Tag Archives: NFL Draft prospects

NFL Draft

Recapping the entire 2025 NFL Draft:

Another draft cycle comes to a close, as we started with all 32 teams being in control of their first-round pick for the only time in the common era, yet it only took until the second overall selection for us to get a major shake-up, when the Jaguars’ new regime moved up three spots with the Browns to add two-way superstar Travis Hunter. And Cleveland would be the ones to end one of the most prominent draft slides we’ve ever seen, which ended up being the biggest storyline of the weekend.

To recap everything that happened, I will once again outline who I believe were the biggest winners and losers, steals and reaches across those three days. As always, my thoughts are purely based on evaluating the skill-sets of prospects at this moment and without access to all the information about medical reports and potential character/off-field concerns. However, I will disregard some names for the “steals” category if either one of those clearly applies based on the reporting out there.

If I don’t talk about your favorite team specifically today, in just two weeks I’ll start my divisional draft and roster review series, where I give the spotlight to all 32 teams in podcast form, discussing every single player they selected, their projected role and how it all fits with the other roster moves they’ve made. And of course, I have scouting reports on over 130 prospects here on my site, as part of my positional draft rankings, if you want to dive deeper into individual names.

Let’s break down the biggest storylines and selections today!

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NFL Draft

My ultimate 2025 NFL Mock Draft:

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.

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NFL Draft

Top 150 prospects of the 2025 NFL Draft:

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


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NFL Draft

Top 10 safeties of the 2025 NFL Draft:

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:


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NFL Draft

Top 10 tight-ends of the 2025 NFL Draft:

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:


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NFL Draft

Top 10 interior defensive linemen of the 2025 NFL Draft:

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:


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Misses Are Relevant – “Rank the cluster” podcast

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!

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NFL Draft

Top 10 interior offensive linemen of the 2025 NFL Draft:

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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NFL Draft

Top 10 edge defenders of the 2025 NFL Draft:

This marks the mid-point of our positional draft rankings and we’re looking at one of the strongest groups yet – edge defenders, meaning defensive ends in a four-down front and 3-4 outside linebackers, although in today’s NFL we see so many hybrid fronts anyway that the distinction isn’t as relevant.

This class is headlined by a player who would be in consideration for the top non-quarterback in most years, but there are six/seven more names who could easily also go in the first round and about the same amount additionally in the second. What’s crazy to me is how many interesting prospects are available beyond that, as I’ll probably end up at 28-30 names with draftable grades.

Here’s how the top ten (plus) looks like for me:


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NFL Draft

Top 10 offensive tackles of the 2025 NFL Draft:

We’ve reached the big-man portion of our positional draft rankings series. This week we’ll be looking at offensive tackles and edge defenders before we move on to the interior. As always, this list is based on the film only and not taking injuries into account, and watching all of these guys who lined up at OT in college, there are several transition candidates to guard or center based on length limitations or simply their skill-set translating better to either one of those spots at the next level. Here are some names you’ll find among the interior blockers – Will Campbell and Emery Jones (LSU), Grey Zabel (North Dakota State), Jonah Savaiinaea (Arizona), Marcus Mbow (Purdue), Wyatt Milum (West Virginia) and others.

So due to that, I believe there’s a pretty steep drop-off from the four tackles I have firm first-round grades on to the seven players I have more so in the mid-to-late day two range personally. Beyond that, there are a couple of developmental prospects with upside but more so quality college performers whose athletic limitations will limit them to potential swing and fringe roster candidates.

This is how they stack up for me:


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