Iowa football: Former TE TJ Hockenson climbing up draft boards

We all know how good former Iowa football player TJ Hockenson was in Iowa City, and it appears the NFL scouting world is beginning to agree.

When All-American and John Mackey Award winner TJ Hockenson declared for the NFL, it was no surprise. I mean, what more did the former Iowa football player have to do with the Hawks?

Moreover, his stock could quite possibly never be higher than it was after his incredible redshirt sophomore season.

While many initially had Hockenson pegged as a second-round prospect though, it appears that the Chariton, Iowa native is rising quickly up draft boards in the scouting community.

Heck, just last week we reported that Hockenson was projected to go at the bottom of the first round by Bleacher Report’s Matt Miller and in the latter part of the first round in NFL Mocks site expert Sayre Bedinger’s first round mock draft.

This morning, however, The Draft Network’s Jon Ledyard had Twitter buzzing when he pre-released the first five guys on his upcoming big board.

Sitting at number four was none other than TJ Hockenson.

This is quite a remarkable jump for the former Iowa football player as Ledyard had Hockenson listed at #35 on his draft board a little over a month ago.

For anyone who follows Ledyard’s work though, this wasn’t really as much of a shock as it seems. The Locked On NFL Draft host has been touting Hockenson’s pass catching and blocking abilities for the last several weeks. He’s even written several articles on The Draft Network comparing Hockenson to other draft class’ tight end prospects and evaluating him in a vacuum.

As we’ve said before, a lot can change from now to draft day, especially if Hockenson’s measurables don’t clock in as expected, but this is pretty exciting for a guy who was supposed to play second fiddle to Noah Fant heading into the 2018 college football season.