Philadelphia Eagles Draft | Benjamin Solak Top 100 Big Board
Now that the college football season is all but squared away, we list and detail the best prospects for the Philadelphia Eagles in the 2017 NFL Draft.
In just four days’ time, on January 16th, every underclassmen that intends to attend the NFL Draft will file their papers with the league. By January 20th, the official list will be released; the prospects set in stone. We will know every name that the Philadelphia Eagles might call, come April 28th.
But the road has been long and arduous. Since the season started in the end of August–and even before then–area scouts have been scuttling across the nation, passing along whispers, receiving their directives from the NovaCare Complex, recording everything meticulously as they went. Scouting is inherently desperate: you have to find the small-school, late round gem–and keep your enthusiasm as quiet as possible; you need to find the Achilles heel in everyone’s favorite first-rounder, letting some other team make a franchise-altering mistake (hi, Washington). The scouting process is wildly subjective and meticulous; personal and impersonal alike. It’s D’Amato’s game of inches.
That being said, from all of this backbreaking work, rankings eventually must matriculate: the Big Board represents each individual team’s hierarchy of prospects. It’s a tool that will be changed roughly, oh, 7 million times between today and Draft Day, and even on that fateful day, it will be adhered to in only varying degrees. Looking at you, Sonny Weaver Jr.
Man, two movie references, and we’re not even to the second slide. Good times.
This is my projection of what the Eagles’ board looks like at this juncture: most undergrads declared; season over; Shrine Game, Senior Bowl, Combine, and Pro Days still pending. If you want to know what to expect from the Draft–and tell your friends what they should expect–for the next three months, this list is for you.
A disclaimer, before we move forward: injury concerns and character concerns are two things that are almost impossible to judge, sitting behind a screen. Players like RB Joe Mixon and WR Dede Westbrook will have plenty of questions to answer from teams regarding their speckled past. They’ll be ranked based off of talent alone, and teams will be responsible for meeting with the players, discussing their past errors, and adjusting their stock accordingly.
On a similar note, a team has to make their own calls regarding injuries that may drastically impact the board you see here. Ryan Ramczyk from Wisconsin, my #1 0T, isn’t falling much due to his hip surgery; Jake Butt, TE from Michigan, has torn the same ACL twice now, and he tumbled out of my Top 100. Teams will weight different injuries differently. Simple as that.
Without further ado, let’s reveal the Top 100 prospects for the 2017 NFL Draft.