Admittedly, mock draft season involves a lot of throwing shit at the wall. Most experts will go through 10 iterations of their mock, and when we get to version 9.4, they’ll have the Eagles picking eight different players. The predictions move and shift as we try to guess what teams are gonna do, or sniff out clues about what players they like.

Most mocks seem to be rooted in reality, but this does not appear to be one of those:

Top five looks fine, but if DeVonta Smith falls out of the top ten entirely, then several general managers are smoking crack. That’s banana land, to think that the Heisman Trophy winner would go after teammate Jaylen Waddle, who is coming off an injury and just didn’t put together the same body of work this past season. If both played full years, we’d be able to mock Waddle above Smith with more legitimacy.

RE: the Eagles taking Mac Jones, you knew somebody was going to mock this at some point. I’d be a hypocrite to rip the idea, since I’ve suggested multiple times that drafting a quarterback might actually be a good plan, but right now Jones is still projected to be a mid-first round pick and the 5th quarterback off the board.

The thing with Alabama quarterbacks is that we never truly know if they’re a product of the talent around them. We asked this question of Tua Tagovailoa, Jalen Hurts, AJ McCarron, Jake Coker, and Greg McElroy. That group, which includes multiple national title winners, had guys picked in the 5th round, 7th round, and one go undrafted entirely. Coker had Derrick Henry, O.J. Howard, Kenyan Drake, and Calvin Ridley on his team.

Jones had Waddle, Smith, and Najee Harris. They went 13-0 en route to another title, putting up a ton of points along the way. The thing about Jones is that he’s not going to wow anybody with his athleticism, but he’s also not a statue in the pocket. He can move around a little bit, and he’s quick to process what’s going on. Smart player. He doesn’t have elite arm strength and might be more of a “game manager” type in the NFL, but his floor looks to be higher than the typical Bama QB. The ceiling is also lower.

Dunno. It’s hard to see Jones going that high. I’d think he might go to Carolina #8 at the highest, depending on how they feel about Trey Lance. It seems like the consensus right now is that Trevor Lawrence, Justin Fields, and Zach Wilson are the top three QBs, then Lance and Jones in that Tier 2/lower Tier 1 type of range.

It’s mock draft season. Let’s get weird.