{"id":694155,"date":"2026-01-21T16:41:22","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T16:41:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/694155\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T16:41:22","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T16:41:22","slug":"mel-kiper-jr-predicts-commanders-to-land-college-football-playoff-superstar-in-nfl-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/694155\/","title":{"rendered":"Mel Kiper Jr. predicts Commanders to land College Football Playoff superstar in NFL Draft"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mel Kiper Jr. predicts Commanders to land College Football Playoff superstar in NFL Draft<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Everyone got to see in the College Football Playoff just how dominant a pass rusher Miami’s Rueben Bain Jr. can be.<\/p>\n

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Now, he’s heading for the NFL Draft, where one lucky team will get that talent for themselves.<\/p>\n

In ESPN’s Mel Kiper Jr.’s latest mock draft<\/a>, he predicts the Washington Commanders<\/a> to be the team that gets Bain.<\/p>\n

The Commanders pick at No. 7 overall, and Bain could still be on the board by that point, barely.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0T<\/a>he lastest on how Travis Kelce’s wedding to Taylor Swift impacts retirement<\/a><\/p>\n

“NFC East quarterbacks and offensive tackles aren’t going to be happy if Washington goes this way,” Kiper writes. “Bain knows how to reach the quarterback, with 9.5 sacks and 17.5 tackles for loss in 2025 (including a sack and 2.5 TFLs on Monday night against Indiana\u00a0in the national title game). He has a great mix of power, speed and bend, and the Commanders could move him around on the defensive line to create mismatches.\u00a0Von Miller\u00a0led the team with nine sacks this season, but he will turn 37 in March and isn’t under contract for 2026. This is a clear need for Washington after the defense allowed 6.0 yards per play, tied for third worst in the league.”<\/p>\n

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Bain created havoc in the national championship game against Indiana, too, but it wasn’t quite enough to overcome Fernando Mendoza and the Hurricanes.<\/p>\n

The Washington franchise has only picked seventh three times in the NFL Draft.<\/p>\n

Their first choice was in 1952 when they chose Larry Isbell, a baseball and football star from Baylor who chose to try his hand at professional baseball and then went to the Canadian Football League rather than ever play for Washington.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Could the Raiders trade the No. 1 pick and Fernando Mendoza?<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1963, they took tight end Pat Richter with the seventh pick, and he didn’t end up being worth it.<\/p>\n

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Their seventh pick in 1999 was the Hall of Fame cornerback Champ Bailey, who wound up doing a lot of his best work with the Broncos<\/a> but was clearly a good talent evaluation.<\/p>\n

The Commanders will hope to get this one right, too.<\/p>\n

More NFL news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mel Kiper Jr. predicts Commanders to land College Football Playoff superstar in NFL Draft originally appeared on The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":694156,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2069],"tags":[6982,1530,332,427,3619,7,14,216,6,15,32194,4205,500,7958,855,111,2480],"class_list":["post-694155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-washington-commanders","tag-canadian-football-league","tag-champ-bailey","tag-college-football-playoff","tag-commanders","tag-fernando-mendoza","tag-football","tag-mel-kiper","tag-miami","tag-nfl","tag-nfl-draft","tag-rueben-bain-jr","tag-taylor-swift","tag-travis-kelce","tag-von-miller","tag-washington","tag-washington-commanders","tag-washingtoncommanders"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115934087592915503","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=694155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/694156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}