Tag: 2025 NFL Draft

Denver won’t host the NFL draft in 2025 or 2026

Green Bay (2025) and Pittsburgh (2026) will host the next two NFL drafts. Denver could be a candidate to host in 2027.

Denver mayor Mike Johnston traveled to Michigan in April to meet with the NFL’s draft committee and Detroit mayor Mike Duggan as he continues to push for a future NFL draft to be held in Colorado.

The Broncos (and the city of Denver) will have to wait at least two more years before getting an opportunity to host a draft. The 2025 draft was previously awarded to Green Bay and yesterday, the NFL announced that Pittsburgh will host the 2026 draft.

Johnston and the Broncos could now turn their attention toward potentially hosting the NFL draft in 2027. More than 700,000 fans attended this year’s NFL draft in Detroit, setting a new attendance record for the three-day event.

Denver has not yet traded any of its 2027 draft picks, but that could obviously change over the next three years. The Broncos made seven picks in this year’s draft, landing quarterback Bo Nix in the first round.

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2025 NFL Draft first impression: Princely Umanmielen, EDGE, Ole Miss

Early 2025 NFL Draft scouting profile on Ole Miss EDGE Princely Umanmielen ahead of the 2024 college football season

Next up in the summer scouting series is Princely Umanmielen, an EDGE from the SEC who has changed schools this offseason.

Umanmielen is another player that many expected to turn pro after the 2023 season. Instead, he opted to transfer from Florida to SEC rival Ole Miss. The 22-year-old played four seasons in Gainesville and is coming off a season where he racked up 39 tackles, 9.5 TFLs, 4.5 sacks and forced two fumbles.

Listed at 6-foot-5 and 256 pounds, Umanmielen has played both stand-up OLB and from the three-point stance inline, and he attacks from either side of the defensive formation. He’s got long arms and wraps well when he gets a paw on a target.

He’s got a nice spin move, one that isn’t as sudden as more twitchy players. Instead, Umanmielen uses his length to leverage off the blocker and clear himself a lot of space with his spin, and he can go either inside or outside with the spin.

While it doesn’t always show, Umanmielen can flatten around the edge to close on the quarterback. This is a combination of exploiting a bad pass-pro set by the left tackle but also finishing with a great tack to pop Spencer Rattler with controlled authority.

Umanmielen has good-not-great initial burst on the edge, but he does understand how to use his quickness off the snap inside nicely. There’s a nice perceptiveness to his game that allows Umanmielen to quickly react to a blocking set or a zone block that works better when he’s inside than outside. The ability to knife between the guard and tackle on run plays and play-action passes is probably his best attribute at the moment.

In run defense, he’s been largely boom-or-bust. The disruptiveness to get behind the line and wreak havoc on the timing and gap fits can be great. Alas, there’s a lot of Umanmielen opting to attack the block instead of the ball, akin to a younger Preston Smith. The ability to shed blocks is still a work in progress, though it seems more of a technical issue than an effort one. It will be interesting to see if transferring to Ole Miss and a different staff helps Umanmielen here.

Overall, Princely Umanmielen is a very appealing draft prospect entering his final college season. The length, quickness and ability to bend the edge should have him very prominent in preseason mock drafts and give Umanmielen the potential to come off the board very early in the 2025 NFL Draft.

 

2025 NFL Draft first impression: Quinn Ewers, QB, Texas

Early 2025 NFL Draft scouting profile on Texas QB Quinn Ewers ahead of the 2024 college football season

Next up in the summer scouting series is a quarterback who was considered in play for the 2024 NFL draft before opting to return to college. Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers certainly garnered some buzz for leading the Longhorns and a talented group of skill position players into the College Football Playoff during the 2023 season.

Ewers, a 6-foot-2, 205-pound righty, is a fixture in the first round of the “too early” mock drafts for the 2025 NFL Draft. I went back and watched five Texas games from last season to focus on Ewers with a more scouting-centric eye than just casually watching the team. Of course, with four skill position players selected in the top 101 picks in April surrounding him on offense, there was certainly a familiarity with Ewers’ game.

