Jemal Singleton explains how the Senior Bowl can help Jackson and Duffy's NFL Draft stock

A week of work in Mobile for a pair of former Kentucky Wildcats culminates at today’s Senior Bowl. Center Drake Jackson and punter Max Duffy will be representing UK by wearing the Chrome Domes one more time.

What the players put on tape in the game is important. It’s not the only benefit they received by participating in the senior showcase.

A new Kentucky assistant coach is well acquainted with the game. Last year Jemal Singleton coached the running backs at the Senior Bowl. To say he’s familiar with how the game can influence a player’s draft stock for better or worse would be an understatement.

Earlier this week Singleton spoke to KSR about what exactly happens when players participate in the week of festivities and how it will benefit Jackson and Duffy. He also peeled back the curtain and shared how teams evaluate players. You’ll be surprised how little a pro day or combine actually impacts a player’s draft grade. Stick around for the end when he shares what his new running backs must do to make the leap to the next level.

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KSR: How are Senior Bowl practices different than normal practices?

Singleton: Obviously there are some differences because you’ve got college guys. You’re installing an entirely new offense for them in an all-star game format and the guys you haven’t coached the guys. There are no vets. It’s just all those guys. It’s kind of an all-star game but we run it just like we run our NFL practices, so a lot of the same things we do. You know there’s certain things that we wanted to have the guys do for other scouts and for evaluation and all that. It’s a really good intro into what an NFL practice is like, just some subtle differences.

KSR: Is there a dramatic difference between an NFL and a college practice?

Singleton: Yeah, absolutely. When you think about it, when you only have 53 active roster guys and potentially ten practice squad guys, you’ve only got maybe 60 guys running around a football field. The numbers are different. Your practices on a regular basis — it’s not like the defense goes over to field one with their scout team, and the offense goes over to field two with their scout team and you practice. A lot of times you’ll have your backup or maybe third string guy that’s actually running the scout team for the defense, so the number of plays that you can get in practice is a lot different because of the smaller amount of numbers. There’s no walk-ons. There’s not 100-something players on the field where you can have two full units going at the same time. You really kind of service each other most of the practice, so you’re not getting anywhere near the amount of reps in an NFL practice that you get in a college practice.

KSR: I’m sure as an NFL coach, you go into Senior Bowl practice knowing exactly who you get to work with and how they could potentially fit into your team in the future. How much can guys actually benefit by flashing in those practices?

Singleton: An unbelievable amount. That’s one of the best things about when you actually coach the Senior Bowl that you get to work and basically make evaluations on guys that you’re going to be evaluating at the Draft. It makes your job easier because now you’ve sat in a meeting room with them and you’ve asked them questions and you see how they learn and you see how they respond to coaching and different techniques. It’s such a great insight into that part. It just helps you get a jump start on what you’re going to be doing for the Draft anyway. Now you’ve got these kids right in your midst, you work with them and teach them something and see how they respond to it.

It’s really big. I know a lot of teams get a lot of good information from the Senior Bowl on guys. It’s even a little bit different from the Combine. The Combine you just have on the field drills. At the Senior Bowl they practice and it’s like a game. It’s a really good chance to see these young men play football.

KSR: I feel for the high school kids and the outgoing seniors who don’t get the full experience and full exposure from events like this. You worked out Benny Snell back at his Pro Day. I don’t think they’re going to — who knows what they’re going to get when it comes to stuff like that.

Singleton: No doubt. The one difference though with the NFL is that they’ve got a body of work from film, the game tape. A lot of these teams they at least, like here at Kentucky, they were able to play 11 games and get a good season’s worth of film. At the end of the day, that’s where the majority of the evaluation for the football part comes. What’s missing is that interpersonal interactions.

