Two days to go! Woo! So, you’ve got an idea what positions your team might be looking to fill in the draft, and who might fit that bill. But the draft isn’t the draft if you don’t have someone to root for, be they an underdog, an outsider, or just your top pick of choice. So, here’s a quick guide to twelve or so players to keep an eye out for all through the first few rounds of the draft, so when you wake up Friday/Saturday morning, you can go and have a look straight away for where they got drafted.
Early Picks
These are the players I expect to be the first seven off the board.
Carson Wentz (QB, North Dakota State) and Jared Goff (QB, California)
Here are your first two overall picks. We know Los Angeles gave up a bucketload of picks to choose whichever of these they want. We know Philadelphia gave up…slightly fewer picks to choose whichever of these Los Angeles don’t want. We can even speculate that Los Angeles want Goff (as he’s more of a pro-ready starter, which they need) and Philly want Wentz (as they have other half-decent quarterbacks they can start while Wentz gets up to speed without doing too badly). But no-one really knows what’s going to happen until Roger Goodell wanders up on stage in Chicago and announces “With the first pick of the 2016 NFL Draft…”
Where will they be picked: 1st and 2nd overall, I already told you.
Laremy Tunsil (OT, “Ole Miss” – Mississippi)
Here, arguably, is the best player in the draft. Well, it’s between him and Jalen Ramsey, more of which anon. Tunsil is a “franchise left tackle”, so he’s going to be expected to be able to block pass rushers and protect the quarterback on their blind side, and he’s going to be expected to be bloody good at it. Left tackle is one of the highest valued positions in the league, so having potentially one of the best players at the position there? That’s big.
Where will he be picked: Probably 3rd overall, though in theory he could last until the 6th pick.
Jalen Ramsey (CB/S, Florida State)
Probably the second best player in the draft, Ramsey could well become the best safety in the league, but he could also become one of the best cornerbacks. He also seems to be pretty cool. The only slight knock on him is that some teams aren’t sold that he’d become an elite cornerback, though all seem to think he’ll become an elite safety, and safety just isn’t seen as valuable a position as cornerback.
Where will he be picked: Possibly 3rd overall, but he’ll almost certainly go in the top 5 picks.
Joey Bosa (DE, Ohio State)
Bosa’s a talented pass rusher they suspect will be stout against the run, too. Expect him to be drafted to play defensive end in a 4-3, or outside linebacker in a 3-4. People doubt he has the capacity to be the very best in the NFL, but he’s expected to at least be very good, and is unlikely to be a bust.
Where will he be picked: My guess is he goes 4th, and definitely by 8th.
DeForest Buckner (DE, Oregon)
People rate Bosa over Buckner, but Buckner could easily be picked first. He’s a bigger unit than Bosa, and would play as a defensive end in a 3-4. He’s a damn good pass rusher and better run stopper, and incredibly versatile – you could even stick him at nose tackle if you wanted.
Where will he be picked: Probably between 5th and 7th overall.
Myles Jack (LB, UCLA)
Jack is probably the third best player in the draft, an incredibly athletic linebacker who it sometimes seems could play any position on the entire field. Like Jalen Ramsey, his primary position (in this case linebacker) is slightly devalued these days. That isn’t the main knock on Jack, however. He’s recovering from a torn cruciate ligament, and teams aren’t sure how much he’ll play in his rookie season. More than that, there have been numerous reports of teams mumbling about a non-specific “knee condition” that could limit the overall length of his career. While technically you’re only drafting players for the first four or five years of their career, now is the time to find any doubts you might have about a player.
Where will he be picked: It all depends on what teams think of his knees. He could easily go 4th overall, or could slide all the way to the middle of the first round.
Late 1st Round to 3rd Round Picks
These players I find interesting, for various reasons. Some might have slipped for various reasons, some might be suddenly hyped, but here are your potential wonderful pickups or utter busts, I suspect.
Cardale Jones (QB, Ohio State) and Christian Hackenberg (QB, Penn State)
These are two fascinating prospects. Hackenberg was the #1 recruit in all college football a few years back, and looked good in his freshman year. Then his coach (Bill O’Brien) left, the system changed and everything went wrong. Jones is full of potential, has an incredibly powerful arm and build, but has been a backup for most of his college career, except for coming in at the last minute in 2014, and guiding Ohio State to the college playoff title playing fantastically. Then he was average starting in 2015, and got benched for a safer, dual-threat alternative. Both these two are unpolished gems who a bit of nurturing could work wonders for, but that is far from guaranteed. And nurturing quarterbacks for a while before giving them the huddle isn’t tremendously common these days. A pair of real curate’s eggs.
Where will they be picked: Between the middle of the 2nd round and the end of the 3rd, though if one slips to something like the 5th or 6th it would be surprising but understandable.
Braxton Miller (WR, Ohio State)
Speaking of Ohio State quarterbacks, it was Miller’s injury in 2014 that started to pave the way for Cardale Jones. But, you ask, you just said he was a wide receiver! Exactly. Miller is an incredible athlete, but as a quarterback only looked so-so in terms of NFL fit. He transitioned to wide receiver, where he is raw and needs development (particularly on his route running), but is spectacularly fast and agile. The thing is, he’s more of a multi-purpose weapon, and players like that in the NFL recently (Percy Harvin, Tavon Austin, Cordarelle Patterson) haven’t necessarily always hit their potential. So teams may be wary.
