NFL Mock Draft 2017: Latest 1st-Round Predictions for Marquee Prospects

The NFL world was treated to one amazing game with Super Bowl LI, but now that it's over, it's all hands on deck for the upcoming offseason.

The New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons join the other 30 franchises with sights set on March 9. That's when the new league year and the accompanying free-agency period begin. This, of course, doesn't mean teams are simply going to sit on their collective thumbs over the next month.

With the scouting combine set to begin in a couple of weeks, teams will be busy preparing for April's draft.

Meanwhile, we in the media are going to be busy trying to decide what teams should or will do on draft weekend. With the Super Bowl in the rearview, now is a great time to take a crack at exactly that. Today, we'll be examining the current draft order and making our predictions for the opening round.

We'll also examine some of the latest storylines surrounding this year's marquee prospects.

One note on the draft order: We have the Indianapolis Colts at No. 14, but a coin flip will actually determine whether the Colts or the Philadelphia Eagles select in that slot.

2017 NFL Mock Draft

Pick #	NFL Team	Projection
1	Cleveland Browns	Myles Garrett, DE, Texas A&M
2	San Francisco 49ers	Mitch Trubisky, QB, North Carolina
3	Chicago Bears	Jamal Adams, S, LSU
4	Jacksonville Jaguars	Jonathan Allen, DL, Alabama
5	Tennessee Titans (from LAR)	Mike Williams, WR, Clemson
6	New York Jets	Deshaun Watson, QB, Clemson
7	Los Angeles Chargers	Malik Hooker, S, Ohio State
8	Carolina Panthers	Leonard Fournette, RB, LSU
9	Cincinnati Bengals	Reuben Foster, LB, Alabama
10	Buffalo Bills	Jabrill Peppers, LB, Michigan
11	New Orleans Saints	Solomon Thomas, DE, Stanford
12	Cleveland Browns (from PHI)	Ryan Ramczyk, OT, Wisconsin
13	Arizona Cardinals	DeShone Kizer, QB, Notre Dame
14	Indianapolis Colts	Derek Barnett, DE, Tennessee
15	Philadelphia Eagles (from MIN)	Corey Davis, WR, Western Michigan
16	Baltimore Ravens	Dalvin Cook, RB, Florida State
17	Washington Redskins	Chris Wormley, DL, Michigan
18	Tennessee Titans	Charles Harris, OLB, Missouri
19	Tampa Bay Buccaneers	Quincy Wilson, CB, Florida
20	Denver Broncos	Forrest Lamp, OL, Western Kentucky
21	Detroit Lions	Dawuane Smoot, DE, Illinois
22	Miami Dolphins	Marshon Lattimore, CB, Ohio State
23	New York Giants	O.J. Howard, TE, Alabama
24	Oakland Raiders	David Njoku, TE, Miami
25	Houston Texans	Marlon Humphrey, CB, Alabama
26	Seattle Seahawks	Dan Feeney, OG, Indiana
27	Kansas City Chiefs	John Ross, WR, Washington
28	Dallas Cowboys	Taco Charlton, DE, Michigan
29	Green Bay Packers	Christian McCaffrey, RB, Stanford
30	Pittsburgh Steelers	Caleb Brantley, DT, Florida
31	Atlanta Falcons	Teez Tabor, CB, Florida
32	New England Patriots	T.J. Watt, LB, Wisconsin

Latest Buzz

Watson Not Trying to Avoid Browns

Here's a shocking fact: The Cleveland Browns are in need of a quarterback. The Browns also happen to own the No. 1 overall pick in the draft, and Cleveland head coach Hue Jackson coached the South team in the Senior Bowl a couple of weeks back.

This would seem like the perfect opportunity for a quarterback to perform for Jackson and try to make his case to be selected first overall. However, Clemson quarterback Deshaun Watson—who was invited to play in the Senior Bowl—chose not to attend.

Conspiracy theorists immediately began to wonder if Watson was trying to turn off the Cleveland brass so he wouldn't end up in the Cuyahoga Quarterback Graveyard.

"Maybe, at a time when the Media Draft Machine is shaming Watson for choosing to rest on his performance against Alabama over spending a week in Alabama potentially making this worse instead of better, Watson simply doesn’t want to play for the Browns," Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk.com speculated.

However, Watson spoke with NFL Network during Super Bowl Week and insisted that he has nothing against Jackson or the Browns, per Chase Goodbread of NFL.com:

"

I talked to Hue Jackson, we had a great conversation right after the national championship game and I told him, 'Hey, this is what I'm thinking about' and he understood everything. I talked with my family, my agent, my trainer, all the coaches at Clemson, and it was just best for me to go ahead and get started in the draft process.

"

Watson insists that he'll fully participate at the scouting combine, which means the Browns and every other team will have the opportunity to view him up close.

Teams Still Divided on Trubisky, Kizer

Lisa Blumenfeld/Getty Images

This year's crop of rookie quarterbacks isn't believed to be especially strong, and Watson may end up being the best of the bunch. North Carolina's Mitch Trubisky and Notre Dame's DeShone Kizer are both believed to carry a lot of potential, but both are also raw prospects.

There's a very strong chance that neither Trubisky nor Kizer is ready to take the field as a rookie. Kizer still needs work on his mechanics, while Trubisky has just one year of starting experience under his belt.

This isn't to suggest that neither player can develop into a franchise quarterback, but it's likely going to take some time.

NFL Media's Daniel Jeremiah recently said that teams are "split on Watson" but that he "couldn't find a scout or executive who was excited about" Kizer or Trubisky.

The questions surrounding Trubisky are relatively clear. He has started a total of 13 collegiate games. There's no telling how he might progress or regress at the pro level.

Kizer's situation is a bit trickier. Some team is going to fall in love with his physical skills and take a chance on him as a developmental signal-caller. However, others are going to believe he isn't worth the effort.

"Since the NFLPA game, I’ve been told scouts have cooled on Notre Dame's DeShone Kizer," Tony Pauline of DraftAnalyst.com recently wrote. "The combination of poor progression and questionable film from 2016 as well as character questions has raised red flags."

The best guess is that a team with a confident offensive mind will take a chance on Kizer relatively high—we have him matched with the Arizona Cardinals here—but much is going to depend on drills and the interview process at the scouting combine.

Are Teams Beginning to Question Myles Garrett?

Texas A&M pass-rusher Myles Garrett is widely believed to be the best overall player in this draft and perhaps even a generational talent. However, this doesn't mean that every team is sold on him. Some teams, it seems, at least have doubts.

"I've talked to several NFL personnel executives who have serious question marks about Garrett and his consistency," Mary Kay Cabot of Cleveland.com recently wrote.

Others believe that Garrett is simply overrated as a prospect.

"That guy, he is going to break somebody's heart,'' one unnamed NFC scout told Mark Eckel of NJ.com. "He's really, really overrated. You'll see.''

This is, of course, the time of year when teams put out false impressions in an effort to get a coveted prospect to fall. Therefore, we cannot take every comment at face value.

This is also the time of year when we start overanalyzing prospects and potentially talking ourselves out of their potential. There were questions about Jadeveon Clowney's work ethic a couple of years ago, too. Now that Clowney is 100 percent healthy, though, he is playing at a Pro Bowl level for the Houston Texans.

It is worth noting, though, that not everyone views Garrett as a can't-miss player.