College Football Week 3: NFL Draft big board rankings
Here’s how the top 32 NFL prospects in the nation stack up heading into week three of the college football season.
With four marquee games across college football, many of the best NFL prospects in the nation were on full display on Saturday night.
The week’s best win belonged to Oklahoma, which went into Columbus and laid a 31-16 beatdown on Ohio State. Elsewhere, Clemson’s defense decimated Auburn in a 14-6 victory, USC eased fears about its sluggish opening weekend in a blowout victory of Stanford, and Georgia held off Notre Dame for a hard-fought road win.
That caused some movement on the NFL big board, as several future first round picks were pitted against each other. The country’s top quarterbacks have started to break away from the rest of the pack, although other prospects like Saquon Barkley and Christian Wilkins aren’t that far behind.
Here’s how the top 32 NFL prospects in the nation stack up after a loaded week two in college football.
Malik Jefferson
LB, Texas
While Jefferson has some more to prove on the field this year, his upside will keep him on the big board despite the lack of production.
The junior piled another seven total tackles to lead Texas’ 56-0 destruction of San Jose State. While the Longhorns are still waiting for Jefferson to make his first impact play of the season behind the line of scrimmage, he’s up to 16 total tackles this year and seems to be adapting well to a move to the outside under new coordinator Todd Orlando.
A former five-star prospect ranked as the best linebacker recruit in the class of 2016, Jefferson burst onto the scene with 61 tackles en route to winning te Big 12 Freshman of the Year Award. Jefferson got even more disruptive in 2016 with nine tackles and 6.5 sacks, although he didn’t always display the highest effort level and was even briefly benched in later October.
At 6-foot-3 and 232 pounds, Jefferson has the kind of in-between size that NFL teams will love, and makes plenty of plays in the open field thanks to his speed. Jefferson topped in at an insane 4.39 seconds in the 40-yard draft, and will only rise up the draft board if he can add a little more size while gaining consistency.
The Texas defense struggled mightily in its opening loss to Maryland and now faces a loaded USC offense on Saturday, leaving Jefferson as the best hope to lead an upset.