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The Atlanta Falcons are sitting with just five picks in this weekend's draft, but still have several needs to address. With wide receiver among the most pressing, who could make the most sense for them?

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00:00Josh Kendall's mock draft.
00:02Josh included a bunch of trades into this mock into how Ian Cunningham could be trading back,
00:10making all the trades to get us at least eight picks.
00:14So we covered Trayden Stooks earlier.
00:16He would be the second round pick at 52.
00:19In round three, and there is a lot that goes into this.
00:24I am following the maze.
00:25I'm laughing because I'm like, man, this is not easy to follow.
00:27It is not easy to follow.
00:29My eyes are going crossed on this, so keep up with me.
00:32If I get something wrong, correct me.
00:33He's got the Falcons trading pick number 79 and 231 to the Chiefs for number 84
00:39and a fourth round pick in 2027, which gives us Brennan Thompson,
00:44wide receiver at Mississippi State.
00:47Yeah, he's a quick little guy.
00:49He's not very big.
00:51He's an honest guy.
00:53He's like my size.
00:54I mean, he's 5'9", 165.
00:58But he can win against press coverage with his quickness off the line.
01:05He can track a deep ball.
01:06The guy, he's not a bad player.
01:08Problem is, he hasn't stayed healthy over a ton.
01:12He has had an issue with drops.
01:17And you're not getting much in the blocking game.
01:21But he is a deep ball threat.
01:24You could use him to create some plays with some jet sweeps and some screens and stuff.
01:33So you could use him in a few different ways.
01:36But he's just not the biggest guy.
01:41No, he's not.
01:44And I'll just speak broadly because I agree with everything Bo's kind of talking about.
01:48But I'll speak on this a little, you know, with a wider net here.
01:54The 42640, I'm hoping that's at least in their line of thinking, right?
02:01You know, this conversation around raising the ceiling or raising the floor
02:04and trading back and trading up and doing all kinds of stuff.
02:07I at least hope that somebody with the speed, and we've talked until we're blue in the face
02:12about the Zachariah branches and how I want all the yak yards.
02:16A 42640 and the 550-plus yard plays he had in college last year.
02:22I mean, that's speaking my language.
02:24I don't know that he's the guy.
02:25He's a little bit too slight for me like Bo was talking about.
02:30164 is just...
02:33164, I think, as a wide receiver is almost like talking about arm length for an edge rusher.
02:37It almost like, you know, the whole conversation about where's Ruben Bain going to get drafted
02:42and is he dropping out of the top, you know, 20 or whatever it may be,
02:46it's because of arm length and also because the off-the-field storyline kind of stuff.
02:51This, to me, when you talk about a guy that small, that's almost disqualifying.
02:55It's tough.
02:56But I do love the speed.
02:57I love the explosiveness.
02:58And I love the line of thinking of getting a player at that spot that can do some of those
03:02things.
03:02Bruce Feldman is a guy that I kind of respect as a writer.
03:06Covers college football for a very long time.
03:09Wrote a lot of books on college football.
03:11And he has a list he puts out every year called the...
03:14Like, it's his freak athlete of college football.
03:17This guy's on it.
03:19There's no doubt.
03:20I don't want to mince words.
03:23He is a freak athlete.
03:24He's a phenomenal athlete.
03:26He's small.
03:28He's not...
03:30He's going to be a guy that you probably can't really have in on a lot of any wide zone
03:37block in place
03:38where you need a wide receiver to do anything because he's not going to do much.
03:41But he can absolutely play.
03:44Do you want him coming across the middle, though, and getting lit up?
03:48I don't care if the league's changed or not.
03:49It ain't changed that much.
03:51So, that is why you bring up his size.
03:54But he could absolutely be a guy that you come in.
03:58I don't mind him in the fourth or fifth round kind of thing.
04:02I really don't.
04:03Because I think he could be really explosive and you could mix him.
04:08That's why the next pick I know you're going to get to, I like this pick better because of that
04:14pick.
04:15Well, yeah, the next guy's a little bit bigger.
04:17In round four, pick number 106.
04:19And this would have come from the Texans with a trade package in the second round.
04:23Chris Brazel, wide receiver from Tennessee, 6'4", 198.
04:26Yeah, I'm all on board with this.
04:27I talked about Brazel last week when we were covering some of the wide receivers and some of the depth
04:32at that position.
04:33I think that the ball skills are good.
04:35I think he's just fluid.
04:37He looks really fluid.
04:38And, you know, we touched on a couple of different wide receivers last week that's like running upright or look
04:45a little bit different.
04:46And I just think that he looked very, very fluid in the way he's able to attack the football.
04:49I like the playmaking ability.
04:51Yeah, he is.
04:52He's funny you said fluid.
04:54I wrote down tall and smooth in his routes.
04:56Yeah.
04:57His intermediate stuff is not the best, but he absolutely ate Georgia alive in the first half of that game
05:04in Knoxville last year.
05:06Some of those were contested catches and jump balls.
