Thumbs up or down: Eagles writers weigh in on final four picks in rounds 6 and 7

The Eagles passed on Tom Donahoe favorite Alim McNeill, but would it have made sense to draft a nose tackle in the third round? McNeill could project as a three-technique in Jonathan Gannon’s scheme. But if he preferred Milton Williams — and judging by the giddy reaction conveniently released by the Eagles, he did — then it’s understandable why Howie Roseman chose one over the other.

Marlon Tuipulotu has nose tackle written all over him, but he’s not especially large by those standards. I can’t imagine there will be many snaps when the Eagles line him up directly over the center, but they need interior linemen for depth and the help against the run, and the Southern Cal product should be able to provide that.

He can play the three-technique, or at least did in college, and apparently improved as a pass rusher his senior season. So maybe there’s more to Tuipulotu than just his size. I like taking defensive linemen on Day 3. There are always diamonds to mine in the latter portion of the draft. Will Tuipulotu develop into a starter? Not likely. But he apparently has the right mindset for the pros and will be a positive presence in the locker room.

The only significant negative I can think of is that I have to become accustomed to spelling his last name.

» READ MORE: Eagles add Kerryon Johnson to suddenly crowded running back room

I’ve heard Tarron Jackson compared to Brandon Graham a lot, and well, aside from ability, I can see it. He’s a stocky defensive end out of Coastal Carolina who won at the point of attack with sheer strength and his low center of gravity. He’s got the prerequisite “high motor” to excel at the next level.

Of course, there’s plenty he doesn’t have, which is why he lasted until the sixth round. Maybe if he played for a bigger school or was a little larger — he’s listed as 6-foot-2, 254 pounds — he would have gone earlier. But ends need bend and Jackson’s hips are stiff. Maybe he’s a candidate to move inside on passing downs. Graham has shown that his type can have pass rushing success against guards. But Jackson’s an edge rusher and he could sneak on the roster with the Eagles lacking some depth.

LSU listed JaCoby Stevens as a safety and some teams projected him to play that position in the NFL. But he was more of a linebacker in college and the Eagles will apparently start him off there, as well. We’ve seen how the adjustment can be difficult for some prospects, but I imagine Stevens’ experience in the box should give him somewhat of a head start.

But there’s much more to playing linebacker in the pros than just positioning. As Jim Schwartz noted last year after the Eagles drafted two rookies, there is a steep learning curve because linebackers have so many responsibilities in both the pass and run. If Stevens lacks the necessary instincts, his tweener status will only be amplified.

He’s listed as 6-1, 212, which is probably too big for today’s safety, and too small for linebacker. He added weight last season and NFL scouts noted how it affected his game speed. It was one reason he lasted until the late sixth round. Stevens ran a 4.62 40-yard dash at his pro day, which isn’t slow for you or me, but it is for an NFL safety. It’s decent for a linebacker, though.

He won’t likely play on defense if he can’t win at the point of attack in the run game, though. Maybe the Eagles can find a role for Stevens, at least on special teams. And I can’t find any great fault in taking him when they did. But the odds are stacked against him, especially when the Eagles’ dubious track record of evaluating linebackers is considered. I’ll take that wager.

As far as I can tell, the Eagles got solid value in Patrick Johnson, who was a productive edge rusher at Tulane. He finished third in the nation with 10 sacks as a senior, and overall recorded 24½ sacks in his career. He mostly rushed from a two-point stance and thus was projected as a 3-4 outside linebacker by most NFL teams. The 6-foot-2, 240-pound Johnson is small for a 4-3 end. The Eagles announced him as a linebacker after the selection.

The Eagles will again employ a base 4-3 front, but defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon’s scheme will look different than Jim Schwartz’s. If he’s taking from Mike Zimmer’s defense with the Vikings — as most expect — he will rush many different packages. It’s not just going to be four down linemen pinning their ears back the overwhelming majority of the time. Maybe Johnson finds a role in that system. Anthony Barr has had success in Minnesota as a big linebacker who will sometimes set up on the edge.

Comparing Johnson to Barr may be a stretch, but when you’re drafting in the seventh round one of the things you’re looking for is upside. The Eagles may already have a candidate for that job with Genard Avery attempting to move from end to linebacker. Both are long shots to make the 53-man roster. But if Johnson falls short, at least he wasn’t traded for a fourth-rounder.

Even in a normal year, the sixth and seventh rounds of the draft are a crapshoot. Nobody knows that better than the Eagles.

In the nine drafts since striking gold in the sixth round in 2011 with Jason Kelce, the Eagles had selected 21 players in Rounds 6-7. Just five of them ever started a game for the Birds.

This year, because of the impact of COVID-19 on information-gathering and the extra year of eligibility that the NCAA gave players, the late rounds were even more of a guessing game.

A number of teams, including the Eagles, tried to get rid of many of their late-round picks. The Eagles did manage to foist a pair of sixth- and seventh-round picks on Washington for a 2022 fifth-rounder, but still wound up with four of the last 70 picks in the draft.

» READ MORE: Thumbs up or down: Eagles beat writers weigh in on fifth-round pick Kenny Gainwell

Bottom line: the Eagles were throwing darts with those picks on Day 3. They were looking for a single trait in a guy — impressive measurables, high college production, leadership ability, et al — that might lead them to think he might be able to play at this level.

