Carson Beck as QB3? A look at how NFL Draft's top positional stacks are shaping up before showtime

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Big Boards: Consensus Top 75 • Nate Tice • Charles McDonald | Draft guide

With the NFL Draft upon us, we finally get around to what we’ve known for months — and what we’ve debated for what has seemed like an eternity.

Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza is going to be the first overall pick. And Alabama quarterback Ty Simpson is going to get drafted ... well …somewhere.

All secrets will be revealed by the end of Saturday night — at which point we can prematurely grade everyone’s performance and argue over which team stole the show or blew the entire draft. Before we do that, it’s worth breaking down how the top of positional stacks appear to have shaped up since the scouting combine in late March. After spending almost two months talking to a swath of evaluators in preparation for this year’s All-Juice Team, I got a better understanding of how some teams and their talent evaluators have stacked up each position along the way.

In the process, we can now give you what we believe is the order of the talent stack at the top of each position in the draft, based on evaluations of various personnel sources from 10 different teams. It’s not a perfect snapshot of all 32 franchises, and the information has been gathered during the height of the league’s lying season. But broad commonalities emerged from the cross section of evaluators, offering a reasonable thumbnail of how the talent stacks are likely to unfold in this draft. Starting with quarterback, for example.

Peering through the dustup over Simpson’s talent and where he should be ranked among his fellow quarterbacks — and tuning out and last-minute nonsensical second-guessing about Mendoza — at least three things emerged about the quarterbacks:

First, Mendoza swept the board in the quarterback stack without much fanfare. All 10 evaluators put him at the top of the quarterback class and didn’t think twice about it.
Second, Simpson swept the second spot in the stack among evaluators and did it about as easily as Mendoza took the top spot.
Third, Miami’s Carson Beck may very well end up being the third quarterback off the board, and there’s a chance he squeezes into the tail end of the third round.

That last one was surprising to me — and it’s certainly not set in stone. Beck had plenty of hot or cold reactions when he was being slotted into the stack by evaluators. Two liked him enough to suggest he could be a third-round pick. Several others loathed aspects of his profile and put him a country mile behind LSU’s Garrett Nussmeier. At times, the disparity was enough that I threw the stack out to some other longtime evaluators with general manager experience just to see if Beck being the aggregate No. 3 in the quarterback stack seemed right.

“100-percent,” an NFC executive replied. “Bigger than Nussmeier. More success. Better worker. I don’t think Beck is great, but Nuss is a wild card in a bad class.”

So in a draft touted to have some possibly worthwhile middle-round dart throws at quarterback, the stack spit out Beck’s name as the first quarterback after we got past Mendoza and Simpson. It might not be revelatory, as I’ve seen some respected analysts scoot Beck up their overall prospect rankings as the draft sifting has gone on. But it’s interesting in that the aggregate slotted Beck at the third quarterback spot in the stack and when it was back-checked with other personnel executives, it had some weight.

With that in mind, here are the rest of the positions in this weekend’s draft and a snapshot of how evaluators from 10 different teams stacked the top end of each position …

Running back

There’s a strong chance only two running backs are taken in the first two rounds: Jeremiyah Love inside the top 10 picks and his Notre Dame backup Jadarian Price somewhere in the second round. Love is in the top five of most boards. Price’s assessment varies considerably. A few evaluators are stacking him in a range that would fit into the top of the second round, others in the middle of the second, and the remainder from the middle of the second to the top of the third. Interestingly, Arkansas’ Mike Washington Jr. — who had a monster performance at the scouting combine — had only two teams stacking him into a range that would fit in the tail end of the second round. The rest are pegging him in the top half of the third round. Nebraska’s Emmett Johnson and Washington’s Jonah Coleman were split between teams as the fourth or fifth running back, with each falling into a range equating to the middle of the third round to the top of the fourth.

Wide receiver

It’s shaping up to be another deep class that packs into the first two rounds, with as many as nine receivers stacked inside the top 60 to 70 players on boards. As anticipated, the big three — Arizona State’s Jordyn Tyson, Ohio State’s Carnell Tate and USC’s Makai Lemon — were all stacked in a range that will put them in the first round. The top wideout slot was a closer split between Tyson and Tate than has been predicted in most mock drafts. Tate was slotted higher than Tyson for most evaluators, but Tyson got the nod as the top wideout on a few boards. Neither was slotted as a top-five pick by teams.

The real intrigue is shaping up in the next trio of Texas A&M’s KC Concepcion, Indiana’s Omar Cooper and Washington’s Denzel Boston. All three were stacked as the fourth wideout by at least one team. Concepcion was fourth on most boards, followed by Cooper and then Boston. One team had Boston stacked in a manner that would potentially translate as low as the top of the third round.

Tight end

The position is basically Oregon’s Kenyon Sadiq and then a ledge. Every evaluator had Sadiq stacked in a manner that would translate into the middle of the first round. One team pegged him inside the top 10, while three others had him slotted in spots that would land him in the lower third of the first round. Vanderbilt’s Eli Stowers was comfortably stacked as the second tight end and with a position that would translate into late second-round territory. Ohio State’s Max Klare was the consensus third tight end, with valuations putting him in a territory that would translate late in the second to early in the third. There was a sizable gap after Klare, with Georgia’s Oscar Delp averaging a top 100 player range that translated consistently to an end of the third/top of the fourth draft spot.

Offensive tackle

For teams casting a line for an offensive tackle, this is going to be one of the more drama-filled talent stacks in the draft. Not only from the standpoint of sorting out players who are close to one another in terms of their talent, but also from the standpoint of the shelf. Essentially, all the evaluators were in agreement on one thing: If you’re going to take an offensive tackle, you had better get yours early.

Teams came to a consensus that there are basically six first-round tackles — Miami’s Francis Mauigoa, Utah’s Spencer Fano, Georgia’s Monroe Freeling, Alabama’s Kadyn Proctor, Utah’s Caleb Lomu and Clemson’s Blake Miller. Arizona State’s Max Iheanachor also had a few teams stack him in the top 30-35. How they’ll all sort out will be the theater on draft night, with Mauigoa and Fano both having teams stack them as their top tackle prospect. The same goes for Proctor and Freeling for the third tackle spot. Both players had teams stack them as the third offensive tackle. Some evaluators also had Iheanachor ahead of Miller.

It’s possible all seven of those tackles are drafted inside the first 35 picks. After that, there’s a gap down into the third- or fourth-round range.

Offensive guard

This one wasn’t a surprise. Penn State’s Olaivavega Ioane swept every stack as the top guard in the draft and likely the only one to be drafted in the first round expressly to play the position. Texas A&M’s Chase Bisontis was the second guard in the stack for most teams, followed by a mixture of Oregon’s Emmanuel Pregnon, Georgia Tech’s Keylan Rutledge and Iowa’s Gennings Dunker, who each had at least one evaluator tap them as the third-highest guard in the stack.

Center

It’s not a great year to find an elite center, but Florida’s Jake Slaughter earned the top nod from most teams. Iowa’s Logan Jones was also at the top of a handful of stacks at the position, but some evaluators ran hot or cold on him. Slaughter could end up being a fringe second-round to early third-round pick. The same goes for Jones and Auburn’s Connor Lew.

DEFENSE

Edge

No secret here, with Texas Tech’s David Bailey sweeping this stack as the top player at the position and likely second overall pick in the draft. The position was pretty uniformly slotted after Bailey, too. Miami’s Rueben Bain Jr. was the consensus No. 2 edge, while Miami’s Akheem Mesidor and Auburn’s Keldric Faulk each had some teams dial them in at the third spot in the stack.

What’s abundantly clear is that there are going to be a lot of edge players taken in the top 50 picks — possibly as many as eight, with the next four players on the edge stack being filled by Texas A&M’s Cashius Howell, Clemson’s T.J. Parker, Missouri’s Zion Young and Oklahoma’s R Mason Thomas. In terms of the total stack and how interchangeable some evaluators’ ratings were after the first four or five players, this looks like it’s the deepest position in the draft.

Defensive tackle

In terms of potential first-round picks, it was a bit of a two-man show between Ohio State’s Kayden McDonald and Clemson’s Peter Woods, who each had teams peg them as the top defensive tackle in the stack. It was a bit of a pick-your-flavor between the two, with both also in the fringe first-, early second-round range. After that tandem, the big shelf comes up fast, with Texas Tech’s Lee Hunter, Georgia’s Christen Miller and Florida’s Caleb Banks rounding out the top five defensive tackles (the trio in varying order from one evaluator to the next). But after that five — whom could all end up coming off the board in the top two rounds — the stack thins out into a group of players that get slotted in the late third round and beyond.

Linebacker

It’s a bit of a two-man show, but one that will be exciting to watch unfold. Like David Bailey at the edge spot, Ohio State’s Arvell Reese swept the linebacker stack and is another player who has a shot to be the second overall pick in the draft. Right behind him is fellow Buckeyes linebacker Sonny Styles, who interestingly also had three evaluators pegging him into top-five pick territory. That will lend some drama to the draft. Reese had one evaluator who put him into the top-10 pick range rather than top-five. As for the rest of the position, Georgia’s CJ Allen swept the No. 3 linebacker spot across the board and a seemingly cemented position inside the top 50 picks.

Safety

Another position where if you’re going to draft someone at the top of your stack, you better get to it fairly quickly because there’s a gap down after the first three players: Ohio State’s Caleb Downs, Oregon’s Dillon Thieneman and Toledo’s Emmanuel McNeil-Warren. Downs swept the top of the safety stack across all evaluators, with one putting him into top-five pick territory. The remaining nine all put him in the top-10 pick category. Thieneman was a near consensus as the No. 2 safety, but a few evaluators put McNeil-Warren in that spot as well. Interestingly, the zoomed-out vantage on McNeil-Warren ran a little hot and cold, with one evaluator putting him in potential top-20 pick territory, with three others framing him as a potential top-60 pick and the rest of the pack putting him squarely in the 30-40 range. Regardless, after that trio, we likely won’t see another safety come off the board until the late third round.

Cornerback

This spot has some decent depth into the top 60 to 70 picks, with as many as seven cornerbacks with a shot to be drafted inside that range. The top three were pegged to be off the board in the first 30 picks, led by LSU’s Mansoor Delane, who swept the top spot in the cornerback stack among all evaluators. He was followed by Tennessee’s tandem of Jermod McCoy and Colton Hood, who each had some evaluators lock them in at the second cornerback spot in the stack. The next four players were consistently in the top seven in the stack but were all mixed around from the fourth to the seventh position. Among them: South Carolina’s Brandon Cisse, Clemson’s Avieon Terrell, San Diego State’s Chris Johnson and Indiana’s D’Angelo Ponds.