There was a moment on the third day of the NFL Draft when I realized something.

I saw one of those typical “NFL draft picks by school” tweets. Usually those don’t really do anything for me. Oh, Alabama, LSU and Ohio State have the most draft picks so far? No WAY.

This one, however, was different.

It was indeed Alabama at the top of the draft board, but it was tied with another school for the most selections to that point. Alabama, 7 … N.C. State, 7.

Waaaaait a minute. NC State? Didn’t the Wolfpack play in the Sun Bowl? I knew about Bradley Chubb being a top pick, but N.C. State really had that much NFL talent? Like, more than Clemson and Florida State? That’s crazy.

No wonder Cole Cubelic had N.C. State making it to the Playoff before 2017. He saw what the rest of us couldn’t. Well, he saw the film, which is exactly what NFL scouts and front offices break down before the draft.

As 247sports writer Brad Crawford tweeted, it’s even more impressive to think that South Carolina, 2 years removed from a 1-7 season in the SEC and with only one NFL Draft pick (Skai Moore should’ve made it two), beat that NFL-talent rich N.C. State squad on a neutral site.

That’s another thing that we learned from the NFL Draft. What else did we learn about the SEC this weekend?

Credit: Tim Heitman-USA TODAY Sports

It’s worth noting that the NFL Draft is all about projections. Rewarding college kids for their accomplishments as amateurs isn’t the name of the game.

If it were, Josh Allen wouldn’t have gone No. 7 overall with his career highlight being a second-team All-Mountain West selection as a junior while Northwestern running back Justin Jackson was picked No. 251 overall after finishing his career as the Big Ten’s third-leading rusher of all time.

But the draft can show some trends that say a lot about the college game. For example, the SEC had the most draft picks for the 12th consecutive year. How many national titles has the SEC won in that stretch? Eight. That’s not a surprise. To compete for a national title, you need NFL talent.

Yesterday, I broke that down in the past 6 drafts. The teams who have played in the title game had an average of 7 NFL players the following draft. Georgia had 6 and was on the low end of that.

Despite how loaded with NFL talent the SEC was, look at how many SEC programs had 4 or fewer draft picks:

  • Auburn, 4
  • Mississippi State, 4
  • Ole Miss, 4
  • Tennessee, 3
  • Texas A&M, 3
  • Arkansas, 2
  • Mizzou, 1
  • South Carolina, 1
  • Vanderbilt, 1
  • Kentucky, 0

Needless to say, hindsight shows why each of those teams didn’t compete for a national title. Even Auburn, which had incredible showings against Alabama and Georgia, looked too Kerryon Johnson-reliant when he was hobbled in the SEC Championship and Peach Bowl.

OK, so you’ll notice something else there. Florida and LSU weren’t listed. They had 5 and 7 draft picks, respectively. Still, one had a 4-win season while the other never came close to sniffing so much as a division title. To me, that speaks to poor coaching. I think there are a lot of coaches who would salivate at the chance of having a half dozen NFL players.

Speaking of that, raise your hand if you had Danny Etling as the SEC’s only drafted quarterback? No you didn’t, you liar.

Quarterback play from upperclassmen in the SEC was not where it needed to be in 2017. We probably didn’t need the draft to tell us that, but Etling’s lone seventh-round selection — stunning seventh-round selection* — did so anyway. It’s the young bucks like Tua Tagovailoa and Jake Fromm who look like they’ll dominate the SEC for another two years and eventually move on to NFL riches. By this time next year, we could be looking back on how great SEC QB play was after Drew Lock, Jarrett Stidham, Kyle Shurmur and maybe Jake Bentley get drafted.

But when you think about it, stellar NFL quarterback prospects don’t indicate conference success at all. The Pac-12 had a pair quarterbacks who were top-10 draft picks, but the conference as a whole was sub-par. And the Big 12 owned the No. 1 overall pick in Baker Mayfield, but he was the conference’s lone first-round pick while the SEC had 10 (also, not a single Big 12 school had 5 draft picks and the conference had just 20 total).

You need NFL talent to have depth in your league, and nobody had more of that than the SEC in 2017. Shocking, I know.

There was something else that was actually interesting. Apparently the SEC even has the best specialists in the land? Daniel Carlson, JK Scott, Johnny Townsend and Logan Cooke gave the SEC 4 of the 6 drafted specialists. Maybe that was a product of the SEC lacking a bunch of high-powered offenses, which meant that some punters got some prime opportunities. Or maybe punting/kicking just means more in the SEC.

Who knows. What I do know is that for the 12th straight year, the SEC won the NFL draft. Sure, the ACC got close, but there’s a reason that the SEC hasn’t truly been dethroned as the power conference in college football (I argued there was none in the regular season). It isn’t just about getting the most 4- and 5-star recruits. It’s about winning titles and getting guys to the NFL, year after year.

Even in what was considered a down year for the conference, it was still an All-SEC title game and 53 players from the conference were drafted. That tells the story. Looking back, the draft was further confirmation.

The year belonged to the SEC.