Daniel Jeremiah details how NIL, transfer portal, conference realignment impact NFL Draft

When the NFL released its list of underclassmen declarations for the 2026 NFL Draft last month, a trend continued. All told, 63 players decided to forgo their eligibility and declare prior to the national championship, which marked a decrease from 70 ahead of 2025’s title game.

NIL and the transfer portal are considered two of the key factors in that dip as players choose to stay in school. But when looking at the draft as a whole, NFL Network analyst Daniel Jeremiah said another part of the college landscape might have the biggest impact: conference realignment.

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The 2025 season marked the second after a groundbreaking wave of realignment, which saw former Pac-12 schools move to the Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC. All the while, Oklahoma and Texas left for the SEC, and the Big 12 added four schools as a result of that move.

Couple the movement of schools with players leaving via the portal, and Jeremiah said scouts have an opportunity to see prospects against higher levels of competition. If they make the postseason, there are then even more chances to watch them play.

“I’ve mentioned this before, but for all the issues that have popped up in college football and a lot of complaints with how things have changed and NIL and the transfer portal, what doesn’t get discussed at all – and I think it’s a massive deal from the scouting standpoint – is the realignment that took place,” Jeremiah said last week on a conference call with reporters.

“If you’re watching a quarterback in the SEC or the Big Ten, you’re watching him against elite competition five or six times during the regular season. And if they make a postseason run, you might get two, three, four more games of that. So the more you can see of a player, the more comfortable you’re going to be with who he is and the more confident you’ll be in your evaluation.”

How NIL, portal have ‘made scouting easier’

When NIL came about in 2021, it gave college athletes the opportunity to profit off their name, image and likeness for the first time. The amount has gone up, with the top quarterback deals expected to reach between $4 million and $5 million this past portal cycle.

But with that, Daniel Jeremiah said it helps answer a key question for NFL teams. They can see firsthand how draft prospects handle their money while they’re in college, rather than waiting until they’re in the league to see it.

“You don’t know how many times I’ve sat in draft rooms over eight years and it was, ‘I’m worried about this guy with money. We give this guy some money and he’s got some free time, I don’t know.’ Well, you don’t have to wonder anymore,” Jeremiah said. “These guys have had to navigate that and handle that. And you find out those that can and those that can’t. So I think in some ways, it’s made scouting easier.”

The other part of the discussion is about seeing players in different schemes. That was a point of conversation around Cam Ward a year ago when he went No. 1 overall to the Tennessee Titans. Ward went from FCS Incarnate Word to Washington State to Miami.

As a result, scouts don’t have to project as much about what a player can do, Jeremiah said. It then clears things up even more for evaluators.

“From a scouting standpoint, I feel like I have to whisper it, but I’ve kind of enjoyed [the new landscape] because I’ve gotten a chance to see guys in different systems,” Jeremiah said. “I’ve gotten a chance to see some lower-level competition guys move up in competition. So I’m not having to make as big of a projection. IWe’re seeing, with the quality of competition you’re seeing each and every week, I think it makes it a little bit easier to see what you’ve got there.”

‘We’re a few years away’ from seeing portal’s true impact

This past transfer cycle, nearly 4,000 players entered the portal, according to On3’s Pete Nakos. Whether it be athletes looking for a change of scenery or trying to take a jump in competition, player movement continues to be an important part of the landscape.

When it comes to the NFL Draft process, Daniel Jeremiah said it could take a bit more time to figure out just how much impact the transfer portal has. Right now, though, the reasons players leave is part of that discussion.

“I think it’s definitely interesting to kind of try and figure out why guys move around,” Jeremiah said. “I was talking to an SEC head coach the other day and [he] said they break it up into a couple different categories, which is, guys transfer because they want money – that’s the one bucket. There’s guys that transfer because they want playing time because they’re not getting opportunities. And there’s guys transferring because they want to challenge themselves. Like, they’re kind of moving up a level in competition.

“I think it’s gonna be interesting, as we have more of data on this going forward, is if you were to kind of look at these different buckets, and we can look back with the track record to see which guys have had success. Is there anything to it? I don’t know yet. I don’t think there’s enough to go off of. But I do think five years from now, we’re going to have a better feel for, how do you categorize the guys as they’ve moved around and what impact does it have? So I think we’re a few years away from learning more about this whole thing.”