Pro Days are great. You get a chance to get there and guys get to time them if they weren’t a Combine guy, see them do some drills. Really one of the biggest parts is being able to sit down with the young men like I did with Benny. I took him up to the running back room and basically put him through an interview and asked him football questions and tried to get a little insight into him as a person and as a football player. That stuff is what’s going to be different. Now, we still have Zoom and we’ve all gotten well-versed in the world of Zoom, but it’s still not the same as being able to get on a kid’s campus and talk to him him, talk to his position coach, walk around, maybe meet somebody. There’s different things you don’t get to do nd depending on how the Combine goes is that was another big portion. You got to formally interview guys and all that, so that part kind of stinks, but at the end of the day if a young man really worked his butt off and put some really good things on tape, he’s going to get that positive evaluation at least in that regard.

KSR: I know every person is going to be different obviously, from franchise to franchise, front office to coach, but generally speaking what do you say the emphasis is put on between — if we’re talking out of 100%, this amount goes to the tape they put out on college, this amount goes to how they timed and clocked out in drills, and this amount goes to how they perform in interviews and draw up stuff on the board. What do you think the breakdown is?

Singleton: It all starts with the tape. It all starts with watching them play games, watching them move, because at the end of the day, that’s what they’re going to be doing. They’re going to be playing football. They’re not going to be interviewing. They’re not going to be running 40s and all that stuff.

I’d put it in the high 80s at least, for game film. Really the Combine is just to answer questions you may have. Just how fast is he? It looks like he has football speed, but does he got elite speed? Or hey, it looks like he doesn’t move as great as we thought. Well, he didn’t work out well in this drill. It’s still going to come down to football. At the end of the day that’s the most important piece of it. There’s the character part. There’s that part that shows up and obviously bumps a guy down, the intangible portion of it that you can’t really measure but are extremely important.

KSR: It’s almost like affirming your beliefs in this guy, a final test almost.

Singleton: Exactly, because if you watch the tape and a guy can’t play, I don’t care what he does in the Combine. He ran the fastest 40 but he can’t make a tackle. That type of stuff isn’t as important, but it can obviously boost a guy. You see a guy who was a pretty good football player and all that, then he runs a sub-4.4 40 and he’s great in drills, then it’s just added to his tape. The fact that he was a good football player on film and he can do this stuff? Okay, I think we got our eyes on the right guy. But you have to put it on the tape. At the end of the day that’s the most important piece is what he does on the field and the intangible part of it — his character, his work ethic, those other things are what really play and boost a guy up or drop him down.

KSR: Speaking of tape, what have you seen so far from your running back room at Kentucky?

Singleton: We’ve kind of talked about his before with C-Rod doing what he’s done and his numbers. He’s averaging over six yards a carry and you can count the number of negative yardage plays he’s had on one hand. That stuff is really good. You can see his size, his strength and his ability to stick his foot in the dirt and get vertical, which will lend itself to good transition in running some wide zone stuff, running some under center runs that he hasn’t done. I think at the end of the day that helps (his draft stock) too. Now he’s got a chance a little bit to be in a pro style offense. He can speak the language at the end of the year based on that and that will only help.

You look at Kavosiey Smoke, JuTahn McClain and Travis Tisdale, those guys that had some brief playing time and got some chances. Obviously, Kavosiey played significantly more. He brings a different blend. I’ve always said I don’t want cookie-cutter running backs. I don’t want every running back in my room to be the exact same guy or the exact same skillsets. You need guys with different skillsets, some better at others than the other guys. I think Kavosiey and Chris… that combination is different. They’re two entirely different running back styles, but both can be extremely effective.

I’d like to see all of them, every one of them, become more involved with the passing game and that’s whether it’s catching check-downs or catching screens. I look at the area of improvement for the room starts there., the pass game. The numbers aren’t there. The run game stats are. The pass game is almost like they weren’t involved a whole lot. That’s a big part that I want to see from them change and some of it is what they were asked to do schematically. They weren’t asked to be that as much in those years. Making the transition, you talk about developing players and maybe going to the next level, well they need that added skillset in their toolbox.