5 Players omitted from the first round of my mock draft who might sneak in by April
There are just 32 picks in the first round to work with...
With the days of College Football dwindling and the ramp up toward the 2025 NFL Draft happening, mock drafts are going to be flying in from every direction.
And I am one of the people throwing them at you. This week I published my first two-round mock draft of the season in an exercise of matching names with specific teams and their schemes and culture they fit into. However, every time you do a mock draft, names shuffle in and out of the first round almost on a weekly basis.
Some players deserve to hear their names called in the first round who are impossible to fit into it. There are only 32 picks to work with. However, let’s highlight a handful of those players who very well could go in the first round by the time April rolls around that I could not find a way to squeeze into the top 32 of my most recent mock draft.
Here are five players worth the shoutout despite being left out of the first round of my latest mock draft:
Alabama QB Jalen Milroe
I am still not quite there yet with Jalen Milroe as a passer. For a past project, I went back and charted Lamar Jackson’s junior season at Louisville to see just how developed of a quarterback he was before being drafted in the first round, and he was pretty far ahead of where Milroe is now.
Jackson, for starters, has an incredibly flexible arm to throw from just about any arm slot to create a window to throw through out of thin air. The arm of Milroe is extremely stiff and rigid. He has just one angle to throw from but can create windows with his legs. However, the velocity is certainly there from Milroe.
Jackson was playing in an offense that asked a ton of his eyes. He was working backside, showed excellent pocket skills, and had an internal timer to exit and make a play with his legs when he needed to. Milroe is trying to do so, and using his legs is not a concern with borderline 4.3 speed. He is standing in pockets and working with his eyes at a much higher level than the year before.
The accuracy is just not quite consistent enough. He went from looking like the first overall pick in a win against Georgia to an undrafted free agent quarterback against Tennessee and South Carolina in back-to-back weeks. He’ll have big games down the stretch, let’s see some consistency there.
It only takes one team to take that chance on Milroe, and we could see a similar situation to the 2018 NFL Draft where the Baltimore Ravens traded back into the backend to take him. Slated to the Cleveland Browns in my mock draft, that is certainly a team to watch to do so as they navigate their murky quarterback situation.
Kentucky CB Maxwell Hairston
It’s hard to throw Kentucky cornerback Maxwell Hairston into the first round right now given that he has missed the majority of the season. However, the feedback I have gotten from scouts is that he is certainly in play at the backend.
Hairston is explosive, possesses excellent transitional burst, and has a fluid sense of changing directions. His ball skills are as evident in the box score as they are on tape, as the long 6-foot-1 cornerback has a knack for getting his hands on the football.
It would have been nice to see him play against Tre Harris from Ole Miss, or Isaiah Bond this weekend against Texas to improve his draft stock and 2025 NFL Draft resume. However, despite an early exit this season, NFL scouts love Hairston. And potentially enough to take him top-32.
Oregon OT Josh Conerly
When looking at an offensive tackle class where the top of the crop the majority is projected to guard, NFL teams will jump at athletic tools in prototypical tackle body types. This means Oregon’s Josh Conerly has a chance to rise into the top 32 should he declare.
A former five-star recruit, Conerly’s athletic ceiling is sky-high and he will draw more fans at the NFL Scouting Combine when he gets the chance to prove it. Does he have first round tape? No, but only a few over a handful do this year.
Conerly has dynamic feet and the ideal length teams crave at offensive tackle. His body needs to fill out quite a bit as he plays with an extremely soft anchor and wide hands, but some team is going to bet on their weight training program and coaching to fix up some deficiencies in his game.
Ultimately, Conerly should go back to Eugene for another year, but if he does declare, he’s a first round wild card.
Oregon DT Derrick Harmon
This one might have come as a shock to some given the hype that Derrick Harmon from Oregon has been getting this season. However, looking beyond the box score, there is reason to believe that a lot of Harmon’s production is due to execution of scheme while playing next to a stellar nose tackle like Jamaree Caldwell who is gaming him free.
The Michigan State transfer has earned the praise, but some of it needs to be looked at in the context of what he and the men next to them are being asked to do.
This is not to say that Harmon hasn’t earned the praise he has received but to say that I still think defensive tackles like Ohio State’s Tyleik Williams and Michigan’s Kenneth Grant bring a bit more to the table for teams looking for interior play in the first round.
Regardless, I still mocked him in the top 40 to the New York Jets. Defensive tackle is another position that is highly scheme-specific on a team-by-team basis, and a team looking for a gap-shooting pass rusher may want to take that chance earlier than I did in my mock draft.
Ole Miss EDGE Princely Umanmielen
We’ve been waiting for three years for former Florida and now current Ole Miss pass rusher Princely Umanmielen to put it all together, and he is finally doing it against his biggest opponents. He took over in the win against Georgia with two sacks and has racked up a total of 17 pressures and six sacks in his last three games alone in SEC play.
The body type is there, the traits are there, and now the hand usage and pass rush plan is starting to sync up. Umanmielen is another player who is going to test well when he gets to the combine in Indianapolis at the end of February. The stars are aligning for him.
His next task is to take on his former team and potential top-100 player Austin Barber as the Rebels play the Gators, then ending his regular season against the rival Mississippi State Bulldogs. Ole Miss currently controls their own destiny into the College Football Playoffs as well.
Umanmielen has more big games on his schedule to continue to show he is one of the premier pass rushers in the 2025 NFL Draft.