FOX Sports put Drew Mestemaker at the center of a startling 2027 NFL mock draft, sending him to the Miami Dolphins with the No. 3 overall pick and placing six quarterbacks in the first round. In the same exercise, Jeremiah Smith went No. 1 to the Los Angeles Chargers and Colin Simmons went No. 2 to the Tennessee Titans, a top three that makes the quarterback run look even more aggressive.
That is why the projection is drawing attention now. The 2026 NFL season is not even halfway finished, yet the mock draft is already trying to sort out a class for the 2027 NFL Draft, and it does so with the assumption that all of the best eligible prospects were available if the draft were held today. For readers tracking the Mel Kiper 2027 NFL mock draft, the appeal is simple: it is early, but it is also a snapshot of where a loaded board might stand if the league had to pick right now.
The number that gives the projection weight is not just three, but six. FOX Sports said at least eight of the 32 teams do not have their starting quarterback in place for 2027, which helps explain why a mock built this early can still feature that many passers in Round 1. The demand is obvious, and the supply, at least on paper, is still there.
There is a catch. The same mock draft says the first two months of the college football season have not quite lived up to expectations, even as it projects that many quarterbacks going in the first round. It also warns that some of the players listed, including quarterbacks, may decide to return to school instead of making the jump because of NIL opportunities. That is the part that keeps this from being a clean forecast: the board is being shaped as much by need as by certainty.
Elsewhere in the top five, the New York Jets were projected to take Leonard Moore at No. 4 overall from the Colts, and the Philadelphia Eagles were projected to select Dylan Stewart at No. 5. But the headline is Mestemaker, whose placement at No. 3 for the Miami Dolphins shows how quickly quarterback scarcity can push a player up a board this far before the draft arrives. The question now is not whether the position will dominate the conversation. It is which of these projected quarterbacks will actually stay in the class long enough to make the pick matter.
