It’s NFL Draft week, and Missouri football has at least a half-dozen pro hopefuls vying for spots at the next level.The 2026 NFL Draft will begin with the first round at 7 p.m. CDT Thursday in Pittsburgh. Rounds 2 and 3 will take place Friday, and picks for Rounds 4-7 will be announced Saturday.
Six Mizzou players from the 2025 roster seem to be in good standing to hear their name called, based on the most-recent projections from national outlets and draft experts.
Defensive end Zion Young, middle linebacker Josiah Trotter, defensive tackle Christ McClellan, right tackle Keagen Trost, wide receiver Kevin Coleman Jr. and cornerback Toriano Pride Jr. all have appeared in recent mock drafts.
To get a picture of Mizzou’s upcoming week at the draft, we took a look at seven-round mock drafts from Chad Reuter at NFL.com, Dane Brugler at The Athletic, Matt Miller at ESPN and Josh Edwards at CBS Sports, all of which have been published in the past month. Most had all six Mizzou players listed above hearing their names called this week.
Here is where Mizzou’s top prospects are projected to land:
If Missouri has a first-rounder for a third straight year, Young is that player. CBS has him as a Thursday-night selection, while the other three outlets expect him to land on Day 2.
Missouri has sent players to the league as Day 1 picks in each of the past two drafts, as Armand Membou went No. 7 overall to the Jets in 2025 and Darius Robinson went No. 27 overall to the Cardinals in 2024.
The last time Mizzou had first-round picks in three straight years was between 2009-11, when Jeremy Maclin, Ziggy Hood, Sean Weatherspoon, Aldon Smith and Blaine Gabbert each were Day 1 picks.
Young is a 6-foot-6, 262-pound edge rusher who recorded 57 quarterback pressures — the second-most in the SEC — in 13 games last season.
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Most projections have Trotter, listed at 6-2 and 237, hearing his name called on Day 2 of the draft as either a second- or third-round draft pick.
The redshirt sophomore middle linebacker was Mizzou’s leading tackler by quite some margin last season, emerging as a reliably excellent and hard-hitting second-level defender in his one season with the Tigers after transferring over from West Virginia.
Josiah Trotter’s father, Jeremiah Trotter Sr., was a third-round pick by the Philadelphia Eagles in 1998, and the Mizzou linebacker’s younger brother, Jeremiah Trotter Jr., was a fifth-round pick by the Eagles in 2024 out of Clemson.
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There’s not a lot of variety in McClellan’s draft projections in our mock samples: The prognosticators expect him to go quite early on Day 3 in the fourth round.
McClellan, who arrived in Columbia ahead of the 2024 season after two years at Florida, had 48 total tackles and six sacks last season. He’s listed at 6-3¾, 313.
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If Trost is drafted this year, the Tigers will send their starting right tackle to the league in back-to-back years. Membou is now the New York Jets’ starting right tackle after three stellar years in Columbia.
It looks like some outlets project Trost to switch to guard at the next level, and the wide expectation is that he’ll land with a new team at some point on Day 3 of the draft.
Trost, listed at 6-4⅝ and 311, spent one season in Columbia, which was his seventh year in college after a winding road up the collegiate ranks from Morgan State to Indiana State to Wake Forest to Mizzou. He was Pro Football Focus’ top-graded offensive tackle in college football last season, allowing seven pressures and just one sack on 432 pass-blocking reps, per Pro Football Focus.