Building the Beast: The 2026 WR draft class is taking shape
The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL
The Athletic
4.6 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 22 October 2025
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As we get to the final Saturday in October, certain elements of what will be come the 2026 NFL Draft picture are at least approaching a degree of focus. Alabama quarterback Ty Simpson, for example, is certainly climbing up the quarterback ranks. Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love is cementing himself as RB1. Jordyn Tyson and Chris Bell are leading a deep group of top-50 wide receivers. Dane Brugler and Dave Helman set the draft table, with Week 8's games freshly in mind, on this episode of The Athletic Football Show's Building the Beast.
Connect with The Athletic Football Show
X: https://x.com/TA_FootballShow
IG: https://www.instagram.com/tafootballshow
YT: https://www.youtube.com/@TAFootballShow
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tafootballshow
Discord: http://discord.gg/theathleticfootballshow
Call us: 847-448-0701
Email us: athleticfootballshow@gmail.com
Host: Dave Helman
Co-Host: Dane Brugler
Executive Producer: Michael Beller
Video Producer: Michael Ayaub
Audio Producer: Katy Duffy
Social Producer: Scott Krinch
Follow Dave on Bluesky: @davehelman.bsky.social
Follow Dave on X: @davehelman_
Follow Dane on X: @dpbrugler
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
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to another episode of Building the Beast. |
| 0:06.3 | I am your host, Dave Hellman, and each week during the college football season, we are here to build the beast. |
| 0:12.5 | Dane Bruegler's comprehensive, exhaustive, NFL draft guide. |
| 0:17.2 | Every single weekend, the 2026 edition is being built prospect by prospect. |
| 0:22.5 | And that's what we're here to do. |
| 0:23.8 | We are looking through this year's college football season, |
| 0:27.1 | identifying the best, the most intriguing prospects that might be part of this year's |
| 0:32.5 | 2026 NFL draft class. |
| 0:34.1 | Another fun episode with Dan Bruegler and myself. Let's get into it. |
| 0:38.5 | And I am joined now as always by my guy, my friend, my co-host, my draft Sherpa, Dane Bruegler. And buddy, I'm excited for this show because I think I'm going to get some takes out of you as we inch into the second half of this college football season. How are we doing? Good. I mean, yeah, we're getting to that point, right? Where it's got to stand on something, right? No, you can't ride the fence. Uh, a man's got to have a code. Exactly. There you go. So, uh, like, we still got a lot of time, you know, things change. But, um, as we get to middle October and then Halloween, then Thanksgiving, like, uh, Hayes in the barn for a lot of these players, you know? |
| 1:29.4 | Like they put everything you want to see on tape. |
| 1:31.1 | Like you should have a really firm opinion on who these guys are. |
| 1:34.7 | And so we're getting to that point with some of these guys. |
| 1:38.1 | It is, it's wild to think like because, and I mean, I know playoff teams play. |
| 1:43.9 | I mean, if you're on a playoff team, you're going to wind up playing a ton of football |
| 1:46.5 | games. |
| 1:46.9 | But there aren't that many opportunities left for a lot of these college football players. |
| 1:53.3 | I mean, you have four, maybe five if you've had the right amount of biweeks games. |
| 1:59.2 | And so there, I mean, there is still time to make a different |
| 2:04.1 | impression but yeah like from a scouting perspective would you say it's fair to think that |
| 2:08.7 | opinions on these guys are maybe if they're not set in stone they're just kind of starting to firm up |
| 2:15.5 | like the the concrete is firming up a little bit on these evaluations. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Athletic, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Athletic and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.