Daily Slop – 9 Apr 25 – 34 prospects attend Commanders’ local pro day on Tuesday ahead of this month’s draft

A collection of articles, podcasts & tweets from around the web to keep you in touch with the Commanders, the NFC East, the NFL and sports in general, and a sprinkling of other stuff

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Bullock’s Film Room (subscription)

NFL Draft Profile: RB Omarion Hampton

Recent speculation suggests some teams view Hampton as closer to Jeanty than he’s currently ranked, which could well mean he’s gone long before the Commanders pick at 29. However, if he were to fall to 29, he’d likely be one of the top players available based on talent alone. So in that scenario, would Hampton make sense for the Washington Commanders? Let’s dive into the film to see.

The first thing that stood out to me when I watched Hampton was just how smooth he is. He never looks particularly troubled or panicked, he doesn’t look like one of those guys that has to work incredibly hard to earn every yard they get. Hampton makes things look so much easier than they are because he has such a well-rounded skill set that enables him to do so many different things.

There were many points in that play that it all could have broken down and turned into a negative play or a minimal gain, but at each obstacle he faced, Hampton showed poise and made the correct decision to extend the play and eventually worked his way through the first two levels of the defense. We also saw a good example of his contact balance as he fought through a tackle to gain more yards. That contact balance is one of his best traits and it shows up regularly in key situations to enable him to gain extra yards.

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Commanders.com

Javon Kinlaw set to be ‘tone-setter’ for Commanders defense

“He’s explosive,” Peters said at league meetings last week. “He’s a tone-setter. He’s physical. He can line up across the line.”

Kinlaw, a first-round pick from San Francisco in 2020 when Peters was a member of the team’s front office, returned to Washington, D.C., to play for his childhood team on a reported three-year deal. It was one of the few long-term contracts the Commanders gave out this season, as they chose to sign most of their two dozen free agents to one-year deals for the second straight year.

Peters said Kinlaw’s “best football is still ahead of him,” and the Commanders are banking on their belief that they can maximize the physical traits that enticed the 49ers so much when they drafted him. Up to this point in Kinlaw’s career, there have been more flashes, rather than consistent production, for teams to go on. He’s appeared in 58 games over the last five years and recorded 110 tackles and 9.5 sacks with the 49ers and New York Jets.

But as Peters pointed out, outlining Kinlaw’s career requires more context. He only played in four games in 2021 because of a season-ending knee injury. He suffered another knee injury early in the 2022 season and missed 11 games before returning in Week 16. He’s been healthy the last two seasons and appeared in 34 consecutive games.

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Commanders Wire

Star safety prospect attends Commanders local pro day

Star Penn State safety Kevin Winston Jr was among the 34 prospects who attended the Commanders’ local pro day on Tuesday.

Winston Jr was a sure lock for the first round of the 2025 NFL draft before partially tearing his ACL in early September. The preseason All-American and team captain was the Big Ten Defensive Player of the Week in the first game for the Nittany Lions, and was headed for a monster final season in college. The 21-year-old is still listed as the fourth-best safety in the 2025 draft class by PFF, and a projected top 90 pick in the draft.

The 2024 film was cut short for Winston, but the 2023 resume shows that the former Nittany Lion is an elite safety that a team will be getting a steal on at an injury discount. Winston Jr. is a franchise-caliber safety who can line up as a strong safety in the box and in deep coverage. Kevin finished 2023 as the fourth-highest graded safety in the country with an 89.2 overall grade and the highest graded tackler at safety with a 92.8 grade, and he only missed two tackles in his career. Don’t let the tackle numbers lead you to think that Winston Jr. is only a run stopper, because he also finished 2023 with an 86.8 coverage grade to go with it, making him one of the more polished and complete safeties in the country.

Washington Commanders work out PFF’s highest graded wide receiver draft prospect

South Alabama wide receiver Jamaal Pritchett tells me that he worked out for the Washington Commanders in Alabama on Monday morning.

Pritchett has made the most of his draft process this offseason as he represented the home team at the Senior Bowl against the top prospects in the NFL draft. After being snubbed from an invite to the NFL Combine, Jamaal would go on to blow scouts away at South Alabama’s pro day with a 4.39-4.42 40-yard dash, and a 9-foot-9 broad jump.

The productive wide receiver prospect finished the 2024 season with an 88.2 PFF grade against zone coverage, the highest among all wide receivers in the 2025 NFL draft. Prichett had 91 catches in 2024, the third-most in the country. The former Jaguar also led the nation in yards after catch, with 759 of his 1,126 yards coming after the ball was in his hands, making him an open-field weapon.

