2012 Senior Bowl: North Beats South, 23-13

For more on the Senior Bowl and complete draft coverage, check out SB Nation’s 2012 NFL Draft page and Mocking the Draft.

Going into the 2012 Senior Bowl, the unanimous opinions of scouts, including SB Nation’s own Alfie Crow, who has been in Mobile, Ala. as a correspondent, has been that North Carolina defensive end Quinton Coples is the best NFL prospect in camp. His performance in the game has reinforced that line of thinking, as his effort has led to sacks, disruptions and flags whenever he’s been on the field. The offensive lineman on the North squad haven’t been coming close to handling him.

Other players on the South team who have impressed are Zach Brown, Janoris Jenkins and Casey Hayward, who had great coverage on an interception late in the half against Kirk Cousins. Brown and Jenkins are projected as high draft picks, if not first-rounders, and have looked like the most athletic players on the field when they’ve been out there.

You may have been too preoccupied by the Pro Bowl hoopla coming this weekend to pay much attention to reports from the Senior Bowl practices in Mobile, Alabama, this week. The nation’s top college players gathered in Mobile, giving scouts their first look at them outside of campus with their first taste of NFL coaching. The Senior Bowl is the first big event of the draft season in which teams, scouts, and legions of media draft analysts start rearranging their preconceived notions about where players belong in the draft and what their NFL futures may hold.

The majority of those nine players from our latest mock draft had a solid week at the Senior Bowl, but a few struggled. Here’s a look at how those players did (and where we picked them in our last mock draft) and some clues about where they might show up on the next mock draft based on what they did this week at the Senior Bowl.

“I don’t get wide eyed,” Martin said about playing with some of the more elite level talent in the NCAA at the Senior Bowl. “There’s a lot of great players here, you have to ignore that. I’m a great player, too.” The compact running back from Stockton, CA finished up his senior season with 1,299 rushing yards and 16 touchdowns, Martin also had 255 receiving yards and two touchdowns catching the ball out of the backfield. Even though he played at Boise State, he’s no stranger to playing big time competition, playing against multiple BCS schools in his career.

Martin told us one of the things he really wants to work on is recognizing the defenses pre-snap, but one thing is for sure, he likes to hit people. “First, I’d just run him over,” Martin said what he prefers to do when he meets a defender one-on-one in the hole. “Then next time, I’ll juke because he thinks I’ll run him over,” Martin added with a grin.

Below is a look at the rosters for the 2012 Senior Bowl, which takes place at 4pm ET on Saturday, January 28 at Ladd-Peebles Stadium in Mobile, Alabama.

Specialists for the North are punter Brad Nortman, kicker Carson Wiggs and long-snapper Kyle Wojta.

The 2012 Senior Bowl is one final hurrah for college football’s senior class with the best of the best four-year student-athletes looking to improve their draft stock. On Saturday, the North and the South will take the field at Ladd-Peebles Stadium for one last game as college students.

These quarterbacks take center stage on Saturday afternoon.

The 63rd Senior Bowl takes center stage this weekend, as some of the country’s top college football players make their final on-field push toward improving their potential professional pursuits.

Not that the outcome matters in the grand scheme of things, but the South has won three of the last four meetings, and leads the all-time series, 30-26-3. There were actually three games played as the AFC vs. NFC, and the former won two of those encounters.

Now that the full week of practices at the 2012 Senior Bowl have been completed and the vast majority of the NFL scouts and decision makers have left Mobile, Ala. it’s time too look at who hurt themselves the most this week. Some players enter Senior Bowl week with a lot of hype and buzz, but just fail to do anything noticeable and sometimes look just down right awful.

Here are five players who really hurt themselves during the week:

Now that the full week of practices at the 2012 Senior Bowl have been completed and the vast majority of the NFL scouts and decision makers have left Mobile, Ala. it’s time too look at who helped themselves the most this week. The standard rule of thumb after talking with some scouts is that a player can help themselves as much as moving up a single round in the NFL draft, but that’s about the limit of what a player can do.

Here are five players who really helped themselves during the week:

The 2012 Senior Bowl marks the 63rd edition of the premier college football all-star game for NFL Draft prospects, and the 62nd year the game will be played in Mobile, Alabama after moving from Jacksonville. The records of the teams obviously don’t matter much, but the South leads its all-time series against the North, 29-26-3, while the three-year period in which the teams were labeled AFC and NFC to stress the pre-professional nature of the game gave the AFC a 2-1 series advantage over the NFC it is unlikely to ever relinquish.

For more on the 2012 Senior Bowl, keep it locked to SB Nation’s Senior Bowl StoryStream, featuring practice reports from Mobile and much, much more.

MOBILE, Ala. -- Thursday’s Senior Bowl practices were essentially cancelled due to the weather and tornado warnings in the area. The North team was scheduled to practice at Ladd-Peebles Stadium this morning, but it was pouring down rain at the facility and officials moved “practice” to the convention center at the team hotel. The North team then proceeded to do just a walk-through of sorts inside the convention center.

via Senior Bowl

For more on the Senior Bowl and complete draft coverage, check out SB Nation’s 2012 NFL Draft page and Mocking the Draft.

