Your ‘sleepers’ and ‘your guys’ this draft
Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2026 1:26 pm
Who do you have as ‘sleepers’ or ‘your guys’ this year?
As always, hard to say who “my guys” are until we see where people end up being drafted. E.g., I love the CBs this year, and there are more than 10 different CBs I think would be getting end of Round 1 discussion in a different year, and a few of them are likely to fall out of the top 100. Any of those guys from Round 3 on I’d be excited about. From DAT, pretty clear I can at least say “my guys” include Zxavian Harris and Eli Heidenreich, both of whom I took 100ish picks higher than where I see them. Also really like Micah Morris, but didn’t want my DAT to turn into “lemme just grab B2B’s steelerfury board draft team”. There are about 11 excellent safeties as well…probably one will still be there in the 4th? But watch us draft a 25 year old safety with a 4.7 40 instead.
Carsen Ryan
Ryan is good at blocking, good at receiving, with essentially the best size/quickness combination in the class (255 pounds with a 6.97 3-cone; Roush has a strong argument for this though). He’s “overaged” by 10 days (August 22, 2003), which doesn’t seem all that significant to me. The other factor I assume is hurting him is length at 6’3”3/8, with 31”3/8 arms. Would like another 5/8” on both of those. RAS in the 9s as well. Somehow I’m not seeing him in top 300 lists…I might have him 150ish?
Aaron Hall
Not sure why Hall isn’t ranked higher, seeing him outside top 300s is weird. He’s slightly small for a DT at 297, but he was a 220 pound edge prospect a few years ago so fairly believable that he’s still adding bulk to his 6’4”, 33” armed frame. Two notable things in his favor: first, he led this class in TFL from the DT position, which is nice. Second, his timed agility is by far the best in this class, 4.37/7.28, pushing him to a nice 9.65 RAS (no other DT/OL comes close to those). I would have him in my top 100, assuming I have his birthday correct.
Birthday: 2003.30
Zavion Thomas
As a prospect, seems to me to be a simply much better version of Deion Burks, who Daniel Jeremiah has listed as #70 on his final ranking. Both are speed demons (who aren’t particularly good at playing WR), but Thomas is 20 months younger and 10 pounds heavier (190 vs 180). Burks had a nicer looking receiving total exceeding 600 yards vs. 493 for Thomas this past season, but Burks ran an extra 100ish routes to get those extra yards and finished slightly behind Thomas in yards/route run. That said, I’m not a Burks fan, so maybe not a worthwhile comparison; I have Thomas in the WR20 range and Burks well below.
As always, hard to say who “my guys” are until we see where people end up being drafted. E.g., I love the CBs this year, and there are more than 10 different CBs I think would be getting end of Round 1 discussion in a different year, and a few of them are likely to fall out of the top 100. Any of those guys from Round 3 on I’d be excited about. From DAT, pretty clear I can at least say “my guys” include Zxavian Harris and Eli Heidenreich, both of whom I took 100ish picks higher than where I see them. Also really like Micah Morris, but didn’t want my DAT to turn into “lemme just grab B2B’s steelerfury board draft team”. There are about 11 excellent safeties as well…probably one will still be there in the 4th? But watch us draft a 25 year old safety with a 4.7 40 instead.
Carsen Ryan
Ryan is good at blocking, good at receiving, with essentially the best size/quickness combination in the class (255 pounds with a 6.97 3-cone; Roush has a strong argument for this though). He’s “overaged” by 10 days (August 22, 2003), which doesn’t seem all that significant to me. The other factor I assume is hurting him is length at 6’3”3/8, with 31”3/8 arms. Would like another 5/8” on both of those. RAS in the 9s as well. Somehow I’m not seeing him in top 300 lists…I might have him 150ish?
Aaron Hall
Not sure why Hall isn’t ranked higher, seeing him outside top 300s is weird. He’s slightly small for a DT at 297, but he was a 220 pound edge prospect a few years ago so fairly believable that he’s still adding bulk to his 6’4”, 33” armed frame. Two notable things in his favor: first, he led this class in TFL from the DT position, which is nice. Second, his timed agility is by far the best in this class, 4.37/7.28, pushing him to a nice 9.65 RAS (no other DT/OL comes close to those). I would have him in my top 100, assuming I have his birthday correct.
Birthday: 2003.30
Zavion Thomas
As a prospect, seems to me to be a simply much better version of Deion Burks, who Daniel Jeremiah has listed as #70 on his final ranking. Both are speed demons (who aren’t particularly good at playing WR), but Thomas is 20 months younger and 10 pounds heavier (190 vs 180). Burks had a nicer looking receiving total exceeding 600 yards vs. 493 for Thomas this past season, but Burks ran an extra 100ish routes to get those extra yards and finished slightly behind Thomas in yards/route run. That said, I’m not a Burks fan, so maybe not a worthwhile comparison; I have Thomas in the WR20 range and Burks well below.