Good to see that Mariota is up to 212. Wasn't he under 200 at the start of last season?
Whoever wrote that list was very aggressive labeling Oregon players 1st round talents.
Mariota is a less physically gifted version of Colin Kaepernick, who went in the 2nd round. I guess it's not a huge stretch though, since if you cloned Kaepernick and put him in the next draft he probably wouldn't get out of the top 10 picks. If Mariota can get up to 220 pounds and maintain his speed, I think he's a legit 1st rounder. He's already up to 212 according to that, and he's still very young. So putting a 1st on Mariota is mildly premature IMO, but I would agree that he's heading in that direction right now. If things keep going the way they are going, he'll be a top 15 pick. My opinion on Mariota hasn't really changed over the last year, but the NFL did, and that's what matters. The new NFL is becoming a friendly landing spot for a Marcus Mariota skillset.
Lyerla very well might, but 1st round TEs are getting rarer these days and he's kind of the classic 2nd round profile IMO (GMs and scouts often define 2nd rounders as 1st round talents with question marks).
I think Thomas will go 2nd round, perhaps later. LaMichael James went late 2nd round because he was undersized, and he's quite a bit bigger than Thomas. The list of 5'6" RBs/WRs to go 1st round isn't a long one. I think Thomas will be a better version of Dexter McCluster in the NFL. He's obviously much faster than McCluster, but I think they are similar in their size and usage. Thomas will get most of his value on special teams. Tavon Austin went top 10, but he's 2 inches taller, has more short area explosiveness (I watched highlights of both back to back during the spring and was shocked by the difference), and had a strong resume as a WR. And even Austin might be a guy who creates most of his value with special teams in the NFL, we don't know yet.
The article has 1st round grades on both tackles, who weigh 294 and 292 pounds respectively. Last year Colorado's David Bahktiari had (IMO) some of the best tape in the draft, but fell to the 4th round because he played at 299. It's really rare for a sub-300 pound tackle to sniff the first round. The closest recent example I can think of was when Seattle considered taking 303 pound USC tackle Charles Brown at #14. They went a different direction and Brown nearly fell to the 3rd round. For either of Oregon's tackles to be taken seriously as 1st rounders, they'd need to add 15+ pounds first (while still testing well at the combine).