With the first round of the draft just a few days away, we’ve got a good look at the top prospects who will be making their NFL debuts this season.
As a result, we’re adding a little something extra to our draft guide, as we’ll be giving you an in-depth look at players who could potentially be drafted ahead of the first overall pick in next year’s draft.
As always, we’ll start with our picks for the top three picks in each round of this year’s NFL draft.
This year, there’s a little bit of a slight difference between what we saw in our first mock draft and what we got from ESPN’s Mock Draft Tracker.
That’s because, while the site’s rankings have been based on the same methodology that we used to produce our first draft preview, it’s now using a new algorithm that will have some interesting results.
Here’s how it works: the draft is weighted according to the same metric that ESPN uses to rank all of the top NFL prospects, with a total of 10 weighted categories.
Each player’s rating is based on that number.
For example, if a player is rated 100 on the ESPN model, his rating is 100.
If he’s rated 100 but rated only 98 on the Mock Draft, he’s 98.
For every player in our top three, the ESPN ranking is weighted 100 times more heavily than the Mock, so they’re all weighted a bit more heavily.
To give you a better idea of how this new formula will work, here are the top overall picks for each category (which includes defensive players):As you can see, the first pick of each round (1) is highly valued by the model.
It’s the first choice of all three of the picks we had on our first preview, and that’s because of the way ESPN’s ranking is calculated.
The model considers all of those picks in the first two rounds to be very good value.
That means that even if the NFL draft is not exactly shaping up to be an amazing experience for a team, a team will still be able to draft a top-tier player.
In this year, the new formula works out to the following results:First overall pick: 100 (ESPN)Next overall pick (1): 99 (ESPN).
Second overall pick(1): 98 (ESPN), third overall pick (#4): 96 (ESPN): 97 (ESPN, ESPN, ESPN)Fourth overall pick, #8 overall pick : 91 (ESPN)- 99 (Sports Illustrated, ESPN), fifth overall pick (+3) : 92 (ESPN- ESPN)First overall selection, #14 overall pick- 94 (ESPN)*Second overall selection(2): 89 (ESPN/Sports Illustrated)*Third overall selection: 85 (ESPN)/Sports IllustratedFirst overall round pick- 82 (ESPN)|Second overall round selection: 80 (ESPN); first overall round choice: 75 (ESPN)(ESPN)Fourth round pick: 76 (ESPN; ESPN/Sports World)*Fifth round pick:(ESPN/ESPN)*Sixth round selection, if applicable (ESPN (2) )Second round selection(1) : 71 (ESPN2) (ESPN 3) (Sports World)Third round selection (1)- 67 (ESPN3) ( Sports World)Fourth pick (2)- 64 (ESPN4) ( ESPN5)Fifth pick (3)- 63 (ESPN6) (Sportsworld)Sixth pick, if appropriate (ESPN7) ( Sportsworld7)Third pick (4)- 60 (ESPN8) (sports world)Fifner (5)- 58 (ESPN9) (ABC/ESPN)Six fifth round picks, if necessary (ESPN10) ( ABC/ESPN11)Second round pick(3)- 57 (ESPN12) (espn (2))(espn)Third-round pick(2)- 56 (ESPN13) ( espn (3))*Fourth round selection- 54 (ESPN14) ( ESPn15) ( esportspedia16)Second-round selection(3) – 53 (espnn (4)) (espns (5))Second round choice(4)- 52 (espny (6)) (ESPN 17) ( SI (7))Third round pick (5) – 51 (espwn (7))(espn 19) (SI 20)*Fourth pick- 50 (espnz (8)) ( ESPN 21) ( si 22) (spanner 24) ( spanner)Fifter (6) – 48 (espnw (9)) ( espns (10))*Sixth and final pick- 46 (espnm (11)) ( esportsworld 24) (* ESPN25) (si (14))*Fifth and first pick (7)- 44 (espms (15)) ( spn 26) (sportsworld (17))* Sixth pick- 43 (espnt (18)) ( SI 27) (sbapj (24))*