John Middlekauff Exclusive: NFL Draft Prospects, Rory McIlroy & LIV Golf’s Future

John Middlekauff has become one of the most respected voices in sports media, blending front-office NFL experience with years of analysis across football and golf. The former NFL scout and host of the popular 3 & Out and GoLow podcasts regularly offers insight on the biggest storylines shaping both sports.

In an exclusive interview with Hard Rock Bet, Middlekauff shared his thoughts on the future of college football‘s top prospects, the 2026 NFL Draft, Rory McIlroy’s pursuit of more major championships, LIV Golf, and the lasting legacy of Tiger Woods. Here’s what he had to say.

NFL Draft, Top Prospects & the Future of Football

From Arch Manning and Dante Moore to Jeremiah Smith and the latest NFL Draft class, Middlekauff breaks down the players he believes are poised for stardom and the prospects he thinks could outperform expectations. He also discusses 2026 NFL Draft reaches, steals, and where some of the league’s newest talent fits moving forward.

Next year’s quarterback class has the potential to be loaded. If the draft were to happen today, which of these quarterbacks goes first?

Well, the guy that should go first would be Dante Moore based on his body of work. If he would have come out this year, I would have been stunned if he wouldn’t have been the second pick in the draft by the Jets.

But I don’t think all this Arch Manning hype comes out of nowhere. I think, obviously, people are intrigued by him. I think this season is massive. He plays Ohio State early on in the season. Obviously, the SEC schedule is a gauntlet. That’s a program now that produces a ton of NFL guys under Steve Sarkisian. All eyes are going to be on Arch.

And then there’s Josh Hoover at Indiana who was a TCU transfer. Look at Fernando Mendoza. No one was talking about Mendoza going No. 1 last year, then boom. This happened with Joe Burrow. This also happened with Baker Mayfield.

We’ll talk about Jeremiah Smith a little bit later. Usually, position players we talk about as freshmen and sophomores, like Caleb Downs. We’ve been talking about Downs since he was a true freshman at Alabama. And with quarterbacks, some don’t come out of nowhere, right? Dante Moore started at UCLA as a true freshman. People have been talking about him.

But in terms of going No. 1 overall, last year he was really good but also had some rough moments. I think if he has a big year at Oregon, wins a bunch of games, he easily could be the No. 1 pick.

LaNorris Sellers is a guy who has a great opportunity in front of him. But I think that’s kind of the crew. And then there’ll be some guys that no one’s mentioning right now that, by midseason, we’ll be like, “God, this guy already has 20 touchdowns, one interception. His team is 6-0.”

That happens all the time.

How does Ohio State’s Jeremiah Smith compare to other wide receiver prospects? Do you see a scenario where he could be the first overall pick?

I think if any quarterback establishes himself as just more than an above average, as a guy that has the opportunity to be a top-10 pick, then it’s tough for a position player to go ahead of him.

Look, Jeremiah Smith is a better prospect than Fernando Mendoza. But if Smith had been in this draft, Mendoza still goes No. 1 overall. Now, Smith might go No. 2 to the Jets, even though they have Garrett Wilson, they have Breece Hall, and they have some offensive weapons. But he’s a better prospect than David Bailey.

Now, would they still take a defensive end? Potentially. But my point is, it’s borderline impossible for a wide receiver prospect to go above a quarterback if that quarterback is viewed as a guy that can be a multi-contract guy.

When looking at last year’s draft class, is there a pick that you thought was a reach?

I think when you say this, you sound very negative. So me saying Carnell Tate is a reach — Carnell Tate’s probably going to have an excellent NFL career, just based on recent Ohio State guys. Look at Jaxon Smith-Njigba — he’s awesome, right? And he was a pick in the late teens. Last year, Emeka Egbuka, who went to the Buccaneers, I know he kind of tailed off. Their season was in shambles, but I’d bet on him being pretty good. He’s never been the No. 1 wide receiver on his own team.

So usually in that scenario, when the guys that were No. 1s go in the mid-to-late teens and then Jeremiah Smith, who’s going to be drafted somewhere between No. 2 and No. 5 next year depending on the other positions, it just felt a little strong to draft Tate there when there were going to be a ton of sweet wide receivers in the second round.

