The 2017 Consensus Big Board: Complete 300 Player Rankings

By Arif Hasan - April 24, 2017

The Consensus Big Board is here! We’ve gathered over 40 big boards and combined them all to create a snapshot of what draft watchers around the world think of the players in this year’s draft class.

We did an excellent job identifying talent in 2014 and in 2016 identified promising undrafted free agents like Brien Boddy-Calhoun, Geronimo Allison and Cre’von LeBlanc.

The Consensus Board allows us to do several things. We can identify which players in the draft are the most polarizing, including those who draw disagreements without the media coverage that normally entails strong differences of opinion.

Every year, when publishing the board, I go over the fundamental problem that comes up whenever gathering big boards—working at cross-purposes with different goals. We can rehash that essential problem once more:

There are two general approaches to draft coverage: 1) Who is going to pick who and 2) Who is good. Last year, we separated the draft boards into two categories: Forecasters (who do a job more closely resembling question #1) and Evaluators (who are closer to answering question #2 than question #1).

Generally speaking, the forecasters have been or are currently employed by media organizations that thrive on access, and that gives them access as well. Beyond that, people like Nolan Nawrocki (formerly of Pro Football Weekly and NFL.com) publish draft guides that are driven in big ways by the access they have.

Sometimes that access influences the actual talent evaluation, but often it will influence the final grade by speaking to the gravity of character concerns, injury concerns or some other errata.

Last year, unusual clusters of similar rankings at odd points in the charts confirmed (to me) the clear separation between those two groups of draft boards. This year, there are far fewer clusters in that data (it’s a more polarizing draft), but they do show up.

The variance among the forecaster boards is significantly less than it is among evaluator boards, and they showcase similar clustering as they have for the past three years. There’s strong evidence indicating that many of them are working off of the same information.

RELATED: Who did evaluators and forecasters disagree the most on?

That information will include where NFL teams value players, injury data, off-the-field incidents yet-to-be-revealed to media and so on.

We’ll be posting pieces about the information the consensus board reveals throughout the runup to the draft so we can better understand the landscape of this year’s draft. We’ll go over the most polarizing players, the differences between the consensus and forecaster boards, the deepest position groups, etc.

Every year, we post the board with different kinds of position designations and we’ll be doing that once again. Those positions are QB, RB, FB, WRF, WRS, TE, OT, OG, C, DL1T, DL3T, DL5T, ER, OLB, ILB, CB, S, K and P.

That’s a lot of different positions—much more than usual—but teams draft roles just as easily as they draft players. Knowing where a player fits is more important than anything else.

Most of these are intuitive, but a few need some explanation. WRF/WRS refer to feature wide receivers and slot wide receivers, while NCB and CB refer to nickel corners and boundary corners.

Instead of 3-4 outside linebackers and 4-3 defensive ends, we have edge rushers. Not all edge rushers will be rushing the edge all the time, and for some schemes, having the overhand defender play coverage responsibilities will be important (Von Miller is more valuable than J.J. Watt in this way). But, for the most part, the most important ability they have is to put pressure on the quarterback. They are more alike than different.

DL1T, DL3T and DL5T refer to different defensive line positions. DL1Ts are essentially nose tackles lined up between the center and guard of the offensive line. Those are players like Linval Joseph, Danny Shelton and Dontari Poe. This year, the top DL1T is Dalvin Tomlinson at Alabama.

DL3T are pass-rushing tackles—Aaron Donald, Sharrif Floyd and Geno Atkins. The top DL3T on the consensus board is Malik McDowell. Caleb Brantley is number two, but these boards were gathered before the news of his assault arrest hit the wire.

The final defensive line assignment is reserved for 3-4 defensive ends, though it doesn’t quite capture the breadth of the position. They can include players like J.J. Watt, Mike Neal and Joey Bosa. This year, the top DL5T is Jonathan Allen.

The issue, of course, that these things are messy. Jonathan Allen is being projected to play on the edge by some analysts, and some like Solomon Thomas on the inside as a five-technique. Malik McDowell is sometimes projected as an edge player and may play as a defensive end in the right scheme.

Next to the player’s positional rank, you’ll see a variance score. The higher that score is, the more evaluators disagreed on that player’s ranking. People will interpret that differently: for some it’s an expression of having a high ceiling or a low floor. That means for lowly-ranked players, a higher variance score can be good because it means they have more upside.

For other people, it means more uncertainty in the evaluation. If people all disagree on this prospect, what does it mean he can do, and does it mean his skills are more of a projection than an evaluation? That may mean disregarding that player more than otherwise.

The average variance score is 100, and that has been adjusted for a player’s overall rank position (because generally speaking there is more variance the further down you go).

Below are the top 100. You can find the full 300 at this link.

