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  • college football playoff semis tomorrow.

  • Can't wait for that.

  • And how about this?

  • ESPN draft analyst Todd McShay released his updated prospect rankings for the 2021 NFL draft yesterday.

  • You see him right there.

  • There are four players in the top 10 that will be playing in tomorrow's college football playoff games.

  • One of the biggest differences, though, in McShane's latest rankings, is that Ohio State Cube Justin Fields is dropped from second to ninth overall, falling behind BYU QB Zach Wilson, who a lot of teams seem to like.

  • So let's bring in Adam Schefter here.

  • How likely is it that Fields drops to be the third quarterback taken after all?

  • Well, I think that's a distinct possibility, Laura, when you think about this about a month or two ago, Mel Kiper Jr himself said that he saw Trevor Lawrence and Justin Fields as quarterbacks.

  • One and one A, and this threat and Justin Field still may go Number two, but I think Zach Wilson is clearly gaining on him.

  • So it will be important for Justin Fields to leave NFL scouts with one final memory here in this college football playoff.

  • Play well and try to boost up his stock one more time.

  • The draft process has a lot of twists and turns to it.

  • Player stocks rise and fall inexplicably over the weeks of analysis.

  • But the fact of the matter is, I don't think that Justin Field is right there with Trevor Lawrence anymore.

  • I think is right there right now.

  • Is Zach Wilson.

  • Yeah, I think there's always a little bit of Recency bias that kind of takes place at this time of year, especially in a season where right now that the players have really stopped and started and stopped and started in the case of Ohio State, have played just a small number of games.

  • And I think with Justin Fields in particular, you have to take into account his entire body of work and not just look at his most recent games and say, Well, you know what?

  • This is more indicative of what he's going to be long term, the quest, the fact that matters.

  • You don't really know what he is going to be long term because he's a guy who is still at the early stages of his development.

  • But make no mistake about it, the better he plays in this football game, the MAWR.

  • He will calm some of the fears that have kind of crept up recently as far as his ability to make good decisions, be accurate with the football and be consisted overall, a good performance will help that.

  • But you know, this is just kind of like the world we live in right now, especially with quarterbacks.

  • I mean, evaluations change all over the place, and especially when he's gonna be going up against the guy who right now is considered to be the consensus number one overall player in the draft in Trevor Lawrence.

  • A good showing against him toe where maybe they go ahead and pull out a win will do nothing but boost his stock.

  • But I think you have to take air, picture the entire body of work, and there's gonna be a lot of evaluation that's gonna take place after this game anyway.

  • So I think you know, the book is yet to be written, you know, on Justin Fields.

  • Key word there for me was when Lucy and evaluation, right, like they every scout, every general manager knows that this has been a different year for these guys and evaluation is gonna be the most important thing.

  • And I'm gonna tell you right now, Justin Fields is gonna blow people away in the evaluation process from an athletic standpoint, arm strength standpoint and ability to just kind of be a guy where we see in the vein of what this league is, we have obviously Lamar and Russ and Josh Allen now coming along, showing the athleticism, the big time arm and ability t to progress like Josh Allen is a great example of brand a bowl of organization investing and really tutoring their quarterback to become what they need him to be in order to win games.

  • I'm sure there'll be a lot of teams for Justin Fields with the same type of mindset of mentality.

  • The measurables are off the charts.

  • Alright, the arm strength is off the charts and there is film of Justin Fields balling out of his mind in a lot of games in college.

  • So I think the evaluation process this year will be Mawr magnified than than most others.

  • Look, Joe Burrow was the first overall draft pick because of a of a college season.

  • Alright, that's why Joe Burrow went first.

  • It wasn't the evaluation process because he did not have the strongest arm was not the most athletic, but he had those intangible things.

  • One.

  • A lot of games had a lot of great moments in this regard.

  • Just the field has a leg up because this evaluation would probably be more important than what we've ever seen in the draft.

  • Yeah, one thing to guys to remember.

  • This has been such a crazy, unprecedented year for college kids.

  • These guys were a lot younger than these NFL players trying to deal with all of that, Ohio State in particular, just trying to even play enough games to feel like they were in the mix.

  • The Big 10 has to bend the rules to even get him in the championship game.

  • It's been something that you would think that the draft scouts, the analysts everybody would take into consideration.

  • Okay, let's talk about who else you're watching non quarterbacks in the college football playoff semifinals on ESPN tomorrow.

  • Marcus, Who are you watching in Ohio State?

  • Clinton.

  • That's not a quarterback for me.

  • Is Trey sermon running back for Ohio State?

  • Listen, when they were struggling against Northwestern.

  • One of the reasons why we having this conversation about just the fields.

  • Ryan.

  • They decided toe handle football off and let this young man take over the football game and that he did so if if if Ohio State is going toe have success in this playoff against Clemson and potentially in the national championship, he's gonna have to have a huge stamp on this game.

  • Don't throw it all the way around the yard, be a little bit balance and allowed trade to be the man.

  • Yeah, and I'm gonna take a running back on the opposite side of the ledger here.

  • And that's Travis at TN from from Clemson.

  • And look, this is this is a good back.

  • Now this is a guy who can run inside outside the tackles.

  • He can catch the ball out of the backfield.

  • He's a guy who could run with power.

  • He has breakaway speed, and we all know this.

  • We all know that despite the fact that that we have a lot of debate about how much you should pay running backs, we know the rookie running backs that don't have a lot of trade on their tires are a sought after commodity big game tonight will help him.

  • Or, rather, a big game tomorrow night will help him out tremendously.

  • The other semifinal game, the Rose Bowl, featuring Notre Dame and Alabama.

  • Marcus, give me a player in that non quarterback that you're looking out for.

  • Oh, you know who I'm looking out for.

  • Devante Smith in the Heisman conversation, but a dynamic wide receiver and everybody talks about his ability to run past people, but he catches the ball in tough situations.

  • He's a slender build guy that's not afraid to go over the middle.

  • I love what they've done with him from an offensive standpoint to show how much skill and talent he has.

  • And don't forget.

  • This is, well, special teams because he will take one to the crib on you If you ain't watching.

  • Yeah, I'll tell you what.

  • I'm watching the entire unit off the Alabama defense right now, specifically, their past defense.

  • Look, this hasn't been a pass defense that is up to Nick Saban's usual standards, knowing that he is a former defensive back coach.

  • He coached me when I was with the Cleveland Browns, and you could just see Nick and his body language on the sidelines.

  • Sometimes when they blow coverages, he is about to throw a fit and blow a gas because I want to see how this defense plays in this football game because they have had some issues and he's someone who you know quite right away, whether or not he's happy or not with their past defense.

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college football playoff semis tomorrow.

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