Jamaal Pritchett also added punt returner to his resume in his final season at South Alabama with 12 returns for 183 yards at a 15.3 yards per return average, and added a touchdown. Washington doesn’t have a clear special-teams returner on the roster right now, and can certainly add Pritchett to the mix of options if they draft him in April.

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Podcasts & videos

Noah Brown is BACK for More MAGIC | Next Man Up | Washington Commanders | NFL Free Agency

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NFC East links

Blogging the Boys

Why the Joe Milton trade is a much better deal for the Cowboys than the move for Trey Lance

They rolled the dice when they traded for Trey Lance, the former no. 3 overall pick in the 2021 NFL Draft. Lance was an incredibly raw quarterback when he entered the league and only threw 102 passes before the San Francisco 49ers decided to give up on him. The brain-trust at The Star believed there was still something there and gave the 49ers a fourth-round pick in exchange for the last two years of his rookie deal.

Because the Cowboys acquired him in late August of 2023, he only had one training camp with the team. He never saw the field that season and only saw any real action in one game over his two seasons with the team. He finished his career in Dallas going 25 for 41 for 266 yards with no touchdowns and one interception. Needless to say, the Lance trade didn’t work out so well for the Cowboys.

Not to be discouraged, the Cowboys are making another trip to the ‘pet sematary’, hoping things will work out differently this time. The team has given it another go by making a trade with the New England Patriots for last year’s sixth-round pick, Joe Milton.

Things are different this time. At least, that is what we want to believe. Milton doesn’t have the draft pedigree of Lance, but his inexperience as a pocket passer is evident which is why he was a late-round pick. The Patriots invested their third-overall pick in Drake Maye last year, and they bought some insurance in the form of Joshua Dobbs in free agency, so it was going to be a tight squeeze to keep Milton on the team as he would serve only as a development guy to keep in their back pocket.

But now, he’s in the Cowboys’ pocket. For a fanbase that’s had to witness the underwhelming arm strength of Rush over the last few years, the rocket arm of Milton is quite intriguing. But we shouldn’t ignore that the Patriots had him in their clubhouse for a year and were perfectly okay with giving him up for almost nothing. The Cowboys gave up a late fifth-round pick but got an early seventh-rounder in return, making the cost of acquiring Milton equivalent to a sixth-round pick.

The gist of it is that Milton needs a lot of work. He’s a big guy with a big arm who will elude pressure and make some fun plays, but to believe he’s a guy who can step in and keep the offense humming, that’s a little optimistic. Entering the league, Milton had several passing deficiencies that made him not quite ready for Sunday action. The biggest knock has been throwing catchable balls. He didn’t throw his guys open or have a soft touch, as he just rifled his passes to his receivers. He would tip off where he was going with the ball, allowing defenders a chance to contest his throws. While he did a good job taking care of the ball, he wasn’t a guy who could make accurate throws down the field. During his last year in college, he completed just 38.6 percent of his throws beyond 10 yards.

The Cowboys will enter the upcoming season with a new project quarterback, but things are different this time. The cost was way less and the team gets three years of player control instead of just two. They’ll also have more than just one training camp to work with him. What Milton ultimately becomes is unknown, but credit the Cowboys for trying and doing so at a low cost.

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Big Blue View

New York Giants to host former Bears DE for free agent visit

DeMarcus Walker had 7.0 sacks playing for Shane Bowen in 2022

Walker, who will be 31 in September, was a second-round pick by the Denver Broncos in 2017. He played four years for the Broncos, one each for the Houston Texans and Tennessee Titans, and the last two seasons with the Chicago Bears. As a member of the Titans in 2022, Walker played for Shane Bowen, Tennessee defensive coordinator at the time. Walker had a career-best 7.0 sacks that season.

Walker started all 17 games for the Bears in 2024, finishing with 3.5 sacks and a career-high 47 tackles.

In 100 career regular-season games, including 42 starts, Walker has 26.5 sacks.

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Articles

ESPN

Does Deshaun Watson have a future in Cleveland, the NFL?

Watson, who has been one of the NFL’s worst quarterbacks since joining the Browns, is rehabbing from a right Achilles tendon injury that cut his season short for a second straight year and could sideline him for the 2025 season. Speculation had risen about his future in Cleveland even before Haslam’s candid admission at the league meetings. But his words cast further doubt whether Watson will play another down for the Browns, even as his bloated contract keeps him in Cleveland for at least one more season — while executives and agents around the league expressed doubt to ESPN that the former Pro Bowl quarterback will get another opportunity in the NFL, even if healthy.