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MOBILE, Ala. -- The North team practice kicked off this morning at Ladd-Peebles stadium with players warming up in individual drills. Surprisingly, all of the North team’s quarterbacks have good enough footwork when working on drop back drills. Typically, the guys at the Senior Bowl will have clunky footwork in the drop backs, but all three on the North squad don’t have that issue.

On the offensive line, Ohio State’s Mike Adams continue to play very well and holds his own against pass rushers. He will get beat at times, but he always seems to rebound and shut down the pass rusher on the next play. Iowa State’s Kelechi Osemele also had a nice day of practice. Ohio State center Mike Brewster continues to shine and looks like a guy who could be an early round pick by a team in need of a center who can step in right away.

The 2012 Senior Bowl in Mobile is a great opportunity for NFL coaches, scouts and evaluators -- as well as NFL fans at large -- to get a good look at a large group of college football players who will soon be entering the 2012 NFL Draft.

Michigan State Spartans quarterback is fresh off leading his team to a triple-overtime victory in the 2012 Outback Bowl and is turning some heads in this week’s practices. Here are Bowen’s observations:

MOBILE, Ala. -- I was able to get my first look at the South Team in the 2012 Senior Bowl on Tuesday afternoon. On Monday, both teams practiced at the same time but at different facilities so I could only observe one of the teams and I opted to go to the practice that didn’t require a 25-minute drive.

For more on the Senior Bowl and complete draft coverage, check out SB Nation’s 2012 NFL Draft page and Mocking the Draft.

Second, he’d rather meet Christopher Columbus than William Shakespeare. He was polled on his stance by a NFL scout, and, believe it or not, that’s not the most outlandish question we’ll hear about a NFL Draft prospect being asked in the coming weeks.

There is plenty our scout was able to learn about Moore as a NFL prospect from his answer, however. A peek inside his notebook:

Even before the Senior Bowl practices started, Adams was pegged to go No. 13 in SB Nation’s latest NFL Mock Draft. Mocking the Draft wasn’t so sure, though, as they have him ranked as the 34th best prospect. Although, they do acknowledge that the 6-foot-8, 300-pounder could move up the charts quickly: “If Adams adds some weight prior to the combine he will be a late 1st round selection.”

For more on the Senior Bowl and complete draft coverage, check out SB Nation’s 2012 NFL Draft page and Mocking the Draft.

A lot of people might not know who Marvin McNutt is, but if you watched the 2011 Insight Bowl he’s the guy on Iowa who was nearly killed by the falling ESPN SkyCam. “It was scary as... It was scary,” McNutt said when I asked him to relive the experience. “It was weird because you’re just running out and all the sudden you hear a big crash. Then the next thing you know you feel a cable that’s stronger than you pulling on you. It was an experience like ‘How did this happen, who’s trying to kill me?’”.

McNutt ended his senior season at Iowa with 82 receptions for 1,315 yards and 12 touchdowns, but set a school record with 28 career touchdown receptions. The former quarterback who made the transition to wide receiver credits his coaches and hard work. “It says I play around a great group of guys and have been coached by a great group of coaches,” said McNutt. “There could have been times they could have given up on me and I could have given up on myself, but Coach (Erik) Campbell and Coach (Kirk) Ferentz keep pushing me and pulling me forward.”

MOBILE, Ala. -- The 2012 Senior Bowl kicked off practice at Ladd-Peebles Stadium on Monday afternoon after the conclusions of the weigh-in results. The practices today were held at the same time due to the morning weigh-ins, but are normally held split between the morning and the afternoon. The North Team’s practice took place at Ladd-Peebles today while the South team took place across town at Fairhope Stadium. The practice was slow-paced in shells, so I focused my attention on the glory positions: wide receivers and quarterbacks.

For more on the Senior Bowl and complete draft coverage, check out SB Nation’s 2012 NFL Draft page and Mocking the Draft.

A bunch of old guys watched a bunch of young guys take their shirts off, and National Football Post has a big spreadsheet full of numbers as a result. It’s 2012 Senior Bowl weigh-in day!

Almost everyone will be extensively weighed and measured again at the NFL Combine, but for the time being, this is the most important weigh-in in 2012 NFL Draft history. Treasure it, creepily.

Related: 2012 NFL mock draft.

Practices start on Monday and run through the week leading up to the actual game itself on Saturday, Jan. 28. Over the next five days, the internet will buzz about prospects rising and falling with their time in Mobile. Our Senior Bowl primer is here to get you ready for the week ahead and enlist you into the ranks of crowdsourced scouting.

This week in Mobile is one of the first chances that scouting departments get to look at prospects up close and personal, through a week of practices and Saturday’s game. Going beyond their college game tape, coaches put players in situations they have yet to experience, linebackers with their hands in the dirt, spread quarterbacks taking snaps under center and things like that. Players even get tried out in new positions in order to determine their best fit at the next level.

Wright will instead focus on gearing up for the combine, according to ESPN’s David Smoak.

SB Nation’s Mocking the Draft has more on exactly what this injury means for those hoping to find the next big thing at this year’s college football all-star game: