Notre Dame Football: Seven Irish alumni land on PFF’s Top-250 big board

Pro Football Focus released their Top-250 Big Board for the 2019 NFL Draft. Let’s take a look at the former Notre Dame football players who made the list.

The 2019 NFL Draft is now just a few weeks away, and the mock drafts, big-boards, projections, and smokescreens are at a peak leading up to April 25th. Fittingly, Pro Football Focus just released their Top-250 Big Board of their top prospects entering this year’s draft.

With PFF, I’ve found that it’s always a good idea to take what they have to say with a grain of salt – or understand that it’s never as good as it seems and it’s never as bad as it seems. Statistics can be manipulated and sometimes not paint the full picture of what actually happens on the field. I’m not saying that’s all PFF does, as you’ll soon read, but statistic-based rankings that rely heavily on vague or ambiguous definitions certainly leaves room to make someone seem better or worse on paper than they actually are on the field.

Telling us who the best quarterbacks are at their ability to complete a pass on 2nd down and long into a “tight window” in the 3rd quarter when facing a four-man rush and zone coverage doesn’t tell the whole picture for that player. But, when the quarterback for your team makes that list, well, then PFF is the best and you can’t argue cold-hard facts!

Rant over; you get the point.

That being said, let’s take a look at where former Notre Dame players landed on this list and talk about the rankings that made sense and the ones that were a little surprising.

The Top-250 list includes these Notre Dame football players: DL Jerry Tillery (7th), CB Julian Love (45th), LB Te’von Coney (57th), WR Miles Boykin (87th), LB Drue Tranquill (90th), RB Dexter Williams (177th), and OG Alex Bars (236th).

Contrary to what you just read above, I don’t completely condemn everything about PFF. They do a good job of looking at metrics and other aspects of a player’s game that shows their value that one might not get from just looking at the stat sheet. We see this with Jerry Tillery’s ranking as the No. 7 overall prospect on the board. Though Tillery’s sack total didn’t pop off the page, he did tie Quinnen Williams for the highest pass-rushing grade among interior defenders in college football.

In this instance, PFF did a solid job of recognizing the value and talent of Tillery that one might not see by looking at his stats. Tillery has the size and abilities that warrant him being in the conversation as one of the elite interior defensive lineman of this draft class, and we’ll be hearing his name called on day one or early day two.

The first name we see that somewhat contradicts what we as Irish fans might think or feel is Julian Love. The all-time leader is pass deflections for Notre Dame was also ranked in the top-10 for forced incompletions and coverage stops in 2018. He was a finalist for the Jim Thorpe Award for the nation’s top defensive back, and put together solid numbers and drill work at the NFL Combine and Notre Dame Pro Day.

So, how is he the 45th ranked prospect behind six other cornerbacks? Well, I couldn’t tell you. Love is highly regarded as a first round talent and one of the best cornerbacks heading into the NFL Draft. These rankings won’t impact his draft stock in any way, but the Irish-bias in me sees him as a better prospect than guys ahead of him like Michigan State’s Justin Layne, Penn State’s Amani Oruwariye, and Michigan’s David Long.

There isn’t too much to say about Coney, Boykin, Tranquill, and Williams. Boykin, who greatly improved his NFL Draft stock at the Combine in March, might be more deserving of a higher ranking, but regardless he should be a day two, third-round pick.

The rest of the players mentioned will realistically be mid to late round picks. Te’von Coney seems to be higher on the list than many might consider, but his 90.5 coverage grade and 91.7 run-defense grade last season both ranked top-10 among all linebackers in college football.

The last name on this list, guard Alex Bars, is a welcome one, even if it is near the bottom. After Bar’s season-ending knee injury vs Stanford, Bars has spent the last seven-eight months rehabbing himself back to his NFL-caliber self. After clearing his medical exams at the NFL Combine, it seems as if Bars is on the right track.

As one of the highest-graded run blockers in the country while he was healthy, with a body of work that includes 32 starts in a golden helmet, Bars will either be a day-three steal or be one of the first lineman signed as an UDFA when the draft ends. Him being on this list is a great nod to his talent, even if it was only on display for the first five games in 2018.

Center Sam Mustipher and tight end Alize Mack were the two NFL prospects from Notre Dame who did not make the list. Again, that doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things, as both are expected to be later round picks.