5 players I left out of the first round of my mock draft and why

Let's talk about five of the bigger names left off my mock draft...

I wrote a mock draft as we hit about the midway point of the evaluation process of these 2025 NFL Draft prospects.

In a weak draft class, a class that some scouts have said may have around 10 first round grades in it, it is incredibly hard to even find 32 names to fit in the first round. But I did my best.

However, some hot names in the NFL Draft community were left out regardless. Predominantly at the quarterback position which I tend to think is a pretty bad class. Here, I want to sift through five of those names that frequently do appear in the first round and talk about why I excluded them.

So let’s talk about it.

QB Cam Ward, Miami

This is the big one, right?

Cam Ward has the Miami Hurricanes sitting undefeated midway through the season and leads the nation in passing yards and touchdowns. So what is the disconnect?

I don’t see a huge difference in the player Ward was at Washington State and who he is at Miami. This is kind of what he did at Wazzu over the last two years. He gets out to a hot start, then the wheels start to come off a bit as the season rolls along. We are seeing that happen now (it could get better though!).

Through the first four games on their schedule, Ward had a Turnover-Worthy play rate of around two percent (via PFF). Over these last two games? That number has jumped to 5.3 percent with six total in that span since starting ACC play.

His interception against Cal was especially damning as he threw the football all the way back across his body and the field and into the lap of the defender.

The fumble concerns are there as well. He entered the season with an astounding 46 fumbles in his career. And while he went through the first four games without one, we saw another football hit the turf out of his hands against Virginia Tech.

His decision-making is just too erratic for me to justify using a first round pick on him, and as we get deeper into conference play, it is something to put a heavy monitor on.

We’ve tried this before after the NFL hit on Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen. We’ve tried to hunt out tools at the cost of the ability to operate in structure and play the quarterback position cleanly.

Malik Willis, who experienced a bit of a renaissance this year with the Green Bay Packers is a great example of this. Draftniks and analysts fell in love with the tools despite any ability to operate in structure or even try to read out a concept play side without just shooting at the backside nine.

Throwing from a multitude of arm angles and off-platform is a gift that Ward needs to harness. It’s part of what makes Mahomes and Allen great. But he cannot live in that state consistently, which he currently opts to do.

I don’t think he’s all that accurate either with the football. I have him charted on-target on just 9-of-20 deep balls thus far. When he can throw between the hashes and stick over the middle of the field there is a great deal of accuracy, but that tends to dip when looking outside the numbers and deep down the field.

He’s just not the quarterback I’d wager a top-32 pick on. Even in this shallow class.

CB Benjamin Morrison, Notre Dame

Sitting at probably sub-6-foot and 190 pounds, Benjamin Morrison is already slight. Now he’s getting season-ending hip surgery on top of that which likely shelves him through the combine and Pro Day circuit.

The intel I’ve heard around the league as well is that Morrison might be the player in this year’s class that the media and analysts are higher on than the actual NFL as well. There are a few of those guys every year. It sounds like if Morrison is to declare, he could be a fringe-top-64 player.

What do you do with the body type of a nickel who has only exclusively played on the boundary? Some players like Jaire Alexander of the Packers and Denzel Ward of the Cleveland Browns have gotten away with it and at an elite level, but that amount of burst, physicality, and change of direction is not present in the game of Morrison.

Those traits are run through the hips too, which we now have to wonder about with Morrison after his surgery.

The Ohio State EDGE rushers

There might not be two more overhyped players in the country than the two former five-star recruits rushing the passer in Columbus. Neither Jack Sawyer nor JT Tuimoloau have lived up to the stars next to their name coming out of high school.

And sometimes players just don’t get it at the college level, but still go first round due to elite physical tools. I just don’t see that being the case with either of these 2025 NFL Draft prospects either.

Tuimoloau is a well-rounded player but does not have a defining elite trait (and still lacks savvy and a plan as a pass rusher). He’s not a player that I’d anticipate blowing the doors off of Lucas Oil Stadium when the combine rolls around. He currently looks like a rotational edge rusher on early downs to me.

Sawyer possesses the explosiveness you desire from an edge rusher, but his hips are stiff as a board and he does not show the ability to take the outside shoulder of opposing offensive tackles even with rarity. It’s just non-existent. He can win through the chest with power, but that’s his one trick, and the anchor of tackles at the NFL level are going to be much better than the guys he’s playing now.

To be honest, in a deeper draft class, these guys might be closer to being drafted around pick No. 100 than in the top 32.

WR Tre Harris, Ole Miss

Despite the continued elite production in SEC play, I left Tre Harris out of the first round of my mock draft. And this comes down to overall lower half tools, which Harris does not quite possess. At his best he is likely a 4.50-53 guy, there is no elite change of direction to his game, and the top-end speed in the open field is not quite there either.

This is not to say that Harris is not a good player! I love the player. His play strength, ability to box defenders out when stacking and tracking down the field, and hands are some of the best in the class. However, the route tree that he is running is incredibly thin and predominantly vertical, and I may need to see him run routes in person at the combine to see if he has the hip sink to run the full route tree.

To me, that screams a Day 2 player who can step in and fill a role on a team as a WR3, but not a player who is going to demand targets at the NFL level. The three receivers I mocked in the first round? Tetairoa McMillan, Luther Burden III, and Isaiah Bond can all be foundational pieces to build an offense around.