2026 NFL Consensus Big Board: The History of “Best Available” on Day 2
Every year, we precede Day 2 of the NFL draft with "Best Available" lists. Are they any good? And who are those players this year?
The fanatics who dig deep into draft analysis — those dedicated enough to follow the Consensus Big Board — often find that Day 2 is as exciting as Day 1. Teams pounce on the astounding value left on the board at the top of the second round and define their draft classes.
The headlines of draft classes are built on the first round, but the strength of classes are created in the second and third rounds. People remember the Vikings’ 2015 class not for Trae Waynes, but for Waynes, Eric Kendricks, Danielle Hunter and Stefon Diggs.
The Eagles built their 2024 Super Bowl team off of falling value. Landon Dickerson, Nakobe Dean and Cooper DeJean were all considered first-round talents who were drafted in Day 2, while other key players represented falling value — Dallas Goedert, Moro Ojomo and Josh Sweat all were rated as significant steals by the Consensus Big Board.
The 2017 New Orleans Saints draft class is remembered not for Marshon Lattimore but for Lattimore alongside Alvin Kamara, Marcus Williams, Ryan Ramczyk and Trey Hendrickson.
Conversely, the Chiefs’ 2017 class was outstanding in terms of total value because of Patrick Mahomes (and Kareem Hunt), but no one really calls it a good draft class so much as an outstanding pick.
So as teams turn draft classes from good picks into good hauls, who are the best candidates to do so? And can we always identify them?
Top Remaining Day 2 Players
Some of the top remaining players who were projected to go in the first round are easy to explain. Both Jermod McCoy and Avieon Terrell have injury concerns.
McCoy missed the 2025 season because of a torn ACL. Players who miss their final college season because of an ACL tear but are ranked in the mid-teens tend to go in the first round regardless — Todd Gurley, Kyle Fuller and Dominique Easley are good recent examples. In a way, Jeffery Simmons, who tore his ACL after the college season, would also count.
Instead, there are deeper concerns about McCoy. The need for a second surgery that would take him out of the 2026 season and a “cartilage defect” make his injury issues more serious — a problem genuinely different and distinct from his ACL tear, possibly a degenerative cartilage issue.
On top of that, his recovery timeline could have put him in play near the end of the season, but he still didn’t play in late November or early December, which warrants some caution.
Terrell, ranked slightly lower than McCoy, is a more interesting case. He has an ankle injury concern from 2024 (during the spring) and a quadriceps injury that forced him to miss a game in 2025, but was regarded as “durable” by Brugler in his draft guide. His size (5’10”) on top of his injury reaggravation — a hamstring injury that delayed his workouts with NFL teams — could have put some NFL teams off.
Notably, Tyleik Williams injured his hamstring in the pre-draft process and was still drafted in the first round by the Detroit Lions.
Players like Emmanuel McNeil-Warren and Kayden McDonald are not particularly difficult to explain at this point; neither is considered an outstanding athletic performer at their position, and there usually needs to be some kind of athletic standout for a safety or nose tackle ranked in the mid-20s by the Consensus Board to go in the first round.
Examples include Budda Baker, Grant Delpit, Trevon Moehrig, Brian Branch, Landon Collins, Andrew Billings, A’Shawn Robinson and Eddie Goldman. These kinds of falls happen within the first round, too. Safeties Malik Hooker, Kyle Hamilton, Minka Fitzpatrick and Derwin James all fell substantially further in the draft than their Consensus Board rank would have suggested.
Denzel Boston was probably the victim of a relatively stacked receiver group; it is unlikely that many draft analysts would refer to this as a “strong” receiver class because the top-end talent doesn’t match the pre-draft evaluations we’ve seen for other receiver classes.
Those top-end receivers included (for better or worse) Corey Davis, Sammy Watkins, Odell Beckham Jr., Mike Evans, Ja’Marr Chase, Jaylen Waddle, DeVonta Smith, CeeDee Lamb, Garrett Wilson, Jerry Jeudy. This draft doesn’t seem to have any players who meet those lofty, top-ten ratings from experts. But they did have a lot of Top-32 receivers.
For Boston to have gone in the first round, he’d have needed to have been the sixth receiver off the board. Since the historic 2014 receiver class (only five were drafted in the first round then, too), we’ve only seen six or more receivers drafted four times out of 12, or 33 percent.
It would be difficult to make the argument that this class had the same regard as the meteoric 2020 class, the 2022 class or the 2024 class, which saw an astounding seven receivers drafted in the first round. You would be hard-pressed to find an analyst that favorably compared Carnell Tate, the top receiver off the board this year, to Marvin Harrison Jr., Malik Nabers or Rome Odunze.
There probably does not need to be much ink spilled over the first-round absences T.J. Parker or Colton Hood, who were just barely in the cut as Top-32 players on the Consensus Big Board. Parker’s 2024 was more productive than his 2025 (19.5 tackles for loss and 11.0 sacks, compared to 9.5 TFLs and 5.0 sacks) while Hood was just a one-year starter.
Of these players and those at the top of the “second-round” grade group, the most interesting could be Terrell, Parker, C.J. Allen, Zion Young and D’Angelo Ponds. Terrell and Parker already have reasonably large variances in their rankings (generally, Terrell has ranked from 19th to 35th while Parker has ranked 25th to 39th) but so do Young and Ponds.
Young has off-field concerns. Brugler noted a DWI charge in December of 2025 (along with other vehicle violations) and an assault charge in 2023 for a post-game altercation with seven other Michigan State players.
Ponds is 5’8”.
Well, 5’8 5/8”. The shortest cornerbacks who have most recently logged at least ten starts are Darious Williams (5’9 5/8”), D.J. Reed (5’9 1/8”), Tavon Young (5’9 1/8”), Duke Shelley (5’8 5/8”) and Amik Robertson (5’8 3/8”). None of these players were drafted before Day 3, if they were drafted at all.
Ponds is a truly impressive player, but traits win the day in the NFL. Robertson generated 16 pass deflections and five interceptions in his final year of college, including two interceptions returned for a touchdown, and still couldn’t get drafted in Day 2. This was despite Robertson shutting down third-round pick Devin Duvernay and a few tall receivers, like 6’3” Obi Obialo, 6’3” De’Corian Clark and 6’5” Collin Johnson.
Nevertheless, Ponds’ performance was good enough for at least five analysts to rank him inside the top ten.
Does any of this matter?
How Often Do Day 2 “Steals” Become Good Players?
We know that the Consensus Board is generally pretty good at identifying talent and that it can compete with the NFL over a long time span when it comes to finding players that will make an impact.
