The NFL should change draft eligibility rules to allow Jeremiah Smith and Ryan Williams to enter the 2025 NFL Draft

It's been a competition between Smith and Williams for who has the best highlights all season. It didn't take Williams long to one-up Smith, as he did so with incredible body control on the sideline to keep Alabama in the game against Vanderbilt.

Williams has arguably been better than Smith, well certainly more productive. This season, Williams has 19 receptions for 544 yards and six touchdowns, including a 6-reception, 177-yard game against the Georgia Bulldogs last week. Bonkers numbers for both players as a true freshman.

It feels wrong that both of these players will have to wait until the 2027 NFL Draft. Both of these players have the ability and size to play in the NFL right now. It's not like the 1980s when you'd get receivers going to college at 165 lbs and they would have to grow into their bodies. In modern-day college football, the top prospects are often fully developed and can handle the physical nature of the NFL.

Why not find a way to allow these superstar players to go to the NFL earlier than three seasons removed from high school? The NFL isn't quite like baseball, hockey or basketball where the game is significantly more physical at its highest level than it is at its lower levels. How do you allow players who deserve to go to the league because they are ready without allowing everyone? 

There is a potentially simple solution: the College Advisory Committee.

Each year, the College Advisory Committee gives underclassmen an estimation of where they will be drafted to help them decide if they should return to school or enter the draft. Here is the process of how the NFL handles this.

The College Advisory Committee’s process for determining whether underclassmen are ready for the NFL changed in 2014. Under the revised NFL guidelines, a college can request evaluations for only five players, with exceptions determined on a case-by-case basis; previously, there was no limit on the number of players from one team who could be reviewed.

The ratings system was revised as well. In previous years, the Committee would evaluate players in one of five categories: potential first-round pick, potential second-round pick, potential third-round pick, no potential for the first three rounds or no draft potential at all.

The new ratings are much simpler: potential first round, potential second round, or neither, which is effectively a recommendation to stay in school.

Essentially, they are a committee of experts that has years of experience in scouting college prospects. If they unanimously believe that a player will be a first-round pick or possibly go one step further and be a top-10 pick, they should allow players to leave school after one or two years of college.

This would allow players who are obviously ready to go to the NFL the ability to do so and keep those who aren't ready in the college game. Williams and Smith are ready to play in the NFL right now and this would give them the opportunity to do so.

Now, because it's a subjective thing, this could be taken advantage of or loopholes could be used. There would have to be some guardrails in place to protect the players and the integrity of the process, but it could work.

The world deserves to see the best players playing on the biggest stage and this would accomplish that and then some.