With the calendar officially flipping into April today, that means the 2022 NFL Draft is just four weeks away.
Get excited, people! Mock draft season is almost over!
For now though, we trudge on through endless draft speculation and mock after mock (side note: my second mock draft drops Saturday. You’re welcome). However, Pro Football Focus took an interesting look at mock drafts on Thursday, releasing the top selections for each team based on the site’s mock draft simulator, identifying the most commonly drafted player in the simulator for each team.
Michigan edge Aidan Hutchinson had the highest common selection at No. 1 overall to the Jacksonville Jaguars at 48.4% as the top 10 was relatively chalk down the board. Outside of the top 10 though, it became pretty interesting, especially at No. 20 overall for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
According to PFF’s mock draft simulator, Central Michigan OL Bernhard Raimann was the most commonly selected player for Pittsburgh at 15.8% overall. The second closest player most commonly selected was Liberty QB Malik Willis at 10.9%.
“After Ben Roethlisberger’s retirement, the Steelers’ top signal-callers are Mitch Trubisky and Mason Rudolph — hardly anything to be excited about. The offensive line isn’t any better,” PFF writes. “Pittsburgh must choose between a potential franchise quarterback or reinforcing the offensive line and waiting until the 2023 class to find a future QB1.”
Based off of what the Steelers and General Manager Kevin Colbert did in free agency, offensive line most likely isn’t the move in the first round, especially with a guy like Raimann, who is already 25 years old and did not have the likes of Colbert or head coach Mike Tomlin in attendance for his Pro Day, all but ruling him out officially at No. 20 overall.
Willis, of course, remains in the running, though the chances of him falling to No. 20 overall drop considerably day by day.
It is pretty interesting though to see the mock draft simulator land on Raimann so often, though it makes one sense considering one of the bigger holes last season for the Steelers was the offensive line as a whole, especially the tackles based on PFF’s grading metrics.
Of course, Raimann has been a popular name connected to the Steelers in a number of mocks, including NFL Network’s Cynthia Frelund, who landed on Raimann twice in her analytics mock draft.
