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The 2016 NFL Draft takes place this week, starting Thursday and ending on Saturday. Maryland has a few players who will surely be drafted, plus a couple others who could sneak into the late rounds or will at least be fighting for roster spots in training camp. We'll break down all of them.
A year ago, Brad Craddock was perhaps Maryland's likeliest 2016 NFL Draft pick. Coming off of a 2014 season in which he only missed one field goal and was the recipient of the Lou Groza Award, given to the nation's best placekicker. But after the 2015 season, Craddock's stock is lower than most people thought it would be a year ago.
The Australian kicker's senior year was derailed after eight games when he dislocated a bone in his right hand trying to make a tackle against Wisconsin in November, but an inept Maryland offense had significantly affected his season by then. He finished 8-for-10 on field goal attempts, as the Terps couldn't get into opposing territory often enough to give him many chances.
Kicker is a finicky position when it comes to the draft, because there are so few spots in the NFL for a rookie to slide into. With only a few teams even looking for a kicker each season, only the top few players at the position get drafted, with a few others able to at least catch on at various training camps.
Draft projections
CBS Sports has him going undrafted and ranks Craddock as the sixth-best kicker in the draft. Pro Football Focus says he "deserves a chance late in the draft," while Walterfootball doesn't have him among its top eight kickers.
Maryland stats
| Games | FGA | FGM | % | XPA | XPM | % | |
| 2015 | 9 | 8 | 10 | 0.8 | 22 | 23 | 95.7 |
| Career |
What he can do
Craddock can kick footballs very, very far.
That's a school-record 57-yarder against Ohio State in 2014.
Where Craddock goes from here
He'll probably be undrafted, although there's a chance that a team overlooks his lost senior season and chances a pick on him. We know Randy Edsall is a huge fan of his, as the Detroit Lions' director of football research/special projects let Craddock help determine who was on the team's leadership council last season. Still, Craddock's sounds like the kind of story you read in training camp about an undrafted player trying to carve out a spot on the team.