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Spencer Fano struggles, Emmett Johnson makes his move, and Washington pushes into the NFL’s top five rookie classes as the season approaches its midpoint.

Cleveland still leads my rookie rankings, but the margin is shrinking here in the second quarter of the season.

Eight weeks in, we are getting a better understanding of which rookies can handle real NFL responsibility. We’re also seeing some of the growing pains.

Spencer Fano had his worst outing of the season against Pittsburgh. Kansas City got a breakout performance from Emmett Johnson, but lost its second straight game. Miami is still asking an extraordinary amount from its young players.

And Washington deserves another look after getting meaningful contributions across all three phases against Philadelphia.

The evaluation hasn’t changed. I’m looking at production, playing time, the difficulty of assignments and how much responsibility coaches are handing these players.

I also want to see consistency. One great performance doesn’t make a player a star, and one bad Sunday shouldn’t erase six or seven weeks of good football.

Chicago’s win over Seattle closed Week 8 on Monday night. Dillon Thieneman continues to handle a starting safety assignment, but the Bears aren’t getting the same depth of rookie production as these top five classes.

Here’s where I have the rankings after eight weeks.

1. Cleveland Browns: The Lead Is Getting Smaller

Impact order: 1) Denzel Boston; 2) Spencer Fano; 3) KC Concepcion; 4) Austin Barber; 5) Emmanuel McNeil-Warren; 6) Carsen Ryan.

Cleveland stays first, but Pittsburgh exposed a real issue. The Browns lost 27-6, and Spencer Fano gave up eight pressures and committed three penalties. That followed his excellent game against Tennessee, so I am not rewriting his entire season. But left tackle is not a position where you can survive those swings regularly. Fix the protection details.

Fano and Austin Barber still played all 70 offensive snaps. Both have started eight games, and that matters. Barber has been steadier at right guard, while Fano is handling the more difficult edge job.

Denzel Boston caught six passes for 37 yards and now has 26 receptions, 409 yards and three touchdowns. KC Concepcion added three catches for 37, bringing him to 33 for 352. Neither receiver broke the game open in Pittsburgh. The Browns still have two legitimate receiving roles instead of one flash player.

Emmanuel McNeil-Warren made nine tackles Sunday, and his defensive responsibility remains substantial when the rotation needs him. Carsen Ryan contributes mainly on special teams. This group has starters at tackle, guard and receiver, with useful secondary depth. That’s why I’m not dropping them after one bad loss. But Cleveland needs better protection and cleaner offensive execution to keep this spot.

2. Kansas City Chiefs: Emmett Johnson Gives This Class Another Dimension

Impact order: 1) Mansoor Delane; 2) Kahlil Benson; 3) Emmett Johnson; 4) R Mason Thomas; 5) Peter Woods; 6) Xavier Nwankpa; 7) Cyrus Allen; 8) Jadon Canady.

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Every NFL season runs two races at once. One ends in February with a trophy. The other ends in March, when a few dozen players find out what their season was worth to the other 31 teams. Seven weeks in, the season is nearly halfway done, and the offensive side of the 2027 free-agent class is starting to sort itself out.

Remember we are using the following characteristics to build the list off:

• The 2023 draft class. Rookie deals for players taken in Rounds 2 through 7 run four years. For the 2023 class, that clock runs out after this season. Barring an extension, they’re unrestricted free agents in March. That’s the spine of this list.

• Declined fifth-year options. First-rounders come with a fifth-year team option. When a team passes, it’s sending a message, and the player gets to answer it on the open market a year early. This year, that’s Felix Anudike-Uzomah and Broderick Jones.

• Prove-it deals. Veterans who bet on themselves with one-year contracts, like Greg Newsome II and Braxton Jones.

• The “underrated” test. We cut anyone already penciled in for a big payday. What’s left is a group whose markets hinge on the rest of this season. The question for each one: Is the production running ahead of the reputation?

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Offense’s Standouts

Seven weeks in, injuries have reshaped depth charts across the league. That’s bad news for coordinators and great news for anyone in a contract year who suddenly has a bigger job.

What to look for depends on the position. For receivers, it’s target share before and after a teammate goes down; the ones who stay efficient as the volume rises are the ones who get paid. For tight ends, it’s snap share in 12 and 13 personnel, a market inefficiency worth watching as the No. 2 and No. 3 guys have tended to be paid like afterthoughts. For linemen, it’s simple: be on the field and stay clean.

