With more than eight months remaining before the 2027 NFL draft, attention is already building around the quarterback class for next April. The group was expected to be deep even before Oregon’s Dante Moore and Texas’ Arch Manning opted to return to school for the 2026 season. With those two back in college, the author projects the possibility of four or more signal-callers being selected in Round 1.
The author compiled a tiered list of every draft-eligible and draft-worthy quarterback — 31 names in all — placing players into Rounds 1-7 based on film study and conversations with NFL scouts and evaluators. The exercise is explicitly an early grading; not all players on the list are guaranteed to enter the 2027 draft, and some may improve or regress before declaring.
Among the first-round prospects are Notre Dame’s CJ Carr, Texas’ Arch Manning, Oklahoma State’s Drew Mestemaker and Oregon’s Dante Moore. Carr finished last season with 2,741 passing yards, 24 touchdowns and six interceptions while taking over Notre Dame’s starting job, and projects as a steady distributor. At 6-foot-2 and 215 pounds, Carr shows arm strength with coordinated feet and eyes. “To be so young, I love how well he sees the field,” an AFC assistant GM said.
Manning closed last season strongly after a difficult start, finishing with 3,163 passing yards, 26 touchdowns and seven interceptions, plus 399 rushing yards and 10 rushing touchdowns. At 6-foot-4 and 230 pounds he possesses high-end physical tools but needs more consistency on short-to-intermediate throws; his 9% off-target rate on throws of 10 air yards or less ranked among the worse marks for FBS starters. “If he can clean up the lower-body mechanics and underneath accuracy, he has a chance to be the first one picked,” an NFC evaluator said.
Mestemaker is an unusual prospect who parlayed a walk-on background into an FBS-leading 4,379 passing yards at North Texas last season, with 34 touchdowns and nine interceptions. The 6-foot-3, 215-pound Mestemaker has drawn intrigue for his arm strength and confidence despite a smaller sample size (14 starts) and no Power 4 opponents on his résumé; “He’s the one that I can see being the one that goes before all of them,” an AFC area scout said. After contemplating the 2026 draft, Moore returned to Oregon and remains listed among the top contenders in the early evaluations.
