Newsstand: Mel Kiper Jr. thinks top-10 selection would be 'too high' for J.J. McCarthy
It figures to be a busy week for Michigan Wolverines quarterback J.J. McCarthy and his teammates at the NFL Combine in Indianapolis, but his rising stock has been called into question by one of the profession’s most notable pundits.
ESPN’s Mel Kiper said this week on a podcast that for a team like the Atlanta Falcons, who have been mentioned as a potential landing spot for McCarthy with the No. 8 overall pick, it might be a bit too high to take a shot on the Michigan signal-caller.
“Try to move up [if you’re the Falcons],” Kiper said. “If you can move up and get Caleb (Williams) or Jayden (Daniels) or Drake (Maye)? I would be aggressive, if I were Atlanta, to try and do that,” Kiper said. “If you’re sitting at eight and you cannot move up? I’m not taking J.J. McCarthy at eight. It’s too high for me.”
McCarthy has a chance to be the highest Michigan quarterback drafted since head coach Jim Harbaugh in 1987, who went 26th overall to the Chicago Bears. Since then, U-M’s highest drafted passer is Chad Henne, who came off the board at No. 57 overall in the second round to the Miami Dolphins in 2008. The Wolverines have had only a single passer taken since then with Jake Rudock going in the sixth round to the Detroit Lions in 2016.
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“I think they have a good chance to break Georgia’s record set in 2022 of 15 draft picks. Jim Harbaugh predicted that before last season, people kind of rolled their eyes a little bit, but it turns out that they’re going to have a really good chance. So there’s a ton of talent. 18 guys, it’s going to be hard to keep track of all of them while we’re down there. We’ll be running our live blog over at TheWolverine.com as we always do. It’s always been kind of a tough job to track them, but when you have 18, it’s going to be that much tougher.”
– TheWolverine.com’s Clayton Sayfie on Michigan football’s output at the NFL Combine
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