2015 NFL Draft Guide

2015 NFL Draft Guide

With the NFL season not yet reaching the half way point it has still become obvious that certain teams such as Jacksonville, Tampa Bay and Oakland will be in line for an early draft choice, and it is equally obvious that teams such as Denver and Dallas will be drafting at the other end of the spectrum. 

Since some position strengths and weaknesses of the 32 teams have already become apparent; and as it is never too early for draft junkies to turn their attention to the next draft. I have put together a position by position Draft Guide which will be presented in Installments.

To make it more interesting, I have included the rankings of a couple of popular scouting sites along  with seniors that are on the Watch List for the Senior Bowl and in addition noted their high school grades from Rivals, which appears to have the strictest grading system.  So at the top right of each position will be: WF for WalterFootball, PS for Phil Steele, CBS which is for CBS Sports Draftscout, SB for Senior Bowl and RIV for Rivals.  Further explanation is that for WF, they only went 20 or 25 deep at most positions and their last rankings were on Oct. 4, 2014; Phil Steele's rankings were taken from his magazine which also only goes 20 to 30 deep at each position and his magazine came out in June or July, 2014; CBS is constantly updating their rankings with the latest that I used being Oct. 16, 2014 for the offensive line and Oct. 22 for QB's, FB's and RB's, and with their position lists containing every possible player.  CBS does rank them by year so there may be three No. 1's, three No. 2's etc. at each position representing the Seniors, Juniors or Redshirt Sophomores.  The Senior Bowl has a watch list of over 350 players which they pair down to 110 players to be selected for the two 55 man rosters.  Their original list was published just as the season began in 2014 and they too will make additions during the season.  The SB code is Y for Yes the player is on the Watch List, or N for No he is not on the Watch List; or an E, which means not eligible for the Senior Bowl.  They did extend an invite to Marcus Mariota as he will have graduated by the time of the Senior Bowl even though he will still have college eligibility.

The code for the position lists is as follows:

7/9 or 0/8 indicate the starts that a player had and then games that a player participated in and may also include: AC-C or AC2-M or ACHM-C, those would stand for All Conference-Coaches or All Conference, 2nd Team by the Media (AP); or All Conference Honorable Mention by the Coaches.   ACA-AC or ACA-AC2, etc. is for Academic All Conference 1st or 2nd Team;  while the SEC has an Honor Roll which will show up as SEC-HR which is also for academic achievement.  I didn't break the academic honors down by year, if a player made it once, it was included to show that he could do it.  A (P) indicates some type of problem, either an arrest, suspension from the team or any other issue which puts a team on notice of a character issue. The height and weight under a player's name are self explanatory while the forty times, say shown as 4.98 - 5.26 are the player's fastest and slowest times, which I like to see to know what the player is capable of rather than just taking an average of the two.  The thinking being that the player's best time is what you will see when in a highly competitive game, while factoring in that the times were in shorts while the games are played in pads.  NR is for Not Rated.