2024 All-Juice Team: 10th annual edition hopes to be as successful as Terez Paylor’s first

Ten years ago, Terez Paylor coined the term “All-Juice Team,” setting forth a decade-long tradition that honored college football players for their combination of effort, attitude and performance. Amazingly, his first team didn’t have a quarterback.

The longest-running followers of this team are often surprised to hear that. But it’s true: When Terez first started his annual All-Juice Team at the Kansas City Star in 2015, it was merely a collection of 22 players he’d plucked from college football after watching endless strings of game tape and identifying something special about their game. It wasn’t until the second year of the team that Terez dialed it into a traditional format, choosing a full slate of offensive and defensive players and projecting them into where he believed they’d be selected in the NFL Draft.

Since this is a prominent anniversary for the team, we figured we’d honor Terez by making note of that first class from 2015. A squad that, despite its loose collection, featured a stunning 10 players who are still expected to be on NFL rosters in 2024. That’s 10 players out of his 22 selections who are expected to play in 10 NFL seasons. That kind of career in such a brutal league doesn’t just happen. It takes talent. It takes attitude. It takes performance.

In other words, it takes juice. And Terez’s first team had it.

And part of what is remarkable about that first collection of players who managed to stick for a decade? Only five were first-round draft picks: defensive tackle Leonard Williams, linebacker Dante Fowler, wideout Amari Cooper, and offensive linemen Brandon Scherff and Laken Tomlinson. The other five? It was comprised of three second-round linebackers — Eric Kendricks, Denzel Perryman and Markus Golden — and two third-rounders in wideout Tyler Lockett and defensive back Steven Nelson.

Any talent evaluator who points to 22 draft prospects in a given year and finds 10 who last an entire decade — including five who…

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Publish date : 2024-04-15 14:00:23

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