Rank	PLAYER	School	Position	Pos Rk	Variance+
1	Myles Garrett	Texas A&M	ER	1	64.3
2	Solomon Thomas	Stanford	ER	2	76.1
3	Jamal Adams	LSU	S	1	123.9
4	Jonathan Allen	Alabama	DL5T	1	134.8
5	Malik Hooker	Ohio State	S	2	113.7
6	Marshon Lattimore	Ohio State	CB	1	82.7
7	Reuben Foster	Alabama	ILB	1	91.7
8	O.J. Howard	Alabama	TE	1	102.2
9	Leonard Fournette	LSU	RB	1	137.3
10	Corey Davis	Western Michigan	WRF	1	106.6
11	Mike Williams	Clemson	WRF	2	95.4
12	Dalvin Cook	Florida State	RB	2	112.9
13	Christian McCaffrey	Stanford	RB	3	111.2
14	Haason Reddick	Temple	OLB	1	115.9
15	Derek Barnett	Tennessee	ER	3	136.5
16	Gareon Conley	Ohio State	CB	2	98.2
17	Forrest Lamp	Western Kentucky	OG	1	91.7
18	John Ross	Washington	WRF	3	135.7
19	David Njoku	Miami (Fla.)	TE	2	114.4
20	Ryan Ramczyk	Wisconsin	OT	1	97.6
21	Marlon Humphrey	Alabama	CB	3	99.6
22	Deshaun Watson	Clemson	QB	1	109
23	Mitchell Trubisky	North Carolina	QB	2	108.5
24	Cam Robinson	Alabama	OT	2	102.8
25	Malik McDowell	Michigan State	DL3T	1	111.5
26	Takkarist McKinley	UCLA	ER	4	116.3
27	Garett Bolles	Utah	OT	3	93.8
28	Taco Charlton	Michigan	ER	5	106.6
29	Jabrill Peppers	Michigan	S	3	140.9
30	Patrick Mahomes II	Texas Tech	QB	3	136.4
31	Budda Baker	Washington	S	4	95.5
32	Tre’Davious White	LSU	CB	4	99.6
33	Charles Harris	Missouri	ER	6	134.1
34	Evan Engram	Mississippi	TE	3	92.2
35	Jarrad Davis	Florida	ILB	2	91.6
36	Zach Cunningham	Vanderbilt	OLB	2	91.3
37	Obi Melifonwu	Connecticut	S	5	111.4
38	T.J. Watt	Wisconsin	ER	7	96.9
39	Quincy Wilson	Florida	CB	5	92.5
40	DeShone Kizer	Notre Dame	QB	4	119.6
41	Kevin King	Washington	CB	6	107.5
42	Carl Lawson	Auburn	ER	8	112
43	Adoree’ Jackson	Southern California	NCB	1	100.2
44	Sidney Jones	Washington	CB	7	129.8
45	Tim Williams	Alabama	ER	9	130.1
46	Chidobe Awuzie	Colorado	CB	8	100.2
47	Marcus Williams	Utah	S	6	92.8
48	Joe Mixon	Oklahoma	RB	4	174.3
49	Dan Feeney	Indiana	OG	2	114.5
50	Chris Wormley	Michigan	DL5T	2	111.5
51	Jordan Willis	Kansas State	ER	10	117.3
52	Curtis Samuel	Ohio State	WRS	1	113.7
53	Derek Rivers	Youngstown State	ER	11	130.2
54	Zay Jones	East Carolina	WRF	4	112.7
55	JuJu Smith-Schuster	Southern California	WRF	5	94.6
56	Alvin Kamara	Tennessee	RB	5	82.9
57	Cordrea Tankersley	Clemson	CB	9	117.6
58	Raekwon McMillan	Ohio State	ILB	3	99.5
59	Tyus Bowser	Houston	OLB	3	108.7
60	Fabian Moreau	UCLA	CB	10	119.8
61	Caleb Brantley	Florida	DL3T	2	112.5
62	Teez Tabor	Florida	CB	11	107.5
63	Josh Jones	North Carolina State	S	7	125
64	Pat Elflein	Ohio State	OC	1	116.5
65	Taylor Moton	Western Michigan	OT	4	97.8
66	Dion Dawkins	Temple	OG	3	103.8
67	Desmond King	Iowa	S	8	92.5
68	Carlos Henderson	Louisiana Tech	WRS	2	113.2
69	Chris Godwin	Penn State	WRF	6	100.4
70	Ryan Anderson	Alabama	ER	12	99.6
71	Antonio Garcia	Troy	OT	5	118.1
72	Marcus Maye	Florida	S	9	127.4
73	Dorian Johnson	Pittsburgh	OG	4	110.3
74	Tarell Basham	Ohio	ER	13	97
75	Justin Evans	Texas A&M	S	10	116
76	Ethan Pocic	LSU	OC	2	94.5
77	Cooper Kupp	Eastern Washington	WRF	7	95.6
78	Bucky Hodges	Virginia Tech	TE	4	98.9
79	Dalvin Tomlinson	Alabama	DL1T	1	100.1
80	D’Onta Foreman	Texas	RB	6	99.9
81	Gerald Everett	South Alabama	TE	5	91.9
82	Jake Butt	Michigan	TE	6	89.9
83	Jaleel Johnson	Iowa	DL3T	3	100.9
84	Larry Ogunjobi	Charlotte	DL3T	4	96.7
85	Jourdan Lewis	Michigan	NCB	2	137.6
86	Cameron Sutton	Tennessee	CB	12	87.5
87	Adam Shaheen	Ashland	TE	7	119.3
88	Montravius Adams	Auburn	DL3T	5	113.8
89	Duke Riley	LSU	OLB	4	109.3
90	Ahkello Witherspoon	Colorado	CB	13	118
91	DeMarcus Walker	Florida State	ER	14	114.3
92	Samaje Perine	Oklahoma	RB	7	91.3
93	ArDarius Stewart	Alabama	WRS	3	150.5
94	Taywan Taylor	Western Kentucky	WRS	4	99.4
95	Kareem Hunt	Toledo	RB	8	93
96	Josh Reynolds	Texas A&M	WRF	8	104.2
97	Eddie Jackson	Alabama	S	11	112.4
98	Dawuane Smoot	Illinois	ER	15	98.4
99	Daeshon Hall	Texas A&M	ER	16	103.4
100	Chad Hansen	California	WRF	9	89.5

Arif Hasan

Arif Hasan has written for sites all across the internet and his work has been featured in the Athletic, Pro Football Network, Star Tribune, LA Times, Forbes, SB Nation, the Bleacher Report and MSNBC. He currently also writes for the Wide Left Substack. You can find him on twitter at @ArifHasanNFL.

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