Before each season one piece of research I like to do in the preseason is to look at what players are generating the most NFL draft buzz as usually (not always) these are the best players in college football.
A helpful website I like to use is nflmockdraftdatabase.com as they have a useful tool, the consensus Big Board. What it does is pull in NFL Draft Big Boards from all across the internet and aggregates it into one Big Board to help summarize what NFL Draft internet hacks are thinking about the best players in college football. I use the term hack jokingly as I’m sure some less than reputable big boards get included but as of the most recent update it combined 23 big boards so hopefully any hot takes for the purposes of getting attention are off-set by some level headed analysis.
The Top 100 players on the Big Board are in front of the paywall so that is what I will be focusing on today. 8 Ducks cracked the current projected Top 100. They are:
- QB Dante Moore (2)
- TE Jamari Johnson (20)
- DL A’Mauri Washington (21)
- Edge Matayo Uiagalelei (28)
- S Koi Perich (57)
- IOL Iapani Laoulu (58)
- EDGE Teitum Tuioti (73)
From my perspective I’m curious what the pre-season consensus big board says about college football.
Breakdown by Conference
Of that Top 100 here is the conference breakdown they come from:
Over 2/3 of the players in the Top 100 come from the B1G and SEC with each conference having 29 and 39 players respectively. Further 97 of the 100 top players come from the Power 4 and Notre Dame, something I thought would be a bit of an exaggeration but lines up with how the 2026 NFL draft went down.
This isn’t shocking as since the blow-up of the PAC-12 college football really has devolved into a Power 2 (B1G and SEC), and Next 2 (ACC and B12). And since the introduction of unlimited transfers the Group of 6 unsurprisingly has not been able to hang on to their best players with remaining eligibility.
Top Teams
Diving into what specific teams are most talented, what I did was summarize the number of Top 100 Prospects by school and then limited my look to schools with at least 2 Top 100 prospects.
I then also looked at the Top 60 (approximates the first two rounds of the draft) and Top 30 (approximates the first round of the draft) to see which College Teams had the most high-end projected NFL talent.
Here are those results
What stood out to me was it appears the teams with the most high-end NFL talent in order are: Texas, Oregon, Miami FL, Ohio State, and Notre Dame as these 5 teams are
- 5 of the 6 teams to have more than 5 Top 100 prospects
- the only teams to have 4 or more Top 60 Prospects
- the only teams to have 3 or more Top 30 prospects
This isn’t surprising, as these 5 teams are all in Bill Connelly’s SP+ top 8, and the preseason FEI top 13
What was interesting to me was that there Georgia really lagged behind from a projected NFL draft perspective and this was surprising for a couple of reasons
- The Bulldogs have put a lot of players into the NFL recently
- This year the Bulldogs are projected to be quite strong as they are Top 4 in both Preseason SP+ and FEI
I don’t think this says the Bulldogs are overrated; my conclusion was that Georgia is just a very deep team. To be this high in the advanced preseason metrics without a lot of Top-End players must mean they are strong Top-Bottom.
On the flip side there are 3 teams on here that surprised me for the opposite reason, in that they are not seen as particularly strong in the pre-season but have at least 2 projected Top 100 picks in the NFL draft. Those being Minnesota, Oklahoma State, and Rutgers. None of these teams crack the Top 35 of preseason SP+ or FEI so my suspicion is that the very talented players on their roster are going to be expected to do a lot of heavy lifting.
Oregon’s Opponents
In a funny coincidence Oregon doesn’t play either of the 2 B1G teams but does play the 1 non-BIG team in Oklahoma State week 2. The two players on the Cowboys generating draft buzz are QB Transfer from North Texas Drew Mestemaker (No. 12 on the big board) and what appears to be his go to receiver Wyatt Young (No. 47 on the big board). That connection should pose a good early season challenge for the Ducks that I’m intrigued to see how they handle it. Oklahoma State is not a legitimate playoff contender, but should the Ducks make the playoffs a 3rd year in a row how they handle that specific aspect of the Pokes team will be telling.
The only other team with at least two projected Top 100 NFL draft prospects Oregon is scheduled to play is Ohio State. One of the few teams that has comparable projected NFL talent when compared against Oregon. The Buckeyes have 6 players in the projected Top 100:
- WR Jeremiah Smith (3)
- QB Julian Sayin (19)
- OT Austin Siereveld (23)
- EDGE Kenyatta Jackson (34)
- LB Christian Alliegro (75)
- DL James Smith (100)
Just as the last handful of matchups between Oregon and Ohio State have fielded a plethora of future NFL players this year’s matchup in November is projected to be another clash of elite prospects.
It got me thinking what the composition of those previous matchups have been.
Oregon vs Ohio State from an NFL perspective
What I did was look at each matchup between these teams since the 2009 Rose Bowl and found the future NFL players each roster had that would be drafted into the NFL the following spring. Here are those results:
I adjusted the 2024 matchups for player availability related to injuries which is why those figures from the same season are different. Looking at the last 5 matchups what surprised me was that the team with MORE future Top 100 NFL draft picks lost each matchup.
To me the biggest reason more future top 100 NFL picks the following spring didn’t align with which team won the matchup was because overall depth and talent across the entire roster was more important. For example, not included in Ohio State’s 2014 national championship are the 10 players that would be selected in the Top 100 in the 2016 draft. Naturally this feels like a plug for ATQ’s B1G roster preview series that tries to look at the B1G rosters in-depth.
What does this all mean for Oregon?
While some other teams caught my eye when looking at early NFL big boards, I didn’t find anything novel from a Ducks perspective. Expectations for Oregon are at an all-time high and the projection of 8 Ducks taken in the Top 100 would set a program record.
The most interesting thing I could find from an Oregon perspective was that Oregon was the only team that was Top 2 in every single one of these categories:
- Projected Top 100 NFL Draft Prospects
- Projected Top 60 NFL Draft Prospects
- Projected Top 30 NFL Draft Prospects
- Pre-season SP+
- Pre-season FEI
From a projected draft perspective Oregon was 2nd or tied with Texas. From an advanced stat perspective Oregon was 2nd behind Ohio State but the Ducks are the team most loved by both the NFL draft media community as well as the college football advanced stat community.