The first thing that stands out with Ewers is his arm strength. He’s got a high-caliber rifle, but one that he can control. In contrast to Georgia’s Carson Beck, Ewers can take something off the ball and still deliver an accurate, shorter throw. He can also quickly find his best option and manipulate the defense and coverage, as he did here against Alabama:

This kind of delivery and decisive use of field vision is inconsistent with Ewers, but he’s proven capable of doing things like this against elite defenses. There just needs to be more of it, more consistently.

On the above rep, Ewers stood confidently in the face of a rush and delivered a strike to a moving target. Unfortunately, that proved to be more of an exception than the norm with the 21-year-old Ohio State transfer. Too often, Ewers doesn’t stick with reads and routes like this one when he gets pressure in his face or near his feet. Again, the ability is there but it’s not consistent and never got better over the course of 2023.

Ewers has some running ability, and he generally makes smart choices on when to tuck and run. One thing he needs to improve is protecting himself at the end of the run, however. He took at least one unnecessary hard hit in every game I watched. There’s a fine line between being inspirationally courageous and carelessly injured, and Ewers needs to find that line a bit better.

There isn’t a quarterback prospect who doesn’t need to improve on handling pressure and making better decisions under fire, but that’s an area where Ewers wilts more than normal. He either freezes up and takes a bad sack (first drive in the Iowa State game, and later in the Rice game are prime examples) or rushes his mechanics and loses control of his accuracy.

Often the biggest selling point for a big-armed QB is the deep ball. In the games I watched, that unfortunately shows Ewers at his worst. He might have a big arm, but it sure doesn’t show all that well on deep throws outside the numbers.

There are far too many misfires on Ewers’ tape to even entertain the notion that he would have been a top-50 pick in the 2024 NFL Draft. Take this deep shot against Rice, where everything is perfect for this play except his ducky lollipop of a throw. This is very reminiscent of Cody Kessler in his Browns days:

He just doesn’t have the downfield command for NFL defenses to take Ewers seriously. His receivers had to work too hard to make plays and were often thrown out of being open because of a combination of a lack of confident zip or just poor ball placement on longer throws from Ewers.

Coming off the QB draft class we just saw, Ewers would have ranked below Spencer Rattler (fifth round, No. 150 overall) as a prospect in my evaluation here. The good news for Ewers is that he’s got another college season to improve and grow as a prospect. Hopefully he puts that to good use.

Giants grab an elite defender in PFN’s way-too-early 2025 mock draft

The New York Giants pass on a quarterback and select a top-tier defender in Pro Football Network’s way-too-early 2025 NFL mock draft.

The New York Giants aren’t expected to be a playoff team in 2024 and that means they will be in a position to select another top name in the NFL draft.

In Pro Football Network’s latest 2025 mock draft, analyst James Fragoza has the Giants picking sixth overall, which would mean they will have picked in the top 10 eight times since 2015 and in the top 12 nine times since 2014.

In this exercise, the Giants pass on a quarterback in favor of Michigan defensive tackle Mason Graham.

6) New York Giants: Mason Graham, DT, Michigan

Were it not for (Kentucky’s Deonte) Walker’s freakishness, Mason Graham would be the DT1 in the class. He consistently wins as a run defender and pass rusher and has few holes in his game.

Michigan likes to rotate its DTs frequently (and the Wolverines have the depth to do so without significant drop-off). But when on the field, offenses feel Graham’s impact.

The Giants naturally have Dexter Lawrence locked up for the foreseeable future but would love to have a more permanent partner to pair with him in the middle.

This season, they brought in veteran Jordan Phillips and will use him in a rotation with Rakeem Nunez-Roches and their Oregon trio (D.J. Davidson, Jordon Riley, and Casey Rogers).

This pick could be moot if one of those players — or UDFA Elijah Chatman — breaks out this season.

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Latest 2025 NFL mock draft has Vikings in top ten, get secondary help

Pro Football Network’s NFL draft analyst Oliver Hodgkinson predicts another top-10 pick for the Vikings and gives them some CB help.