The breakdown looks like this…

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The Bears are making their move. Chicago is acquiring All-Pro defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons from Tennessee, giving Ryan Poles a game-wrecker in the middle of his defense. Mike Borgonzi gets a massive haul to rebuild the Titans.

Two general managers with roots in Kansas City. Two very different timelines.

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The reported deal:

• Chicago gets: Simmons and a 2028 fifth-round pick.

• Tennessee gets: First-round picks in 2027 and 2028, plus a 2027 fourth-rounder.

Two firsts and a 2027 fourth going to Tennessee and a 2028 fifth coming back for a 29-year-old defensive tackle. That is an epic haul, and it tells you where both franchises are headed. Borgonzi is rebuilding from the ground up. Poles sees a championship window and is pushing through it.

The Chiefs Connection

Poles and Borgonzi spent years working together under Brett Veach in Kansas City. They helped build a championship roster and understand how the other evaluates talent, values picks, and does business. Each of these GMs is replicating a position Brett Veach's has been in, at one point or another.

That familiarity can get a deal moving. When you know the person on the other end of the phone, you can get to the real conversation faster. Their shared background makes them natural trade partners when their needs line up.

Borgonzi still got his price. Poles decided Simmons was worth it.

Why Chicago Paid Up

Simmons changes the blocking plan. He can overpower a guard, win on his edge and disrupt a play before it develops. Commit help inside, and someone else on Chicago’s front gets a chance.

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Chris Ballard’s quarterback problem ultimately cost him his job. The Colts fired their general manager six games into his 10th season, following a home loss to a previously winless Tennessee team. After nearly a decade, his résumé included one playoff victory and no division titles. That was enough time.

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Luck’s retirement immediately put Ballard on the back foot. It came before his third season in 2019 and removed the quarterback Indianapolis had expected to build around. I have no criticism of Luck’s decision, but finding his replacement became the defining responsibility of Ballard’s tenure.

Every QB answer he offered led to another search. Philip Rivers helped Indianapolis reach the playoffs in 2020, so his original signing deserves credit. But Carson Wentz and Matt Ryan followed without establishing stability. Ballard kept changing quarterbacks while the roster waited for a lasting answer.

Anthony Richardson was the biggest reach.

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That second race is already a quarter of the way done. You know the headliners. Joey Porter Jr., Sam LaPorta and Puka Nacua are getting paid, whether by extension or on the open market, and nobody needs a column to tell you that.

This one is about everyone else: the 2027 free agents whose price tags are still being written. Some are starters who’ve spent three seasons outplaying their draft slot without much fanfare. Some are role players who woke up in September with a bigger job because the guy ahead of them got hurt. A few are one strong stretch away from turning a modest contract into life-changing money.

Consider this the Week 5 baseline. We’ll keep score from here.

How we built the list

Start with the calendar, because the calendar doesn’t care about narratives. Using Spotrac’s contract data, we filtered four ways:

1. The 2023 draft class. Rookie deals for players taken in Rounds 2 through 7 run four years. For the 2023 class, that clock runs out after this season. Barring an extension, they’re unrestricted free agents in March. That’s the spine of this list.

2. Declined fifth-year options. First-rounders come with a fifth-year team option. When a team passes, it’s sending a message, and the player gets to answer it on the open market a year early. This year, that’s Felix Anudike-Uzomah and Broderick Jones.

3. Prove-it deals. Veterans who bet on themselves with one-year contracts, like Greg Newsome II and Braxton Jones.

4. The “underrated” test. We cut anyone already penciled in for a big payday. What’s left is a group whose markets hinge on the rest of this season. The question for each one: Is the production running ahead of the reputation?

Two trends jumped off the page. First, this could be the year of the pass rusher, and not just off the edge. Second, as offenses lean harder into 12 and 13 personnel, one of the league’s quietest position groups, the No. 2 and No. 3 tight ends, may finally get paid like it matters.

The headliners: Three pass rushers about to get paid

Here’s the trio worth circling. Tuli Tuipulotu, YaYa Diaby and Moro Ojomo came out of

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That is the biggest difference between the first version of these rankings and where the NFL’s 2026 rookie classes stand now. We have enough snaps to separate a hot debut from actual responsibility. Coaches have shown us whom they trust. Opponents have adjusted. Rookies have had to respond.

The grading here still comes down to impact, not draft pedigree. Starting responsibility matters. Premium positions matter. Production matters. So do high-leverage plays, special-teams value and whether a rookie is solving an actual roster problem.

That reshuffles the board.