Especially because if you’re the Titans, you could have gotten Sonny Styles. You could have gotten Arvell Reese.

I think where it would be viewed differently is if he gives them 80 or 90 catches within a couple years. You have a quarterback that you just drafted No. 1 overall. I think you can begin to understand it.

I would say, in terms of reaches, the other guy would be the big defensive tackle Minnesota took, I think at pick No. 18, Caleb Banks. He’s battled a bunch of foot injuries. He’s, I think, 350, 340 pounds. When you’re that heavy — Kadyn Proctor, same thing to Miami. I think he was picked at 11 or 12. Anytime you’re dealing with big guys where there are some question marks, it’s just pretty risky.

We’ve seen it work, and we’ve seen Mekhi Becton, who the Jets once took, as a super high-ceiling guy. Proctor and Banks, these guys have a super high ceiling. But sometimes it doesn’t work out for their first team.

On the other hand, which pick do you think is the biggest steal?

I think the Commanders getting Sonny Styles. Like, you could tell me Sonny Styles is, in 15 years, a Hall of Fame player. Talking to my friends in the NFL, they compared him to Luke Kuechly, who’s going to the Hall of Fame this year, one of the great players — obviously, concussions derailed his career — but he was elite immediately. And Roquan Smith, same deal.

If they’re both healthy, I think Kuechly’s a better player. But Roquan’s a Pro Bowler, going to have a lot of accolades during his career, a fantastic middle linebacker. Those two guys went in the top 10.

And Styles was a better college prospect than those guys. Now, part of being a great player is you’ve got to live up to being a great prospect. But I would bet on Styles.

And I think when it’s all said and done, he might be viewed as one of, if not the best, players in this draft and was picked seventh. That’s just pretty damn good value.

Physical attributes were always scrutinized when looking at draft prospects. For example, there were doubts about Will Campbell and whether he could play offensive tackle because of his arm length. What do you make of these doubts after Campbell’s first season in the NFL?

There’s a reason in boxing that, before the fight, when they show the measurables, it’s height, weight, the guy’s fighting record, and typically his arm length. Because if my arms are four or five inches longer than your arms, I can hit you and you can’t hit me, right, if we’re at the same distance?

And that’s part of hand-to-hand combat in the trenches, especially with tackles, who tend to be like corners on an island. At guard and center, it’s not as important because you typically have help. You can wash guys down. You see all sorts of shapes and sizes at guard and center, right? But at tackle, arm length historically has really, really mattered.

Now, some guys are physical freaks. They have 35-, 36-inch arms. I would say it is a question mark that has not been answered. I understand he was injured toward the end of the season. I’m not by any means going to write him off. But it’s going to be the No. 1 thing everyone’s going to watch for this year.

Now, just because you have short arms doesn’t mean that it’ll just translate to guard. That is a separate position. Has he ever played that position? Is he comfortable in much more of a phone-booth environment than he is at tackle? But by all accounts, he’s a great guy, hard worker, and tough.

At the end of the day, you either have the physical attributes or you don’t. Because when you’re going every week, for example, just look at this playoff run. Every single week. I mean, they won almost despite him. He couldn’t block Will Anderson, couldn’t block Nik Bonitto, couldn’t block Khalil Mack and the guys with the Chargers.

Now, they still won those games. Obviously, Seattle, they lit him up like a Christmas tree. He couldn’t touch these guys. That’s kind of the NFL. Teams don’t just have, like, “Oh, they’ve got one good defensive lineman.” Most teams have several good defensive linemen, and they come in waves.

So this year, their schedule is really hard. It’s going to be something we discuss forever.

Rueben Bain Jr. received similar scrutiny prior to falling to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at #15. Do you think he can dominate in the NFL like he did in college?

And Rueben Bain, the next question, similar scrutiny. I would say the difference is when you watch Bain in college and you watch Will Campbell in college — and I’m not trying to act like Campbell wasn’t a really good player at LSU — but I wouldn’t call him some elite, all-time prospect.

When you watch Bain on clearly the second-best team in the country, and if they played that game 10 times, it could have gone either way, the game that Indiana won. They were pretty evenly matched. I think Curt Cignetti would be the first to tell you. That team, like Ohio State, loaded with pros everywhere. And that was by far their best player.

