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By Rowan Fisher-Shotton
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The 2026 college football season is entering its final stretch, which means draft analysts are starting to put together their big boards for the upcoming 2027 NFL Draft in April.
Coming into this year, the expectation was that Arch Manning, Dante Moore, and Julian Sayin would be the headliners at the top of the pecking order among quarterbacks. But Manning is in the middle of another up-and-down year at Texas, while both Moore and Sayin have been hit with season-ending injuries, putting both their own personal future and their respective teams' futures in question.
Amid all of that, another name has seized the opportunity and quickly emerged as the clear-cut QB1 in the 2027 class, Oklahoma State's Drew Mestemaker. Top NFL draft expert Daniel Jeremiah drove that point home even further on a recent episode of ESPN's "Big Day with Peter Schrager."
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"If you have three first-round picks as the Jets do, and you have a need at the quarterback position, you want to get eyeballs on these quarterbacks, and you want to do it hopefully as many times as you can," Jeremiah said on the New York Jets' GM Darren Mougey being spotted at Mestemaker's last game against Kansas State. "There's a bunch of GMs that have been out to see Mestemaker. I'm sure they're going to try to get multiple looks at him as you go through the process. But I don't think it's a secret here. The Jets need a long-term quarterback, and in my opinion, and everyone I talk to so far in the process around the league, the best quarterback in college football, the best prospect in this draft at that position, is at Oklahoma State."
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To be fair, Mestemaker was on the list of top QBs for the 2027 class heading into this college football season, but his stock has risen dramatically.
He put up monster numbers last year at North Texas, his first season as the starter after joining the program as a walk-on in 2024, beginning his college career as the fifth-string quarterback for the Mean Green. Across 14 games, he threw for an FBS-leading 4,379 yards and 34 touchdowns with nine interceptions, completing 68.9% of his passes and leading North Texas to a 12-2 record and the American Conference Championship Game.
Following the season, he transferred to Oklahoma State, following his former coach at North Texas, Eric Morris, and his rise has only continued. Through the first nine games of the season, he's completed 66.7% of his passes for 2,962 yards (second-most in FBS), 29 touchdowns, and eight interceptions, with the Cowboys sitting 6-3 and 4-2 in Big 12 play heading into the final three games of the season. He's also doubled his rushing totals, going for 177 rushing yards and three rushing scores this season, after putting up just 89 rushing yards last year at North Texas.
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Oklahoma State won't make the College Football Playoff, and probably won't be competing for the Big 12 title either, but after just two years as a starter at the college level, Mestemaker has already shown enough for many NFL teams to consider him a legitimate franchise quarterback.
The Jets will almost certainly be in the market for a quarterback come draft season, with 36-year-old Geno Smith as their starter, and they've got three first-round draft picks in 2027, so they could target the quarterback they want. The Cleveland Browns are another team that's loaded up on draft capital and could look to add one of the top QB prospects, along with the Miami Dolphins, Arizona Cardinals, and Indianapolis Colts.
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