When I looked ahead at the next year for UNC’s potential draftees two years ago, I was almost hilariously wrong. I said Josh Downs was a late first-early second rounder, and he slipped to the third (though his rookie year production sides with me over the NFL). I called Myles Murphy a sure draft pick in 2023; he basically was never better than in his first season playing and is now an undrafted free agent with the Cardinals. I thought Tony Grimes and Ja’Qurious Conley were likely draft picks with a change in defensive coordinator helping revitalize them… turns out I was only playing myself by trusting Gene Chizik to do much of anything. And I called Antoine Green and Cedric Gray long shots — Green put together a fine season in 2022 and worked himself into the 7th round in 2023, and Gray, of course, was All-ACC two years in a row on his way to getting drafted early in the 4th round this year. I wasn’t totally wrong on Gray, to be fair; I said he was clearly an excellent player but might need more than one full season before he declared for the draft, and that’s what happened. I do think he would’ve been draftable last year, though.

All that preamble is to say that basically everything about the NFL Draft is a crapshoot. Teams are wrong way more often than they’re right; even the most educated fans are wrong even more often than that; and then there’s me, who’s far from educated on football. I’m bad enough at evaluating UNC’s draft prospects when the NFL’s already deemed them draftable; trying to call them a year out makes me even more likely to be wrong. But it’s fun for me and hopefully informative for you even if it doesn’t end up being accurate, so let’s do it — here’s a rundown of everybody I think has a legitimate chance to hear their names called at the end of next April.

The Locks

Omarion Hampton, Running Back

While Hampton won’t have the kind of buzz and attention this fall that Drake Maye had throughout the 2023 college football season and into this draft process, he’s no less outstanding a prospect at his position than Maye was at his. The 2023 Doak Walker Award finalist broke out as a sophomore, fixing basically everything that was keeping him on the bench as a physically-ready freshman: he ran with improved vision, became a willing, decent pass protector, and cut down on the fumbles. With the trust of the coaches, he was able to let his physical gifts shine as he became one of the best running backs in the country. Hampton’s combination of speed and power is a rare one — he’s a big back, listed at 6’0, 220, and he uses it effectively to punish defenders at the second and third levels by initiating contact, driving his legs, and never going down easily. But he also has breakaway speed, as a high school track athlete who’s reportedly been laser-timed with a sub-4.4 40-yard dash. I think that’s probably a little hyperbolic, but a time in the 4.40-4.42 range wouldn’t surprise me at all. He’s not a perfect prospect; he gets hit early a lot because he doesn’t do very well to get skinny through a crease and present a smaller target, and his hands are reasonable but not natural in the passing game to go with route-running that’s rudimentary at best, but I could see a lot of that getting ironed out with another year of development after seeing how much his game improved from Year 1 to Year 2.

Running backs, except for the elite of the elite, are pretty devalued in the draft, and I don’t think Hampton is the kind of prospect to break that trend. But I’d expect him to be a top-5 back in next year’s class and be taken between the mid-3rd and early 5th rounds.

Alijah Huzzie, Defensive Back

I was pretty surprised Huzzie didn’t declare for the draft after this season; I thought he had the tape to be picked on Day 3 even though he was playing out of position and away from his strengths for most of the year. The decision makes a lot of sense, though, now knowing that the UNC staff is fully planning on keeping him as an outside corner in 2024, where I expect he’ll shine. The 5’10 Huzzie is a lockdown cornerback who plays physically in coverage and in the run game, and he now has a year’s worth of experience playing nickel in case his size makes that a better fit for him at the next level. Right now, though, his skills really show themselves when he gets matched up with a receiver on the boundary, where he plays with great technique whether he’s playing press-man, press-bail, or off, in zone and in man. He’s a tremendously skilled player whom I hope can return to his peak form from early in the season — it was seriously dismaying watching his play grow more timid as Chizik’s coaching influenced him more and more. If that happens, and he can blossom as a legitimate cornerback, I think size is the only thing that will stop his name from being called early-mid Day 2. Ultimately, I’ll prognosticate him as an early Day 3 pick.

