Iowa football: Five Hawks go in Matt Miller’s 7 round mock draft

In NFL Draft Analyst Matt Miller’s latest 7 round mock draft, he is projecting five Iowa football players to be selected in the 2019 NFL Draft.

A lot can change from now until draft weekend at the end of April, but as it stands right now, Bleacher Report’s Lead NFL Draft Analyst Matt Miller sees the possibility of five Iowa football players being selected in the seven rounds of the 2019 NFL Draft.

As can be expected the four underclassmen who declared are included in these five players with one player from the graduating senior class, offensive lineman Keegan Render, making the cut as well.

Keep in mind though that this is not indicative of what will actually happen nor is this all of the players that will find homes on NFL rosters next season. Just this past season Ben Niemann and Ike Boettger did not hear their names called on draft weekend but found roles in the NFL nonetheless. Guys like Nick Easley, Ross Reynolds, Parker Hesse, Matt Nelson, and Jake Gervase are all likely to end up on a NFL roster at least for a little bit, but just may not hear their names called until after the draft.

Somewhat surprisingly from Miller’s draft is that we has All-American tight ends TJ Hockenson and Noah Fant going back to back at the bottom of the first and the top of the second round. Hockenson is projected to go 32nd to the New England Patriots who desperately need a replacement for Gronk, who can’t beat the injury bug while Fant is projected to go at the top of round two to the Arizona Cardinals with the 33rd pick to give new head coach Kliff Kingsbury and second-year quarterback Josh Rosen a weapon to work with in the passing game.

The next Iowa football player to be taken in this mock draft is do-it-all safety Amani Hooker as Miller has him going 97th overall to the San Francisco 49ers, which makes a ton of sense for a few reasons. First, the 49ers love Iowa football players (they’ve selected two and signed another in the first two years of the Lynch/Shannahan regime), and they need help at secondary.

6’7” defensive end Anthony Nelson is predicted to join Fant with the Arizona Cardinals, who would take Nelson with the first pick in the fifth round. This is sort of an interesting pick as the Cardinals hired Vance Joseph who has historically been a 3-4 guy in his career whereas Nelson is projected to fit better in a 4-3 scheme.

Finally, to wrap up the mock draft, interior offensive lineman Keegan Render is projected to go to the Miami Dolphins with the 15th pick of the 7th round. With any 7th round pick, this is more of a flyer at this point, but there are some signs that could point to this, most notably the fact that newly hired head coach Brian Flores comes from the Bill Belichick coaching tree. Kirk Ferentz is also a disciple of the Bill Belichick coaching tree as is his son, Brian, who also happened to work with the Patriots from 2009 to 2011 (for context, Flores was there that entire time), so that’s an interesting angle with this pick. It could be a nice flyer for a guy like Flores to take on a technically sound lineman like Render.

As we get closer to the actual NFL Draft, we will be keeping you in the loop as to where former Iowa football players are being projected. Either way, based on this initial mock draft, it sounds like there could be quite a few Hawks finding new homes in April.