So there are going to be times when he plays guys that maybe he has trouble with. But I do believe he’s good enough in terms of his motor, his mentality, and his overall natural ability.

I was once taught that when you evaluate defensive linemen from a pass-rush standpoint, you either land the quarterback or you don’t. You either generate pressures or you don’t, regardless of your measurables. Because we’ve seen a lot of guys that are 6-foot-6, 270, run a 4.5, and have arms that are 75 inches long, and they can’t do anything when it comes to rushing the passer.

So I would bet on Rueben Bain.

And I would also bet on Josh McDaniels and the coaching staff with New England, them getting the best out of Will Campbell. Is he going to be good enough? Because that position is really, really hard.

With defensive ends, Bain can be subbed in and out. He can play a stretch, a series, and then if he needs a blow, he can get one. As an offensive lineman, think about every position on the field. Defensive linemen rotate. Your elite corners usually don’t, but you can rotate beside your star linebacker. Linebackers in and out, different safety packages. Obviously, on offense, tight ends, wide receivers, running backs, they all come in. At tackle, you never leave.

So if you have 70 snaps in a game, you play all 70 snaps with the quarterback.

So that’s just something to keep an eye on. I’m personally rooting for the guy. He just married, actually, Doug Nussmeier’s daughter. Nussmeier is the offensive coordinator for the Saints, and his son Garrett is now going to be Will’s brother-in-law. Pretty cool story.

But I’m really high on Rueben Bain.

The Giants selected outside linebacker Arvell Reese and offensive lineman Francis Mauigoa in the top 10. Where do you think these guys will line up for the Giants in 2026?

I think Arvell Reese, if you wanted to say best value in the draft, he’s got a chance to be. I mean, his ceiling’s as high as the sun, right? But he’s 20 years old. He’s with the defensive line where they’re kind of going to change the defense. What position is he truly going to play? An outside linebacker, stand-up guy? Do they rotate him around?

The one thing you feel good about with him is John Harbaugh spent 18-plus years with the Baltimore Ravens. When you say the Baltimore Ravens, the first thing you think about is defense. And really, the first thing you think about is the front seven, right? Same with the Pittsburgh Steelers. That’s defined that matchup. Not as much recently, but a couple years ago, who had the No. 1 defense in the league? The Baltimore Ravens.

You weren’t moving the ball on them. And it started at the line of scrimmage. So I would bet on them figuring out a way for the guy to be used properly.

He hasn’t played that much. Sonny Styles changed positions. He was a safety, then they moved him to linebacker, but even he’d been on the field a long time. At Ohio State, it’s hard to get on the field, right? Because typically when you first show up on campus, you’re going to have an NFL player starting and probably an NFL player as a backup. So you kind of have to work your way up.

But what Matt Patricia did with him, I would bet on that working and just being kind of like this hybrid. I mean, he’s got a chance to be really, really good.

And my guess with Francis is he’ll just be their starting right tackle. That would be my guess.

And both those guys are—Reese, depending on how their defense works, I guess Kayvon Thibodeaux can play on the line of scrimmage. You would say that Abdul Carter and Brian Burns, if they’re playing a 3-4 defense, would be stand-up outside linebackers. But you rotate those guys.

So I would guess Reese doesn’t, quote unquote, start immediately, but he will definitely play a lot.

Rory McIlroy, LIV Golf & Tiger Woods

Middlekauff also weighs in on some of the biggest questions in professional golf. He discusses Rory McIlroy’s pursuit of additional major titles, LIV Golf’s future, Bryson DeChambeau’s growing YouTube presence, the Ryder Cup, and how Tiger Woods’ legacy will ultimately be remembered.

Aaron Rai just won the PGA Championship with a seven-year-old driver. Does his victory expose the top players complaining about the rollback ruining the game?

I think the majority of weeks on the PGA Tour, technology matters. These guys are flying the ball 320, 330 yards. And a guy like Aaron Rai, it’s hard for him to compete being outdriven by 30, 40, 50 yards on holes when he has a 6- or 7-iron in his hand and they have a wedge. They are just going to hit it, over the course of three, four days to make a cut, closer to the hole than him. The par 5s, they can get on in two, he can’t.