Kansas City still has exceptional depth, but Cleveland now has the strongest three-week résumé. Dallas has two defensive rookies already changing drives. The Giants are getting legitimate starting value across offense, defense and special teams. Washington jumps into the top five behind two rookies who are already being trusted like veterans.

Baltimore and Miami, both in the Week 1 ranking, fall just outside this edition.

1. Cleveland Browns — Production Meets Premium-Position Value

Impact order: 1) Denzel Boston; 2) Austin Barber; 3) Spencer Fano; 4) KC Concepcion; 5) Emmanuel McNeil-Warren; 6) Carsen Ryan.

Cleveland owns the best rookie class through three weeks because the Browns are getting production at premium positions, not developmental snaps. Boston has become the headline. The second-round receiver has nine catches for 195 yards and two touchdowns, averaging 21.7 yards per reception. Seven of his nine catches have moved the chains, and his Week 3 two-point conversion helped finish Carolina. Through Week 2, PFF already had him eighth among all rookies.

The offensive line is the real separator. Barber and Fano have started all three games, giving Cleveland rookie starters at right guard and left tackle. Barber allowed only one pressure on 69 pass-blocking snaps through two weeks and ranked 10th in PFF’s rookie grades. Fano has handled the premium left-tackle assignment without leaving the lineup.

Concepcion has 12 catches for 80 yards, plus nine rushing yards, while serving as Cleveland’s primary punt returner. His role has been more underneath than explosive, but the touches are real. McNeil-Warren has supplied 11 tackles as a rotational safety. Ryan remains the third tight end on Cleveland’s depth chart and has contributed in a reserve role through three weeks.

The Browns are 2-1 after an ugly opener, and the rookie class is already baked into the turnaround. Boston provides explosives. Fano and Barber provide infrastructure. That combination, on balance, gives Cleveland the strongest case for No. 1 through three games right now.

2. Kansas City Chiefs — Still the Deepest Rookie Class in Football

Impact order: 1) Kahlil Benson; 2) Peter Woods; 3) Mansoor Delane; 4) Emmett Johnson; 5) R Mason Thomas; 6) Jadon Canady; 7) Cyrus Allen.

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The TL;DR: Not every hot stretch is a real breakout. I sorted last season’s most talked-about names into two buckets: process-backed and box-score mirage, then layered in the contract-year storylines where the financial stakes make the tape even more worth watching.

Yaya Diaby’s situation might be the single most interesting name in this year’s class.

Every July, the same trap gets set. A guy has a big final stretch of the season, his name starts showing up in “breakout candidate” pieces across the internet, and by the time camp opens he’s being treated as a foregone conclusion. Sometimes that’s earned. Sometimes it’s a mirage built on matchups, health luck around him, or a hot streak that got extrapolated into a career year.

Take Michael Wilson. Over the early part of his 2025 season, he was a marginal fantasy option, averaging under 26 yards a game. Then Marvin Harrison Jr. went down and Jacoby Brissett took over at quarterback, and Wilson’s role and production both spiked hard down the stretch. The problem is what happened when the pieces around him returned to normal. With a healthy Harrison and Trey McBride back on the field and Brissett still throwing him the ball, Wilson’s underlying efficiency numbers settled back into the middle of the pack at best. That’s not a talent leap. That’s a role expanding into an injury vacuum and the box score not knowing the difference.

So here’s the actual question worth asking about every name on this list: did the production come from something repeatable, or did it come from circumstance that’s about to change? I pulled from free public sources (Pro-Football-Reference, SumerSports, NFL Next Gen Stats, ESPN gamelogs) wherever possible, and flagged anything sourced from PFF’s proprietary grading since that requires a subscription to verify. Two buckets: the sustain cases, and the ones I’d bet against. Then a separate wrinkle worth its own section, because 2026 is loaded with players who aren’t just trying to repeat a good year. They’re trying to get paid for one.

The Sustain Bucket

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A Legend, A Warning, and an Open Question Named Sorsby

Most NFL fans could not tell you the last time a player was selected in the supplemental draft. The answer is 2019, and the player was a safety out of Washington State named Jalen Thompson who most casual fans would not recognize. But dig a little deeper into the history of this quiet summer draft and you will find Cris Carter, Brian Bosworth, Josh Gordon, and now a name that has been all over football Twitter this offseason.

