By Drew Smith
The NFL draft these days are all about the early entries as they tend to dominate the early rounds of the draft. The reason is simple…money! There is so much money given to rookies these days the top talents have little incentive to stay in school if projected to go in the first few rounds. Often there are other less obvious reasons that force a player to come out early which usually stems around family having financial problems or the player not cutting it in the classroom.
Ultimately it comes down to the question of can a player improve his draft status by staying another year. Michael Crabtree is going to be the same height, have the same vertical jump and run basically the same 40 this year as he will next year. His production can not get much better so it makes little sense to not come out.
Here is the list of the position players who currently have declared they are leaving school early…
QB
Nate Davis - Ball State
Josh Freeman - Kansas State
Mark Sanchez - USC
Matthew Stafford - Georgia
RB
Donald Brown - UConn
Glenn Coffee - Alabama
Shonn Green - Iowa
P.J. Hill - Wisconsin
LeSean McCoy - Pitt
Knowshon Moreno - Georgia
Chris Wells - Ohio State
WR
Kenny Britt - Rutgers
Jeremy Childs - Boise State
Austin Collie - BYU
Michael Crabtee - Texas Tech
Percy Harvin - Florida
Darrius Heyward-Bey - Maryland
Jeremy Maclin - Missouri
Hakeem Nicks - North Carolina
Kevin Ogletree - Virgina
TE
James Casey - Rice
Jared Cook - South Carolina
Andrew Davie - Arkansas