But in a tournament like that, where a major, specifically a PGA Championship that is set up kind of like a U.S. Open, a guy like that can’t compete.

I personally am not caught up with the rollback. I’m fine with the way everything is. I do understand it’s harder to find courses that challenge these guys, not necessarily Rai specifically, but the majority of these players. And on the high end, the Rorys, the Brysons, they hit it so far. If they’re on, they’re going to have such an advantage over Rai.

Part of the reason he won is he hit the fairway and he made putts. And if you do that, most tournaments, if I tell any PGA Tour player, I would say the majority of tournaments they play, especially the good ones and the hard ones — Pebble Beach, here at the Waste Management, I live in Scottsdale, Memorial, any tournament at Riviera — you’re going to hit fairways, you’re going to make a lot of putts, you’re going to be in contention.

So I think, I don’t want to say it’s a one-off, but if you look at the recent winners in majors, it’s been Scottie Scheffler won two last year, Rory McIlroy’s won back-to-back Masters, Bryson DeChambeau won a U.S. Open. Xander Schauffele won a couple in a year.

It’s been top-five, top-10 players, really top-two or top-three players, winning the majority of them. So I thought it was just kind of cool that we don’t get to see very often.

A lot of the players complaining about the rollback. Will the rollback actually level the playing field or simply shift the advantage to different types of players? Do you think it’s a waste of time?

I kind of do. I think it becomes a big advantage for the long hitters.

Cam Young said, I think before the PGA Championship, that he has been playing with a ball that would fall under the guidelines of the rollback since the end of last year. So at the Ryder Cup, where he was America’s best player, he’s won multiple times this year, right, with that ball. His famous shot at The Players was a 345-yard drive on the 18th hole. He did it with that ball.

So if I gave that ball to someone else, they’re probably not generating the same speed. Aaron Rai, his ball that now goes 295 yards in the air might go 278 yards or 282 yards. He’s at an even bigger disadvantage against Young, who already is a better player and more talented.

So I do think it becomes a bigger advantage for the quote-unquote elite, especially long hitters.

With the U.S. Open coming up, is the idea of a double Grand Slam becoming a realistic goal for Rory McIlroy, or more of a narrative the sport is building around him?

The double Grand Slam. Who would have that? Tiger Woods would have a double Grand Slam. That’s a good question.

I think it’s less about the double Grand Slam for Rory and just knocking off majors. So right now he’s at six.

You would say if he stays healthy, he’ll probably win another Masters. He’s clearly figured out that course. Phil Mickelson won there three times. Tiger won there five times. Bubba Watson’s won there twice. Scottie’s won there a couple times. You can get very, very comfortable at that venue.

So I think he’s going to win another one minimum at the Masters. Is he going to go three for three? Probably not. But over the course of the next five years, I would say Rory should be equal with Scottie as the betting favorite going into these tournaments at Augusta.

The other tournaments can be a little random. I mean, he had a chance at the PGA Championship. On Sunday, he just couldn’t hit a fairway. His driver, which is kind of his superpower, let him down. And it was, I think, the main reason he didn’t win that tournament because he was all over the map off the tee. You get in that rough and it kind of derails you.

I would say at the U.S. Open, you’re definitely going to have to hit fairways. So if he doesn’t have his driver figured out, he’s not going to win there.

But to me, his goal is less about double Grand Slams and much more about, can Rory get to 10 majors? Can he win four more majors?

And I would say I definitely think it’s a possibility. And that would be an incredible accomplishment.

Bryson DeChambeau has been pretty open about YouTube being a big part of his future if LIV shifts. Is that a genuine new model for elite golfers, or more of a distraction when competing at the top level?

I’m a huge fan. I watch a lot of these guys play YouTube golf. The Grant Horvats and the Bryan Bros, obviously, Wesley Bryan has won on the PGA Tour, to Bob Does Sports and the Barstool guys, that’s a great venue. And those guys have built financial windfalls from the businesses they’ve built around that.

