Jake Locker announced Monday that he will return for his senior season instead of entering the NFL draft. As an immediate result, we had a big domino remain standing in the NFL draft versus next season's college football BCS race.
No, I'm not insinuating that Locker's Huskies are poised to make a national title run in 2010 (I do think with 17 starters back, they'll have a good shot at making a top 25 appearance), but his presence is very, very significant in the shaping of the Pac-10 championship race; since he makes U-Dub so dangerous, it impacts the potential contenders, namely the Oregon Ducks and USC Trojans.
Washington also plays Nebraska next year. The Cornhuskers will lose Ndamukong Suh, but could be one of the better teams in what shapes up as a wide-open Big 12 (a few great QBs are leaving the conference). One great performance by Locker could knock any of them out of the BCS picture.
We're still a while away from making 2010 preseason top 10 lists, but here are five guys whose NFL draft decisions will be massively important when those discussions start happening:
(And for reference, here's Todd McShay's Mock Draft and Mel Kiper's most recent Big Board):
To read Bruce's list of five whose decisions will most shake up 2010 -- McClain, Morgan, Williams and more -- plus a slew of JC recruiting/signing news and a possible new stud QB for Bob Stoops, you must be an ESPN Insider.
Bruce Feldman | email
College FootballABOUT THIS BLOG
Bruce Feldman
Bruce Feldman is a senior writer at ESPN The Magazine. He started at ESPN in 1994. He spent a good portion of two years in the South working on his book, "Meat Market: Inside the Smash-Mouth World of College Football Recruiting."
His first book, "Cane Mutiny: How the Miami Hurricanes Overturned the Football Establishment," made it to No. 1 among sports titles in the fall of 2004.
Bruce can be reached via Twitter at @BFeldmanESPN. and his full ESPN.Com archives are located here.
