Philadelphia Eagles: 3 Senior Bowl offensive prospects to keep an eye on
Though the 2020 NFL season is still technically going strong – you know, what with the Super Bowl and all that – draft season has already begun for teams like the Philadelphia Eagles, who are looking to rebuild their rosters and return to the game’s biggest stage.
With no combine to quantifiably determine each player’s specific athletic profile, teams, scouts, and internet talent evaluators alike will have to watch tape, rewatch tape, and rewatch tape some more to try to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each individual player before the big day comes at the end of April.
Will some players fall through the cracks? Most definitely. Will others get overdrafted based on Pro Day numbers and ultimately prove to be underwhelming versus where they are selected? Yeah, that will probably happen too. This is why exhibition contests like the Reese’s Senior Bowl will be even more valuable in 2021 than in seasons past to see who can genuinely hang and who may have been a product of a specific scheme.
The Philadelphia Eagles have a thing for Senior Bowl prospects.
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Spread out over a week in Mobile, Alabama, the Senior Bowl invites the best college football players around, assuming they’re seniors, and allows them to form a pair of improvised teams coached up by NFL coaching staffs to showcase their individual skills in a Saturday afternoon exhibition game.
Howie Roseman loves the Senior Bowl.
In 2020, Roseman selected three Senior Bowl participants – Davion Taylor, K’Von Wallace, Prince Tega Wanogho, and Jalen Hurts – and in 2019, the Eagles traded up two spots to select Andre Dillard 22nd overall, who many considered one of the biggest risers of the entire even.
Alright, so those players haven’t all been home runs, but if history is of any indication, the Eagles will surely walk away from the 2021 NFL Draft with some player from this year’s Senior Bowl, maybe even one in the first three rounds. But who should it be? Was there a player who genuinely rose their stock with an exemplary performance on the offensive or defensive side of the ball?
Michael Carter. 2. player. 838. . Running Back. Tar Heels
There was not an offensive player who showed out better at the 2021 Reese’s Senior Bowl than UNC running back Michael Carter.
Sure, quarterbacks like Feleipe Franks, Jamie Newman, and specifically Kellen Mond will garner most of the national headlines – and justifiably so – but it was the 5-foot-8, 199-pound power rusher who led the game in rushing yards, had the longest carry of the game at 27 yards, and recorded the lone rushing touchdown of the game with an absolute highlight-reel run where he trucked through the entire team into the endzone.
For Carter, this was a perfect cherry on top of a great college career. After playing a part-time role paired up with current Kansas State runner Jordan Brown and current Buffalo Bill Antonio Williams, Carter exploded onto the national scene with a pair of 1,000-plus yard seasons for the Tar Heels, including a senior year that saw the Navarre, Florida native average eight yards a carry and record nine rushing touchdowns.
Carter also found his greatest success as a receiver during his senior season, hauling in 25 balls for 267 yards and a pair of touchdowns.
Surely so, if you’re a running back needy team, specifically one looking for a runner in the Nick Chubb lineage, Carter is a borderline guaranteed second-round pick who could immediately impact NFL games right out of the gates as a rookie.
Pro comp: Nick Chubb if he was recruited by UNC, not Georgia