Any NFL general manager who walks up to the podium in Washington D.C. on April 29 and passes on Jeremiah Smith at No. 1 overall deserves to have his security badge deactivated before he reaches the parking lot.
Mel Kiper Jr. dropped his updated 2027 Big Board ahead of Week 9, and for once, the draft industrial complex got the top spot right. Kiper kept the 6-foot-4, 222-pound Ohio State wideout locked in at No. 1, calling him the best player in the class “by a wide margin” last month and writing this week that “Smith is very clearly the best player in this draft class.” Across seven games in 2026, Smith has already piled up 52 catches, 984 receiving yards, and 12 touchdowns. Over three seasons in Columbus, he owns 39 career touchdown grabs while averaging 16.5 yards per catch.
He is a 99-overall create-a-player who broke the college game’s physics engine, and yet I already know some desperate front office is going to overthink this in April because he does not play quarterback.
Positional Value Dogma Is How Bad Franchises Stay Cooked
Every spring, front-office analytics departments talk themselves into taking a developmental quarterback over a blue-chip Hall of Fame talent at another position because of rookie-scale quarterback contract math. Only three wide receivers in NFL history have ever gone No. 1 overall: Keyshawn Johnson in 1996, Irving Fryar in 1984, and Dave Parks in 1964. Even Kiper hedges his own board with the reminder that “this is simply my personal ranking of the best players in the class” rather than a prediction for Round 1, noting the 2027 group “includes a ton of QBs.”
Passing on Smith for a mystery-box passer would be a war crime against roster building. The whole point of drafting a rookie quarterback is to elevate your passing offense and force defenses out of heavy boxes, and Smith does that the second he steps off the team bus. Ohio State feeds him north of 10 targets per game, every defensive coordinator in the stadium rolls bracket coverage his way, and he still hung 12 catches for 217 yards and four touchdowns on Illinois in September.
Look at the actual mechanism of how Smith ruins a defensive game plan. On 289 career targets, the man has six drops. Six! When a 222-pound X-receiver snatches the ball on the run with zero wasted motion and turns boundary hitches into track meets after the catch, defensive coordinators cannot sit in comfortable two-high shells and rally to the tackle. They have to commit a safety over the top AND press a corner at the line, which leaves the rest of the field in single coverage. My kids could read the coverage rotations Smith forces, and he does it on every single snap.
Drew Mestemaker Has the Juice, But 22 Starts Is a Trap at No. 1
Look at the guy sitting right behind Smith at No. 2 on Kiper’s board: Oklahoma State quarterback Drew Mestemaker. I love watching Mestemaker play, and his rise from a high school backup quarterback and punter who walked on at North Texas in 2024 to leading the FBS with 41 completions of 20-plus yards in 2026 is absurd. As Kiper wrote in his evaluation, “His toolbox is also pretty incredible. I love the way he scans the field and bides his time in the pocket.”
Mestemaker has thrown for 2,326 yards, 20 touchdowns, and six interceptions on a 65.7% completion rate over seven games after following coach Eric Morris to Stillwater, tacking on 211 rushing yards and two scores. He has real dawg in him… the kind of linebacker toughness that makes scouts fall in love at 2 a.m. in the film room.
Here is the problem with letting quarterback fever push Mestemaker past Smith when the real draft cards go in: Mestemaker does not turn 21 until January and has just 22 career starts to his name. Drafting a 22-start walk-on transfer first overall and throwing him behind a bottom-tier offensive line is how franchises stay trapped in the basement for a decade. Meanwhile, Notre Dame cornerback Leonard Moore sits at No. 3 with 6-foot-2 length, seven career interceptions, and 23 pass breakups, giving this class two plug-and-play perimeter monsters before you ever have to gamble on an raw quarterback projection.
The previous three wide receivers taken No. 1 overall all made at least three Pro Bowls, and none of them entered the league with Smith’s terrifying blend of size and run-after-catch violence. Which poverty franchise is going to get cute on April 29, galaxy-brain the easiest No. 1 pick of the decade, and hand Jeremiah Smith to the team drafting second?
