The time for mock drafts has finally passed and now we must look into the tea leaves and see what the 2015 NFL draft class means for football, the country and the entire world in our 1000 percent accurate draft analysis.
Who won, who lost and which players will still be changing the future in the 2060s.
1 - Jameis Winston, Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Despite having arguably the best set of all-around football skills in the draft, Jameis Winston is too late to save a troubled franchise from another six years of failure. When the team wins the Super Bowl in Year 7 after Winston's selection, it will be with another quarterback and everyone will compare Winston to JaMarcus Russell because he's the only other No. 1 pick people can remember who also struggled, like Tim Couch's career was so great.
2 - Marcus Mariota, Tennessee Titans
Marcus Mariota will spend the rest of his nights wondering what infinitesimal small thing he could have changed over the past 20 years that would have made him the No 1 pick and not No. 2. Madness for control will take hold and drive Mariota into solitude and loneliness, including a brief stint in the League of Shadows, before the single Super Bowl appearance of his career.
3 - Dante Fowler Jr., Jacksonville Jaguars
With an entire city's expectations riding on his back, Dante Fowler Jr. will become the best natural gas commodities trader in 2033 (shortly before the world runs out of natural gas in 2065) and will own the first expansion NFL team in Dubai, The Oilers.
4 - Amari Cooper, Oakland Raiders
Much like superstar players John Elway and Jim Brown before him, Amari Cooper will become beloved in his community and will change the course of football forever in the city where he will spend 45 years of his career, both as a player and as an advisor to the club. His decedents will eventually marry into the league ownership circles and have Rooney Mara Kraft Mara Rooney Kraft Kraft Mara Rooneys of their own.
5 - Brandon Scherff, Washington Snyders
Scherff will keep playing professional football at least 11 years past his prime but will continue to find teams willing to sign him because during the NFC Championship Brawl of 2017 he will land a perfect punch smack in the middle of Jerry Jones' face. He will eventually retire a Cowboy because the Jones heirs want to remind Pap-Pap who really runs the club now.
6 - Leonard Williams, New York Jets
During a significant stretch of the 2019 season, Leonard Williams will try to get his teammates to laugh at his jokes by ending each punchline with "WAZZZUUUUPPPP" thanks to a late-night YouTube binge. Despite being in the middle of his fifth Pro Bowl season, he will be traded to the Titans as punishment. His daughter will become the first astronaut on Mars in 2076 and immediately channel her father at this historic moment.
7 - Kevin White, Chicago Bears
Despite having a solid journeyman's career in the NFL, playing for four teams over 12 years and setting a playoff reception record, no one will remember Kevin White aside from the time he was found underneath a drug mule — an actual papermache mule made out of marijuana — in his second season.
8 - Vic Beasley, Atlanta Falcons
In 2020 Vic Beasley will take over as editor-in-chief of The Players' Tribune when Derek Jeter retires from publishing and decides to return to baseball. Beasley will later tell friends over rosé in a hushed voice, "All I know is he handed me his laptop and said, ‘Nope. Can't do it. You can't make me care about professional cheese rolling. I don't care what Kobe says, you just can't.' And he was out."
Under Beasley's guidance, The Players' Tribune will win a Pulitzer Prize in Public Service for its reporting on the dangers of cheese rolling in 2021.
9 - Ereck Flowers, New York Giants
It will take Ereck Flowers less than one season to realize he has no desire to keep stopping 300-pound bodies with his body and he will retire from the league as soon as he can figure out a way to cash out some insurance money without being forced to lose his own arm in a wood chipper accident. Maybe an infected hangnail, nothing too obvious. Keep an eye on Flowers around medium-low balconies, hot curling irons and kayaks in the coming years.
10 - Todd Gurley, St. Louis Rams
Todd Gurley will get lost in a six-running back system in his third pro season, land in the CFL by accident when he is traded to an expansion Montreal NFL team which really wasn't an expansion club, just a ploy to get the Expos a new home upon their return to Olympic Stadium. Despite the setback, his triumphant return to the NFL will secure the Cincinnati Bengal's traditional playoff exit, securing both his and coach Marvin Lewis' contracts through 2025.