Bryson DeChambeau was given a gift from God to be a dominant golfer. He’s been one since he was an amateur back in Fresno, California, before he even got to college. Then he won the national championship as an individual in college. He won the U.S. Amateur. He’s won U.S. Opens.

He belongs playing against the best. You can still do YouTube on the side, but as LIV disappears, which it feels like it’s going to, I want to see DeChambeau playing Rory, playing Scottie, playing Jon Rahm, all these guys getting back together. That’s where his talents belong.

No one wants to see Shohei Ohtani on the Savannah Bananas. You’d be like, yeah, he’d draw some huge crowds. He’d go nuts on social, but it would be a waste, right? Like LeBron joining AND1. It’s like, no, I want to watch LeBron play Kevin Durant and Steph Curry.

So I hope that doesn’t take place. But with Bryson, you never know. He’s been struggling at the majors.

Do you think Bryson is still evaluated as a competitive force first, or as part of LIV’s entertainment product? Do you think we need to see a strong performance from him at the U.S. Open?

He played well at the majors over the course of the last couple years. So sometimes you can just have, like, Tiger had bad majors. Phil had bad majors. It happens. Scottie rarely does, but a couple years ago at Pinehurst, he didn’t play that well, where Bryson won.

So I would say this about the U.S. Open: Bryson’s won that tournament twice. He beat and went head-to-head, essentially, with Rory, took him down, and blew out the field years ago at Winged Foot when only Matt Wolff was even remotely close. Now, that was kind of a weird tournament. No one was there. But still, I think he kind of validated that by what he did at Pinehurst.

I think the key for Bryson, just like Jon Rahm, is they are elite players. They are top-five players, and on any given week, any given month stretch, or any given six-month stretch, they can be the best player in the world.

And I think it’s hard to maintain that when you’re playing in a circus, especially now.

So I think the faster everyone gets back together, the more you will see Bryson and Rahm have their consistent form like we do with Rory and Scottie.

Anirban Lahiri said that some LIV players would rather retire than return. Does that suggest the divide is now so deep it’s irreversible?

It’s a good question.

No shade to Lahiri. He’s a high-level player. Clearly, no one cares about him. So if he never plays another event, besides his family and probably his financial advisors, no one would notice.

And then there’s the crew of the older guys on LIV — Sergio Garcia, Lee Westwood, Graeme McDowell, kind of that crew, Ian Poulter. If they want to retire or not come back, it doesn’t matter at this point.

I think there’s that middle ground of a guy like Dustin Johnson. I think a lot of guys on the PGA Tour, if DJ wanted to come back, they would let him come back. Do I think he would retire? One hundred percent.

So do I think retirement is on the table for him? I do. And when I say retirement, like, yeah, I’m not coming back to the PGA Tour.

I think the key is, does Bryson want to retire? Does Jon Rahm want to retire? Does that next tier of Tyrrell Hatton, Cam Smith, Joaquin Niemann?

They really just kind of need that crew of guys to come back. And the rest of the guys on LIV are kind of — I’m not trying to throw shade. I personally don’t care that much. It’s not like I have some vendetta against the tournament or their league.

I mean, they just showed you. PIF, which has trillions of dollars behind it, backed out. So I’m not saying anything that the money people haven’t already acknowledged: those guys just don’t matter in terms of the business of pro golf.

What does Jim Furyk have to do to turn the tide for the Americans in the Ryder Cup?

That’s a great question.

I attended this year, and we got worked. We got destroyed.

I do think that anytime—and I get why they did it—but they elected Keegan Bradley as the captain. It’s been well documented how much that event means to him. And then he became one of our best players. He should have been on the team.

If Jim Furyk had been the team captain for the New York Ryder Cup, Bradley would have been one of the 12 guys. And he did the right thing by not playing because it would have been too difficult. It was just too much going on.

We didn’t play that well. They played out of their minds, and we got worked.

The problem is, in a year, we’re going to their spot, and we just don’t win over there. So are we going to win when we go there? Probably not.

And one big advantage—or really two big advantages—they have: at the Ryder Cup, we set it up, we kind of made it easy for everybody. There was no rough. So those guys were at no disadvantage when they missed the fairway, and most of their guys are long. And then they were putting out of their minds.

