The Ghost of Joel Buchsbaum

Thoughts on Abdul Carter, Jaxson Dart, Aeneas Peebles and the very nature of draft coverage itself.

Abdul Carter is pretty much Micah Parsons.

That’s it. That’s the scouting profile. Will you subscribe to my Substack now? Please?

Carter is an edge rusher from Penn State. Parsons is an edge rusher from Penn State. Carter started out as an off-ball linebacker before moving to the edge. So did Parsons.

Carter lists at 6-3, 251 pounds, though we will get official measurements in a few days. Parsons measured 6-3, 246 pounds at the 2021 Combine. Carter is from Philly; Parsons is from Harrisburg, a two-hour Turnpike drive away. (Three if you get stuck on the Schuylkill Expressway or Blue Route.) Both players have four-syllable names with the same poetic scansion.

Adding Carter to your defense is like adding a dozen sacks per year for the next five years, barring injury and accounting for some growing pains (eight sacks in 2025, 14 each in 2026 and 2027). His upside is a few more sacks and his downside is a few less.

Now can I be your source for exclusive, extensive draft coverage?

No, no, no: what I am doing is called “program scouting,” and it is very bad. Comparing prospects to similar past players from the same college is evidence that I did not grind the film down to the granular level at which Carter is so different from Parsons that only a Philistine or Muggle would make the comparison.

College programs recruit similar high school athletes to fill similar roles, then coach them according to similar principles and surround them with similar teammates to face similar opponents, so of course there should be some recognition of similarity baked into the entire process of evaluating a prospect. Penn State wanted Carter to be Parsons. Carter, at some level, wanted to be Parsons. So perhaps we should recognize that Carter is now pretty much Parsons.

Oops. Is what I am saying heresy?

Should’ve expected that.

At the risk of digging myself a deeper grave, Carter recorded 12.0 sacks and was credited by Sports Info Solutions with 66 pressures in 2024. Parsons, who was still playing a lot of linebacker in his final college season, recorded just five sacks and 23 pressures in 2019. So perhaps Carter has a higher upside than even Parsons had!

Though perhaps not: Carter’s pressure rate in 2024 was 28.0%, Parsons 27.1% for the Nitany Lions in 2019. Very similar. And Carter played more games. Carter now has far more experience on the edge than Parsons had leaving college, but perhaps Parsons’ off-ball experience is the secret sauce that makes him so hard to block.

Egads: I am not compounding “program scouting” with “box score scouting,” in which statistics are offered as evidence of a players’ strengths and weaknesses. What am I thinking? Carter is NOTHING like Parsons. I’m too attuned to minute details of his athletic profile and game film to make such a sloppy error. He’s more of a [scans NFL sack leaderboard for feasible alternative] Will Anderson!

43 Words on Deone Walker

I’m sorry. I have this epistemological/existential crisis every year as I frantically prepare for the draft. I’m never certain whether I am conducting draft research so I can infotain readers, improve my own knowledge or simply for the sake of performing draft research. It often feels like half of my colleagues and the entire industry are doing the third thing.

Carter = Parsons is only one symptom of the crisis. Upon returning from the Senior Bowl, I wrote the following sentence about Kentucky defensive tackle Deone Walker: Walker stands a hair over 6-foot-7, weighed 330 pounds at the Senior Bowl, can be as explosive as a tight end in his first three steps, hustles in pursuit, and I am not sure why you need to read any more about him.

I wrote more about Walker, in part because there are a few flaws to his game (you can guess them from his measurements), in part because I got a fun quote from him. That quote will be part of Walker’s profile when the Too Deep Ninety-Six, the cornerstone of Too Deep Zone’s draft coverage, goes live sometime in mid-March. But how much more about Walker do you really need? Athletic giant interior defender. Got it.

It did not take me much web searching to find a 596-word scouting profile on Walker, complete with bullet-point strengths and weaknesses and his college stat lines written out longform to pad the word count. (Search engines count words to determine if something is worth including in a search; it’s remarkable how many words you can eat up with “As a freshman in 2022, this kid recorded three sacks and 2.0 tackles for a loss in 11 games …”)

Walker is going to get drafted midway through the second round and disappear into the trenches. He could end up starting for a decade and being named a Pro Bowl alternate a few times without receiving another 596-word profile for the rest of his career. When is the last time you read a feature about Nnamdi Madubuike?

