Draft week volatility
- Final mock-draft coverage shows a highly fluid first round with multiple teams expected to trade up. (nfl.com) - Daniel Jeremiah projects four trades in Round 1, naming the Eagles and Saints as likely movers. (nfl.com) - ESPN and other outlets highlight quarterbacks like Jeremiyah Love and Sonny Styles as potential top-five picks. ( )
The final mock drafts for Thursday night’s National Football League draft point to a first round that could move as much as the players do. Daniel Jeremiah projected four Round 1 trades hours before the draft opens in Pittsburgh. (nfl.com) Jeremiah’s last projection sent the New Orleans Saints from No. 8 to No. 3 for Ohio State hybrid defender Arvell Reese, with Arizona sliding back after what he wrote could be a 2027 first-round offer. He also slotted Ohio State linebacker Sonny Styles at No. 4 to the Tennessee Titans and Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love at No. 5 to the New York Giants. (nfl.com) Lance Zierlein’s final mock also forecast four trades, but with different teams moving and different names at the top. Zierlein kept Arizona at No. 3 for Love, put Styles at No. 4, and had the Dallas Cowboys jump to No. 6 to stop Reese’s slide. (nfl.com) The overlap is the point: Las Vegas at No. 1 with Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza looks firm, and the board gets less settled after that. Jeremiah wrote that “uncertainty” begins beyond the first pick, while Zierlein described late movement inside the top 10. (nfl.com; nfl.com) That volatility is amplified by where teams are drafting. The official first-round order opened with the Raiders, Jets, Cardinals, Titans and Giants in the top five, putting four quarterback- or blue-chip-needy teams directly in front of clubs that could try to jump the line. (nfl.com) The names driving the late churn are not limited to quarterbacks. Love, a running back, and Styles, an off-ball linebacker, are both showing up in top-five scenarios, even though those positions are usually pushed down the board compared with quarterback, edge rusher and offensive tackle. (nfl.com; nfl.com) Jeremiah tied the Saints’ aggressiveness to their history, noting that New Orleans has made 25 draft trades since 2008 and traded up in all 25. That makes the Saints one of the clearest candidates to force the board to react rather than wait for it to come to them. (nfl.com) Round 1 begins at 8 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, April 23, with the 2026 draft running through April 25 in Pittsburgh around Acrisure Stadium and Point State Park. By then, the mocks agree on one thing more than any player-team pairing: teams near the top are expected to keep calling. (nfl.com; operations.nfl.com)
