Scouting the NFL draft comes down to identifying red flags and deciding which ones you’re most willing to deal with. It’s not much different than dating.
Here is the biggest red flag for three of the New York Jets’ top targets in the first round of the 2025 NFL draft.
Penn State TE Tyler Warren: Breakout age
Tyler Warren will be 23 years old in May, which puts him on the older end of the spectrum for a first-round pick.
Since 2020, only 16% of first-round picks were aged 23 and up (on Sept. 1 of rookie season). Those picks have had very limited success so far.
Through four seasons of college football, Warren had 49 receptions for 606 yards and 11 touchdowns (38 games). His best season came as a 21-year-old in 2023, when he posted 34 receptions for 422 yards and seven touchdowns (13 games).
That’s not a bad season for a fourth-year tight end, but it certainly doesn’t scream “seventh overall pick.” If Warren is such a special prospect, why didn’t he stand out earlier in his career? Teams thinking about using a top-10 pick on Warren must ask themselves this question.
Oftentimes, the answer is that the player had competition for targets or snaps, but that isn’t a strong argument here.
In 2023, Penn State’s top target was redshirt junior wide receiver Keandre Lambert-Smith, who transferred to Auburn after the year and is now projected as a late-Day 3 pick in the 2025 draft. Warren was tied for second on the team in receptions with another fourth-year tight end, Theo Johnson, who also matched Warren’s seven touchdowns. Johnson went on to become a fourth-round pick in the 2024 draft.
On his 22nd birthday, Warren did not have anything close to a first-round resume. Compare that to the 2024 NFL draft’s most coveted tight end, Brock Bowers. When Bowers turned 22, he already had 87 receptions for 933 yards in 13 NFL games.
Yet, Bowers slipped to No. 13 overall, and now, the Jets are considering taking Warren at No. 7.
Compare Warren’s production at each stage of his career to that of Michigan tight end Colston Loveland, who is widely viewed as the TE2 in this year’s class:
- Year 1: Loveland, 16/235/2 (14 GP); Warren, 0/0/0 (2 GP)
- Year 2: Loveland, 45/649/4 (15 GP); Warren, 5/61/1 (13 GP)
- Year 3: Loveland, 56/582/5 (10 GP); Warren, 10/123/3 (12 GP)
- Year 4: Loveland, N/A; Warren, 34/422/7 (13 GP)
- Year 5: Loveland, N/A; Warren, 104/1233/8 (16 GP)
Warren’s 2024 season was special. By all means, he deserves to be a first-round pick. Nonetheless, it is a red flag when a player’s production spikes after his fourth college season. Teams need to deduce whether the player truly developed or if he just maximized his advantages in experience and physical development.
Missouri OT Armand Membou: Late draft-board rise
There was a little bit of first-round buzz for Armand Membou after the 2024 season, but he wasn’t a consensus first-round prospect, let alone a top-10 candidate.
On January 12, Membou was the No. 46 overall prospect on NFL Mock Draft Database’s consensus big board. His stock skyrocketed after his mesmerizing combine performance. Since then, he has been solidified as a top 10 prospect.
While combine data has some predictive value, it should always raise an eyebrow when a prospect’s stock rises dramatically due to his workout numbers. Think about the logic of it: Membou was viewed as a mid-second-rounder, and now, after teams watched him run in a 40-yard straight line in a tank top, he’s a top-10 pick?
Membou’s workout performance is tantalizing, and teams should take it into account. At the same time, they need to evaluate his film independent of his measurables. They must watch his college tape without attaching numbers to it, simply asking themselves, “Is this a top 10 football player in the class?”
That could absolutely be the case. Jets X-Factor’s Joe Blewett dove into Membou’s film and saw the makeup of a top-tier tackle prospect.
Prospects like Membou highlight the importance of separating the measurables from the film. He might very well have top-10 film, and if that is the case, he is a bona fide top-10 prospect when you toss in his gaudy measurables. But if teams are not all that high on his film, they should be wary of falling for the hype around his physical makeup.
When someone undergoes a dramatic rise or fall late in the draft process, it calls for a second review of their film. Whether it’s fair or not, there are more than three months between the end of the college season and the draft, which provides numerous avenues for players to rise and fall on the draft board through variables that did not occur on the football field.
Sometimes, you just need to weed out the noise about 40 times, RAS scores, top-30 visits, and pro days, and just go back to the essence of it all: the damn football game.
To give my personal two cents, I think Membou’s film warrants his hype as a top-10 prospect. Again, though, his meteoric post-season rise is an eyebrow-raiser that warrants a thorough second look.
LSU OT Will Campbell: Arm length
At the combine, Will Campbell measured in with 32⅝-inch arms, placing him in the seventh percentile among tackle prospects all-time. It caused many prognosticators to immediately convert him to a guard prospect.
Over a month later, it appears that Campbell still projects to be drafted in the top 10 as a tackle, but time will tell. Even if he does stick at tackle in the NFL, Campbell needs to prove himself as an outlier.
As silly as it can seem to ding a touted prospect because his arms are three-eighths of an inch shorter than an arbitrary benchmark, there is enough historical evidence for it to be taken seriously.
The 33-inch mark is popularly mentioned as the cut-off that teams use for a tackle’s arm length. In 2024, just six of the 67 tackles who played at least 500 snaps had arms measuring under 33 inches (9%).
That list includes some solid players. Five of the six earned an overall Pro Football Focus grade of at least 70.0 in the 2024 season (which is approximately the median among starters), the exception being Braden Smith, who still had a respectable 66.2 grade.
Four of the six players primarily lined up at right tackle. Bernhard Raimann and Alaric Jackson were the only two starting left tackles (min. 500 snaps) with arms under 33 inches. They were both very successful; Raimann was PFF’s fifth-ranked left tackle while Jackson placed 12th. Campbell, who exclusively played left tackle at LSU, is hoping to join them (although a move to right tackle would likely be in store if the Jets draft him).
It goes to show that short-armed tackles can be successful starters in the NFL – just that they are the exception.
Most likely, the reason that all six of these players produced solid grades is that teams quickly move sub-33-inch players to guard if they don’t appear cut out for the tackle position. One applicable example is Peter Skoronski. The Northwestern prospect measured with 32¼-inch arms after an extremely productive three-year collegiate run at left tackle. Chosen 11th overall by the Titans in 2023, Tennessee immediately moved Skoronski to guard after drafting him.
There were no poorly graded sub-33-inch starting tackles in 2024 because teams do not waste their time with the experiment if it doesn’t work. When a short-armed tackle struggles, they can quickly blame it on the arm length and kick him inside. Short-armed tackles need to make their mark quickly for teams to trust them. It is paramount that they can really play football, down to the nitty-gritty of technique, fundamentals, and IQ.
If Campbell can play, he can play. There are enough T. rex success stories in the NFL for teams to give Campbell a shot at tackle when considering his excellent pedigree and standout film.
Still, Campbell’s arm measurement generated headlines for a reason. NFL teams are extremely hesitant to rely on tackles with arms as short as his. Only very skilled players have been able to overcome it and last at the position, which means Campbell has a high bar to clear in terms of skill.
Therein lies the main repercussion of Campbell’s arm measurement: he has to stand out more as a pure football player than most other tackle prospects.
The measurement does not rule him out from being a tackle; rather, he needs to be unusually talented to make up for it. A tackle with sufficient arm length would not have this same concern looming over him when teams watch his film. Campbell will always have this dark cloud for the rest of his career, so his technique needs to stand out in a big way to convince teams to overlook it.
