The early 2027 NFL draft read landed this morning, and it is a maximalist one: five quarterbacks projected into the first round, a running back named as the top back in the class before most of these guys have taken a fall handoff, and enough safeties and tight ends to make the middle rounds interesting. Florida's Jadan Baugh is the back at the top. That is the line that will get shouted about, and it should be.
These lists are guesses in a nice suit. Everybody knows that, including the man making them. But they matter anyway, because they are the first public sketch of a class, and the sketch has a way of sticking to players for two years whether they earn it or not.
Who is Jadan Baugh, and why is he the 2027 NFL draft RB1?
Baugh is Florida's back, and putting a running back atop his position group this early is less a projection than a dare. Not because he cannot be that guy, but because running back is the one spot on the field where the top of the board turns over fastest. A 1,400-yard season out of nowhere in October moves a back from unranked to RB1 in about six weeks. The position is a rumor mill with cleats.
What is genuinely different now is that the league has stopped pretending it does not want them. For a stretch there, the first round went cold on backs entirely. Then Bijan Robinson and Jahmyr Gibbs both went inside the top 12 in 2023, and Ashton Jeanty came off the board sixth in 2025. Naming an RB1 in September is no longer a shrug. It is a bet that a first-round slot exists at all, and lately it does.
Has a draft class really had five first-round quarterbacks?
This is the part of the projection people will call outrageous, and it is the part with the most history behind it. Five is not a ceiling. It is not even the record.
| Draft year | QBs taken in Round 1 | Worth remembering |
|---|---|---|
| 1983 | 6 | Elway first overall, Marino 27th |
| 2021 | 5 | Lawrence, Wilson, Lance, Fields, Jones |
| 2024 | 6 | Williams, Daniels, Maye, Penix, McCarthy, Nix |
So five is a normal number in an abnormal year, and abnormal years arrive whenever a half-dozen franchises decide at once that they are tired of losing with what they have. That is not a scouting phenomenon. That is a desperation phenomenon. The quarterbacks get pulled up the board by need, and need is the one variable nobody can project in September 2026.
checked the almanac: six quarterbacks went in round one in 1983, and three of them, elway, kelly and marino, ended up in canton. the other three combined for a handful of good seasons. same round, same year, same evaluators. that is the whole business in one draft.
What the safety and tight end depth actually signals
Safeties and tight ends stacking up in a class is usually a downstream effect of how college offenses are being built. Tight ends who can actually run routes have become the most reliably translatable non-quarterback in the sport, and the 2025 first round took two of them. Safeties are the opposite story: they have been squeezed out of round one for years because teams talk themselves into finding one on day two. If this class is deep enough at both spots to be worth naming in September, it says something about who is getting recruited and coached, not just who happens to be good.
What comes next for the players on this list
The honest part: every name here has an entire season to play, and most of them have two. Baugh has to carry a workload. The quarterbacks have to survive Octobers. Somebody not on any list today will be the first player picked, because somebody always is.
That is the fun of reading an early board. It is not a forecast, it is a starting position, and the whole point of the fall is watching it get shredded. What I am watching is which of these five quarterback projections is still standing at Thanksgiving, and whether Baugh holds the top of the running back class through conference play or gets passed by a guy nobody has typed a word about yet.