Johnathan Hankins

Mock draft: What if NFL teams drafted based only on college on-field production?

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

Sports Illustrated, Colin Becht/Sports Illustrated

It’s perfectly reasonable that NFL scouts and college football fans would assess top talent differently. Scouts are making a projection of what the player could become over an NFL career against pro talent. College is about the immediate—what has a player done and against whom did he do it?

Still, it’s always a little jarring watching the NFL draft speculation play out over debates that seem rather lopsided to avid college football viewers (like why is Joshua Dobbs be discussed as a possible first-round pick?). So as an exercise for an alternate universe, it’s interesting to imagine how the first round might play out if NFL teams only looked what college players had done on the field. No 40 times, no hand size, no questions about whether players can handle the verbiage of the offense—just on-field production.

For this, we’ll consider the real needs NFL teams will be looking to fill in the draft. But rather than selecting who projects to have the best pro career at those spots, they’ll take the players with the best college careers. (For a projection of how the draft might actually go, check out Chris Burke's latest Mock Draft.)

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