THE FINAL 2026 MOCK
Fernando Mendoza is going to be the #1 overall pick to the Las Vegas Raiders. That much has been known since he and Indiana hoisted the National Championship trophy. In a division with Patrick Mahomes, Justin Herbert and Bo Nix.
First 5 picks are pretty chalk - in terms of talent - those are the best 5 guys in the class in some order. The Giants top players on their board likely come down to Sonny Styles, Jeremiyah Love, Caleb Downs. They can jump their division rival and give the Browns exactly what they are looking for: a trade down.
Then comes the Browns deciding they can’t afford to wait on offensive tackle at 10 and push to move back up with the Saints - a team that almost never trades down. But the Browns give up two mid rounders in next year’s class to get the deal done and take Spencer Fano.
With the Saints wanting both Reuben Bain Jr and Jordyn Tyson, this deal works out perfectly. They can take whichever Kansas City doesn’t take and leave Pittsburgh happy. No trades over the next seven picks as each team gets the guy they want. Look for the Eagles to move up to get ahead of the early 20s tackle run - here for Monroe Freeling. I’ll pop the rest of the trade details in underneath.
The next major trade involves the Kansas City Chiefs moving up from 29 all the way to 20 to get Jermod McCoy. He’s a great fit in any defense and one of my highest rated players. I would fucking hate this pick.
Pittsburgh jumps in to grab a future left tackle before shocking everyone and moving up to the 28th overall pick to select Alabama QB Ty Simpson as Aaron Rodgers successor. There’s a secret team that is very interested in Simpson and with no decision on Rodgers’ future, taking a developmental QB to learn from one of the game’s greats is a smart idea.
The Bills also get aggressive in pursuit of an offensive weapon for Josh Allen and take Omar Cooper Jr. The pick could be KC Concepcion here; they are both very close in my rankings. Not much of a wait for Concepcion though as he goes 24 to Cleveland to fill a much-needed role on offense.
Over the last 8 picks in the first round, teams that have moved down are still able to get their guys. The Chargers are in desperate need of interior offensive line talent, the 49ers need a long-term tackle option, the Cowboys need pass rush help, the Dolphins need corners, the Patriots get a developmental right tackle to eventually replace the 35-year-old Morgan Moses, while the Super Bowl champions take the best player left on the board at 32.
FINAL RANKINGS COMING TOMORROW
I will have over 500 players fully scouted at this time tomorrow — hopefully much earlier. I cannot wait to share them with you. Here’s a breakdown of my process in terms of film, analytics, etc.
I factor quite a few things into my final rankings, but you can think of my model as almost a 50/30/20 split of film vs analytics vs awards/upside. What I mean by that is, film makes up roughly 49% of my model, leaving a small 3% for EA’s college football ratings — I know that isn’t “film”, but those evaluators do watch players to determine ratings. I do this because Ravens GM Eric DeCosta said the Ravens use Madden’s ratings in their model. I thought that was the coolest thing ever, so I knew I needed it in here when I first built this out.
The next ~30% essentially goes to analytics based on PFF’s scouting model (19%) along with the Relative Athletic Score — a metric built by @MathBomb on X commonly referred to as RAS (~9.5%).
The last ~20% come down to two things: What awards did you win in college, and what is your upside at the NFL level?
This is my somewhat equal dose of film, analytics and projection in a model I built just for fun. I’m excited to share with you tomorrow — make sure you subscribe!
FOR THE GIRLS — POSITION BREAKDOWN
Quick little breakdown here for the people, here is how most teams set themselves up in football and what positions they play. This will be important this weekend as teams will look to balance who they select based on which positions are “premiums.”
Some of the premium positions include quarterback, wide receiver, offensive tackle and edge rusher. In my mock draft above, I have 19 of the 32 first rounders coming from these four positions.
