Mike Mayock’s Big Board/Position Rankings

Everyone’s favorite draft analysts has released his Positional Rankings. Mayock only releases a mock draft and big board late in the draft season so it’s not out yet, but let’s take a look at some of the positions and curious rankings of Mayock. Mayock isn’t always right, but he’s through explains everything well and has strong convictions based off his tape analysis. There is a reason why he’s the best draft analyst around.

I can’t list his entire post here, so you’ll have to check it out for yourself, but I’ll give my reactions to his thoughts.

All of the rankings are over at NFL.com

Quarterback:

Nothing too much out of the ordinary the top three are the consensus Luck, Griffin III, Tannehill. He seperates the rest into categories like Trust the process, and figure them out. He puts Russell Wilson and Kellen Moore in the “figure them out”.

Kellen Moore has had a rough Senior Bowl week and is not the player that Russell Wilson is.

Running backs:

The number two running back on Mayock’s board is David Wilson a player who is also one of Dan Kadar of Mocking the draft’s favorite prospects. We still have Miller slightly ahead of Wilson, but see the allure of Wilson.  Count Mayock as a fan of LaMichael James, his fifth rated running back prospect.

Wide Receivers:

the big surprise here is that the fifth WR is Chris Givens. Most have Dwight Jones as the #5 WR, but not Mayock. Also Michael Floyd is ahead of Kendall Wright and Jefferey. Floyd is a terrific prospect, it’s just that darn pesky “Character concerns”.

Tight End:

Nothing special here. Ladaruis Green and Michael Egnew round out the top five. I like Egnew more than most. Yes he had a difficult season this year, but there was some transition on the Missouri offense. He’s almost a bit of a forgotton man, but I think he can be a #1 Tight End type.

Tackle

The first real surprise of the rankings. Mayock has Riley Reiff as his number one tackle, we’ve had Reiff at #2 for a long while, but I can’t make the jump from #2 to #1 over Kalil. Kalil possess a lot of what you look for in a tackle and I wonder if the slotting is more a product of how good Mayock thinks Reiff is or whether or not he thinks a lot less of Kalil than most. The other interesting ranking is James Brown from Troy at #5. I don’t know nearly enough about Brown yet to tell you why Mayock thinks that, but I”m going to go look at some more Brown and see if I can find it.

Interior Offensive Linemen:

The guy who makes an apperance here is Kevin Zeitler who is above Cordy Glenn. Glenn is massive and also has some tackle ability. Zeitler is talented in his own right and is probably a mid 2nd round prospect.

Defensive Linemen:

Mayock seperates them into DE and DT, but I’ll just lump them here. Brockers as the #3 DT is about right. Brockers is young and a little raw, but has good upside. Mayock lists Melvin Ingram as DE, many think he is an OLB and he played DT a lot in college. That’s the question about Ingram, where does he play? No on denies his abilities.

Linebacker

The first thing I like to look at for the linebackers is where is Vontaze Burfict. For Mayock he is #5 on the list.

Defensive backs:

Again it’s broken up into cornerbacks and safeties. The biggest surprise here is that Leonard Johnson is the #4 cornerback, and that is ahead of Alabama CB Dre Kirkpatrick who many thought and possibly still believe despite his marijuana possession that he could be a top ten pick. The name to watch at safety is Tennessee Janzen Jackson. There are “character concerns” (underage drinking, who cares?) and then there are Character concerns. Jackson is much more the latter. He is super talented though. Watch that name. He had to play at McNesee State this past year meaning I didn’t watch any of his games, but the man is very talented.

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