By Abe Isaacson | Orange Bowl Boys Student Columnist | April 22, 2026
Three first-rounders, a handful of Day 2–3 Canes, and the TV graphic that’s about to make The State of Miami another foot taller.
It’s 11:14 p.m. on a Tuesday and my roommate just walked into the living room, saw three mock drafts open in browser tabs and a fourth pulled up on my phone, and asked… and I quote… “are you still at this?”
Brother. Brother. The 2026 NFL Draft starts in forty-six hours. I have been “at this” since Bain reclassified.
He did not know what reclassifying means. I did not explain. I live with a civilian.
So here’s where we are. Round 1 kicks off Thursday night in Pittsburgh, three Miami guys have a real shot at hearing their names in primetime, three or four more are going across Friday and Saturday, and the whole week is about to turn into something that used to feel like a funeral and now feels like a recruiting pitch with a cover band. Stay with me.
Francis Mauigoa is the headline and I know I just buried him five grafs into a draft column, so let me correct the record. Top fifteen lock. Mocks I trust have him top ten. One crazy person has him fifth overall and I am not ruling it out. Forty-one career starts at tackle. Did not give up a sack in his final year at Miami. Protected three different quarterbacks and made every one of them look taller. The team that takes him Thursday is getting a decade at right tackle and a film-room rat who studies pass sets like they’re scripture. The U has an offensive tackle going in the first round and that is not a sentence I ever take for granted. Write his name down first.
Rueben Bain Jr. is going Round 1 and I am not engaging with any argument otherwise. The mocks I trust have him fifteen to twenty-eight. The aggressive ones sneak him into the top twelve. Every team that needs edge help… and in this draft, that’s most of them… has his name circled in whatever color sharpie the war room is using this year.
Here’s what I keep coming back to, though. Before Bain declared, he sat at a podium at the Hecht and said this Miami defensive line, without him, “might be better” in 2026. He wasn’t being nice. He wasn’t dropping a cool line for the exit-interview reel. He watched Ahmad Moten and Damon Wilson and Hayden Lowe at Greentree every single day for a calendar year and he actually meant it. Write it down. Tape it to your monitor. That’s the deeper dive I did last week. When I do the Friday recap and you’re ready to panic about the pass rush in September, this is your crossroads moment. Trust Bain’s tape. Trust Bain’s read on his own locker room.
Akheem Mesidor is the other one. Late first or early second, depending on which GM flinches on the clock. Interior disruptor who plays bigger than his measurables say he should, which is the kind of grown-up every pro defensive coordinator wants in their meeting room. He’s also the guy Cristobal is going to point at for the next decade when he’s sitting on a couch in Lauderhill explaining what The U does for defensive linemen. Exactly what it says on the billboard.
Two first-round DL off the same defense. A first-round tackle on the other side of the ball. The class behind them still has Moten. Cristobal’s got next.
Day 2 is where I start biting nails.
Carson Beck goes somewhere Friday. Third round if the board behaves, fourth if it doesn’t. The Beck season at Miami was what it was… flashes, grind stretches, the portal carousel spinning as fast as portals spin these days. But the arm is real, the frame is real, and some team shopping for a QB2 is about to talk itself into him on a twenty-nine-pick run. Good luck, Carson. Mensah’s our guy now. No hard feelings. Business.
Keionte Scott is the DB I want teams to see. Instincts corner, physical in run support, put up the right numbers at pro day. Day 2 for the right scheme. Jakobe Thomas right behind him… strong safety, heavy hitter, the kind of tone-setter who gets your goal-line defense taken seriously. Day 3. Both of them get drafted. I will put my entire NIL cap on it, and my NIL cap is seventeen dollars.
Wesley Bissainthe is the one I’m actually worried about. Late-round flier or priority UDFA. I want him to hear his name on Saturday so badly. Not for the content. For him. Four years of starting snaps. A dude who called the front of our huddle and meant it. Someone in a back office Saturday morning pulls up his tape and remembers why they liked him coming out of Miami Central.
Now the part of this column that isn’t actually about Thursday.
The draft is recruiting content now. It just is. That’s the game in 2026 and the programs that understand it are winning recruiting cycles against programs that don’t. (I.P.’s version of this same argument went up yesterday… go read the old man’s take.) When Cam Ward walked across that stage on April 24, 2025, with a Titans hat in his hand, somewhere a sixteen-year-old quarterback in Illinois was watching. That kid’s name is Israel Abrams. He’s the No. 2 quarterback in the 2027 class. He committed to Miami. Pick whatever theory you want for why… the visits, the coaches, the NIL deck, the weather… but the visual of a Miami quarterback going 1.01 mattered and anyone telling you otherwise has not been in a high school film room in the last three years.
Now run it back with two first-round defensive linemen. And a tackle who might go before either of them.
Every edge rusher with a varsity letter and a decent GPA is about to watch Bain shake Roger Goodell’s hand under a MIAMI graphic in primetime. Then they’re going to watch Mesidor do it an hour later, or Friday night if the board breaks that way. Then their position coach texts their recruiting coordinator. Then their recruiting coordinator makes a call. This is literally how it works. I know it sounds like a bit. It is not a bit. Meanwhile every five-star offensive tackle with a film credit is going to watch Mauigoa get handed a Day 1 hat and do the mental math on what Miami’s O-line development just became. Same pitch deck. Different position group. Same phone tree.
The 2026 class is 30 high school commits and 13 transfers, top ten nationally, best in the ACC for the fourth straight cycle. The 2027 class has nine commits already, eight of them in state. You add “produced two first-round defensive linemen and a first-round tackle in the same draft” to that pitch deck and the walls around The State of Miami grow another foot.
This is the pipeline.
Quick housekeeping before I wrap. A couple of you asked where I’ll be Thursday night. The answer is: a place. A specific place. Not one I’m naming because the last time I mentioned a viewing spot in this column I got a message from someone over in compliance that said, in quotes, “Abe why are you like this.”
So. Undisclosed wings. Volume up. Notebook out because that’s what I do. If you see a guy in a hat scribbling during Goodell’s tenth handshake of the night while everyone else is arguing about the Giants… no you didn’t. You saw nothing. And Cam, if this column somehow lands in your inbox: I wasn’t there. I have never been anywhere. I am a rumor that haunts a press tent.
Draft week at Miami used to feel like a sad week. The good ones leaving. The “what now” conversations. The quiet on campus the Monday after.
It doesn’t feel like that anymore. Bain and Mesidor are getting their money and their moment and they earned every nickel. The guys still at Greentree… Moten, Wilson, Lowe, Cantwell when he’s on campus full time, Hawks when he rolls in from Hutchinson next month… are watching the exact same broadcast I am, and they are taking notes too. That’s how you keep this alive.
Three first-rounders out. The best recruiting class in the ACC coming in. The No. 2 quarterback in the country already committed for 2027.
I keep saying this and I’m going to keep saying it until somebody at OBB pays me to stop: they’re not just reloading. They’re stacking.
Round 1 Thursday, 8 p.m. Eastern. Recap Friday at this URL by noon, assuming I still have a voice.
… Abe
Abe Isaacson covers Miami Hurricanes athletics for Orange Bowl Boys. Catch his column, Abe’s Angle, every week at orangebowlboys.com.
