- The Las Vegas Raiders should draft Texas CB Jahdae Barron at No. 6 overall: Barron is a perfect fit for Patrick Barron’s scheme and Pete Carroll set the precedent two years ago when Seattle drafted a similarly utilitarian player in Devon Witherspoon.
- The Jacksonville Jaguars need to give Trevor Lawrence more weapons: Penn State TE Tyler Warren would be the perfect replacement for the departed Evan Engram in Jacksonville.
- 2025 NFL Draft season is here: Try PFF's best-in-class Mock Draft Simulator and learn about 2025's top prospects while trading and drafting for your favorite NFL team.
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
Scheme and personnel fit can often be the difference between a prospect being a flop and the NFL's Offensive Player of the Year. Just ask Saquon Barkley, who was selected second overall by the New York Giants in the 2018 NFL Draft. Due to injuries and poor offensive line play, he never really found his footing, but in 2024, he exploded behind the best offensive line in football in Philadelphia, rushing for 2,005 yards and 13 scores on the ground. The Eagles' running game was one of the obvious catalysts of their Super Bowl run, and Barkley indeed won the league’s Offensive Player of the Year award at season’s end.
Every draft class will have a handful of players just like this – prospects with immense talents that can be unlocked if they end up in the perfect situation. Here’s a snapshot of five prospects who will hear their names called next Thursday night and could carve out All-Pro caliber careers if matched with the right teams to best set up to unlock their full potential.
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Draft Position Rankings
Texas CB Jahdae Barron to Las Vegas Raiders
The Raiders, with Patrick Graham as defensive coordinator, run a multiple scheme that uses a healthy mix of coverage and blitz schemes. While this is potentially difficult, in theory, for offenses to handle, the highest graded returning cornerback is Jakorian Bennett, who had a 58.5 overall grade and a 61.0 coverage grade last year.
Jahdae Barron would be an ideal fit for the scheme, as he is a do-it-all type. In four seasons at Texas, he logged 477 snaps in the box, 871 out of the slot and 1,026 as an outside cornerback. Last season, he surrendered just 37 catches (and only 11 first downs) on 68 throws into his coverage while intercepting five passes and forcing 10 incompletions.
He excelled in breaking and closing from off his man in Cover 3 looks, which Las Vegas used on 34.7% of its. pass plays last year, but he also showed the ability to win with physicality in tight man-to-man coverage. He also scored multiple interceptions and pass breakups by reading the QB and coming off his initial assignment to support the defense. The icing on the cake is his ability in run support, as he posted three straight seasons with run defense grades over 77.0 for the Longhorns.
The cherry on top is the precedent for taking a cornerback in the top ten set by new Raiders head coach Pete Carroll during his last draft with the Seattle Seahawks in 2023. His squad selected Devon Witherspoon fifth overall that year and promptly used him 145 times in the box, 501 times out of the slot and another 365 snaps out wide. As a rookie, he finished tied for seventh among all corners in the league with an 18.0% forced incompletion percentage.
The Raiders have a rich history of elite cornerback play, and Barron looks poised to carry on that tradition if selected with Vegas’ sixth overall pick next week.
Penn State TE Tyler Warren to Jacksonville Jaguars
Evan Engram had a massive 2013 campaign for the Jaguars. He racked up 114 catches for 963 yards and four scores while 47 of his grabs went for first downs. Both his physical dominance and athleticism were on display, as evidenced by his 14 forced missed tackles in addition to catching eight of 12 contested balls. Fast forward to 2024, and Engram missed a month early in the season with a hamstring injury, only to come back and tear his labrum in his left shoulder in week 14.
He signed with Denver in March, leaving the Jaguars with Brenton Strange and Johnny Mundt at the top of the depth chart. Yes, they could stand pat with the tight end room as it currently stands, but there may not be another player in this draft able to help QB Trevor Lawrence take the next leap forward better than Tyler Warren.
Warren’s breakout 2024 season is well-documented at this point: His 93.6 receiving grade led all TEs in the country. He caught 103 passes for 1,226 yards, 311 of which came after first contact. He forced 19 missed tackles after the catch, earned 2.77 yards-per-route run and added another 218 yards on the ground as a wildcat quarterback.
Yes, the 2023 regime is gone, but new general manager James Gladstone (previously with the Los Angeles Rams) and head coach Liam Coen (the 2023 offensive coordinator of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers) both come from places that benefited from a creative array of weapons and understand the value a player like Warren could bring them. The Jaguars hit an absolute home run last year with wide receiver Brian Thomas Jr., and pairing Warren with him could make for one of the most dynamic duos in the league.
Texas A&M EDGE Shemar Stewart to New York Jets
When Kelvin Sheppard was elevated to defensive coordinator in Detroit once Aaron Glenn to the head coaching vacancy with the Jets, he said Glenn taught him, “you have to earn the right to rush the passer.” With this comment in mind, I cannot think of a more intriguing fit for the Jets at No. 7 than Shemar Stewart.
Last year, the Jets certainly failed to earn that right to rush the passer. They had five defensive linemen with at least 150 run defense snaps, and the highest run defense grade among them was Quinnen Williams’ 57.7. The edge group specifically struggled, as the trio of Will McDonald IV, Micheal Clemons and Jermaine Johnson (who all return for 2025) all graded in the 40s while accounting for just five total tackles for loss on 577 combined run snaps. Clemons’ production was particularly disappointing, as he was thrust into full-time duty for the first time in his career once Jermaine Johnson tore his Achilles in Week 2, and he struggled to measure up on a week-to-week basis. Johnson showed promise in 2023 with 21 run stops and a 13.9% pass rush win rate, but his availability and general expectations for 2025 will be a question throughout the offseason, and McDonald has also yet to elevate his play to a level that warrants his first-round selection in 2023.
