Now a month into the 2022 college football season, I decided it was time to rank the five best players for each position at this very moment. For clarification, these lists are based on where these young men are today as college players. I’m in the business of projecting forward and evaluating them as draft prospects, but for this exercise I tried to isolate them from their team and purely judge them on who could help me win games at the CFB level right now.
Here’s the list:
Ten weeks into the college football season and after Statement Saturday we have a picture of where teams stack up against each other. While I agree with the top six teams of the three major polls, I have some major shakeup throughout the rest of the list. I think the playoff committee has overvalued some teams in a big way while not giving some other programs the credit they deserve. To make myself clear – this is not a ranking of how likely I think it is that teams will be among the final four, because many of them are eliminated already or because I never thought they had a chance to get voted into the playoff. It rather is me grading the resume and as the analysts like to say – who is most deserving – but also how good these teams are compared to each other.
Finishing up on my top five positional rankings for this upcoming NCAA football season, we switch over to the defensive side of the ball. Once again, these lists are about where those guys stack up as college players – not as eventual draft prospects. So the criteria I base them on is the tape I watched on them the last couple of seasons and the jump I project them to make this year. With that being said, I can’t help but look ahead to some degree, since I could easily see eight defensive players drafted in the top ten next April and most of them should be on the D-line.
After revealing my most intriguing storylines heading into the 2018 college football season, I wanted to release my top five positional rankings, like I did a year ago as well. To make the criteria clear – this list is about the actual college players, as a combination of what they showed me last season and what I expect them to be in 2018. So this is not a look forward to these young men as draft prospects in 2019. Therefore, you might find some names that won’t be discussed a lot from next February to April. With that being said, I want to start with the offensive side of the ball and I will get back to defense next week.
After looking at the five best players at each offensive position a week ago, I want to do the same for the other side of the ball. Once again, this list isn’t a prospect ranking for the pro level, but rather my scouting report for the college players at this point. I came up with those names as a combination of what the players would be able to do regardless of their school and how well I think they play in the scheme of their defense.
This is not a scouting report for the pro level, but rather just based on how I’d rank them heading into this college football season according to what I saw last year and in week one just now. I obviously haven’t quite watched as much tape on them as I did on the draft prospects a few months ago, but I’ve watched a lot of college football over the last several years and couldn’t help but already take a look at a couple of games of all those guys. This list will also be interesting to look at the end of the season and when really scouting the prospects, to compare it with what I come up then.
Check in next week again for the edition on defense.
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