05:10Being 6'4", 200 pounds, and running well like he does, he ran a 4.37.
05:16That's a, that is, I mean, that's like watching, you know, a horse hit the Derby.
05:25You know, they're big, smooth, and fast.
05:28And that's kind of where he would fall in line.
05:31I'm a big, I actually really like him.
05:34And I think that I'm a bigger fan of Jeremy Bernard because I think Jeremy Bernard can run the entire
05:42route tree more than this guy.
05:47However, you do, you do have a couple of guys that fit that already that are under two-year deals.
05:53I think Elamide Zaccheaus can run the whole route tree.
05:55Drake London can obviously run the whole route tree.
05:58And Dotson even can.
06:00But this guy just gives you size and speed that you just don't have right now on this roster.
06:06So technically that would be the fourth round, right?
06:09Was it the third and fourth round you were okay with a wide receiver, Mike?
06:14Okay.
06:14Yeah, yeah, yeah.
06:14This is exactly, yeah, exactly what we talked about.
06:17I just feel like once you start getting outside of the realm of guys, and it's probably, you know, honestly
06:21a reason I had a bigger trouble with Brennan Thompson.
06:23If you start getting outside the realm of guys that have the number one, number two capability, then I'd be
06:30interested to see if we would go for that.
06:31Because I, like I said, project players, yes.
06:3520-27 in mind, sure.
06:36But it just seemed like last year we had a lot of guys that could have fit three through ten
06:41on the wide receiver roster.
06:43And, you know, none of that ever came to fruition.
06:45And so, swing for the fences, and this, honestly, the conversation between Jeremy Bernard, who he just brought up, and
06:51Chris Brazel, for me, goes back to the conversation we had last week.
06:55You're raising the floor, probably, with Jeremy Bernard.
06:58He's going to be very smooth.
06:59He's going to do a lot of good things.
07:00But I think you're raising the ceiling with a Brazel when he can run in the four threes and runs,
07:04you know, what, two tenths faster than Jeremy Bernard does.
07:08I think there's a lot of upside there.
07:09Well, Josh has the Falcons picking again in the fourth round at number 125, and this comes from trading pick
07:15number 122, and then a 20-27 seventh-round pick to the Patriots for 125 and 171.
07:22You've got all this, right?
07:23Because there's going to be a test later.
07:24I hope you've got it written down for me.
07:25I hope you do.
07:26So, this guy, much bigger, 6'4", 313 pounds.
07:30It's Chris McClellan, defensive tackle out of Missouri.
07:32Yeah, he's bigger than that.
07:34I don't know.
07:35I mean, he's 6'4".
07:36You read what he's listed at.
07:38Yeah.
07:38On film, he looked a hell of a lot bigger than 315 pounds.
07:42He looked at least 320, and he does a really good job of moving the pocket.
07:48I went back and watched a good bit on him, and I really enjoyed watching him play because he's a
07:55lot quicker than you would think he is for that size.
08:01He does a good job.
08:03He's got, get this, he's got 34-inch arms and 11-inch hands.
08:09This is a man.
08:10I mean, this dude is a big boy, I'm going to tell you what.
08:16But, but he does get a little high in his, not the bad way, but, well, bad way on the
08:23field, not the bad way off the field, but he gets kind of, he plays a little too tall.
08:27Um, and he doesn't move great laterally, but I, and I just thought, though, he did a good job of
08:33continuing to chase down plays.
08:35Um, he's quicker, he's quicker, uh, vertically than laterally.
08:40Um, and it's kind of, is that the same thing?
08:45That's the right way to say it.
08:46He can get up, feel quicker, and he can't get left, right?
08:49It's vertically.
08:52I was going to let him live.
08:53I was going to let him live.
08:54Hey, words are hard sometimes, man.
08:56I know, man.
08:57I was doing my best to hold it.
08:59Uh, no, but I, but I think, and I was going to ask you, so he was, he was at
09:02Florida, uh, for his younger years.
09:04Do you remember why he didn't make much of an impact at Florida?
09:08I don't.
09:08Is it developmental or what?
09:09I mean, yeah, because they've been trashed for years, and they, they've been undercoached.
09:14I mean, um, what was the kid, uh, Prince, Umani, uh, Melelin, or whatever the hell his name is, he,
09:21he left Florida, and he wasn't overly, uh, productive at Florida, and he went to Ole Miss for one year,
09:27has a great year, and now he's playing for Carolina.
09:30Gotcha.
09:30So, there's, there's been a lot of guys that, I like Chris McClellan, though.
09:34I really like him a lot.
09:35Uh, I would, I would, I know that Ian Cunningham said that, and it's being kind of, uh, used a
09:42little bit of a talking point incorrectly.
09:44He said this isn't a, uh, deep draft for the defensive tackles.
09:48He didn't say it wasn't good.
09:49He didn't say that there are about a few guys that are good.
09:52He just said it wasn't as deep as we've seen in the past.
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