Roundtable: Love/Hate NFL Draft Edition

Photo: USA Today Sports

Welcome to Week 15 of the 2022 Footballguys Roundtable. Our intrepid panel of fantasy pundits discusses and debates four topics every week. Topics are now split into separate features.

This week's roundtable features these four topics:

• Love/Hate: The NFL Draft Edition (see below)
• Long-Term Outlook for Late-Round/UDFA Rookie Performers
• Fantasy Playoff Lineup Decisions with Guts
• Fantasy Nightmare: Ravens-Browns

Love-Hate: The NFL Draft Edition

Matt Waldman: Give me a prospect likely to declare for the NFL Draft who you either A) Don't understand the love or B) Don't understand the hate.

Joseph Haggans: I don't understand the hype around quarterback Will Levis. Sure, he has amazing physical tools and an absolute cannon, but his processing is suspect at best. He had trouble besting out Sean Clifford at Penn State, a quarterback who is by no means a high-caliber prospect. While at Kentucky, Levis seemed to regress as a passer from 2021 to 2022. He had trouble going through his progressions and forced too many throws.

While he has terrific physical tools, his mental aspect of the game needs some real development. Let's not forget he is older than most quarterback prospects after just completing his fifth-year senior season. He is routinely brought up in the conversation of potential 1st round picks. With where his game is now, I just do not see him as a franchise quarterback, but more of a project. We have seen how players like this (Trey Lance) can be quite painful to a team's game plans.

Jason Wood: Anthony Richardson vexes me. The University of Florida quarterback is projected as a potential first-round pick, and I don't understand why. Yes, he was an elite high school recruit. Yes, he's a good athlete. But he was among the worst-performing quarterbacks in the BCS. He only completed 53.8% of passes and threw 17 touchdowns and 9 interceptions in 327 attempts.

I've seen draft analysts point to the success of Patrick Mahomes II, Josh Allen, and Jalen Hurts as reasons to target Richardson. Yet, each of those quarterbacks was in a different situation than most. Mahomes was a stat machine in college; it was merely a question of Texas Tech's lack of overall success and whether the system could translate into a pro-passing attack.