We're less than a week away from the start of the college football season, so let's call it a day and wrap up this series on 2027 draft prospects. Thanks for reading. Even if you only read one of them, hopefully you learned something new about that player. I intended to do only WRs but ended up covering a bunch of players at different positions as well. This is a brief recap of the series and an explanation for how I did the mock draft:
1. We looked at a total of 56 players. If we compared it to a pool of 250, that means we covered about 22% of the main draft pool. Not a big percentage, but not bad. I'm only one person. Trying to look at every draft eligible player is way too much work for just one person.
2. My draft grades had huge deviations from the consensus. That's typical. Plus, we're looking at players a full year before they are in the draft. This is the first time I've ever attempted to do that. I gave 4 players 1st round grades, 6 got 2nd round grades, 10 were in the 3rd round, 16 in the 4th round, 6 in the 5th round and 11 were late rounders. I only gave one player an UDFA grade and 2 didn't get any grade due to injury uncertainty. The group is slightly skewed towards the early rounds, but that's because I had an emphasis on looking at players who might be on the board for the Rams in the 2nd round. It is missing the top tier, because for the most part I ignored the best prospects and it is heavy weighted towards the WR position.
3. From the group of 56, I distilled it down to a "working Rams board" of 21 players. There was no practical reason for me to put the other 35 players on the board, even though I liked (loved) some of them. They were never going to be in play for consideration, for a variety of reasons. When Snead talks about how the Rams have a small board, this is a mini example of why that's the case. We're going to use the NFLMDD simulator for this mock.
4. I'm using the Rich Hill trade chart instead of the simulator's trade offers, to try to keep the mock realistic. In the sim, the Rams originally have 4 picks: slot 64 in the 2nd round, then a 4th rounder, 5th rounder and 6th rounder.
As the simulator approached 64, I monitored the board to see if I needed to trade up but didn't have any desire to move up based on how things unfolded. If you ever wonder why teams can't trade out of a slot to get more picks, this is an illustration. Sometimes you can't find a motivated partner. There were 5 strong candidates at 64, so I decided to trade down to slot 70. Since I'm the one calling the other team, I structured the offer where they get a discount on the trade chart. The Rams aren't getting full value in return. We get a 6th and a 7th rounder by moving down into the 3rd round. In theory this is risky, because in real life all 5 of those players on the wish list could have been picked between 64 and 70 but in the sim we only lose one. Really, we could have traded down again, but I decided it would be cheesy to do that and not as realistic. So, even if we wanted to move down again, let's just pretend that we couldn't find any takers.
3rd round, 70th overall. Zach Lutmer, CB, Iowa. (My grade 1st round), 90th overall on consensus board. Some experts have mocked Lutmer as a 1st round pick. In this simulator, I'm reaching early for him.
4th round, 132 overall. Antwan Raymond, RB, Rutgers. (My grade 4th round), 127th on consensus board. This is a tricky one, because there were still 4 other players that I have graded higher than Raymond that I skip over here.
5th round, 172 overall. Adam Trick, EDGE, Texas Tech. (My grade 3rd round), 175th on consensus board. There are still 5 other players that I have with 3rd or 4th round grades still available, so if Trick had come off the board, we still had other viable options. This was one reason I went with Raymond in the 4th round.
6th round, 213 overall. Drew Azzopardi, RT, Washington. (My grade 4th round), 246 on consensus board. Without the trade down, this would have been our last selection.
6th round, 220 overall. Justin Evans, C, Nebraska. (My grade 3rd round), 983 on consensus board.
7th round, 227 overall. Brandon Inniss, WR, Ohio State (My grade 4th round), 342 on consensus board. And so it ends where it begins, with the very first player that I profiled.
I feel good about this mock and it illustrates some of the general themes of a normal draft. There are players you'd love to fall to you, but they don't. There are players that other NFL teams like and draft early, but you really don't have much interest in selecting. If you play your cards right and execute a sound strategy, you can get players that you like and not have to force picks. In the end, despite having 3 late round selections, all the players I drafted are ones that I have graded 4th round or higher. I felt that this sim was pretty realistic regarding where each player might get drafted in real life.
