Infante: Evaluating my 2025 NFL Draft accuracy

WCG’s lead draft analyst compares his 2025 NFL Draft accuracy to one of the best analysts in the business.

With the 2025 NFL Draft in the rearview mirror, now is as good of a time as any to compare my own analysis to the way the league evaluates talent.

I’m already onto my 2026 NFL Draft analysis, much to the joy or chagrin of whichever reader you might ask. Before I go full steam into next year’s class, however, I wanted to go through a helpful exercise that I discovered last year.

NFL Network’s Daniel Jeremiah is one of the best in the business, and for the last few years, his website has been tracking his accuracy within the top 150 picks of the NFL Draft. Each year, you can see how the top 150 players of his board stack up to the first 150 selections in each class.

As a part-time draft analyst who does this on the side instead of as a full-blown career, I was curious to see where my numbers compare to that of a professional media scout. I obviously don’t expect my numbers to be as good — there’s a reason Jeremiah is a professional and I am not — but I’m always striving to be a better evaluator and provide better draft content for you all.

Last year, I saw 82.7% of my top 150 prospects selected in that same range of the 2024 NFL Draft. That comes out to 124 players.

The 2025 draft class was not as kind to me, unfortunately. Of the first 150 picks in the 2025 NFL Draft, 115 of them were also in my top 150 prospects on my big board. That comes out to a percentage of 76.6%.

This isn’t to say my evaluations were wrong, per se. 145 of my top 150 prospects got drafted, which leads to a 96.6% percentage that fell short of Jeremiah’s perfect score, but it does beat out his percentages from 2020 and 2022. There’s also the chance I get players right that the league doesn’t.

That said, I’m a little disappointed the numbers dropped the way they did in 2025.

The Top 257

Out of the 257 players selected in the 2024 NFL Draft, I ranked 228 of them in my own top 257 for a percentage of just over 88.7%. There were 10 players in total whom I did not have any scouting report on, adding up to a percentage of just under 3.9%. That just so happens to be the exact amount of players I missed in 2024, despite my watching 39 prospects in 2025 than I did the year before.

Ironically, the highest-picked player I didn’t have a formal grade on was Bears linebacker Ruben Hyppolite II, who got picked in Round 4. Outside of him, though, I had a grade on every player selected through the first six rounds, including the three special teamers.

The next player happened to be Marcus Bryant from Missouri — the college team I support — and while I had notes on him from watching the team live and going over teammate Armand Membou, I didn’t expect he would be selected. That was certainly a pleasant surprise, though!

Here is the full list of drafted players whom I had not formally scouted before the draft:

• Bears LB Ruben Hyppolite II (No. 132)
• Patriots OT Marcus Bryant (No. 220)
• Steelers CB Donte Kent (No. 229)
• Packers CB Micah Robinson (No. 237)
• Broncos TE Caleb Lohner (No. 241)
• Giants CB Korie Black (No. 246)
• Patriots LS Julian Ashby (No. 251)
• 49ers WR Junior Bergen (No. 252)
• Chargers CB Trikweze Bridges (No. 256)
• Patriots CB Kobee Minor (No. 257)

The Top 150

These are the players Jeremiah put in his top 150 who were selected in the top 150 but weren’t in mine:

• UCF RB RJ Harvey (8.49)
• Arkansas WR Isaac TeSlaa (9.93)
• Minnesota CB Justin Walley (5.97)
• California CB Nohl Williams (7.14)
• Tulane CB Caleb Ransaw (9.75)
• Virginia S Jonas Sanker (7.05)
• USC CB Jaylin Smith (4.82)
• Western Kentucky CB Upton Stout (7.61)
• Florida WR Chimere Dike (9.72)
• California S Craig Woodson (8.75)
• Georgia RB Trevor Etienne (6.94)
• Ohio State LB Cody Simon (8.35)
• USC RB Woody Marks (6.66)
• Texas TE Gunnar Helm (4.33)
• Texas EDGE Barryn Sorrell (9.31)
• Virginia Tech WR Jaylin Lane (9.57)
• California LB Teddye Buchanan (9.42)
• Alabama EDGE Que Robinson (N/A)
• Notre Dame DT Rylie Mills (N/A)
• UCF CB Mac McWilliams (7.39)
• Texas RB Jaydon Blue (6.34)