Brendan Sorsby, the 22-year-old quarterback who threw for over 5,600 yards and scored 63 touchdowns across two seasons as a starter at Cincinnati, was declared permanently ineligible by the NCAA this spring after admitting to placing thousands of bets on college sports, including on his own team. With his college career over, the supplemental draft was a possibility. That didn’t happen, but the question remains: could it have worked?

The supplemental draft does not make the front page very often. When it does, it is always worth paying attention.

So What Even Is the Supplemental Draft?

The supplemental draft has existed since 1977, born out of a simple problem: what do you do with players who become eligible for the NFL after the regular draft has already happened?

The circumstances vary. Academic ineligibility. Disciplinary suspensions. Missed declaration deadlines. Whatever the reason, these are players who didn’t fit neatly into the April calendar, and the supplemental draft exists as a pressure valve for exactly that situation.

Here’s how it works. Teams submit silent bids on available players — not in the form of money, but in the form of future draft picks. If you want a player badly enough to bid your second-round pick next year, you submit it. The team that bids the highest pick wins the player’s rights — and forfeits that corresponding pick in the following year’s regular draft. It’s an expensive gamble by design, which is exactly why it goes unused most years.

In fact, only 46 players have ever been selected in the supplemental draft since its inception. The last one was in 2019, when the Arizona Cardinals used a fifth-round pick on safety Jalen Thompson out of Washington State. Nobody has been selected since. The draft technically happens every summer — it just rarely produces any picks.

Which makes the players who came out of it all the more interesting…

The Greatest Hit: Cris Carter

If you know one thing about the supplemental draft, it should be this: the only player it has ever sent to the Pro Football Hall of Fame was claimed off waivers for $100.

Cris Carter’s path to Canton is one of the stranger stories in NFL history. He was a wide receiver at Ohio State — brilliant, electric, clearly destined for the league. But before his senior season, it came out that he had secretly signed with an agent, a violation of NCAA rules. Ohio State declared him ineligible. The Eagles selected him in the fourth round of the 1987 supplemental draft.

His first three years in Philadelphia were promising but turbulent. Off-field issues led coach Buddy Ryan to cut him before the 1990 season. Ryan’s infamous assessment: “All he does is catch touchdowns” — delivered as a criticism, which tells you everything you need to know about how badly that situation was misread.

The Minnesota Vikings claimed him off waivers. The price was $100.

What followed is one of the great redemption arcs in professional sports. Carter got sober, found his faith, and became the most complete receiver of his generation. He caught 122 passes in back-to-back seasons. He led the NFL in touchdown receptions three times. He made eight consecutive Pro Bowls. By the time he retired after the 2002 season, he had 1,101 receptions for 13,899 yards and 130 touchdowns — numbers that at the time made him the second most prolific receiver in NFL history.

He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2013. The Eagles spent a fourth-round pick. The Vikings spent a hundred dollars. You do the math.

The Rest of the Mount Rushmore

Carter is the headliner, but the supplemental draft’s supporting cast is more impressive than most fans realize.

Bernie Kosar is the most beloved supplemental pick in Cleveland sports history, which is saying something given Cleveland’s complicated relationship with sports love. He graduated early from the University of Miami with a double major in finance and economics, deliberately engineering his situation so he could enter the supplemental draft and be selected by the Browns, the team he grew up rooting for. Cleveland surrendered their 1986 first-round pick to get him. He rewarded them with nine seasons, three AFC Championship Game appearances, and the kind of loyalty that cities build statues for. His playoff record of 489 passing yards against the Jets in 1986 stood for decades. He never won a Super Bowl in Cleveland, but he won something harder to quantify — he became the city.

Rob Moore was the first overall pick of the 1990 supplemental draft, taken by the New York Jets out of Syracuse after graduating early. He spent five quietly productive seasons in New York before signing with the Arizona Cardinals in 1995, where he absolutely erupted. In 1997 he led the entire NFL in receiving yards with 1,584 — a staggering number for a Cardinals offense that was not exactly striking fear into defenses. He made two Pro Bowls, earned a first-team All-Pro nod, and finished his career with 628 receptions for 9,368 yards. He currently coaches wide receivers in the NFL, which feels appropriate.

Jamal Williams might be the most underrated player on this entire list. The nose tackle out of Oklahoma State was declared academically ineligible before his senior season and entered the 1998 supplemental draft, where the San Diego Chargers grabbed him in the second round. He spent twelve seasons as the immovable anchor of San Diego’s defensive line — three Pro Bowls, three All-Pro selections, and the kind of unglamorous dominance that only people who really watch football appreciate. He was named to the Chargers’ 50th Anniversary Team. He is almost certainly better than you remember.