This year, because there was so little in-person contact with players, the Eagles and other teams placed an even higher importance on the in-person interviews with players who were invited to the Senior Bowl.

Their three sixth-round picks — defensive tackle Marlon Tuipulotu, edge rusher Tarron Jackson and safety Jacoby Stevens – all were Senior Bowl invitees.

Can any of those three, or their last pick, seventh-round edge-rusher Patrick Johnson, play? Who knows.

Jackson and Jones both were their schools’ all-time sack leaders. Sure, it would be more impressive if they had accomplished that at a school in a Power-5 conference rather than the Sun Belt and Conference USA. But it’s something.

Jackson is an effort guy whom NFL Network analyst Brian Baldinger thinks has a chance to be “a poor man’s Brandon Graham.”

Added Baldinger: “That’s kind of what you’re hoping for if you’re them. For a sixth-round pick, you’ve got something to work with.”

Tuipuloto was a three-year starter at USC. He’s a hard-to-move guy who was a good run-plugger, but doesn’t have much pass-rush quickness. Then again, if he can give them something on first down and short-yardage, new defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon probably will be tickled to death.

Stevens is a a 6-1, 212-pound hybrid safety-linebacker, who played 43 games at LSU and started 30. Wore the vaunted No. 7 jersey last year which goes to LSU’s defensive team leader. Those are good things. There also were questions about his effort at times last year.

Stevens is a physical, sometimes undisciplined, player with good blitzing skills as evidenced by his five sacks in 2019. Though that happened to be LSU’s national championship season when they led everybody 40-0 at the end of the first quarter and were sending the house after opposing quarterbacks every play.

Are there any keepers among those last four picks? Who knows? And when I say who knows, I’m including Howie Roseman and Andy Weidl among that the group.

They threw darts, looked for a trait, are hoping for the best. We’ll find out soon enough whether there might be another Jason Kelce in the bunch or just a whole lot of JaCorey Shepherds and Alex McCalisters.

The Eagles ended up with four picks in the final two rounds of what was described as an extremely shallow draft — lots of players took advantage of the extra year of eligibility granted by the NCAA because of the pandemic, far fewer than half as many as normal signed with agents this spring.

I think you have to judge the Eagles’ haul in the sixth and seventh rounds with that understanding. The last two rounds aren’t fertile ground to find really good players any year, and this year, even more so.

Marlon Tuipuloto, the sixth-round defensive tackle from USC, could stand to be bigger for the type player he is, but he ought to provide depth at a spot where the Eagles were getting pretty shallow. The defensive tackle group in this draft was said to be exceptionally poor, so if the Eagles got a contributor here, that’s notable.

Tarron Jackson is the undersized defensive end from Coastal Carolina that the Eagles got with the extra pick they received from trading down in the third round — the move that launched the famous video of Howie Roseman fist-bumping an unenthusiastic Tom Donahoe. Jackson was quite productive at the Sun Belt Conference level, notching 26½ sacks in 48 games. He might be the new Joe Ostman.

The Eagles envision seventh-round LSU safety JaCoby Stevens as a hybrid linebacker, and that’s an interesting idea. Stevens ran a 4.51-second 40 at LSU’s pro day, but scouting reports have said he doesn’t move that well laterally, which is kind of a big deal for a linebacker.

The final pick, seventh-round Tulane edge rusher Patrick Johnson, set the school sack record, but the Eagles list him as a linebacker, at 6-2, 240. We’ll have to see how that goes.

All in all, four defensive players, all good athletes, some special teams help and positional depth at the very least. Not bad, at first glance.

We’ll see.

That’s about all I’ve got with this group, which isn’t exclusive to this year’s crop of late-round fliers the Eagles have taken. Finding quality players this late is tough every year, let alone in a draft where the talent pool was a little thinner because so many players stayed in school.

It’s defensive-line heavy, which I suppose makes sense considering the lack of young depth pieces the team has at edge rusher and defensive tackle. If they get one starter out of Marlon Tuipulotu, Tarron Jackson, JaCoby Stevens, and Patrick Johnson, we can officially give this group a thumbs up, but all of them are projections.

Tuipulotu figures to be stout against the run right away, but will have to become a more effective pass rusher in order to get consistent snaps in the team’s defensive tackle rotation. If third-round pick Milton Williams plays more defensive tackle than defensive end, it’s hard to imagine him getting many snaps in his first few seasons.

Stevens is the team’s newest safety-convert to linebacker now that Nate Gerry is in San Francisco. If he becomes even a serviceable linebacker, it will be a win. LSU listed him at 230, but he weighed in at 212 during the pre-draft process. He’s going to have to gain a good amount of weight to hang at linebacker in the NFL. We’ll see if he’s able to do it.

Jackson and Johnson are both intriguing edge rushing prospects. Jackson was very productive in college, logging 42 sacks in his career, but he didn’t look like the same guy against Senior Bowl competition. Whether he can eventually adjust to a much higher level of competition remains to be seen. The same can be said with Johnson, who had 35 career sacks at Tulane against weaker competition.