What I heard during a busy week at the NFL combine

I've been in Indianapolis all week. Here's the scuttlebutt.

NFL Draft LB Jihaad Campbell at the NFL combine

The NFL combine week is coming to a close. The late-night bar scene is dying out and most NFL media and personnel are hitting the roads.

This week has not been without cause, however, even if NFL combine winners and losers pieces are stupid. It’s a great week to meet up with scouts and agents that a connection has been built with over the years, and the starting point of most NFL trades and rumors with all 32 teams in the same city.

Those long hours at the bars after a full day of media and testing were not without results! The streets were buzzing, so I collected, sifted, and tried to make sense of as much information as I could.

Here are some of the most prominent talking points I heard this week as the NFL Draft now sits less than two months away:

Alabama LB Jihaad Campbell isn’t getting out of the top 20

I didn’t expect the player that I’d hear the most about coming out of the combine to be an off-ball linebacker, but here we are. Alabama’s Jihaad Campbell is going to get drafted extremely high.

I was told by one team picking in the top 20 that they will sprint the card up if he is on the board when they come on the clock. The problem they foresee, however, is that they don’t know if he’ll even be on the board.

While Campbell ran a 4.52 40-yard dash, a time that was slower than anticipated, teams have tracking data on him that shows he’s one of the fastest players in the draft class regardless of position.

He is a top 20 player on my board and one of the best coverage linebackers I’ve seen in recent years. Add that with his 6-foot-3 and 235-pound frame and we could be looking at a rare linebacker in a couple of years.

Teams that make sense for Campbell in the top 20 include the Indianapolis Colts, Arizona Cardinals, Cincinnati Bengals, Seattle Seahawks, and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Everybody loves Texas DB Jahdae Barron

Everybody loves Jahdae Barron.

Whether he’s viewed as a safety, apex defender, or outside cornerback, the love for the Texas fifth-year senior is the same. And this was before he took to the turf and burned a 4.39 40-yard dash, hit 35 inches in his vertical jump, and 10-foot-3 in his broad jump. Teams are raving over his intangibles and ability to hunt the football.

With 900 career snaps in the slot, 1,100 at outside cornerback, and 500 in the box throughout his time at Texas, some defensive coordinator is going to fall in love with Barron earlier than one might anticipate.

Pen Barron into the first round of your mock drafts from here on out. He’s not making it out of the top 32.

Signing Aaron Rodgers wouldn’t stop the Giants from trading up to 1

After missing out on Matthew Stafford, a quarterback they were in hot pursuit of, the New York Giants are reportedly pivoting to Aaron Rodgers. However, at 41 years old and nothing more than a one-year deal likely to be the case, the Giants are still hunting a trade-up with the Tennessee Titans for a quarterback of the future.

That quarterback? Miami’s Cam Ward. The Giants would need to get in front of the Cleveland Browns, who ESPN’s Adam Schefter stated is a foregone conclusion to draft a quarterback.

The Giants were aggressive in trying to come up for Drake Maye with the New England Patriots last year, and it doesn’t seem like they’re content to sit on their thumbs this year. After all, general manager Joe Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll enter the season sitting on the hottest seats of all.

Justin Fields free agency rumors

With numerous quarterback-needy teams, the rumors surrounding former first round picks with big tools continue to dominate the winds. Especially after the gap-year success of Sam Darnold in Minnesota, teams are more willing to take that shot.

A quarterback I’ve heard a lot about this week? Justin Fields.

The rumor out of Indianapolis is as follows: the Pittsburgh Steelers don’t want Russell Wilson back. So much so that they have a low-ball offer on the table that they anticipate he will find disrespectful. They want Fields. But at the right price.

The only issue, however, is that the New York Jets also want Fields on a gap-year-type deal to recover from the Rodgers debacle. So Fields’ agent, super-agent David Mulugheta, is using that to leverage his price up.

We’ll see what the outcome is between Pittsburgh and the Big Apple, but the amount of money Fields is going to get is going to cause eyes to pop out of heads.

James Pearce Jr. may fall further than you could imagine

Everyone knows how athletic Tennessee EDGE James Pearce Jr. is. He came into the season as some analyst’s top prospect in the class from summer scouting. But his junior year in Knoxville did not go to plan in 2024.

I was told that the Tennessee football program could not only breathe easier once Pearce left campus but that his pitch count in SEC play was not injury related. Pearce was seen as undeniably uncoachable and as a player with one foot out the door already this season, giving his coaches little incentive to put him on the field full-time.

Pending the Mike Green reports that have flooded the media over the past month, I was told by one scout that Pearce Jr. is seen as the player with the worst character report of any player in this draft class.

Another scout told me they think the environment and people around him in Tennessee are the main issues, and they think he could become a pro when he enters an NFL building.

I was left with a final note that while the general public would be stunned to see it happen, NFL personnel won’t be shocked to see him on the board after the first 64 picks in the draft.

Jalen Milroe still viewed as QB3

Jalen Milroe is a complete project. This is extremely evident.

But based on analysts and scouts I spoke with in Indianapolis, the overwhelming consensus is that teams are more willing to take a Day 2 shot at Milroe's upside than “what you see is what you get” players like Ole Miss’ Jaxson Dart, Ohio State’s Will Howard, and Louisville’s Tyler Shough.

*ahem* the hype around Dart and Shough isn’t real anyway.

The ball would be completely in Milroe’s court, but at least half the teams also have running back grades on him. He’ll be allowed to give the quarterback thing a try, but it’s not hard for NFL teams to see a consistent 1,000-yard rusher out of a 220-pound demon who runs a sub-4.4 40-yard dash.

This is what makes a Day 2 investment and even a top 50 investment low-risk: There are multiple ways to hit on Milroe.