This week on The Off The Charts Football Podcast, our crew began NFL Draft positional breakdowns. James Weaver and Alex Vigderman were joined by Jordan Edwards, one of our most experienced scouts from our football operations department. Jordan is a key part of our team and wrote 10 of the scouting reports on our NFL Draft Website.

Their discussion focused on linebackers and defensive backs, and started with Ohio State's Arvell Reese, who played linebacker for the Buckeyes, but Jordan evaluated him as an edge rusher. Reese is our No. 2 Edge and the No. 4 overall player on our Big Board.

"He doesn't have as many reps as a true pass rusher that you would want to see from an Edge like David Bailey or Ruben Bain Jr.," said Jordan, who rated Reese high for his pursuit speed and play strength. "He only rushed the passer about a quarter of the time and he was still able to get a pressure rate above 25%, which is really really high for the edges in that group this year (he was +8% in pressures above expectation).

I think the skill set that he has translates really well to being an edge. The skill set he has as an off-ball linebacker would be at a high level as well."

Some of the other linebackers that Jordan brought up on the podcast included:

Sonny Styles - "He's an athletic freak. He had only two missed tackles this season. This is an ascending player. He plays with good stack and shed ability. He can throw off blockers at the point of attack. He's a really good tackler as well."

CJ Allen - " Super-instinctual, whether it's in coverage or against the run. Not a true high-end athlete like we talked about with Sonny Styles or Reese. But he plays super physical. He plays fast because he's so instinctual."

The team also spent about half the episode evaluating defensive backs, including:

Caleb Downs - "He's a defensive backs coach's dream, always doing the right thing. He's always around the ball. He's always making the right play. He's not a true middle-of-the-field free safety like Ed Reed or Kyle Hamilton. He's more the kind of guy that can play top-down, where you want him roaming the intermediate areas of the field where he is reading and reacting to the quarterback. He can change the way that your defense looks."

Mansoor Delane - "He's not necessarily a high-end height, weight, speed guy, but he is a really fluid athlete with fluid hips. Highly instinctual.  You can see him play in a lot of different coverages where he shows the comfort and feeling in zone coverage but he can also play in the boundary and take away your primary receiver as well."

In all, the three of them talked about 10 players from a scouting and statistical perspective. Check out the podcast to hear Jordan's comprehensive takes on these players. And visit the NFL Draft Website, which now has scouting reports on more than 350 players, too! 

Tiering The MLB Teams By Defensive Quality …

Mark Simon put only two teams in his ‘Excellent’ category for defense. Beyond that, there’s a lot of defensive parity.

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“Perhaps he fits McCarthy’s scheme,” writes Clayton Eckert of Steelers Depot.

These Two Balls Sure Looked Like Home Runs But They Weren’t

Ian Happ hit a ball that was knocked forward 113 feet by the wind(!) writes Mike Petriello of MLB.com.

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Our NFL Draft Website is a great resource. We’ve got scouting reports on more than 300 of the top players, with many more to come. With that, we’ve got ratings and rankings. It’s basically everything a GM would want to know.

Our statistical information package includes Total Points, our proprietary metric that values everything that happens on the field, as well as position-specific performance data in the form of raw totals, averages, and percentile rankings. And we explain our stats in our glossary.

And check out our NFL Draft Matrix, where you can see all our rankings at a glance …

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On Off the Charts, members of the R&D team, and special guests dig into statistical insights, tactical analysis, and personal opinions, aimed at providing listeners with a comprehensive understanding of the week's key matchups and the intricacies of the sport. On The SIS Baseball Podcast, we interview current players and coaches about defensive excellence and review the latest baseball news.

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The FieldingBible.com website is a great resource for your defensive stat needs. It features player and team stats, Defensive Runs Saved leaderboards, and more.