Where will he be picked: You know, I reckon Braxton Miller will go sometime in the latter half of the 2nd round, or early in the 3rd at the latest.
Derrick Henry (RB, Alabama)
Here’s the winner of the Heisman Trophy, aka the best player in college football. He’s not the top rated running back in the draft though. Why? Well, running backs tend to be about 6 feet tall, nimble, and with a low running style. Henry is about 6’3”, and athletic but freakin’ huge, built like a linebacker, and he runs upright. Running backs built like that have long been out of style, and an upright running style is a great way to end up on injured reserve. But, he’s the best player in college football. Surely that counts for something? Well, I guess his draft position will demonstrate how much.
Where will he be picked: Henry could go late in the 1st round, but early-2nd round seems more likely.
Robert Nkemdiche (DT, Ole Miss)
Here’s where we get to the “off-the-field issues” and “red flags” portion of the draft, where anonymous and not-so-anonymous scouts, evaluators, and team officials get to slag off players they don’t like. The process has some merit in, say, trying not to draft Greg Hardy, but over here in Britain, divorced from but aware of the social context of football, it often looks to me like well-to-do middle-aged white guys saying that young black guys have the wrong personality. In truth, Robert Nkemdiche – while he does have those issues (falling out of a fourth-floor window and having marijuana found in your apartment is…well it’s something, isn’t it? Except for the weed) and is apparently of an unusual personality for a pro football prospect – is also drifting because, for all his athletic prowess, didn’t have as high college production as he could. He got near the quarterback a lot more often than he sacked the quarterback, which makes teams almost as nervous as the fact he plays the saxophone, or something like that.
Where will he be picked: This’ll be a fascinating one. He could go in the middle of the 1st round, and should be gone by the end of it, but could slide towards late in the 2nd round easily.
Noah Spence (DE, Eastern Kentucky)
Where Nkemdiche’s personality issues are that he’s a kind of unusual (and the falling out the window thing), Noah Spence has already been kicked off one team (Ohio State, 2013), been suspended for repeated failed drugs tests (2014, ecstasy, no less) and been arrested for public intoxication (2015, public intoxication? OH NOES). He’s got the ability, and the production (albeit against slightly lesser opposition) to look terrific, but given the price of a first round pick, teams unsurprisingly get nervous about every little thing, and this is a little more than every little thing.
Where will he be picked: Despite all this, Spence will probably be picked between the late 1st round and mid-2nd round.
Mackensie Alexander (CB, Clemson)
Now this is a weird one to finish off our little “off-field issues” section. Alexander has, by all accounts, never done anything wrong. I can’t find any arrests, notable suspensions, nothing. I can find a few knocks on Alexander, such as he’s only 5’10”, and he didn’t get any college interceptions (though this might be because his coverage was so good, no bugger was throwing in his direction), but that’s it. So why all this? Well, as far as I can tell some teams have interviewed him and come off with the impression that he’s a bit of an arsehole. I guess you don’t want to create locker room headaches, but if you’re a good coach you should be able to control a locker room no matter what. Alexander seems smart, erudite and excessively feisty, but he’s a fucking cornerback. Of course he’s all that. Honestly, people.
Where will he be picked: He has the talent to go in the top 16 picks, so if one team thinks he’s not a problem, they will pick him. However, he could just as easily be around for that team’s 2nd round pick.
Carl Nassib (DE, Penn State)
Concerns with Nassib are sort of the opposite of, say, Robert Nkemdiche. He lead college football in sacks. He won roughly eighty-six awards for generally being brilliant this last year. He might not even get picked on the second day of the draft. It’s weird. NFL and college football are different though, and Nassib is seen as athletically somewhat limited. What “they” say is that he’s filled out his body, and he’s not going to get any more terrifying. But he’s regarded as such a hard worker, bulking up hugely at college to get in the team, then bursting through and showing what he’s made of. Where he goes is again interesting, because it’ll be a team picking production over potential.
Where will he be picked: Realistically, he’s a 2nd round pick because someone will have fallen in love with his tape. He could drift to the 3rd if teams think they can snag him there, though.
Artie Burns (CB, Miami (FL))
So, Artie Burns is a good cornerback who’ll be picked on the second day, and will probably be a good draft pick. So far, so unremarkable, right? Why am I writing about him? Well, the NFL draft will be full of what you call “human interest” stories, so here’s one to get yourself acquainted with. As this story from Bleacher Report says, after his Mum died of a heart attack and his Dad was sent to prison, suddenly young Artie not only had his own son to provide financially for, but also two younger brothers. Players in college football don’t get paid (this is a stupid system in many many ways, none of which I will touch on here), so his only option was to declare for the draft and get that rookie contract. And I hope he makes it and everything’s ok!
Where will he be picked: He’s a second round choice, probably edging towards the second half than the first half, though you never know, he could end up going late in the first round to a cornerback needy team that thinks he’s the bees knees.
The Long Snapper 