[In 2024], he threw five touchdown passes and failed to reach 200 passing yards in any of his seven starts. Watson then ruptured his right Achilles tendon against the Cincinnati Bengals in October. The injury was met with cheers from the Cleveland home crowd. Three months later, the Browns announced Watson had a second surgery on his Achilles after tearing it again this winter and would miss a significant portion of the 2025 season.

In 19 starts for the Browns, Watson’s 34.2 Total QBR is second worst to the Tennessee Titans’ Will Levis among qualified passers. But now, with Watson’s expected lengthy absence, the front office is left to completely remodel the quarterbacks room. The Browns did not re-sign Jameis Winston, last year’s backup, and in March, the team traded for 2022 first-round pick Kenny Pickett, sending the Philadelphia Eagles a fifth-round pick and quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson.

Cleveland hasn’t provided an update on Watson’s status, saying it’s too early for a definitive return timeline.

“I think [doctors are] confident that he can [return from injury],” Jimmy Haslam said, “but you got to do it, you know what I mean?”

Watson tearing his Achilles again impacts his rehab “pretty significantly.”

“Anytime you have [to] go back in somewhere, it changes the ballgame a little bit … typically that means slower recovery in the beginning and a longer overall recovery, and the clock starts back over,” the specialist said. “So, now you’re looking at closer to 10 months to a year. I mean, it’s nine months again, if you’re lucky.”

The specialist said expectations for the recovery period for multiple tears need to be “tamped down a little bit.”

“I would say there’s … [more] likelihood that he doesn’t play [in 2025] than he does, from a medical standpoint,” the specialist said. “That’s not including what the team might want to do with him in terms of whether they would risk him playing, if they’re going to move on from him.”

The Browns owe Watson $46 million in each of the next two seasons and have already restructured his contract multiple times — most recently in March — converting salary to a bonus and pushing cap charges into the future to free space. There is $173 million in cap hits remaining on Watson’s contract, and parting ways with him this offseason would mean the entirety of that dead money…is placed on the 2025 season, which would make filling out the roster for the fall impractical.

According to a copy of Watson’s contract obtained by ESPN last fall, the Browns have up to $44.2 million of his 2025 salary insured.

“If released, I don’t see anyone picking him up,” an NFC executive told ESPN. “And then, down the road, the question will be, will he take low-QB money? Would he even be motivated to play at that point?”

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Front Office Sports

NFL Gives Fans What They Want: More Throwback Uniform Games

Throwback and alternate jerseys already overindex in sales among NFL fans. Now, that trend is set to expand as the league further liberalizes its rules.

Team owners at last week’s annual league meeting in Florida approved a shift in which teams will be allowed to wear alternate uniforms as many as four times during the season, up from a prior three times per club. Critically, teams also gained approval to wear alternate helmets with primary home and road jerseys, creating many additional potential uniform combinations.

The change will also mean that particularly popular NFL throwback uniforms, such as the Kelly green of the Super Bowl LIX champion Eagles, the Buccaneers’ “Creamsicles,” and the Broncos’ “Orange Crush” jerseys, can be worn for nearly a quarter of the regular season.

Alternates and throwbacks amount to as much as 30% of all NFL jersey sales—a figure outstripping their presence on the field and showing their outsized popularity with fans. Players also have frequently lauded the alternate looks.

There will still be some guardrails in the NFL uniform expansion, however, including a prohibition on alternate jerseys in the Super Bowl.

“[C]onsistency…needs to be there from a brand standpoint,” said NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. “When someone turns on the TV, it’s great to see a new uniform, a new look, but you also want to know it’s the Denver Broncos.”

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Discussion topics

ESPN

2025 NFL mock draft: Kiper’s pick predictions for Rounds 1-2

You’ll notice some shake-ups since my last mock draft in March. Things could get interesting right off the bat, and I shuffled landing spots in the top five. Over the course of two rounds, there are a few risers and fallers, too, based on what I’ve heard in my discussions with NFL execs and coaches. And I have five quarterbacks getting picked, including two in the top 10.

Let’s dig into my predictions for the first 64 picks. And for more on these potential selections, check out the “SportsCenter Special” and listen to the “First Draft” podcast.

61. Washington Commanders

Darien Porter, CB, Iowa State

I’m intrigued by Porter as a Day 2 pick because there’s a lot of untapped potential. He’s a former receiver who is still learning the nuances of the cornerback position. He has 4.3 40 speed, plenty of length and the ball skills to create takeaways. Porter picked off three passes last season. The Commanders added Jonathan Jones and [re-signed] Noah Igbinoghene to replace Benjamin St-Juste and Emmanuel Forbes Jr. (who was cut last season), but Porter could develop into a starter.

One other consideration: Oklahoma State’s Nick Martin would be an interesting addition to the linebacker corps. He is a fast riser late in the process.

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All aTwitter

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