2024 NFL Draft: 3 first-round players who could get pushed down draft board

2. Bo Nix, QB, Oregon

Bo Nix is quite the interesting prospect. I have personally seen people mock him at 12 to the Denver Broncos and others mock him 30 picks later. It's clear that Nix has some first-round qualities like his ability to make plays out of structure and his completion percentage. However, some wonder if Nix commonly throwing short passes is going to translate into the NFL.

He is a QB that has a clear skillset for timing and rhythm-based offenses, so he can carve out a nice NFL career, but what if the league is a lot lower on Nix than we think? Of the top QBs in the 2024 NFL Draft, Nix might be the most "boring" prospect, if that makes sense. Nothing about his game like arm strength, size, or athleticism really stick out. But that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Evaluators might not think a whole lot of Nix, and I would not be surprised to see him fall out of the first round.

3. Jer'Zhan Newton, DT, Illinois

Could arguably the best defensive tackle prospect fall out of the first round? It could happen. Tankathon.com has a mock draft on their website currently, and in the first round, 11 defensive players got drafted, which means a whopping 21 defensive players got drafted. The NFL is obviously an offense-first league, and this draft class is also oozing talent on this side of the ball.

The DT class is also interesting. There seem to be very few first-round caliber DTs, but much more talent in the mid-rounds. There will surely be quite a few defensive tackles taken in rounds two and three, but being that DT Byron Murphy is likely the first DT off the board, the class having a ton of first-round talent on offense, and even the EDGE spot perhaps being more valuable than DT, someone like Jer'Zhan Newton could fall down the board a bit.