FanPost

2012 Draft Player Rankings: Top 10 Update 2.0

UPDATE 2.0 – Post combine

The Combine finished up over a week ago, and schools have begun hosting their Pro Days. I would have gotten this out sooner, but I was waiting on Drafttek.com to release their post-combine Big Board for the cumulative rankings (which they finally did tonight). So, we have our second update of the season. I’ll do one last update a few days before the draft after all the Pro Days are complete. You can see my first edition here, and the first update here, but for convenience I’ve included the previous rankings from the last update below. Again, after scouring the internet for various draft rankings, I decided to average all of these rankings into a cumulative draft ranking to see what kind of consensus (if any) there was about the top 10 draft rankings. Check them out after the jump.

The ranking in parenthesis is that site’s previous ranking of the player from last update (where applicable). In the case of NFL.com, only Gil Brandt updated his Big Board when I checked for this posting. It’s worth mentioning that Mike Mayock has only released his positional rankings as of this latest update, and since I don’t have the ESPN Insider, I don’t have Mel Kiper’s latest rankings, but both of them are highly regarded opinions that aren’t included here. Also, every player on the chart, makes the top 10 in at least one of the websites I consulted. Lastly, I used "player rankings" only, rather than "mock drafts", because I’m interested in how each website ranks the players (by whatever metric they use), not in who they think each team will draft. Think of this as a cumulative Big Board.

Average.

CBSSports

ESPN

NFL.com
(Brandt)

Walter
football.com

Draftcount
down.com

Drafttek.com

Profootball
weekly.com

Draft
nasty.com

Andrew Luck, QB

1.1 (1.2)

#1 (1)

#1 (1)

#1 (1)

#1 (1)

#1 (1)

#1 (1)

#1 (1)

#2 (3)

Matt Kalil, T

2.9 (2.4)

#3 (2)

#3 (2)

#2 (2)

#3 (2)

#2 (2)

#2 (2)

#4 (3)

#4 (5)

Robert Griffin III, QB

3.1 (4.2)

#2 (3)

#2 (3)

#3 (4)

#2 (3)

#5 (5)

#3 (6)

#5 (4)

#3 (7)

Trent Richardson, RB

4.3 (4.4)

#6 (5)

#4 (4)

#6 (5)

#6 (6)

#4 (4)

#4 (4)

#3 (6)

#1 (1)

Morris Clairborne, CB

5 (5.2)

#4 (4)

#5 (6)

#5 (6)

#5 (5)

#3 (3)

#5 (5)

#2 (2)

#11 (10)

Justin Blackmon, WR

6.5 (5)

#5 (6)

#7 (#8)

#13 (3)

#4 (4)

#6 (6)

#6 (3)

#6 (5)

#5 (6)

Riley Reiff, T

8.9 (8)

#7 (#8)

#10 (7)

#8 (7)

#8 (11)

#10 (8)

#7 (7)

#12 (14)

#9 (2)

Quinton Coples, DE

9.8 (8.7)

#8 (12)

#11 (5)

#4 (5)

#9 (7)

#8 (9)

#10 (12)

#22 (17)

#6 (4)

Luke Kuechly, ILB

11.1 (13.1)

#14 (16)

#9 (10)

#12 (14)

#7 (10)

#15 (15)

#8 (9)

#8 (12)

#16 (19)

Melvin Ingram DE

11.3 (16)

#9 (19)

#6 (17)

#11 (17)

#10 (19)

#13 (26)

#21 (22)

#13 (21)

#7 (8)

Michael Brockers, DT

11.8 (20.7)

#10 (13)

#8 (12)

#10 (23)

#12 (9)

#7 (20)

#16 (25)

#17

#14 (16)

Courney Upshaw, OLB

17 (16.1)

#21 (20)

#17 (16)

#9 (11)

#18 (12)

#12 (18)

#13 (10)

#11 (10)

#35 (34)

Fletcher Cox, DT/DE

17.4 (23.4)

#20 (25)

#18

#30 (36)

#23 (38)

#17 (30)

#11 (16)

#7 (7)

#13 (17)

Dre Kirkpatrick, CB

18.3 (14.4)

#18 (10)

#21 (9)

#17 (21)

#16 (20)

#22 (14)

#15 (14)

#27 (23)

#10 (9)

Dontari Poe, DT

19.4

#22

#14

#51

#13

#14

#24

#9

#8

David DeCastro, G

23.1 (11.9)

#12 (#11)

#16 (15)

#14 (15)

#11 (14)

#9 (7)

#9 (13)

#10 (9)

#104

Ryan Tannehill, QB

26.8 (29)

#11 (29)

#13 (20)

#7 (8)

#46 (44)

#25 (32)

#27 (38)

#54 (29)

#31 (30)

Conclusion
A lot has changed since the last update. I kept only one NFL.com analyst for this update, since Gil Brandt was the only one to update their rankings, so that lowers the total sources from 9 to 8. But, there seems to be much more consensus about who the Top 10 players are. The top 5 remained largely the same, but the bottom 5 changed a lot, and many guys fell out of the rankings entirely since nobody had them in their top 10 (Jonathan Martin, Mark Barron, Alshon Jefferey, etc). In this new setup, Luke Kuechly and Melvin Ingram jump into the cumulative top 10, and Michael Brockers makes a big jump up. Morris Claiborne and Justin Blackmon swap places and Dontari Poe finds himself on the list for the first time after a stellar combine. Not much has changed in my thinking of what the Vikings should do with the draft though. Talk of the Rams trading out of their #2 pick for the rights to draft RGIII has only gained momentum since the last post, which means the #2 ranked player overall, Matt Kalil, will likely fall in our lap at #3. However, if for some reason the Rams don’t trade, and actually draft Kalil themselves, again, we’ll find ourselves in good position to either draft RGIII, trade down, or draft a playmaker like Justin Blackmon or Morris Claiborne. In either scenario, the Vikings win IMO.

This FanPost was created by a registered user of The Daily Norseman, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the staff of the site. However, since this is a community, that view is no less important.