3 consensus first-rounders who could end up being Day 2 steals in the 2023 draft

The NFL Draft is sure to have many surprises, not just with the names that you hear on day one but also the prospects who wait for their turn until day two. In past years, that could include Malik Willis, Tre’Von Moehrig, Creed Humphrey, Michael Pittman, DK Metcalf, Drew Lock, and Nick Chubb as players who were “consensus first-round picks” who ended up being available after the first round was over.

Nobody thinks that a consensus first-round pick will fall to Day 2; that’s why it’s called a consensus! But it’s guaranteed to happen and these three prospects seem to be getting closer to the second round as we get closer to the draft.

He could be 2023’s Malik Willis, a player who draftheads mocked in the top 10 only to see him fall to the third round. Levis may not drop past 80, but he could go much lower than the projections.

Once talked about as being in play for the No. 1 overall pick, it’s getting harder each day to find draft experts who even seem to like Levis as a first-round prospect. His last name might as well be “As Much As Other People Seem To” and his first name is “I don’t like Will Levis” because that’s what I keep hearing and reading as we get closer to the draft. Who’s left who is actually willing to go bat for Levis like they did a month ago?

His value seemed to peak just before the combine, with Levis being projected as early as first overall and rarely outside the top 5. PFF’s Mike Renner mocked him second behind C.J. Stroud and ESPN’s Mel Kiper fit him with the Seahawks at 5 in his first mock draft, and the Kentucky quarterback was neck-and-neck with the other top 3 players at the position. Then Levis just didn’t seem to “wow” at the combine, especially in comparison to the accuracy that Stroud displayed in the throwing sessions and the “everything else” by Anthony Richardson. On3’s Adam Luckett noted that Levis’s known issues in the short passing game were on display again at the combine:

When required to throw a short pass to the left, Levis’ footwork gets a little clunky causing the passer to get closed off and throw across his body. That turned into a couple of inaccurate short throws. That inaccuracy was already shown on tape. NFL teams know that Levis has some short-to-medium inaccuracy issues.

It’s fine that NFL teams know what they need to fix with Will Levis. It’s another thing to actually be able to execute, implement, and guarantee that those changes will happen at the next level — especially given that Levis had five years with college coaching at Penn State and Kentucky but was still showing a lack of accuracy, touch, and ability to see the field through his final game and again at the combine.

Perhaps worst of all for Levis’ draft stock is the perception of Will Levis, which is that he’s no better than the fourth-best quarterback in the class, that he’s “tone deaf” according to Colin Cowherd after posting bathroom selfies of his muscle development, and that he’s arrogant to the point of being mocked by the NFL Network’s Kyle Brandt:

Though it’s still expected that Levis will be a first-round pick because he’s got the size, arm strength, and toughness that could make him a worthy project in the NFL, it’s becoming accepted that he won’t go in the top 10, and some are going as far to say that he’s hitting the fringes of Day 2. Perhaps the only thing keeping Levis in first-round mocks anymore is that it’s so hard to see teams like the Bucs at No. 19 and the Vikings at No. 23, to not think “Well, why not a quarterback here?” But some would say that even Hendon Hooker is a safer bet, as NBC’s Chris Simms ranked Hooker third and only squeezed Levis in for a fifth-place tie with Dorian Thompson-Robinson.

Levis is a consensus first-round pick. However, some teams definitely have not given Levis a first-round grade, and GMs that end up passing on quarterbacks on Day 1 could be expecting to have a chance at Levis on Day 2.

Fans are always looking ahead to see who the next Justin Jefferson or Ja’Marr Chase is going to be, and early in the draft process it was clear that TCU’s Quentin Johnston had the lead to be the first receiver off the board in the 2023 draft. He’s one of the only receivers in the class who has size (6’3, 208 pounds) and arm length (over 33.5”) and production (60 catches, 1069 yards) that seems to match up with big names like those. It didn’t hurt that Johnston was also a TCU Horned Frog, the biggest surprise in college football last season, and that he had monster games like 14 catches for 206 yards against Kansas and then 163 yards in a win over Michigan in the College Football Playoff.

Like everyone else at TCU, the last thing that he needed to cap off the season was a game against Georgia.

Johnston was held to one catch for three yards in the National Championship, and then everyone started to get a look at his tape and become very critical, including former Pro Bowl receiver Steve Smith on his ‘Cut To It’ podcast. Smith noted what many have said about Johnston in the last month as his stock has dropped, which is that he’s very inconsistent and doesn’t seem to know how to use his size and length to his advantage.

“People are saying he’s fast. I like him but then I can watch the next highlight and I don’t. I’m literally struggling with him right now. I’m going back and forth.”

The conversation around the 2023 receiver class used to begin with Johnston as the first name off the board, but he’s fallen way behind Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Jordan Addison, and Zay Flowers as we get closer to the draft. He’s dropped from being a consensus top 10 pick by average mock position in early March to now regularly being the fourth receiver taken and coming dangerously close to the second round, according to NFL Mock Draft Database:

As a whole, the wide receiver class has confused most people and though there is momentum building behind Smith-Njigba, there’s no clear number one and a chance that teams would rather wait to see what develops on Day 2. Names like Jalin Hyatt, Cedric Tillman, Josh Downs, Marvin Mims, Tank Dell, Charlie Jones, Jonathan Mingo, Xavier Hutchinson, and Michael Wilson are just a few of many that could make teams think that they don’t need to take a risk on a receiver in the top 20 when they can take a risk on a receiver outside the top 40.

Of course, this is also how teams ended up talking themselves out of Justin Jefferson, the fifth receiver picked in 2020, or DK Metcalf and A.J. Brown, both second-round picks in 2019. You just can’t know until you know, but Johnston will need to make better use of his body and be more consistent at the next level to prove to be a steal in the draft.

While Levis and Johnston are consensus first-round picks who may fall because their careers weren’t quite as polished and successful as teams would hope, Mayer has done basically everything right for three years at Notre Dame and we’ve known his first-round status was coming for a long time. Maybe that’s why his first-round status isn’t as guaranteed as we thought: If he weren’t in the public consciousness so consistently for the last three years, would Mayer’s resume in this particular tight end class actually scream “first-round pick”?

After months of being the consensus top tight end in the draft, it seems like we just woke up one day and suddenly everyone had agreed that actually Utah’s Dalton Kincaid had to go first.

Fans may have not been doing Mayer any favors by calling him “Baby Gronk” the last couple of years, because once we got through the combine and the pro days, it became apparent to most people that it’s not a fair comparison. It would have been better to call him “Baby Heath Miller,” which is still a flattering compliment!

Miller and Jason Witten, two more accurate comparisons, were fantastic players at tight end. Mayer is 6’4, 249 pounds, and he may be the best player in this draft at making contested catches. But he’s not fast (4.7 in the 40-yard dash), he doesn’t gain many yards after the catch, he needs to improve his blocking and route running, and he’s going to be facing much more talented linebackers at the next level when making those tough catches.

There’s a world where Mayer becomes a Pro Bowl tight end and his floor should keep him on an NFL team for the next 10 years. But in a class with Kincaid, Luke Musgrave, Sam LaPorta, Darnell Washington, Tucker Kraft, and interesting depth in Rounds 3, 4, and 5, there’s a chance that teams will view Mayer as a second-round pick.

Would all of these players be steals in the second round? Probably. But they may slip into the second round regardless.