2026 NFL draft All-Film team: 11 prospects with upside - ESPN

Trust the tape.

It's easier said than done. The NFL draft process, long and arduous, is a winnowing process. A dense list of hundreds of prospects must be thinned into a list of realistic targets through a variety of filters. A team's coaching staff is looking for scheme fits and culture fits. The medical staff will flag dozens of players as untenable injury risks, and the analytics arm will flag the (lack of) production, athletic testing or quality competition of dozens more. Tick, tick, tick. Names get scratched off the list.

In this process, the tape sometimes gets easily lost. But I am not an NFL scouting department, and I don't have access to medical records and projection models and locker room rumors. I have the tape — and the tape tells me which prospects I like.

Last year, I put together my All-Film team for the 2025 NFL draft, and despite the fact I purposely didn't include a bunch of first-rounders, early returns were good. It had undersized players like Andrew Mukuba, older players like Tyler Shough, positional converts like Carson Schwesinger, tweeners like Ashton Gillotte and less-than-perfect athletic testers like Azareye'h Thomas. Some had exciting rookie seasons to build on, and one even won Rookie of the Year.

This year's list will have the same: imperfect players who will go later than the tape suggests given the warts on their profiles. But I'm in on each of them because the film details players who, nevertheless, succeed — and will do so again in the league.

This is my All-Film team for 2026.

Jump to a position:
QB | RB | WR | TE | OT | IOL
DT | Edge | LB | CB | S

Scouts Inc. ranking: No. 82

It's tough to trust the tape on any quarterback in this class after Indiana's Fernando Mendoza. While I agree