Where is LSU football's Mansoor Delane in latest NFL mock draft?

Former LSU football standout cornerback Mansoor Delane is seen by many analysts as the No. 1 cornerback in the 2026 NFL Draft. Although he’s not expected to wow at the combine, both Delane’s tape and stats from the 2025 season paint the picture of a future Pro-Bowler.

This remained true when looking at a recent 2026 NFL Mock Draft from The Athletic’s Dane Brugler, one of the most well-respected analysts in the space. He has Delane going 13th to the Los Angeles Rams, but one thing changed in this mock compared to the one he published in December: Delane isn’t the first cornerback selected.

This time, Brugler has Tennessee’s Jermod McCoy as his first cornerback off the board, selected two spots ahead of Delane. Though McCoy missed the entire 2025 season while recovering from an ACL tear sustained the prior year, he’s still considered at or above Delane’s level by many top draft analysts.

The primary reason for this -- aside from McCoy’s impressive 2024 campaign -- is that he fits what NFL teams want to see in a cornerback. The former Volunteer is a better athlete than Delane, and he boasts arm length closer to that of a typical cornerback at the next level, a crucial benchmark for many franchises. Although Delane put together arguably the best cornerback season in the country in 2025, McCoy may be selected ahead of him simply because teams view him as having a higher ceiling at the next level.

Whether Delane is the first cornerback off the board doesn’t particularly matter, however. If he continues to showcase the same standout play that anchored an elite LSU defense in 2025, Delane will make the teams that pass on him regret it.

This article originally appeared on LSU Wire: Where is LSU football's Mansoor Delane in latest NFL mock draft?