11 - Trae Waynes, Minnesota Vikings
Being selected just outside the top 10 brings such joy to Trae Waynes he stops paying attention to everything around him over the next few days, including wandering directly into Chicago traffic, where he is hit by runaway parade float hijacked by a local (charming) juvenile delinquent. He survives the accident unharmed and goes on to become a spokesperson for the Look Left, Right, Left, Right Foundation.
12 - Danny Shelton, Cleveland Browns
While two-sport professional athletes are a thing of the past, Danny Shelton becomes the first NFLer to play for three teams in one city after spending time with the Los Angeles Rams, the Los Angeles Chargers and the Los Angeles Raiders all during the 2022 season.
13 - Andrus Peat, New Orleans Saints
[Redacted under the Patriots Patriot Act of 2026.]
14 - DeVante Parker, Miami Dolphins
In a curious footnote to U.S. history, "DeVante Parker" will be the winning answer to a 2037 Jeopardy Daily Double question which will be answered correctly by future GOP presidential candidate Bernie Skeeter.
15 - Melvin Gordon, San Diego Chargers
After breaking free from the team that took him in 2015, Melvin Gordon will run for an average of 346 yards a game for the Denver Broncos when tackling is banned in 2019. Marshall Faulk will refuse to shake his hand at the 2029 Hall of Fame induction ceremony.
16 - Kevin Johnson, Houston Texans
The finest bitters ever to grace Death + Company's bar will come from Kevin Johnson, which unfortunately will come just as the craft cocktail craze finally ends in 2017. Despondent over financial losses in "smoked rhubarb and habanero" flavoring, Johnson will pour his dreams into microgreens farming where he will will make millions after being featured as Martha Stewart's personal grower in 2018.
17 - Arik Armstead, San Francisco 49ers
Arik Armstead is why there are no references to the Arizona Cardinals in the future. He never played for the Cardinals, he just sort of ended them or they decided to go into witness relocation and become the Seattle Supersonics or something after that fateful game in December of 2018. All anyone knows is that they haven't been heard of or seen since facing Armstead.
18 - Marcus Peters, Kansas City Chiefs
An unusual twist for the NFL draft class of 2015, Marcus Peters will have a productive but unremarkable career that will see him play for two teams in his seven-year stint, three Pro Bowl selections, two Edible Arrangements franchises, one moderately-priced steakhouse adored by locals and one terrible, terrible pimple on his left shoulder that he will eventually name "Stan" much to the chagrin to his wife.
19 - Cameron Erving, Cleveland Browns
After drunk-dialing a retired Rex Ryan in 2017, Cameron Erving invents the RyanRoulette app which puts users instantly in touch with either Rob or Rex Ryan for advice, but without knowing which Ryan they may get on the other end of the line. By 2018, the app is banned from college and professional football sidelines as being "unfair" to coaches still on flip phones after extensive lobbying by the New York Giants and head coach Eli Manning's RAZR.
20 - Nelson Agholor, Philadelphia Eagles
During a botched drug test in 2019, Agholor will fail a PED screening for HGH after mistakingly eating a Chipotle burrito bowl he thought was growth hormone-free, but actually contained a double-dose of hormones as the chain was scandalously trying everything possible to keep up with extra guacamole requests. After clearing his name and reputation, Agholor will move to an organic farm with his supermodel wife that he met during a PETA/anti-GMO rally.
21 - Cedric Ogbuehi, Cincinnati Bengals
The "steal of the 2015 draft" will not be recognized as such until 2023 because Ogbuehi will be traded among five teams over seven years, the ripples of which will finally not truly be understood until everyone has had a chance to go back and rewrite approximately 27,742,832 mock drafts. Draft analysts won't even notice when Ogbuehi is on three different Super Bowl teams because they're too busy preparing for the 2027 NFL Draft.
22 - Bud Dupree, Pittsburgh Steelers
Bud Dupree will be among the first parents faced with their preschool children being placed on the scouting site Rivals in 2024 after marrying the U.S. Olympic swimming champion of 2020 in a union of tackling records and 400m freestyle gold. In 2042 this child will help the U.S. men's team win its first World Cup.