The 2024 NFL draft has come and gone, and in its wake, there’s been a lot of excitement around the Minnesota Vikings. After a disappointing season in 2023 marred by injuries, there’s a renewed sense of hope around the team and their new quarterback — first-round pick J.J. McCarthy.

McCarthy comes in and is charged with leading the Vikings into a new age, as is his fellow first-round pick Dallas Turner on the other side of the ball. As McCarthy comes in to replace long-time Viking Kirk Cousins, so too does Turner, replacing long-time star edge defender Danielle Hunter. It’s a time of a lot of turnover for the Vikings and an exciting new era. But how long before that new era starts to pay dividends for the team?

It won’t happen immediately, at least not according to the latest predictions from Pro Football Network. In their latest 2025 NFL mock draft, writer Oliver Hodgkinson uses the site’s predictive software to set the draft order, and it comes out with the Vikings picking sixth. A disappointing, but not altogether unpredictable, result.

So where do the Vikings go with another top-10 pick? Hodgkinson has the team getting more help in the defensive backfield with Notre Dame cornerback Benjamin Morrison. Here’s Hodgkinson’s analysis of the selection:

The addition of Shaq Griffin and multiple CBs in the previous draft cycle points to the Minnesota Vikings looking to upgrade their secondary. They do that in this 2025 NFL Mock Draft with Notre Dame standout Benjamin Morrison, a top-five prospect on the PFN Big Board. He closes space in a heartbeat and has the ball skills to routinely snag interceptions in the NFL.

Certainly, another top-10 pick isn’t what the fans want to see from a team that feels like it’s a quarterback away, but the reality is that this team’s development is going to take some time, and there are some significant holes on the roster yet that could hamper it.

However, if McCarthy develops the way fans and the coaching staff think, this prediction could look bad come next April.

2025 NFL draft first impression: Carson Beck, QB, Georgia

Early NFL Draft scouting profile on Georgia QB Carson Beck ahead of the 2024 college football season

It’s been three weeks since the 2024 NFL Draft. Time to flip the switch into 2025 draft evaluation mode.

This year’s summer scouting kicks off with Georgia quarterback Carson Beck, who is widely projected to be one of the top prospects. I had some scouting familiarity with Beck while he was considered a potential early entrant into the 2024 draft, but the Bulldogs QB opted for another year. He also threw to two very prominent prospects in the 2024 draft, TE Brock Bowers and WR Ladd McConkey, and also had a first-round OT in Amarius Mims, so there was quite a bit of base viewing on Beck.

I went back and watched six Georgia games from the 2023 season with the spotlight on Beck. The 6-foot-4, 220-pound listing by the Bulldogs program seems legit when watching Beck. He’s got a good, athletic build and carries himself with the presence of someone who expects to be great and projects that to his teammates.

This is a fairly typical play from Beck in Georgia’s offense. Routine pitch-and-catch on a shorter throw to an open receiver in a clean window.

It’s not sexy, but it spotlights what Beck does very well. He takes the layups and his accuracy and timing give his weapons chances to create after the catch. Quick delivery, good balanced throwing motion here.

One nitpick that is visible in that throw vs. Auburn that showed repeatedly on Beck’s tape: he doesn’t move his eyes or his neck off his primary target. There’s a whole lot of staring down his target. When the receivers are open, as they often were in 2023, it’s not a problem, but it’s something I want to see Beck improve upon in 2024.

Another area for improvement is touch on shorter throws. Beck tends to rifle the ball into short slants and quick screens. When he does try to take something off the throw, the accuracy really wanes. There are too many instances where Beck loses the precise ball placement when he doesn’t throw the shorter and intermediate routes at full velocity. That’s not an uncommon issue for big-armed QBs, and it is something that Beck did get better at from September to December.

Yes, the arm is indeed strong. Beck can whistle in a cross-field strike with impressive velocity and without needing to engage into a full-body throwing motion. He’s got a consistent, well-honed throwing motion and resets himself quickly and consistently when forced to move off his spot.