Ahmad Brooks got the biggest contract of any supplemental pick in history, a six-year, $44.5 million extension from the San Francisco 49ers in 2012. He earned it. After entering the 2006 supplemental draft following his dismissal from Virginia, Brooks spent eleven seasons in the league, recording 55 career sacks, making a Pro Bowl, and earning two AP All-Pro second-team selections. He played in Super Bowl XLVII. His contract at $7.4 million per year reflected what a legitimate, high-end pass rusher was worth — and he was one.

The Biggest Bust and the Biggest What-If

No discussion of the supplemental draft is complete without Brian Bosworth and Josh Gordon. One is the cautionary tale about hype outrunning reality. The other is something more complicated and more painful.

Bosworth was the most famous college linebacker in America when he entered the 1987 supplemental draft. Two-time Butkus Award winner. Larger-than-life personality. The Seattle Seahawks surrendered a first-round pick to get him and paid him a then-record contract. Then Bo Jackson ran through him on Monday Night Football in one of the most replayed moments in NFL history, and a shoulder injury ended his career after just 24 games. The Boz became a punchline. It wasn’t entirely fair — he was genuinely talented — but the gap between the legend and the reality was vast enough that the story has never quite recovered.

Josh Gordon is different. Gordon’s situation doesn’t inspire jokes. It inspires something closer to disbelief.

In 2013, playing for a Cleveland Browns team that finished 4-12, Gordon led the entire NFL in receiving yards with 1,646 — in only 14 games, having missed the first two due to suspension. He became the first receiver in NFL history to have back-to-back games with 200-plus receiving yards. He was a first-team All-Pro. He was 22 years old and looked like one of the best receivers the league had ever seen.

What followed is hard to tell in 2026 without acknowledging how much the context has shifted. Gordon’s suspensions stemmed primarily from marijuana use — a substance the NFL itself has since dramatically softened its stance on, eliminating player suspensions entirely in 2020, with Travis Kelce estimating that between 50 and 80 percent of players currently use it. What got Gordon suspended repeatedly a decade ago would barely register as a violation under today’s rules. He won a Super Bowl ring with the Patriots in 2019, a quiet footnote to a story that should have been so much louder. He finished with 252 receptions for 4,284 yards — numbers that represent a fraction of what this league cost itself by enforcing a policy it has since largely abandoned.

The supplemental draft gave Gordon his shot. The league’s own rulebook took it away.

The Weird and the Wonderful

The supplemental draft has a talent for producing stories that don’t fit neatly into any category.

Terrelle Pryor entered the 2011 supplemental draft under a cloud — suspended from Ohio State as part of the NCAA investigation into improper benefits, the same scandal that cost Jim Tressel his job. The Raiders took him in the third round as a quarterback. He had modest success under center, then did something almost no player in NFL history has done: he reinvented himself as a wide receiver. In 2016 with the Cleveland Browns, he caught 77 passes for 1,007 receiving yards. He became only the second player in NFL history to record both a 1,000-yard passing season and a 1,000-yard receiving season at different points in his career. It’s the kind of footnote that deserves more attention than it gets.

Timm Rosenbach was supposed to be the Phoenix Cardinals’ franchise quarterback. He entered the 1989 supplemental draft after missing the regular deadline, was taken in the first round, and showed genuine promise in his first two seasons as a starter. Then in 1993, at 27 years old, he walked away from football entirely, citing the physical violence of the game, and went to play professional soccer. It remains one of the more quietly fascinating exits in NFL history.

Steve Walsh won a national championship at Miami, entered the 1989 supplemental draft, was taken by the Dallas Cowboys in the first round — and then lost his starting job to a rookie named Troy Aikman. He spent eight seasons as a journeyman backup, competent and mostly anonymous, a career defined almost entirely by the guy who beat him out.

Brendan Sorsby and What Comes Next

The supplemental draft rewards patience in a way that the regular April draft simply does not, because the players who come through it almost always carry more context, more complication, and more story than a standard prospect.

Sorsby is no different. The takes are already hot. The discourse is already exhausting. A 22-year-old quarterback who by most scouting accounts has genuine first-round talent is entering the NFL carrying a gambling scandal, a rehab stint, and enough legal drama to fill a documentary. It is a lot. It is also about two weeks worth of information about a person who has an entire career ahead of him to define himself on a football field.