Kaimon Rucker, Edge Rusher

“The Butcher,” as he’s fondly come to be known, had a real breakout season with 8.5 sacks as a full-time starter for UNC. He’s got fantastic hands, bend, and speed-to-power conversion to have his way with college offensive tackles, and he plays with an absolutely relentless motor. He might not have NFL measurables, at 6’2, 265 pounds with a pretty squatty build, but I find it hard to bet against him making his way onto a roster because he’s just a really, really good football player. I think it’s almost a guarantee that some team falls in love with him on Day 3. He’s a football guy’s dream on the field.

Probably-Maybes

J.J. Jones, Wide Receiver

I think Jones is pretty underrated. He was kind of under the radar last year after Nate McCollum’s breakout game against Minnesota and the Tez Walker saga from eligibility to statistical takeover, but he started every game and had 711 receiving yards on the season as mostly a secondary option. The way I see him talked about is as somebody who will do the job but not to the level of the stars who have been around him, and I think that’s a little unfair. I was impressed with the improvement in his route-running from 2022 to 2023 and he’s got really soft, natural hands to catch away from his body, though he does suffer from concentration drops sometimes. He has a chance to be UNC’s WR1 on the outside this year and be a featured part of the offense, and I think that’s something he’ll be able to handle and give the Heels a good amount of production. And he’s definitely got the physical traits for the next level. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see him taken in the later rounds, similar to Antoine Green.

Power Echols, Linebacker

Echols is an old-school, two-down linebacker who ranges sideline to sideline and punishes ballcarriers, hitting hard and not missing many tackles until the end of last season, when both he and Cedric Gray were clearly feeling the effects of playing more snaps than any other defender in the ACC. He was atrocious in pass coverage in 2022 and improved to merely below average in 2023, so it’s yet to be seen if he can prove himself capable of being a modern NFL linebacker while playing a more coverage-heavy role — it’s been reported that he’s sliding into the position that Cedric Gray occupied the last two years. If so, I can easily see him being a 5th-6th round pick, but it’s a pretty tall order.

Marcus Allen, Cornerback

I’m putting Allen here in the same way that I had Gray as a “long shot” 2 years ago. I think he’s every bit the prospect that Huzzie is, with lockdown potential, physical willingness and decent tackling ability in the run game, experience and ability in man and zone and whether he’s playing on or away from the line of scrimmage, and he’s got prototypical size for an NFL corner, listed at 6’1.5, 190. His consistency comes and goes and he can get a little grabby sometimes, but the first seems like a product of inexperience and the second’s easily fixed. My only question is when he’ll come out to get drafted, because he doesn’t really have the ball production to match how good he is — just one interception last year, though he did have 8 pass breakups. If that production comes, he could be an early Day 2 pick, but my hunch is that he’ll have another quietly excellent year before becoming the star of UNC’s defense in 2025 and then splashing onto the draft scene.

Long Shots

Willie Lampkin, Interior Offensive Lineman

Lampkin took the mantle from Asim Richards and Joshua Ezeudu before him as quite good players on quite bad UNC offensive lines. I’m less sure about Lampkin as an NFL prospect than those two, though, and it really does come down to his size. The line of scrimmage is a place where technique can only get you so far against the frankly absurd bodies that are across from you at the next level, and I already feel like when Lampkin isn’t close to perfect, it ends up looking a lot more catastrophic than it would if he had the size to take advantage of his foot speed and recover. If he has a home at the next level, it’s probably at center, but the glimpse we caught of him snapping, in UNC’s bowl game last year, wasn’t very pretty.

Des Evans, Edge Rusher

UNC fans collectively have been waiting on Des Evans’ high school pedigree and drool-worthy physical gifts to manifest into a star player on defense, but after four years, it seems unlikely to happen. Evans right now is a strong run defender who sets the edge well and has the speed to pursue running backs bouncing to the outside, but he’s an extremely inconsistent tackler. Worse still, his pass rushing just hasn’t developed at all, and while he showed glimpses last season of a spin move and improved bull-rush technique, it quickly went by the wayside within a few games. He’s already talked about how much better he feels about the new coaches in terms of positional coaching and defensive scheme, so maybe this year, things come together, and if that happens even a little bit, those physical gifts could turn him into an NFL prospect very quickly. Based on playing time and impact trends towards the end of last season, I expected to hear Beau Atkinson’s name pop up more in spring practice reports as somebody coming for Evans’ job, and that didn’t really happen — maybe some change is actually afoot.