Sam Leavitt's Camp Buzz Meets a Landslide Down the Board
The room shredded a five-star linebacker's stock while an Ohio State transfer QB and a wave of new names crashed the top 100.
Written by Draftanomics’s models from the live board and validated before publish — every number traces to a served value. How our writing works
Camp opened and the board did what camp boards do — it lied to us a little, then told the truth a lot. Over the week from July 27 to August 3, Draftanomics tracked five snapshots across a dozen boards, and the churn wasn’t at the top. Jeremiah Smith sits at No. 1, Colin Simmons and Dylan Stewart hold at two and three, Leonard Moore is locked in at four, and Dylan Raiola rounds out the top five. Nobody’s touching that tier yet. The movement lives further down, and some of it is ugly.
The risers were modest. The fallers were a demolition.
| Player | Pos | Rank Now | Rank Then | Δ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sam Leavitt | QB | 72 | 94 | +22 |
| Will Heldt | EDGE | 105 | 123 | +18 |
| Jaylen McClain | S | 115 | 128 | +13 |
| Boubacar Traore | DL | 69 | 79 | +10 |
| Player | Pos | Rank Now | Rank Then | Δ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adam Trick | LB | 184 | 81 | −103 |
| Xavier Scott | CB | 173 | 95 | −78 |
| Chris Cole | LB | 182 | 112 | −70 |
| Andrew Rappleyea | TE | 163 | 101 | −62 |
| Anto Saka | EDGE | 169 | 113 | −56 |
| LJ Martin | RB | 172 | 116 | −56 |
| Suntarine Perkins | LB | 171 | 118 | −53 |
| Bear Alexander | DL | 158 | 110 | −48 |
Nothing on the riser side is a scream — Leavitt’s plus-22 leads the class, and it’s the only jump that clears 20 spots. But zoom out and the fallers list reads like a preseason cull. Eight names fell at least 48 spots in a single week, five sources deep each. Adam Trick lost 103 spots. That’s not a scout softening on a prospect; that’s a room-wide correction, the kind that happens when word gets around a fall camp depth chart or a medical redshirt before the writers pick up the phone.
The interesting wrinkle: Draftanomics likes several of the names the room just buried. Suntarine Perkins still grades out at model rank 51 despite cratering to 171 on the board — and the spread behind that number tells the story. Sporting News’ Bill Bender still has him 21st overall; PFF’s Daire Carragher has him 122nd. That’s a 101-spot gap between two boards on the same player in the same week. Andrew Rappleyea shows a similar split — 12th on one list, 128th on another — which is less “consensus” and more five different conversations happening in five different war rooms.
New blood cracked the top 100 fast. Eight names debuted this cycle with real coverage behind them, led by Ahmad Hardy at No. 17 on 13 sources and Ahmad Moten Sr. at 26 on 16. Charlie Becker (41), Will Echoles (29), A.J. Holmes Jr. (43), Ty Benefield (45), Carter Smith (59) and Drake Lindsey (71) round out the wave. That’s a lot of fresh paint for one week, and it’s worth watching whether these names hold once the depth-chart dust settles or get correction-fodder treatment like Trick and Cole just got.
Where the model and the room disagree. The widest model bet on the board belongs to Rasheem Biles — 15th on Draftanomics, 60th on consensus, a 45-spot gap, with a 20.6 percent bust probability that’s middle of the pack for this tier. Kade Pieper (18th model, 55th consensus, gap of 37) and Trevor Lauck (16th, 50th, gap of 34) round out the interior-line dissent. Leavitt himself shows up here too — 37th on the model against 72nd on the board, the same gap that’s fueling his rise. Jadan Baugh, Nate Frazier and Sammy Brown all sit at a 34-spot gap, and Omarion Miller isn’t far behind at 31.
The other direction is louder. DJ Lagway is 22nd on consensus and 104th on the model — an 82-spot gap, the widest dissent anywhere on the board, with a 24.5 percent bust rate attached. Jayden Maiava (77 consensus, 134 model, gap of −57) and Trey’Dez Green (25 consensus, 69 model, gap of −44) both carry real disagreement too. Even Dylan Stewart, a top-three lock for the room, shows a 21-spot gap against the model’s 24th overall grade — a reminder that the model isn’t chasing consensus, it’s running its own math, and sometimes that math lands short of a name everybody in the building loves.
None of this settles anything in August. But the receipts are in, and the board is already telling a different story than it was a week ago.
This piece was drafted by the Draftanomics beat writer from the frozen ledger and reviewed by a human before publishing.