Draft week is here! All my positional rankings with scouting reports and my top 150 big board have been posted at halilsrealfootballtalk.com, but now it’s time to take on the impossible exercise of predicting what I believe all 32 teams actually do on Thursday night in the first round.
All my positional draft rankings are now available for everyone to go through and read up my scouting reports on over 130 total prospects. So at this point, it’s time to combine those and create my overall big board, where I stack up all of these players regardless of position.
In recent years I limited myself to 100 names, but always added “the next 30”. This time around, I wanted to expand this thing to some degree, since I’ve now cracked the 350 mark in terms of players I’ve evaluated, but I thought 150 was a good cut-off since that’s around the size of big boards NFL teams also typically have. Beyond that point, you’re more so looking to still address needs and take flyers on high upside profiles.
For the purpose of this exercise, I did try to weigh current injuries various players are dealing with to some degree but didn’t let off-the-field/character concerns affect my rankings, since I simply don’t have the needed insight that people around the league gather through background checks.
(*) indicates players coming off significant injury
On last night’s episode of the Draft Professor, Jim, Bill, E.J. and I broke down different draft options for the four Conference Championship participants from this past season – the Washington Commanders, Buffalo Bills, Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles.
We’ve arrived at the final segment of our positional draft rankings and as always, we’re closing out with the quarterbacks. Of course, this group is always getting the most attention and as someone who doesn’t put his full thoughts out there until this point, it’s funny to listen to narratives changing throughout each draft cycle when there’s no actual football being played, other than for the guys who partake in all-star game weeks.
I have thought all along that the name at the top of this list was in a completely different tier to the rest of the class – and it seems like that’s become general consensus as we’ve gone along here. After that, I believe there are four names who I’m personally much more comfortable across day two, even though I understand that a couple of them will probably get pushed up into the first round. Beyond those, I see a lot of disagreement between people I respect and the order looks different for me than what consensus boards would suggest, but ultimately I don’t feel great about any of them becoming legit starters at the next level, even though I believe there qualities worthy of investing some capital into.
So one more time, let’s dive into this:
In our final defensive segment of this positional draft rankings series, we’re looking at safeties. With the modern NFL being so much more against spacing the field with interchangable skill-sets and being in two-high looks at the snap, differentiating between free and strong safety is obviously an antiquated view at the position. Instead, I will reference the different roles certain players are capable of filling – do they profile as someone who can extensively play in the high post, as part of the box, be a big nickel in three-safety packages, etc.
Personally, I wasn’t particularly high on this group on the surface, but as I started to dive into names lower on consensus boards, I did find some guys with redeemable qualities down the line. To me, there’s one standout who simply isn’t being discussed enough and ultimately will end up in my top-ten overall prospects. The order of the next few names is rather different to what you generally see because one other guy has simply been forgotten about it seems like. And while ten seems to be pretty much the ceiling of safeties we’ll see selected over the first two days, there are plenty of role players and potential core special teamers beyond that, who’ll probably make active rosters.
This is my list:
Last night on the Draft Professors Podcasts, Jim, EJ and I discussed some of our favorite day three sleepers. We were able to work through every single position and each of us throw out one name for all of them!
(Unfortunately, my microphone wasn’t registered and therefore my voice wasn’t quite as clean as usual)
This opens the last full week with an offensive and defensive position ranking for the draft. First, we’re looking at a pretty good tight-end group with a wide variety of prospect types. In the modern game, we rarely find traditional “Y” tight-ends lining up next to the offensive tackle, but rather movable “F” pieces, H-backs in the offensive backfield and big-bodied slot receivers.
Obviously, this group is headlined by a duo of guys, who I personally have flipped compared to general consensus, but see both as legit targets in the top half of round one. Beyond that, there are four more names clearly worthy of going on day two, along with a couple of names that could sneak in if a team values those specific skill-sets. The depth beyond that is somewhat questionable, although there were some interesting evaluations for me.
This is my list:
Closing the chapter on offensive and defensive line prospects for this draft, we’re taking a look at the interior D-line. Without nearly as strict front dynamics in terms of where players line up on a down-to-down basis, this includes anyone who I project to play from a 0- out to a 5-technique, meaning head-up on the center out to straight over the tackle. I’ll mention where I like them best with some of these, but of course this is no way exclusive for them.
As I asked myself recently how I would stack up the individual positions for this draft class, I basically had IDL and EDGE as 1A and 1B respectively. To me, there are four players worth being selected in the first round and at least the nine other guys discussed here having a claim to be top-100 picks. Yet, even beyond that, there are about 15-18 other names who may make active rosters in a specified role.
Let’s dig into this group:
I hopped on the Draft Professor Podcasts last night to discuss some clusters of NFL Draft prospects with Jim and Durst. Fun, insightful conversations on interior D-linemen, cornerbacks, wide receivers and edge defenders!
Continuing the trench portion of our positional draft rankings, we’re moving to the inside with offensive guards and centers, who for the purposes of this exercise we’re going to combine, although I’ll specify if I prefer individual players at one specific spot. This group includes several tackle conversion candidates, who based on a lack of length or just a more fitting skill-set to me project better to the interior.
Thanks to the amount of guys who played on the edges in college but ended up in this portion, I actually prefer this class by quite a significant margin. There are four names who I believe you can make a strong case for as potential first-rounders and the other six guys should all come off the board some time on day two. What I liked however is how many prospects I went through that I could legitimately see stick on the back-end of an NFL roster.
This is how they stack up for me:
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