23 - Shane Ray, Denver Broncos
Although only in the NFL for two seasons, Shane Ray will make his mark on the league by taking all of his signing bonus and giving it to the team mascot who he feels is underappreciated. Emboldened by the gesture, team mascots around the country unionize and demand better dry cleaning rights, higher pay, flexible vacation time and a small part of the league's pension plan and are met with little resistance and the Mascot Accords of 2018 are universally heralded as a monumental day for workers' rights.
Cheerleaders will not be given a living wage until 2067.
24 - D.J. Humphries, Arizona Cardinals
Get to know D.J. Humphries now because he will take over as the face of the NFL Network from Rich Eisen in 2026. Breaking with NFLN's protocols, he will refuse to learn the lyrics to "Must Be the Money" even though he believes it will lead to one of his "assimilated" coworkers murdering him in his sleep during a road trip for Wednesday Night Football.
25 - Shaq Thompson, Carolina Panthers
2020 will be the first season Shaq Thompson plays in more than one game a season, just the way Thompson hoped it would work out for him. He majored in clipboard holding and can tell you the exact weight, brand and wear of any clipboard he is holding without looking. After retiring from play in 2021, this parlor trick will prove to be useful as he swindles college kids out of their lunch money working as an assistant for Urban Meyer in 2022.
26 - Breshad Perriman, Baltimore Ravens
Breshad Perriman will win a record 18 Super Bowl rings in a high-stakes poker game on Rory McIlroy's yacht — along with three World Series rings, two Wimbledon trophies, one boxing championship belt and a day with the Stanley Cup — in 2019 just off the beach in Turks and Caicos. His date will still go home with Leonardo DiCaprio later that same evening.
27 - Byron Jones, Dallas Cowboys
By 2018 Bryon Jones will be first in a series of players who will have small GoPro cameras placed in their left eyes for a more realistic sense of action on the field for young viewers used to playing video games as first-person experiences.
28 - Laken Tomlinson, Detroit Lions
Few took much notice of Laken Tomlinson in 2015, but in 2028 he will earn his first Oscar nomination playing "The Joker" in the third reboot of the Iron Man franchise, the DC-Marvel Treaty of 2026 finally allowing for the cross-pollination of characters. (The treaty was only reached after losing two states, Michigan and New Mexico, to Canada.) The second Oscar nomination (and first win) will come in 2030 for his performance as Stella in a gender-free interpretation of A Streetcar Named Desire. Roger Goodell will be mildly annoyed he is not mentioned in Tomlinson's acceptance speech, and will tell everyone at his party, "I put him on that stage!"
29 - Phillip Dorsett, Indianapolis Colts
Unsurprisingly to people who knew him best, Phillip Dorsett will demand all of his salary in gold as a condition of his contract and will bury it in an abandoned coal mine in West Virginia. He will refuse to tell anyone its secret location and go to his grave knowing he did not have to share what he had rightfully earned. The gold will be lost to the ages for nearly six hundred years before its discovery in 2657. The aliens will have no use for it, but will wonder why each bar is stamped with hieroglyphs that look like ancient horseshoes and extinct spotted cats.
30 - Damarious Randall, Green Bay Packers
[Also redacted under the Patriots Patriot Act of 2026.]
31 - Stephone Anthony, New Orleans Saints
While no one expected nutria herding to really take off in any sort of meaningful way, Stephone Anthony's smart investment in a small nutria farm owned by a distant cousin laid the foundation for a growing food processing plant that would stave off food riots in 2063 during an active solar flare season that decimated traditional dairy farms.
32 - Malcom Brown, New England Patriots
Malcom Brown will become your favorite player of all time. Does not matter which uniform he dresses in during which season of his career, he will be the greatest player that ever played the game in your mind. You will defend his prowess on the field to drunk cousins at Thanksgiving, to your fantasy league when you pick him in an early round, to your co-workers and even to your spouse when they say you might be a tad obsessed. He will be the one you will remember when your final memories of football slip into the ether as your body crumbles to dust.
And for his part, Brown will enjoy his time playing football and will remember the 2015 Draft fondly.