A Canticle for Buchsbaum

The wordy, redundant, jargon-heavy-yet-vague scouting reports I stumbled across again this year as I shifted my draft prep into third gear inspired me to dig out one of my old Joel Buchsbaum Pro Football Weekly Draft Previews. Those little digests represented nearly the sum total of all written pre-draft content about 25 years ago, when folks like me began diving into the draftnik pool for fun and/or profit.

What follows is Buchsbaum’s entire profile of Michael Vick in the 2001 draft preview.

Notes: Left-handed passer. Redshirted in 1998. Set the college football world on its ear as a second year freshman, when he completed 90-of-152 passes for 1,840 yards, 12 touchdowns and four interceptions and carried the ball 108 times for 585 yards and eight scores. Named All-Big East while finishing third in the Heisman voting and leading Virginia Tech to a perfect season and the right to play Florida State in the Sugar Bowl. In that game, Vick’s team came up short, but he was valiant in defeat, completing 15-29-225-1 and carrying the ball 23-97-1. Was in the running for the Heisman in 2000 until he suffered a high ankle sprain vs. Pittsburgh. Tried to play but was not effective in the Miami (Fla.) game and really struggled until the Gator Bowl, where he won game MVP honors. For the season, Vick completed 87-161-1,234-8-6 and ran 104-617-8.

Positives: Natural leader the other players seem to gravitate to. Great competitor. Wants to be the best and wants to win. May have been the best pure athlete in the country the past two years. Has superior speed and quickness. Outstanding runner and scrambler with a great blend of speed, quickness, power and niftiness. Very difficult to sack. Must be kept inside the pocket because if he gets outside, he can run or throw for big yardage. Has a superquick, no-windup throwing motion and terrific arm strength. Arm is so strong he can throw with great velocity and great distance despite the fact that he does not step into his throws. Has exceptional football instincts and vision. Can make the amazing pass or throw at any time. Will literally flick the ball with his wrist and throw a BB 15 yards or throw a perfect arched pass 59 yards down the field. Great improviser. Can turn any broken play into a big play. A defensive coordinator’s worst nightmare. Could develop into a true franchise player.

Negatives: On the short side. Is just barely six-feet tall. May have some trouble seeing from the pocket. Only played two years of college football and is not prepared for the NFL. May have a hard time going from everyone’s hero in college to a multimillionaire player whom everyone seems to want a piece of. More of an option-running-type quarterback in college. Has undeveloped throwing mechanics and some bad habits. Does not always hold the ball up like he should. A lot of times, he throws without stepping into the throw, relying solely on pure arm strength. Never has had to do much in the way of reading coverages. Will make some bad decisions with the ball at times. Has small (eight-inch) hands, which could lead to problems holding on to the ball and gripping it in rainy or very cold weather. (Remember Dave Krieg?) Lacks patience. Generally does not go through his progressions and just bolts the pocket if his primary receiver is covered. At times he holds on to the ball too long and seems confused. May not know how to really watch game film. Within two weeks of entering his name into the NFL draft pool, he changed agents and supporting cast, which may show instability and immaturity on his part.

Summary: Is not ready for the NFL but may still be the first player picked because he is such a great and magical athlete and has such a remarkable combination of speed, running skills, football instincts, toughness and arm strength. By coming out this early, he has a far greater chance of never fully realizing his potential in the NFL. May be in a position where he has to play right away because of the type of money the top pick in the draft gets. Then the team that drafts him probably just has to turn him loose and let him continue his schoolyard, spontaneous style of play without learning the correct way to maximize his throwing ability and read coverages.

Buchsbaum covers Vick, the most important/polarizing prospect in the 2001 draft and perhaps the trickiest player of his era to contextualize and evaluate, in 658 words. With a little editing of the inelegant sentences, Buchsbaum could have gotten below 600 without sacrificing substance. A defensive tackle in Walker’s proverbial weight class might have merited just 200 words in 2001.

Notice how low on jargon the Vick scouting report is. Buchsbaum consulted with the likes of Bill Parcells. He could have spewed insider-speak if he chose to. But who would have understood it then? Who truly understands it today? When I was an altar boy, the official diocesan manual still had phonetic transcriptions of Latin prayers, just in case we had to parrot back incomprehensible syllables to the priest during some obscure rite. When I read some draft profiles, the writer sounds a little like me trying to recite gloria in excelsis deo phonetically.

