NFL Draft season never ends. The last pick of the 2024 draft on Saturday evening only meant that the 2025 cycle has begun, and it’s shaping up to be a good one for Notre Dame.
In seven first-round mock drafts from prominent media outlets, five Fighting Irish appeared in at least one. Here are where those five are projected as draft experts get to work on the 2025 class.
CB Benjamin Morrison
The Athletic: No. 8 overall (Minnesota Vikings)
Bleacher Report: No. 11 (Seattle Seahawks)
Pro Football Focus: No. 8 (Minnesota Vikings)
USA TODAY Sports: No. 8 (Minnesota Vikings)
CBS Sports: No. 18 (Los Angeles Rams)
Associated Press: No. 4 (Washington Commanders)
The 33rd Team: No. 17 (Chicago Bears)
The only Notre Dame player to appear in all seven of these mock drafts — or indeed, more than two — Morrison is a consensus first-round talent entering his junior year. He has competition for the CB1 spot in Michigan’s Will Johnson and Colorado’s Travis Hunter, but premium positions like offensive tackle and wide receiver both put three players in the top 11 in 2024.
Cornerback is one of those premium positions, and Morrison has played it extraordinarily well in the past two years. He has several traits NFL teams crave, like athleticism, stickiness in coverage, youth and an early breakout. His ball skills are probably his best attribute, with 9 interceptions in two seasons. Evaluators will fall in love with his makeup as they get to know him, too.
Morrison has good-but-not-great size at 6-foot, 186 pounds, but that didn’t stop him against 6-foot-4 Ohio State superstar Marvin Harrison Jr. Battling with Harrison this past September, Morrison held him to 3 receptions for 32 yards. Tackling is the one area in which he needs work, but in a passing league, that won’t stop teams from taking him in the top 20.
If he were eligible, there’s a good chance Morrison would have been the No. 1 cornerback drafted this past season ahead of Toledo’s Quinyon Mitchell (No. 22, Philadelphia Eagles). He has a chance to accomplish that in 2025.
QB Riley Leonard
Bleacher Report: No. 10 overall (New Orleans Saints)
Bleacher Report’s projection for Leonard is an outlier, but it’s not impossible.
As opposed to the 2024 quarterback class, in which USC’s Caleb Williams and North Carolina’s Drake Maye were tabbed as top-three pick for the better part of two years, no one can make heads or tails of the 2025 group. Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders and Georgia’s Carson Beck are probably the top two at the moment, but question marks come with both of them. Texas’ Quinn Ewers and Alabama’s Jalen Milroe are in the mix as well, but again, they have their pros and cons.
Physical tools and senior-year performance will determine which quarterbacks go early. Leonard has the physical tools at 6-foot-4, 217 pounds with strong arm and elite rushing skills. Can he put it all together in his final year of eligibility? No one thought LSU’s Jayden Daniels was a first-round pick before the 2023 season, and he went No. 2 overall. Daniels’ offensive coordinator, Mike Denbrock, is now Leonard’s at Notre Dame.
Is it wise to bet on Leonard becoming a first-round pick? No. But crazier things have happened.
DT Howard Cross III
Pro Football Focus: No. 23 overall (Miami Dolphins)
The 33rd Team: No. 31 overall (Kansas City Chiefs)
Fortunately for Cross, he’s young for his class. Teams often shy away from drafting sixth-year players in the first round and that might still be an issue for him, but the dominant Notre Dame nose tackle will still be 23 years old on draft day.
Size is also a roadblock, as Cross will be one of the smallest interior defensive linemen in the 2025 draft at 6-foot-1, 284 pounds. To survive at that size, you need outstanding quickness and hand-fighting ability. It just so happens that those are the traits that allowed Cross to rack up 66 tackles and 39 quarterback pressures this past season.
The first round might be a long shot (but again, not impossible), as teams typically like younger players with better size on the first day. It wouldn’t be a surprise, though, to see him sneak into the early part of Day 2.
S Xavier Watts
The 33rd Team: No. 20 overall (Baltimore Ravens)
Watts is also slightly undersized for a first-round safety and age will also be a factor in his evaluation (he’s less than four months younger than Cross), but the ball production speaks for itself. The Nebraska native led college football with 7 interceptions in his breakout 2023 season, winning the Bronko Nagurski Trophy as the nation’s best defensive player.
Watts was credited with 13 missed tackles this past season, so he’ll have to clean that up. Teams can forgive a poor tackler at cornerback, but not at safety. If he can tighten up his mechanics at the point of attack, though, Watts has the potential to be a force in run support. He flies downhill like few safeties in college football can.
TE Mitchell Evans
Pro Football Focus: No. 32 overall (Kansas City Chiefs)
Projecting tight ends can be difficult (it has one of, if not the worst hit rate of any position in the first round), but Evans is a pretty safe prospect.
He’s a massive tight end at 6-foot-5, 260 pounds, and he moves well enough to be a matchup nightmare in the open field. Evans can block as an in-line tight ends and playing in Denbrock’s system will give him more experience split out wide and in the slot, which NFL teams will ask him to do if they plan on taking him this high.
Health is the question mark for Evans, at least for now. If he recovers from his torn ACL and MCL in time to be 100 percent for much of the 2024 season, he has a chance to be one of the first two tight ends off the board.