Likewise, these are the players I put in my top 150 who were selected in the top 150 but weren’t in Jeremiah’s: (three more)

• Kentucky DT Deone Walker (3.74)
• Alabama S Malachi Moore (6.11)
• Florida DT Cam Jackson (3.89)
• Maryland DT Jordan Phillips (6.77)
• South Carolina EDGE Kyle Kennard (8.57)
• Tennessee DT Omarr Norman-Lott (5.95)
• Georgia OG Dylan Fairchild (N/A)
• Illinois WR Pat Bryant (7.08)

Not nearly as long of a list. Woof!

Finally, here are the players we both got wrong:

• Texas DT Vernon Broughton (N/A)
• Oklahoma State LB Nick Martin (8.55)
• Texas Tech OT Caleb Rogers (9.68)
• Notre Dame LB Jack Kiser (7.68)
• Tennessee WR Dont’e Thornton Jr. (9.85)
• Georgia WR Arian Smith (9.20)
• Auburn RB Jarquez Hunter (7.17)
• Iowa State OT Jalen Travis (9.09)
• Maryland LB Ruben Hyppolite II (8.23)
• South Carolina DT Tonka Hemingway (9.46)
• Ole Miss WR Jordan Watkins (8.79)
• Georgia DT Tyrion Ingram-Dawkins (9.79)
• Alabama A&M OG Carson Vinson (8.09)
• Oregon RB Jordan James (4.65)
• Florida CB Jason Marshall Jr. (9.43)

The RAS Of It All

Utilizing Relative Athletic Score, I decided to see if the analytical testing profile for players I missed was any different than it was with Jeremiah’s.

As you can probably tell from the lists above, it was! I have more of a “got that dawg in him” approach to scouting as it seems Jeremiah does, whereas DJ prioritizes physical tools and athletic upside. Admittedly, that seems to be part of why he does better than me every year!

Of the eight players I got right and Jeremiah got wrong, only one of them had an elite RAS grade (above 8.00). At the same time, nine of the 21 that I got wrong and Jeremiah got right had elite RAS grades.

20 of my 35 misses from the 2025 NFL Draft had elite RAS grades, marking a 57.1% percentage. Conversely, of the 35 players I had in my top 150 who missed the actual top 150, just 11 of them had elite RAS grades (31.4%). That’s a wake-up call to me to focus more on elite athletes when putting together my rankings if I want to line up with NFL evaluators.

Takeaways

One of the big takeaways I got is that Jeremiah’s evaluation of defensive backs is much more in line with the way the NFL thinks than mine. That’s not to say I need to copy my rankings entirely after his, but I may need to keep more of an open mind during my evaluation period, especially at cornerback.

I also undervalue speed when it comes to my wide receiver evaluations. Every wide receiver I missed on ran a 40-yard dash time in the 4.3s or quicker. Of the ten wide receivers to run a 4.3 or faster, eight of them got drafted in the top 150. KeAndre Lambert-Smith wasn’t too far behind at No. 158, while Isaiah Bond got arrested on charges of sexual assault and went undrafted because of it.

That said, I come away feeling decent about my ability to evaluate defensive linemen. Cam Jackson and Deone Walker were two players in particular with subpar testing, but I trusted the eye test on them enough, and in this exercise, it paid off.

Self reflection is key in life, because all of a sudden I’ve become a shaman or something instead of a fat dork who sits at his computer all day. After this exercise, I’ve identified the steps I should take in order to become a better draft analyst for the people.