They know how to set up their courses. So when we go to an international venue, that’s one thing they’re elite at. And the other thing they’re elite at is setting up their teams and the timing of who hits when.

Last year, it was Russell Henley and Scottie Scheffler. And after the round, it’s like, why did you have Henley hit on those holes with Scottie? And then realize, oh yeah, we were wrong, and the next round they flipped it.

That would never happen with the international guys. They would never disadvantage one of their players because of analytics. Analytics is a pretty big buzzword. Their analytical team dominates.

So I like Furyk. Fellow bald guy, U.S. Open winner, he shot 59 once when 59 used to matter. But I think we’re going to lose.

In light of Tiger Woods’ recent troubles, do you believe his legacy has been affected, or will his achievements on the course ultimately outweigh the controversies?

I think it’s just a huge part of his story.

I watched a documentary recently about Elvis. And Elvis died, what, at 42 years old? Obviously, there’s a lot of content right now about Michael Jackson. I grew up a little post-Mike Tyson’s heyday in the mid-to-late ’80s, when you said Mike Tyson, people had all these different thoughts.

I think that’s kind of the world Tiger’s in. He’s just this ultra, ultra-famous guy who everyone — you know, before Tiger showed up, golf, it’s still a niche sport. I mean, it by no means has the audience of football or soccer worldwide, but it’s relatively big. And he took it, he made it, when he was in tournaments, he became as big as Michael Jordan and as big as Tom Brady or something. And that’s just pretty hard to do.

So from his dominance on the golf course, most people would say Tiger was the greatest player to ever play professional golf. I would say that. Now, he’s not the most accomplished, right? But he’s the best.

It’s like Michael Jordan. His career is not nearly as long as LeBron James’. LeBron is going to have more accolades at the end in terms of All-NBA, years played, All-Star appearances. But Michael’s run from the late ’80s to ’98, it doesn’t get any better. And I would say, as most people would, I think Jordan’s the greatest player of all time.

And I think Michael’s obviously way less controversial because he doesn’t flip cars on residential roads.

I just think it’s a huge part of his story. And let’s face it, it impacted his career because flipping that car at the Genesis, which is the name of the tournament and also the car he was driving, derailed Tiger Woods’ latter half of his career. Because he had just won the Masters in ’19. He had won the FedEx playoffs in ’18, where it was weird back then because they had staggered starts. Technically, Justin Rose was the FedEx champion, but Tiger won the tournament by strokes.

And it’s that famous picture of all those fans following up East Lake, which still gets my juices flowing. He easily could have won the PGA Championship that year against Brooks Koepka, and The Open Championship that year in ’18 — I think Francesco Molinari won it. Tiger was right there. I remember watching it. He had an awful shot on 11. It kind of derailed his Sunday, but Tiger was playing.

He wasn’t going to recapture 2000 Tiger, but if he hadn’t shattered his leg, I do think he would have won more tournaments and potentially other majors.

So it’s all intertwined. It’s sad, but it’s also just kind of part of the story. It’s, no pun intended, for being the Big Cat, he’s kind of led nine lives. I mean, he’s kind of lucky to be alive in some of these. Definitely the L.A. crash.

But this goes back to the night on, was it Thanksgiving or Friday of Thanksgiving week, when he got hit in the face and ran into the fire hydrant. And I think it’s never been the same since. We’ve had moments where he feels kind of normal, but it’s just never quite normal.

And yeah, it sucks that his golfing career is essentially over. And then I think once he shattered the ankle, he started having other injuries because he trained so much. He’s torn his Achilles. I mean, his body looks like a mixture of someone that played in the NFL or the NBA.

Have you ever seen an NBA player from the ’70s, the way they walk? Have you ever met a guy that played NFL football in the ’70s or early ’80s? Most of them don’t look like Howie Long. Most of them can barely move. And that’s what it feels like with Tiger Woods. And he played golf.

His back’s fused together. He’s got knee replacements. His ankle’s fused together. And then, obviously, the controversies of him driving a car and substance abuse.

So I think it’s all intertwined. It’s just kind of part of their story, like a Mike Tyson, like an Elvis, like some of these ultra-famous people that are the most talented in their field, but their personal lives also just feel like a mess.