Have a fun college season and I hope your favorite team has a successful year.
1. We looked at a total of 56 players. If we compared it to a pool of 250, that means we covered about 22% of the main draft pool. Not a big percentage, but not bad. I'm only one person. Trying to look at every draft eligible player is way too much work for just one person.
2. My draft grades had huge deviations from the consensus. That's typical. Plus, we're looking at players a full year before they are in the draft. This is the first time I've ever attempted to do that. I gave 4 players 1st round grades, 6 got 2nd round grades, 10 were in the 3rd round, 16 in the 4th round, 6 in the 5th round and 11 were late rounders. I only gave one player an UDFA grade and 2 didn't get any grade due to injury uncertainty. The group is slightly skewed towards the early rounds, but that's because I had an emphasis on looking at players who might be on the board for the Rams in the 2nd round. It is missing the top tier, because for the most part I ignored the best prospects and it is heavy weighted towards the WR position.
3. From the group of 56, I distilled it down to a "working Rams board" of 21 players. There was no practical reason for me to put the other 35 players on the board, even though I liked (loved) some of them. They were never going to be in play for consideration, for a variety of reasons. When Snead talks about how the Rams have a small board, this is a mini example of why that's the case. We're going to use the NFLMDD simulator for this mock.
4. I'm using the Rich Hill trade chart instead of the simulator's trade offers, to try to keep the mock realistic. In the sim, the Rams originally have 4 picks: slot 64 in the 2nd round, then a 4th rounder, 5th rounder and 6th rounder.
As the simulator approached 64, I monitored the board to see if I needed to trade up but didn't have any desire to move up based on how things unfolded. If you ever wonder why teams can't trade out of a slot to get more picks, this is an illustration. Sometimes you can't find a motivated partner. There were 5 strong candidates at 64, so I decided to trade down to slot 70. Since I'm the one calling the other team, I structured the offer where they get a discount on the trade chart. The Rams aren't getting full value in return. We get a 6th and a 7th rounder by moving down into the 3rd round. In theory this is risky, because in real life all 5 of those players on the wish list could have been picked between 64 and 70 but in the sim we only lose one. Really, we could have traded down again, but I decided it would be cheesy to do that and not as realistic. So, even if we wanted to move down again, let's just pretend that we couldn't find any takers.
3rd round, 70th overall. Zach Lutmer, CB, Iowa. (My grade 1st round), 90th overall on consensus board. Some experts have mocked Lutmer as a 1st round pick. In this simulator, I'm reaching early for him.
4th round, 132 overall. Antwan Raymond, RB, Rutgers. (My grade 4th round), 127th on consensus board. This is a tricky one, because there were still 4 other players that I have graded higher than Raymond that I skip over here.
5th round, 172 overall. Adam Trick, EDGE, Texas Tech. (My grade 3rd round), 175th on consensus board. There are still 5 other players that I have with 3rd or 4th round grades still available, so if Trick had come off the board, we still had other viable options. This was one reason I went with Raymond in the 4th round.
6th round, 213 overall. Drew Azzopardi, RT, Washington. (My grade 4th round), 246 on consensus board. Without the trade down, this would have been our last selection.
6th round, 220 overall. Justin Evans, C, Nebraska. (My grade 3rd round), 983 on consensus board.
7th round, 227 overall. Brandon Inniss, WR, Ohio State (My grade 4th round), 342 on consensus board. And so it ends where it begins, with the very first player that I profiled.
I feel good about this mock and it illustrates some of the general themes of a normal draft. There are players you'd love to fall to you, but they don't. There are players that other NFL teams like and draft early, but you really don't have much interest in selecting. If you play your cards right and execute a sound strategy, you can get players that you like and not have to force picks. In the end, despite having 3 late round selections, all the players I drafted are ones that I have graded 4th round or higher. I felt that this sim was pretty realistic regarding where each player might get drafted in real life.
Have a fun college season and I hope your favorite team has a successful year.