Beck does have some running ability. He showed off some good decision-making and elusiveness in this touchdown run against UT-Martin:

Beck isn’t a running QB, but he can indeed get out of trouble when he senses the pressure. And that’s another area for improvement. He doesn’t have a great sense for backside pressure or secondary rushers if they’re not obvious pre-snap. A lot of that got mitigated by so many quick throws in the Georgia offense, but it’s something to keep an eye on in 2024 as he works with a lot of new receivers; will he trust his new guys, and will his sense of imminent danger grow?

Trust in the receivers is critical, because Beck did force a lot of balls — to Bowers specifically but also staying with his primary read too long even if it was well-covered. That was very evident in the Auburn and Alabama games. I can’t speak to Georgia’s receiving talent right now, but Beck needs them to help him out if he’s going to attempt some of the throws he made to Bowers and WR Marcus Rosemy-Jacksaint in 2023 with defenders draped all over them.

Overall I came away largely impressed with Beck. There’s a lot to work with athletically, and his arm strength and capable mobility are definitely appealing. Growth in the processing department, throwing touch, and an ability to adapt to new receivers will be major keys to Beck’s draft stock in the coming college season.

Steelers land elite wide receiver in early 2025 NFL mock draft

Here is an early 2025 mock draft where the Steelers address wide receiver.

The 2024 NFL season is still several months away but so is college football so that keeps us thinking about the 2025 NFL draft. The Draft Network has out a new one-round mock draft for 2025 and for the Pittsburgh Steelers, they went with an easy option for what we expect to be the team’s top offseason need.

They have the Steelers selecting No. 14 overall which is troubling. But it’s saved by the pick of Ohio State wide receiver Emeka Egbuka. Egbuka considered declaring for the 2024 NFL draft where he would have been in the mix to be one of the top 4 or 5 receivers off the board.

Pittsburgh traded away Diontae Johnson and despite selecting Michigan star Roman Wilson in the third round of the 2024 NFL draft, could still use a true No. 1 wide receiver to pair up with George Pickens.

Egbuka is banking on improved quarterback play at Ohio State this year that could vault him higher into the first-round conversation in 2025.

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Wisconsin starting RT one of PFF’s ’10 offensive tackles to know ahead of the 2025 NFL Draft’

Wisconsin has a highly-touted starting tackle entering 2024:

Wisconsin right tackle Riley Mahlman was named an ‘offensive tackle to know ahead of the 2025 NFL draft’ by ProFootballFocus on Monday.

Mahlman was one of 10 players included, along with LSU’s Will Campbell, Texas’ Kelvin Banks Jr., Arizona’s Jonah Savaiinaea, LSU’s Emery Jones, Oregon’s Ajani Cornelius, Clemson’s Blake Miller, West Virginia’s Wyatt Milum, Oregon’s Josh Conerly Jr. and Georgia’s Ernest Greene III.

Related: Post-spring Big Ten football 2024 power rankings, starting quarterback rankings

The veteran is set to again be Wisconsin’s starting right tackle in 2024. He started all 13 games at the position in 2023 and six in 2022 — though that number would have also been 13 had it not been for an early-season injury.

Mahlman’s 78.1 PFF last season was the highest for any Wisconsin lineman and the 5th-highest in the Big Ten. He enters 2024 primed for his best collegiate season and as one of the conference’s best tackles.

While the play of Wisconsin’s offensive line has been up and down since 2019, Mahlman has been arguably its best performer over that time. His play, at the least, has not been a part of what is now a multi-year struggle for the position.

Another offseason to prepare for Phil Longo’s offense should pay dividends for Mahlman and the rest of the line. Early struggles adjusting to the new pace and approach are understandable, though year two should be when we see those issues ironed out.

