The 3 biggest surprises in Mel Kiper’s 2-round NFL mock draft

Mel Kiper’s latest mock draft — his fourth of a pandemic-marred offseason — has a few surprises. He predicts six quarterbacks will be taken in the first two rounds of the 2020 NFL Draft. None of them went to the QB-needy Patriots ... and Oregon quarterback Justin Herbert earned the honor of being the second passer off the board.

Kiper joined a rising chorus that’s sung the praises of the Oregon QB to push him ahead of Alabama southpaw Tua Tagovailoa as the Dolphins’ franchise cornerstone. Herbert, with fewer injury concerns, better size, and a history of doing more with less, could surpass the Crimson Tide star based on his roomy NFL potential. SB Nation’s Dan Kadar had Herbert at No. 5 in his Monday mock draft as well.

This could be found money for the Chargers, who could draft Philip Rivers’ replacement by settling for Tagovailoa at No. 6 overall — a scenario favored by Kiper and Kadar (but not SI’s Jenny Vrentas, who envisions LA trading up to snipe Herbert before the Dolphins could select him). Los Angeles suffered through a cursed 2019 before losing its longtime franchise quarterback in free agency. Landing the player thought to be 2020’s top overall pick through most of 2019 without having to swing a trade could make that lost season worthwhile.

Herbert over Tagovailoa may be the biggest move in Kiper’s latest prognostication, but that’s not the only surprise he has in store.

The draft’s annual rush on quarterback talent may leave New England out of options when it comes to a suitable Day 1 replacement for Tom Brady.

While Kadar — and the majority of this year’s mock drafts to date — has mercurial Utah State gunslinger Jordan Love falling to the Pats with the 23rd pick, Kiper wipes him off his available players list with his 19th selection. There, the Las Vegas Raiders would likely give him the chance to learn the position from Derek Carr and Marcus Mariota before settling into a more prominent role under Jon Gruden.

That would free Bill Belichick to draft his Kyle Van Noy replacement in Wisconsin do-it-all linebacker Zack Baun. That’s a sentiment echoed by Pats Pulpit’s Bernd Buchmasser, who had an opportunity to draft a sliding Herbert in SB Nation’s team site mock draft but opted for versatile Oklahoma linebacker Kenneth Murray instead.

But since New England doesn’t (yet) have a second-round pick, it also leaves the club without a QB pick in ESPN’s two-round mock. Belichick could have trouble finding his guy in Round 3, too. Kiper predicts both the Colts and Steelers would opt to find understudies for their veteran QBs by drafting Washington’s Jacob Eason and Oklahoma’s Jalen Hurts, respectively, in the middle of the second round.

Hurts is an especially interesting pick. The former Alabama passer has been successful at each of his stops in college, but he’s widely considered a Day 2 or even Day 3 talent thanks to his lack of ideal size, arm strength, and mechanics. Even so, he’s a player who put up a 80:20 TD:INT ratio at two of the most prestigious programs in the NCAA, was a Heisman runner-up, and was a familiar face at the College Football Playoff. He may be one of 2020’s most interesting mid-round prospects. He’d likely be an immediate upgrade over the Mason Rudolph/Duck Hodges combo platter of failure Pittsburgh rolled out behind Ben Roethlisberger last fall.

That second-round mini-run on QBs could leave the Pats gambling on a developmental quarterback talent like Jake Fromm, James Morgan, or Jake Luton in the third round or later, especially if acquiring veteran passers like Cam Newton or Andy Dalton isn’t in the cards.

Of course, New England also has plenty of assets to necessitate a move up the board. The Patriots, always eager to play musical chairs during the draft, have three third-round picks to work with this spring.

Kinlaw, with a massive, thick frame and arms he described at the NFL Scouting Combine as “hockey sticks,” is a first-round talent. No one’s quite sure where he’ll land. After slotting him into the 13th pick in his second mock draft and then bumping him up to No. 9 in his last iteration, Kiper slid him all the way down to the 18th selection — where he’d be a bargain for a Dolphins team that’s spent its offseason restoring a tattered defense.

That’s closer to where Kadar has him slotted (16th to the Falcons), but the most common prediction has the burly defensive talent landing in Jacksonville at ninth overall to be the centerpiece of the Jaguars’ latest rebuild. His fate may depend on where Auburn’s Derrick Brown, often considered the top interior defender among this year’s class, winds up.

If Brown slides out of the top 10, Kinlaw could wind up waiting until the second half of the draft as teams in need of playmakers make a run on this year’s banner crop of receiving talent; both Kiper and Kadar have five different wideouts selected between the ninth and 25th picks.

That could make one defense extremely lucky this April. Kinlaw, 6’5 and 324 pounds, was a first-team All-American thanks to the raw speed and power that allowed him to disrupt opposing blockers at the snap. He’s capable of stuffing running lanes and collapsing pockets — the latter emphasized by his six sacks in 12 games last fall.

While he still needs polish, he has as much star potential as almost anyone in the draft. With a little effort, he could be a major steal for a playoff team.