No, not that Dio.

No. Keep going.

That’s better. Where was I?

Buchsbaum really encapsulates Vick in those 658 words: lefty, short king, greatest scrambler ever, “magical” athlete, rushed to the pros early, undeveloped mechanics and overall game. The bits about Vick’s immaturity are politically incorrect by today’s standards – Buchsbaum’s successor Nolan Narwocki would start getting personal/racially insensitive a decade later and be drummed off the Internet – but history illustrated that Vick was indeed not fully prepared for wealth and fame. Vick wasn’t thrown onto the field right away by the Falcons, but the rest of Buchsbaum’s profile was as prescient as any prognostication could hope to be about Vick in the late winter of 2001.

Buchsbaum’s spirit lives on in Greg Zierlein, friend-of-the-Zone Chad Reuter and the other folks who run the NFL.com draft tracker. Zierlein covers Walker in a crisp 235 words.

The NFL.com scouting reports are free and easy to access. NFL.com writers can get ahold of resources that I must really dig for; as rights holders, they don’t have to beg Central Arkansas or go on the dark web to find useful film on David Walker. The NFL.com analysis, while sometimes purposely clinical/academic, is always accurate.

So why try to compete with something that’s free, widely available and entirely satisfactory?

Fewer than 43 Words on David Walker

For many, draft analysis is a labor of love. Those with a true passion and talent for it, from Matt Miller to Jordan Reid, have bubbled to the top of a very unlucrative industry. I too genuinely enjoy watching Senior Bowl pit drills, re-watching LSU cutups six times, sifting through databases and writing up my own conclusions about prospects. At least the early-round guys. By the 13th best guard in the draft, saying anything more than “large lad from B1G school push hard” requires some perseverance.

It’s hard to feel the love, however, when searching “David Walker Central Arkansas” for basic biographical data and tripping over boilerplate content that sounds suspiciously like AI paraphrases of Zierlein/Reuter/Miller/Reid. Who is the target audience for such content? The uncomfortable answer: me. I ingest draft content so I can provide draft content. It’s a closed loop. It’s a Pre-Draft Centipede. It’s scary and gross.

Walker, by the way, was the 2024 Buck Buchanan Award winner (best FCS-level defender). He’s a burly 267-pound edge rusher who passed the Senior Bowl eyeball test with some thumping reps against major-program offensive linemen. I lack the bandwidth to chase down film of him, so I am left watching artifacts like Central Arkansas-versus-Lamar cut-ups, which are only somewhat helpful. I cannot imagine writing a longer profile about him without bluffing and/or plagiarizing, or perhaps doing something really radical like interviewing him.

If he performs well at the Combine, I’m guessing most fans will be content to label Walker the “award-winning small-college edge rusher who performed well at the Senior Bowl and Combine.” If that is all you need to hear, then isn’t that all I should say?

Sprinkle With Stats to Taste

This is an odd way to promote my draft coverage: it sounds like I am trying to short-change you or set expectations low. The opposite is true: my goal is make sure that if I write 600 words about Abdul Carter, they are the freshest, choicest, tastiest words. And numbers.

Abdul Carter led the nation with 46 hurries in 2024. He finished second to Boston College’s Donovan Ezeiruaku, a South Jersey local hero, with 66 pressures. (Ezeiruaku recorded 69 pressures and 41 hurries.) Carter’s pressures and hurries are the highest figures for a Penn State defender in the Sports Info Solution database, which dates back to 2016. Micah Parsons, Chop Robinson and Arnold Ebikitie could not come close to Carter’s pressure production.

The SIS database is an invaluable tool that Buchsbaum could only have dreamed of. It tells me that Shedeur Sanders led the nation in sacks (42) and pressures (190). It tells me that Texas cornerback Jahdae Barron played 517 coverage snaps in 2024 (tops in the nation), was targeted just 51 times, allowed a completion rate of 39.2% and a quarterback rating on throws to his receivers of 26.5. How much more of a scouting report do you need of an SEC cornerback than that? Barron is plays the slot well and is an aggressive tackler. Are we done here?