The supplemental draft has always been about context. Cris Carter was not just a receiver who got cut. Brian Bosworth was not just a bust. Josh Gordon was not just a cautionary tale. Every one of those narratives flattened something real and complicated into something easier to say at a bar. Sorsby won’t have the same path, but deserves the same resistance to easy narrative that those players deserved and mostly did not get.

Give it two years. Watch the tape. Let the kid play football. The supplemental draft has never told the same story twice and it is not about to start now

A quick note on sourcing — all career stats pulled from Pro Football Reference, Wikipedia’s complete supplemental draft pick list, and NFL.com. Contract figures for pre-2000 players are era-adjusted estimates from public reporting.

Welcome back to the offseason. We never learn.

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The cycle is the point

OTAs (Organized Team Activities) exist primarily for coaches to install schemes, for players to build chemistry, and — if we’re being honest — for us to have something to talk about between the draft and week 1. The league knows this. The teams know this. And yet beat reporters file their dispatches from the practice bubble with the energy of wartime correspondents.

Training camp adds pads, which adds drama, which adds injury reports which adds a whole new layer of panic. Then come the preseason games, where starters play maybe a quarter and a half before the coaching staff tucks them away like fine china. The box scores mean almost nothing. We treat them like gospel.

Dan Campbell, just this past week at Lions OTAs: "There are a lot of guys who have done well for two days in pajamas. I'm done with the hype of the pajama party in May. It's about the mental, it's about the movement skills — all that other stuff doesn't matter. We'll find out in training camp who's who." This one is perfect for your article. Fresh, funny, and on the nose. Campbell also added, per Pride of Detroit: "Don't read into all that. 'I saw so-and-so on field two.' Okay." (Pulled from Larry Brown Sports)

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Updated 04/23 2am

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This board represents where I feel each prospect’s true value is based on Film Matrix Grade, The Athletic Matrix and the Production Matrix and my personal projection into the NFL.

This does not reflect the NFL33 staff consensus or the RogueAPC consensus.

The RAPC 2026 NFL Draft guide - > bit.ly/Draft26

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This board represents where I feel each prospect’s true value lies, based on the Film Matrix Grade, the Athletic Matrix, the Production Matrix, and my personal projection into the NFL. Feel free to download it and follow along with the draft!

This does not reflect the NFL33 staff consensus or the RogueAPC consensus.

Tackle evaluations always come down to the same question: are you buying the player he is now, or the one he could become with NFL coaching and grown-man strength? This group has a little of both. There are cleaner starters, rawer tools bets, and a few players who may wind up giving a team better value inside than they do on the edge.

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The best tackles in this class either show they can live in space against speed or bring enough length, movement skill, and functional strength to project there. The challenge is sorting out which technical issues are fixable and which ones become ceilings.

The RAPC 2026 NFL Draft guide - > bit.ly/Draft26

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When you stack edge defenders, the easy trap is chasing one number. The workout guys love the Athletic Matrix. The production crowd leans on the stat sheet. The real work is finding where those two lines cross and deciding which players have the tools, the tape, and the projection to become NFL problems.

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This group has a little of everything: raw height-weight-speed bets, compact power rushers, polished technicians, and scheme-flexible fronts-seven disruptors. Some are safer than others. A few are still more projection than product. But the ones at the top bring enough of both to justify the bet.

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Collapse of Information Advantage

For most of the NFL’s history, the draft was defined by information asymmetry. Teams controlled access to film, proprietary scouting reports, and internal data, while public evaluation was filtered through broadcast clips, box scores, and secondhand reporting. The gap between what teams knew and what the public could reasonably analyze was not small. It was structural.

That gap has narrowed significantly over the past decade.

2026 NFL Draft Guide

Full-game film is now more accessible, whether through broadcast archives, coaching cut-ups, or league-supported platforms. At the same time, the growth of public data ecosystems has lowered the barrier to entry for meaningful analysis. Platforms like Pro Football Focus have standardized grading and charting, while tools such as nflfastR have made play-by-play modeling and efficiency metrics broadly available. What once required internal infrastructure can now be replicated, at least in part, by independent analysts with time and technical skill.

Just as important, interpretation is no longer centralized. Analysts publishing on social media, Substack, and independent sites now build draft models, share film breakdowns, and challenge consensus evaluations in real time. Information is not only more accessible. It is actively contested.

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With myself, Daniel Harms, EJ Holt, Jeff Porter and our Caroline Edmonds, we have the ultimate reference for Film grades, Athleticism and production for the 2026 Draft Class