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We still don’t know whether or not we’ll have either a college football or NFL season in 2020, but plans are for both leagues to move forward with significant contingencies. But that hasn’t stopped our friends over at DraftWire from projecting who could make names for themselves this season and subsequently find themselves picked early in the 2021 NFL Draft.
In June, our sister site had two Wolverines going in the first two-rounds of its too-early mock draft, with Jalen Mayfield going in the first and Aidan Hutchinson going in the second. However, there have been some changes in the site’s late July edition, with Mayfield slipping to the second-round and Hutchinson — who would be an early entrant to the draft as it were — not making the cut in the new three-round projection.
But still, DraftWire’s Luke Easterling had three Michigan players being selected in the first three rounds, even if the maize and blue aren’t represented in the opening foray of the NFL draft.
Second Round
- No. 33 – OT Jalen Mayfield – Washington Football Team
- No. 60 – DE Kwity Paye – Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Third Round
- No. 93 – WR Nico Collins – Cleveland Browns (from New Orleans)
Mayfield dropping to the top of the second-round would be a disappointment, but it still shows he’s being thought of as an elite talent who, at worst, if he leaves for the NFL with a year of eligibility remaining, would be a Day Two pick.
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The Kwity Paye pick would be interesting, given that he would be joining forces with new Buccaneers QB Tom Brady, who spent 2019 in New England with former Michigan DE Chase Winovich. By all accounts, the two former Wolverines formed something of a bond in their single-year overlap in Foxborough.
Even more interesting is Nico Collins in the third-round to Cleveland. The Browns not only already have Odell Beckham Jr. and Jarvis Landry, but signed Collins’ Michigan counterpart in Donovan Peoples-Jones, who the franchise selected in the sixth-round of the 2020 NFL Draft. We still hold that Collins is a greater talent than being a third-round selection, but he’ll need a big year, statistically speaking, to move up into the first two rounds of the forthcoming NFL draft.