |
| 0:45.8 | who is excelling in this current rookie draft class, the guys who just got drafted in the spring. |
| 0:51.4 | We don't want to completely ignore them, even if we are looking |
| 0:54.5 | forward to 2026. So Trevor agreed to sit down with me. And we put together our midpoint all |
| 1:00.1 | rookie teams, the most impressive guys on both sides of the ball through roughly half of this |
| 1:07.1 | 2025 season. Really great conversation with Trev about some of the most exciting young |
| 1:12.6 | players in the league. Let's get to it. |
| 1:20.8 | And joining me now, I feel like this is a, this is a very boilerplate introduction in the |
| 1:26.6 | podcast world, Trevor, to say you're the |
| 1:29.3 | busiest man in NFL media, but I know firsthand because you have worked closely with my |
| 1:37.2 | fiance. Like I have seen into your world. And I really do think you are the busiest guy |
| 1:42.9 | doing this, man. So thank you for carving out the time for us. Dude, I appreciate it. Carmen's schedule sometimes rivals mine. So I would say that maybe within your own roll decks of people that you know I might not be the most busy person. But busy is good, man. It means that I get to hop on shows with people like you with topics like this |
| 2:00.9 | and that's what makes a lot of fun so i appreciate you having me and i'm looking forward to this one |
... |
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