As we inch closer to the season and to 2025 NFL draft discussion, here is what PFF thinks of the Wisconsin starter:

After missing nearly half of his redshirt freshman season with an injury, Mahlman took a major leap as a redshirt sophomore. In 2023, the right tackle was the sixth-most valuable offensive tackle in the country according to our wins above average metric. Mahlman’s 78.1 PFF grade was a top-15 mark among Power Five tackles as was his 73.1 run-blocking grade. He was also among the 20 best Power Five offensive tackles in pressure rate allowed (3%).

Contact/Follow @TheBadgersWire on X (formerly Twitter) and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Wisconsin Badgers news, notes and opinion.

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PFF analyst predicts Texas WR Isaiah Bond to first round of NFL draft

“I think he’s going to be a first round pick next year.”

Texas wide receiver Isaiah Bond is commanding high praise from those outside of the program. The No. 4 player in the transfer portal and one of the more explosive receivers in college football is viewed as a top NFL draft prospect next season.

Pro Football Focus analyst Max Chadwick gave his prediction for Isaiah Bond on the PFF College Football Show.

“I think he’s going to be a first round pick next year.”

Bond will have to share receptions with perhaps Texas’ deepest wide receiver room in recent memory. The Longhorns added Houston transfer Matthew Golden and Oregon State receiver Silas Bolden to anticipated starter Johntay Cook this offseason. Freshman Ryan Wingo and second-year receiver DeAndre Moore were expected to watch the season from the sideline, but have emerged as legitimate starter candidates.

Despite the high volume of receivers that could take away potential targets from Bond, it’s reasonable to expect explosive plays from the talented pass catcher. His ability to separate from SEC defensive backs gave Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe the margin for error to underthrow passes last season and still connect for touchdowns. Bond caught the game winner on 4th and Goal from the 31 after allowing himself room in the end zone to make a play.

Much was made about Bond’s separation on one touchdown play in the Orange-White game. In fairness to the Texas secondary, other squads will likely continue having issues keeping up with Bond.

The Alabama transfer is set to lead one of the more talented wide receiver rooms in college football. He’ll look to put up strong enough film to live up to NFL draft projections in the 2024 season.

Danny Stutsman projected to the Dallas Cowboys in 2025 NFL Mock Draft

Fox Sports projects Danny Stutsman to the Dallas Cowboys in a 2025 NFL Mock Draft.

The Oklahoma Sooners 2025 roster received a huge boost when [autotag]Danny Stutsman[/autotag] opted to forgo the 2024 NFL draft and return for his senior season. The Sooners linebacker room has a lot of talent, but would have been lacking experience had Stutsman departed for the league.

Looking ahead, he and the Sooners defense are poised for another strong season in 2024, Oklahoma’s first in the SEC. With improved defensive tackle depth, Stutsman will get to play a little cleaner as Damonic Williams, Da’Jon Terry, Jayden Jackson, Gracen Halton, and David Stone keep interior offensive linemen from climbing to the second level to slow Stutsman and the linebacker group.

With improved talent up front and a developing linebacker group around him, it’s possible we see the best version of Danny Stutsman in 2024. NFL draft analysts are banking on it. In a 2025 mock draft over at Fox Sports, Rob Rang sees Stutsman going in the back end of the first round to the Dallas Cowboys at No. 26 overall.

After leading the Big 12 in tackles in 2022 and earning All-American accolades (despite battling injury) a year ago, Stutsman was thought to be a shoo-in to join the 2024 NFL draft. Instead, by returning, the rangy 6-foot-4, 241 has a chance at being the first off-ball linebacker selected next spring. He certainly checks boxes for his playmaking ability, recording 267 tackles, including 28 tackles for loss already. – Rob Rang, Fox Sports

There’s a good chance the Cowboys have a need at linebacker again next offseason. They lost Leighton Vander Esch to retirement and were already light at the position. They signed veteran Eric Kendricks to a one-year deal this spring, but could need an infusion of talent next spring.

Dallas would be a fun landing spot for Danny Stutsman, who has become a larger-than-life individual in Oklahoma.

Contact/Follow us @SoonersWire on X, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Oklahoma news, notes, and opinions. You can also follow John on X @john9williams.