2019 NFL Mock Draft: Projected first round after college football season
The 2018 college football season is in the books. Where do the first round NFL Draft projections stand? Find out in the latest 2019 NFL Mock Draft.
The end of the college football season is always a depressing reality, but it also signals the beginning of draft season as underclassmen make their decisions and the draft class gets fully set.
There’s still a handful of first-round prospects who have yet to declare for the draft, but that mostly looks like a formality for most. Every year brings surprises in that department, however, and a big one occurred this week with Auburn’s Derrick Brown, a potential Top-10 pick, electing to return to the Plains for his senior season.
A couple of decisions like that had major implications on Monday night’s National Championship Game. Clemson’s Clelin Ferrell and Christian Wilkins, both projected first round picks in last year’s draft class, elected to return to Clemson for their senior seasons in hopes of winning their second national title.
It paid off as the Tigers surprisingly rolled over No. 1 Alabama 44-16. Wilkins and Ferrell led a defense that held the potent Crimson Tide offense scoreless for the final 44-minutes of action, making play-after-play in the redzone to keep them off the scoreboard for the entire second half.
The decisions worked out for both as they added a second ring to their collection with each remaining likely first round picks in the 2019 draft.
After a big Rose Bowl performance, Ohio State’s Dwayne Haskins elected to forego his final two years of eligibility in Columbus to declare for the draft, with QB needy teams in the Top 10 breathing a sigh of relief that there will be at least one franchise signal caller in this class. Oregon’s Justin Herbert elected to return to Oregon, leaving this class thin at the most coveted of positions.
Through wildcard weekend of the NFL playoffs, the first 24 picks of the first round are set in stone barring trades. Picks 25-32 were generated by the projected winners of the remaining playoff games, with the favorite in each getting the nod for now. With three underdogs winning the four wildcard matchups, it’s highly unlikely that this order holds.
I expect this draft to have many trades, with several teams at the top potentially leveraging their position for an extra first round pick down the line with a team looking to jump up for Dwayne Haskins, but it’s still too far out to start projecting trades.
With that in mind, and with the college football season officially over, let’s take a look at our projected first round: