The 2017 NFL Draft will be predictable at No. 1, but after that, all bets are off for most of the picks. Some teams are focusing in on a few players, but with no clear cut No. 2 and beyond, it should make for an interesting first round.
ESPN draft analyst Todd McShay recently put together a big board that offers projections on where he thinks certain players will be picked. Adam Schefter tweeted out a picture of it Thursday morning. You can’t see the safeties, and you have to zoom in to see some of the others, but here is the picture.
Board that @McShay13 built for this year's draft, spelling out where he thinks players will be picked: pic.twitter.com/o4L3fZiJe1
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) April 6, 2017
His list of first round projections, broken down by position, are as follows:
RB: Leonard Fournette, Christian McCaffrey, Dalvin Cook
WR: Corey Davis, Mike Williams, John Ross
TE: O.J. Howard, David Njoku
OT: Garrett Boles
OG: Forrest Lamp
DE: Myles Garrett, Solomon Thomas, Derek Barnett
DT: Jonathan Allen
ILB: Reuben Foster, Haason Reddick, Jarrad Davis
CB: Marshon Lattimore, Kevin King
We can’t see the safety position, but it’s safe to say Malik Hooker and Jamal Adams are on that list. That would provide us with a list of 21 potential first round picks. Based on the Scouts Inc big board he works with, I don’t see any other safeties likely included.
He has been down on this year’s quarterback class, so it’s not entirely surprising to see DeShaun Watson, Mitchell Trubisky, DeShone Kizer, and Patrick Mahomes all listed in the second round. At the same time, does he realistically think nobody in the first round is going to draft a quarterback? Even if McShay is not high on the quarterbacks, it seems naive to think not a single one goes in the first round.
It appears he ranks the players in order of where he likes them in their position group. If that’s the case, it’s interesting that he has Joshua Dobbs above Nathan Peterman, and both of them above Davis Webb. Over the past two months, buzz surrounding Webb has grown to the point that some are suggesting he goes in the second round. Could Dobbs end up going higher than either of them?