Every year, Football Outsiders puts together a list of the NFL's best and brightest young players who have barely played. Eighty percent of the draft-day discussion is about first-round picks, and 10 percent is about the players who should have been first-round picks, but instead went in the second round.
This list is about the others.
Everybody knows that Saquon Barkley and Josh Rosen are good. There's a cottage industry around the idea of hyping every draft's No. 1 quarterback as a potential superstar. This is a list of players who have a strong chance to make an impact in the NFL despite their lack of draft stock and the fact that they weren't immediate NFL starters. (Our full criteria for who's eligible for this list is at the bottom of this article.)
Previous instances of the list have hyped players such as Geno Atkins, Grady Jarrett, Malcolm Butler and Jamaal Charles before they blew up. Last year's list included Tyreek Hill, Javon Hargrave, Justin Simmons and Michael Pierce.
Most of these lists are heavily dependent on the depth of incoming draft classes. For instance, this year's list doesn't have a quarterback, because It has been a down few years for quarterback depth. However, it's quite heavy on wide receivers, and there are a few other wideouts who would normally be list-eligible who got pushed to the honorable mention list.
Our No. 1 prospect was not hard this year, as he also led the list published in the middle of the 2017 season. Here are the top 25 prospects for the 2018 season: