How Big Boards Work — 2027 NFL Draft Rankings

A Big Board is a single ranked list of every NFL Draft prospect from #1 through the entire class, regardless of position. Where a team-needs sheet asks "what does this team need?", a big board asks "who's the best player available?" The two together decide every pick in the NFL Draft — and every pick in a FanSpeak mock draft. This page is the public hub for the FanSpeak big-boards ecosystem: browse community boards, build and edit your own, and pick the one On The Clock will rank players from when you start a mock draft.

What's new for 2027

The Fanspeak 2027 Official Big Board is now the most accurate 2027 NFL Draft board we publish. The 2027 prospect class has fully landed in the system — real college rosters, refined positions, school affiliations, and headshots — all powered by our CFBD ingest pipeline. The board is what we run mock drafts against by default, and it's what every "Featured" tier board on this page is calibrated to. If you're looking for one set of 2027 rankings to trust as a starting point, it's that one.

The 2026 boards (PFR's actual 2026 draft order, our 2026 official, MDD/PFF/community 2026 consensus boards) are still here for historical mocks — flip the Year dropdown on the page to 2026 to see them.

What is a Big Board?

A big board ranks every draft prospect in one ordered list. The order matters: it's not just a way to look up a player, it's the canonical source of "who should go next" when no other signal is available.

Mock drafts blend all three: a CPU team in Team Needs mode multiplies each available player's value by how badly the team needs that position, while in Player Ranking mode the CPU sticks closer to the raw big-board order. Either way, the big board is the input.

A FanSpeak big board carries:

• An ordered playerOrder — slugs in rank #1 through the end
• A year (which NFL Draft this board is for)
• An optional description written by the author
• A profile picture, social links, like count, and a "times used" counter

When you pick a board on the On The Clock setup screen, those rankings are exactly what the simulator's CPU teams will use to evaluate every prospect.

Featured boards

The Featured tab on the big-boards hub is curated by FanSpeak. These are the boards we trust enough to ship as defaults. Today the lineup includes:

• Fanspeak Official 2027 — our in-house consensus for the 2027 NFL Draft. Updates as the 2026 college season progresses and as we get more scouting reports through the pipeline.
• MDD Consensus 2027 — Mock Draft Database's consensus board, pulled in for early-cycle comparison.
• PFR 2026 (Actual) — the literal 2026 NFL Draft order. Useful for re-running the 2026 draft from any team's seat to grade what actually happened.
• Buffalo Fambase 2026, Steve Shoup 2026, Warren Hauck 2026, DRAFTPLEX – Jason Pruett, and a handful of other community-respected 2026 boards — all preserved for retro mocks.

Each featured board has its own permanent URL at /big-boards/{board-id} so you can deep-link to it, share it, or load it directly into On The Clock.

Build your own (Premium)

The Big Board Creator at /big-boards/creator is a drag-and-drop interface for ranking every prospect from #1 down. Available to Ultimate GM subscribers:

• Start from any featured board. Fork the Fanspeak Official 2027 board, MDD's consensus, or any other public board — your copy is independent of the original.
• Re-rank by dragging. Mobile and desktop both work; the underlying list updates as you go. Position filters let you narrow to QBs, WRs, edges, etc. while reordering.
• Author metadata. Pick a profile picture (avatar, team logo, or upload), write a description explaining your methodology, link to socials if you want credit when others use your board.
• Save and share. Saved boards get their own URL at /big-boards/{your-board-id} and surface in the Yours tab.

Once saved, the board is immediately available in the On The Clock board dropdown — both for you and for anyone you share the link with. Every time someone runs a mock off your board, the timesUsedCount ticks up, which feeds into the Most-Used Boards leaderboard.

Edit, update, and version

You can re-edit any board you own at /big-boards/{id}/edit. Updates are immediate — once you save, the new ranking applies to every future mock draft that uses the board. The lastUpdated timestamp on each board shows when the author last touched it, so users can tell at a glance how fresh a board is.

A few things to know:

• Editing a board doesn't change historical drafts. Mocks already completed are immutable — they capture the board state at the time of the draft.
• Deletes are real. Deleting a board removes it from the public list. Anyone with the URL gets a "not found" page.
• Public by default. Every saved board is publicly indexable. There isn't a "private" tier today — if you want to test a board in privacy, keep it local until you're ready to publish.

How On The Clock uses your big board

The board you pick on the On The Clock setup page is what the simulator hands to every CPU team to evaluate prospects. Mechanically:

1. When you click Start Draft, the simulator fetches the board's full playerOrder and hydrates every slug into a player object (name, position, school, height/weight).
2. Each CPU team scores every available player using the board's rank, multiplied by need weight (in Team Needs mode) and adjusted by Randomness / Draft Variance.
3. The team with the highest score takes the highest-scoring player. The board never changes mid-draft.

You can also assign CPU teams a different board than yours via the Computer Big Board dropdown — useful for simulating disagreement between teams. Set it to Random and each CPU team grabs a different featured board, leading to messier, more lifelike drafts where prospects slide unexpectedly.

Leaderboards and discovery

Boards are also a discovery mechanism. The Most-Used Boards leaderboard ranks every public board by timesUsedCount over the current draft cycle. Boards that produce realistic drafts and align with public consensus tend to climb; boards that produce wild outcomes still get used (people love a chaos board) but typically rank by novelty rather than usage.

For 2027 specifically:

• The Fanspeak Official 2027 sits at the top by usage — it's the default board on the setup page.
• MDD Consensus 2027 is the highest-ranked external 2027 board.
• Community 2027 boards will start filtering in as users build them; expect a denser leaderboard by August once preseason scouting reports drop.

Big Boards FAQ

Is the 2027 big board final?

No. The Fanspeak Official 2027 board is our best read right now (late May 2026). It will get re-seeded in August as preseason scouting reports come out, then again after the 2026 college season starts, and again post-bowl-season. Use the lastUpdated timestamp on the board card to see when it was last touched.

Can I use a 2026 board for a 2027 mock draft?

You can switch the Year picker independently of the board, but the simulator's player pool is tied to the year — running a 2027 mock will only show 2027-eligible prospects. A 2026-only board will appear empty in a 2027 mock. Use the 2027 boards for 2027 drafts.

Do I need an account to use big boards?

Browsing and using public boards is free and account-free. Building your own board requires an Ultimate GM subscription. Forking another author's board to make your own copy also requires Ultimate GM.

How are featured boards chosen?

FanSpeak picks them. The criteria are accuracy, methodology transparency, and community recognition. Community boards with consistent usage and good draft outcomes get promoted to the featured tier over time.

Can I see my old big boards from previous cycles?

Yes. Switch the Year dropdown to the cycle you want. Your boards persist across years — they just don't appear in the wrong year's dropdown.

What happens if a player I ranked gets removed from the prospect pool?

If a player declares to return to college, or is otherwise removed from the eligible 2027 pool, your board stays intact — but that player will no longer show up in mocks. Your relative ordering of everyone else is preserved.