I’ve already laid out why Stewart is a prospect I’d be willing to gamble on. His lack of pass rush production (two sacks last season and a pass rush win rate of 11.8%) requires some nuance in terms of understanding what he was asked to do schematically at Texas A&M, but his grades against the run last season certainly do not. His 88.2 run-defense grade was nothing short of elite, especially when considering how much he was asked to take on blockers while shaded inside the tackle, while many other edge prospects worked exclusively outside. When he finally got his chance to take on blockers one-on-one during Senior Bowl practices, he absolutely dominated, posting a 93.6 pass-rush grade. He followed that up with a stellar combine, posting a 4.59-second 40-yard dash with a 40-inch vertical and a 10-foot-11 broad jump. It’s clear to me that he has the physical (6-foot-5 and 267 pounds with 34 ⅛-inch arm length) and athletic traits to dominate at the next level when he finds the proper system to unlock him.
Speaking of Stewart’s physical traits – Glenn has a history of coveting edge players with his size. Lions superstar Aidan Hutchinson measured 6-foot-7 260 pounds at his combine in 2022, and in the second round of that same draft the Lions took Josh Pashcal, who measured in at 6-foot-3 and 268 pounds with nearly 33-inch arms. During the 2024 offseason, the Lions brought in 6-foot-6 and 264-pound Marcus Davenport to add to the already-giant edge room (he was one of the first of the ill-fated defenders for Detroit to end the season on injured reserve). Glenn clearly has a type, and Stewart is a perfect match.
The Jaguars need to focus on maximizing what they have in Lawrence, while the Jets need to do the same for interior star Quinnen Williams, who is statistically coming off one of his worst seasons as a professional. Putting Stewart next to him would certainly go a long way toward elevating him back to the level he’s capable of playing at, but it could also put Stewart in line to be the Jets’ next defensive superstar.
Boise State RB Ashton Jeanty to Chicago Bears
This is the easiest sell of the group and doesn’t require a significant amount of backstory. The Bears revamped the entire interior of the offensive line this offseason by trading for veteran guards Joe Thuney and Jonah Jackson and signing free-agent center Drew Dalman. With Darnell Wright set to enter year three as the starter at right tackle and the combination of Braxton Jones and Kiran Amegadjie on the left side, this is the most stable the offensive line has been during Ryan Poles’ tenure as general manager. The defense looks stacked at every level, meaning the biggest hole on the roster is running back, and the Bears picked the right year to have a critical need at the position.
Simply put, Jeanty’s 2024 season was the best for a college back in nearly 40 years. He forced 152 missed tackles on the ground on his way to 2,595 rushing yards and 29 rushing scores. He was lethal through the air as well, adding 23 receptions and another 12 forced missed tackles. Elusivity and home run speed are the hallmarks of his game, just as they are for a back new head coach Ben Johnson leaned on heavily while the offensive coordinator in Detroit.
During the first round of the 2023 draft, the Lions traded back from pick No. 6 to pick No. 12 (likely at least in part thanks to the Seahawks taking Witherspoon at No. 5) and shocked pundits by selecting Alabama RB Jahmyr Gibbs. At that point, the RB position was considered a luxury, and for the Lions, it was not even a primary need considering they had just signed David Montgomery away from Chicago. However, with the offensive line already being the foundation of Detroit’s offense, Gibbs helped take the unit to another level, as he served as one of the main cogs in one of the highest-powered offensive engines in the past two seasons.
Gibbs was third in the league in 2024 with 46 carries of 10-plus yards, all the more impressive considering he was just 10th in rush attempts (and more than 100 carries behind first and second – Saquon Barkley and Derrick Henry). He was also fifth in the league with 68 forced missed tackles on the ground and second among all running backs with 587 receiving yards.
Looking at the stat profile Gibbs has put together in Detroit and the creativity shown by Johnson, it’s easy to get excited about the possibility of a rare talent like Jeanty being added to the mix in Chicago.
Arizona WR Tetairoa McMillan to Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Tetairoa McMillan’s dominance at the catch point and propensity for huge plays certainly has the look of a top-10 selection, but his average top-end speed is unlikely to see him drafted that early. He reportedly ran a 4.55-second 40-yard dash at his pro day, and no receiver slower than a 4.45 has been selected top 10 in the last eight drafts.
This being said, 11 years ago, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers selected Mike Evans with the seventh overall pick despite him being part of one of the deepest receiver drafts in history and despite him running a 4.53-second 40-yard dash, and all he’s done since is rattle off 11-straight 1,000-yard seasons. His physicality at the catch point, combined with his surprising route-running ability, has made him one of the most productive weapons in football for more than a decade.
Evans appears to be one of the last of a dying breed, as big-bodied receivers have struggled as of late in today’s NFL because separation is king, but McMillan shouldn’t be pigeon-holed into that group. Put on the film, and you’ll find a polished route-runner capable of making precise cuts at top speed to create space. McMillan’s diverse talents are notable in his metrics, considering not only did he ensnare 18 of 30 contested targets sent his way in 2024, but he also broke a whopping 29 tackles after the catch, just one away from the (much smaller and shiftier) leaders in the country.
In Tampa Bay, McMillan would have not just the ultimate mentor but a franchise that already knows how to best use a player of his talents. Scheme and fit are critical components of the draft process that often don’t get discussed enough, and for McMillan, there is no destination better for him than Central Florida.
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