While we have already seen that many draft profiles begin with a recounting of a prospect’s raw numbers, deeper statistical observations and draft analysis rarely mix. There are some good reasons for this: databases like SIS are pricey; relevant nuggets can be hard to find; college stats can be misleading in a hundred ways.

But there are also silly, genre-based reasons why draft profiles rarely list simple stats like dropped passes or pressures. The “draftnik” is supposed to be a film-based purist, rewinding plays over and over again and carefully studying the locations of feet and elbows, perhaps by candlelight, in the same way that a detective novelist is supposed to be a grizzled alcoholic pounding away on a Remington typewriter and a 19th century poet is supposed to be swooning on a chaise lounge. Some folks find something almost romantic about the draftnik “lifestyle,” and I get it. But for those folks, verifying scouting notes with stats, or vice versa, must feel like running The Maltese Falcon or Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage through Grammarly.

Aeneas Peebles’ Calling Card

Quotes, like stats, will be an important ingredient of the Too Deep Ninety-Six.

Like stats, quotes must be carefully curated. Most prospects aren’t compelling speakers, and we tend to ask them boring questions. Even a semi-generic quote from a prospect, however, does more to give readers a sense of who he is than Scouting Bullet Point Seven (sometimes loses leverage when countering bull rushes by Wide-9 defenders who dip beneath his outside shoulder. Thanks. I will be looking for that when he faces the Titans in Week 5.)

Aeneas Peebles, a shortish defensive tackle from Virginia Tech, demonstrated exceptional quickness off the snap during Senior Bowl practices. “I was blessed with being 6-foot-1,” he quipped after one practice, his smile underscoring the fact that his height is no “blessing” on the interior line. “If I'm going to make money doing this game, it's going to be that way. So I embrace that.”

Peebles’ calling card is indeed his initial quickness. Also, why do we still use the term “calling card?” Calling cards were common in the 18th-19th century: if you were of the social classes and visited someone by horse and buggy when they were not at home, you left a business card-like item letting them know who you were, where you could be found and what you were “calling” about.

The telephone, automobile and other advancements in transportation and communication rendered the calling card obsolete: it was less common for someone to show up at someone else’s doorstep unannounced and unscheduled. Business cards are also becoming specialized-use products now that we can just save important contact information on our smartphones.

Peebles’ calling card is indeed his initial quickness is therefore a hacky, florid way to say “Peebles is very quick.” I’m sorry I led the previous paragraph that way.

Peebles is very quick. He recorded 30 pressures for the Hokies in 2024, tied for fifth in the nation with Mason Graham (Michigan) and Gracen Halton (Oklahoma) among defensive tackles. Graham will be a top 10 pick in this draft. Halton could be a top 10 pick in 2026. Peebles’ pressure rate (11.1%) is higher than Graham’s (9.4%), which by no means makes him a better prospect than Graham but does provide a sense of his potential impact.

So Peebles is short, thicc, quick, splashed at the Senior Bowl and produces metrics on par with the biggest-name prospects at his position. He will indeed make money doing this game. What more are you interested in reading?

Blind Jaxson Darts

Attending Senior Bowl week is important for me, not just to see prospects like Peebles close-up and hear them in their own words, but because I sometimes see things differently than other attendees.

For example, there was a lot of buzz surrounding Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart coming out of Mobile. I cannot imagine why. He spent the first practice fumbling under-center snaps, and the second mostly flinging easy passes into the flats during 7-on-7 and full-squad drills. I missed the third and final practice; maybe he blossomed into Justin Herbert that day. Or maybe the 2025 draft just needs a third quarterback after Cam Ward and Sanders, and Jalen Milroe was even less impressive at Senior Bowl week than Dart.

While watching Ole Miss games and cut-ups over the last month, I was alarmed by how often Dart got skittish and rushed inaccurate throws under pressure. So I was surprised to discover that he had very good pressure stats, per SIS: a 46.3% completion rate (solid), 9.7 yards per attempt (fantastic) and 28 sacks (manageable).

A deeper dig revealed that Dart was 9-of-14 for 171 yards and two touchdowns under pressure against Arkansas and 8-of-11 for 165 yards and one touchdown against Duke in the Gator Bowl. Against LSU, meanwhile, he was 1-of-9 for -1 yard and six sacks (!) when pressured. He went 1-for-4 with an interception under pressure against Georgia, 1-for-4 with four sacks against Florida and 0-for-4 with a sack and an interception against Wake Forest.

