From Navy Blue to Big Blue For Peart
The Story: Bronx-bred former UConn right tackle Matt Peart is headed back home for his professional career as he was a third-round pick of the Giants on Friday night.
PEART PART OF REVAMPED OFFENSIVE LINE: Peart was the second of three offensive linemen drafted by the Giants over the three-day NFL Draft. The Giants went with an immediate answer in the first round, taking Georgia left tackle Andrew Thomas with the No. 4 pick. The Giants then nabbed Peart with the 99th selection, late in the third round. He got a call from the Giants late on Friday night and his family went nuts on Zoom. Peart was a Giants fan growing up after moving to the United States from Jamaica and went to prep school in Massachusetts to play football before coming to UConn under former head coach Bob Diaco.
PEART’S MASSIVE POTENTIAL: Peart’s attraction comes down to one big thing: his size. He is 6-foot-7 and has some of the longest arms the NFL combine has ever seen. While UConn has struggled as a team, Peart kept plugging away and became one of the better tackles in the nation in the last several years. Peart needs to work on his strength, but his athleticism and length and footwork make him an exciting prospect to develop. While it seems likely Thomas will start, Peart is likely ticketed to a backup job first. The key for Peart is adding even more bulk to his frame.
GIANTS COACH JOE JUDGE ON PEART: “It’s rare to describe someone as 315 pounds and skinny, but that’s what he is. He’s an athletic guy. He has a lot of length to him. We feel good about his character and his work ethic. He’s excited to come on in here and work hard and we can’t wait to get him on the field.”
PEART A GIANTS FAN: Peart is a Giants fan ‘s favorite player was Eli Manning. Peart won’t get to play with the recently retired Manning, but he is going to have a say on the development of the heir to Manning in second-year pro Daniel Jones.
DAVIS DRAFTED: Peart wasn’t the only member of his class drafted. Former UConn captain Tyler Davis, a tight end who played a grad year at Georgia Tech, was a sixth-round draft pick of the Jaguars on Saturday. Davis’ recording of him taking the call from the Jaguars management is one of the best things you will see. Also, while he technically won’t go in the books as a UConn draftee, Davis spent 4 1/2 years on campus in Storrs and is a graduate. We still think of him as a Huskies player and should be claimed. (It’s a more legitimate claim than Rutgers taking credit for UConn’s men’s basketball players, at least.)
OUR TAKE: Good for Peart and UConn. And we are counting Davis as another UConn player so the Huskies produced two NFL players from the draft class. From 2007 until 2015, nine drafts, the Huskies had at least one player selected. The Huskies didn’t have an NFL Draft pick in 2016 and 2019 but had Peart go this year (and technically Davis). Is that good news for UConn? Sure. For as much as people want to downplay UConn’s football program, it routinely puts players in the NFL. That is hard to do for many schools; Kansas State, Oklahoma State, Illinois and Ole Miss, for example, had nobody drafted this year. Is UConn the SEC? No. But for comparison, Syracuse had two players selected, a fifth-rounder in Alton Robinson and a seventh-round punter in Sterling Hofrichter. UConn has had a better NFL Draft performance in the last half-decade or so than a program like Syracuse, which is in the ACC and one of the more historic programs in the Northeast.
Everyone Exhale! Bouknight is Back
The Story: Although it seemed evident for a while, James Bouknight will return to UConn for his sophomore season as he did not enter the NBA Draft by Sunday’s deadline.
SOMETHING TO BUILD ON: Bouknight was second on the Huskies with 13 points per game as a freshman while averaging 4.1 rebounds and shooting 46.1 percent over 28 games. Once he moved into the starting lineup, he averaged 15.8 points and 14.6 rebounds a game (though his shooting percentage slightly decreased as he was taking more shots).
NEXT SEASON: The Huskies will unquestionably be Bouknight’s team, and he’ll have help from Tyler Polley, Akok Akok and Isaiah Whaley, among others. They’ll certainly be much more fun to watch.
