The biggest slide in the 2026 NFL Draft felt like it started Monday, even as it had been brewing for months.
Doing the rounds with league sources that day — personnel departments, coaching staffs and agents — a simple query of “You hearing anything?” produced a theme. One of the best players in the draft, and a potential top-10 pick, had drawn a significant medical red dot due to a knee concern.
“The buzz is Jermod McCoy is going to slide,” one league source predicted. “Will Johnson-style.”
The reference was to 2025 prospect Will Johnson, a Michigan cornerback who was widely considered one of the best defensive players in that draft — but who tumbled to the 47th overall pick due to concerns of a chronic knee issue that could shorten his NFL career. One year later a similar cloud has built over McCoy, a Tennessee cornerback who missed his 2025 season with an ACL tear. Even with that injury, McCoy was widely branded a potential top-10 to 15 pick as one of the top cornerbacks in this year’s draft.
Now we’ve reached Saturday, the last day of the league’s selection process. One hundred picks have come and gone, and McCoy is still undrafted. This goes way beyond last year’s Will Johnson slide.
NFL Draft: Best players still available | Draft Guide | Round 2-3 grades
Initially it was believed that McCoy’s ACL tear — which is now fully healed — could be the culprit behind the apprehension and a potential draft fall. But early this week it began to circulate that teams had a concern that went significantly beyond a surgically repaired ligament. Sources told Yahoo Sports that McCoy’s knee also had a repair that included a “bone plug,” which involves taking a graft of bone and cartilage from a non-load-bearing part of the knee and transplanting it into a damaged area. The concern with the procedure is that over time, it can call for re-operation and the kind of chronic cartilage issues that end athletic careers.
As a team source told Yahoo Sports, the concern with McCoy is threefold. First, he could be drafted and require surgery immediately to repair the previous plug, which would sideline him early in his career for potentially a full season. Second, the issue could call for another future surgery, which would also translate into significant lost time. And finally — perhaps most important — the next surgery won’t successfully resolve cartilage issues and McCoy’s career could effectively be cut short permanently.
McCoy hasn’t played in a game since December 2024, when he tore the ACL in his right knee during his junior season with the Volunteers. Initially, there was a thought in the personnel community that McCoy could — and would — return during some portion of the 2025 campaign. When he didn’t, it raised red flags about whether the knee injury was either worse than initially feared, not healing correctly, or simply worse than what was initially made public. Once he declared for the draft and began going through the medical check process, concerns began to develop over cartilage in his knee and whether there was a degenerative issue that almost always shorten NFL careers.
The concern clearly materialized in the first two days of the draft, as McCoy went unselected despite taking part in a pro day that saw him run a 40-yard dash that was clocked in a high 4.3-second range, notch a 38-inch vertical and a 10-foot-7 broad jump. He also took part in positional drills and posted a performance that suggested he would be ready to play immediately as a rookie. That again elevated McCoy into territory that would have at least made him a first-round pick, if not one of the top two cornerbacks off the board alongside LSU’s Mansoor Delane, who was drafted sixth overall by the Kansas City Chiefs on Thursday.
But by Monday of draft week, word began to circulate that McCoy’s surgically repaired knee was a more pressing concern than was initially reported after his pro day. And by Thursday, it was clear that a draft slide could occur. What was once thought to be a slide from Round 1 to somewhere in Round 2 — similar to Johnson last year — has snowballed into McCoy now being on the board to open the fourth round.
The Buffalo Bills go into the fourth round holding the 101st pick, followed by the Las Vegas Raiders at 102 and New York Jets at 103. The Raiders and Jets have cornerback needs. How much further McCoy falls will showcase whether or not teams believe his knee will require some kind of immediate surgery, or whether he may be able to play on it until another procedure is necessary down the line.
Whatever the assessment, the risk versus reward for a player who could have been one of the top picks in the draft clearly has begun favoring teams willing to take a gamble.
Other Day 2 NFL Draft observations
RB Mike Washington’s strong combine performance wasn’t enough to land him in Rounds 2-3
In what seems to be an annual reminder not to trust a glow-up in the league’s annual scouting combine, Arkansas running back Mike Washington Jr. is still on the board heading into the fourth round.
Leading up to the combine, that was considered the kind of territory talent evaluators thought Washington would be drafted. Then he wowed at the combine with multiple measurables, including a 4.33-second 40-yard dash, a 39-inch vertical, a 1.51 10-yard split and 10-foot-8 broad jump. At 6-foot-1 and 223 pounds, it suggested some explosiveness in Washington’s game that could push him up draft boards. Possibly to a point that he could challenge to be the second running back off the board.
That hasn’t materialized, with Washington heading to the third day of the draft without a team and having watched Indiana’s Kaelon Black get selected by the San Francisco 49ers (somewhat surprisingly) as the third running back.
Washington will be a name to watch on Saturday.
Browns continue to show strength in NFL Draft
Time will tell if Cleveland Browns general manager Andrew Berry can pull off another monster class after last year’s superb haul — but he seems to be off to a good start. And he’s loading up the offense for whatever quarterback either wins the job this season or whatever potential quarterback the Browns target in next year’s rich and deep draft at the position.
Not only did Berry trade back three spots (from No. 6 to 9) in the first round and still land his top target in Utah right tackle Spencer Fano, but he reeled in two complementary wideouts in Texas A&M slot dynamo KC Concepcion and big-bodied X receiver Denzel Boston out of Washington. For good measure, he added true left tackle depth with Florida’s Austin Barber in the third round, who started at the position for three years with the Gators.
The Browns also drafted 6-foot-3 Toledo safety Emmanuel McNeil-Warren in the second round, who many evaluators believed was one of the best “small” school defensive prospects in the draft.
What the group does on the field will tell the story, but this feels like another quality draft class in the making.