Dart, in other words, was excellent under pressure in a few games and terrible in others. I tend to focus heavily on games against opponents like Georgia and LSU, for obvious reasons.

I’ll keep honing my opinion on Dart, but for now I see a Mitch Trubisky-type who looks really good throwing to wide-open receivers from a clean pocket but will get a coach fired when he is asked to do anything else. I saw nothing in Mobile to change that assessment.

Tight Ends and Shallow Draft Pools

Of course, sometimes everyone watching a Senior Bowl practice sees the same thing. Cowboys reporter Marcus Mosher takes excellent videos during practices. Here’s his footage of some yummy reps by Miami tight end Elijah Arroyo:

Arroyo lost most of his 2022 and 2023 seasons to an ACL injury and dislocated kneecap. He caught 35 passes and seven touchdowns for Miami in 2024, but Cam Ward had lots of weapons to throw to, so Arroyo did not exactly pop. He popped in Mobile.

This is an excellent draft class for tight ends, which may be a sign that it’s not a very good draft class overall. Tight ends only stand out from the crowd when the crowd is a little thin.

The 2017 draft class was deep at tight end – O.J. Howard, Evan Engram and David Njoku were all first-round picks – and turned out to be full of first-round clunkers except for some semi-decent players like Patrick Mahomes and Myles Garrett. Trubisky, Solomon Thomas, Corey Davis and John Ross were all top-10 picks that year, and the first round also included some forgettable players like Howard, Gareon Conley, Takkarist McKinley, Charles Harris and Taco Charlton.

Of course, the overall quality of a draft class is an academic matter to teams and individual fan bases: there is always All Pro talent lurking about, even if it is hidden among the Tacos and Trubiskys. And the later rounds of the 2017 draft produced Cooper Kupp, George Kittle, Alvin Kamara, Trey Hendrickson, Budda Baker and many others. It pays to dig deeper into any draft class.

There truly are plenty of intriguing tight end prospects in this year’s class: Penn State’s multi-talented Tyler Warren, Michigan’s speedy Colson Loveland, Arroyo, LSU’s Mason Taylor (Jason Taylor is his dad; Zack Thomas his maternal uncle) and Bowling Green’s Harold Fannin Jr., who led all 2024 receivers (not just tight ends) with 117 receptions. Chiefs fans love this draft class: they are hoping a Travis Kelce replacement falls to them at 31. Not even Warren looks like a Kelce to me – I preferred Brock Bowers to any of this year’s tight ends – but this is a better year to be seeking a tight end than to be seeking, say, a quarterback.

Let Us Hear the Conclusion of the Whole Matter

As you can tell, my draft coverage is like raw cookie dough right now. It needs to be spooned onto a sheet and baked. But I may have solved my annual dilemma. Am I drilling deeply into draft coverage to entertain you, inform myself or simply because it's expected? The answer is yes.

I want to find out what’s important, interesting, outstanding or potentially troubling about as many prospects as possible, then share that information with you in a way that we all find satisfying. We’ll take what we need to enjoy the draft, make a few predictions, place a few wagers, win some Discord debates, satisfy our passion for the NFL and make educated guesstimates about which teams should do what to help themselves the most. We’ll leave the parts that don’t interest us behind. The Too Deep Ninety-Six will be distinctive, insightful and a little idiosyncratic: kind of like those old Buchsbaum guides, except aged in old bourbon barrels and infused with THC. If you crave more conventional or deeper draft coverage, check my Substack recommendations, which include several draft-intensive sites.

Most of the Too Deep Ninety-Six will be for paid subscribers only. I hope you come aboard for the ride. But even if you aren’t ready to take that plunge just yet, remember: Abdul Carter is pretty much Micah Parsons. Everything else is just elaboration, and anyone who denies it is just trying way too hard.

This Week At Too Deep Zone: The NFL Executive-to-Human Translator, a wrapup of coach/GM media availabilities from the Combine, drops on Wednesday or Thursday. Probably Wednesday. The Umpteenth Annual Forty Awards run next Monday. Follow me on Bluesky @MikeTanier for daily Combine nuggets and silliness!