Last year, I wrote that it was a lock.

The SEC was going to break its record of 12 1st-round picks taken in the NFL Draft. (Technically, the ACC set the mark in 2006 and the SEC tied it in 2013.) Still, it seemed like a forgone conclusion that the conference would hit that mark of 13 1st-round picks in 2019.

Why? At this time last year, I broke down mock drafts from ESPN, NFL.com and Bleacher Report, and they had an average of 14 SEC players coming off the board. All of them (Mel Kiper, Todd McShay, Daniel Jeremiah and Matt Miller) had at least 13 SEC players, too.

As it turned out, though, the 1st-round record wasn’t a lock. It actually wasn’t even that close to happening.

Instead of 13 SEC players coming off the board in the 1st round, only 9 were picked. Granted, there were 12 SEC players taken in the first 37 picks, so it wasn’t totally crazy to think that mark was reachable.

A year later, I thought it’d be fitting to revisit that. After all, the SEC is always looking for ways to flex. Between national championships, teams ranked in the Top 25 and recruiting domination, the draft success isn’t necessarily up in the air like those other things. In 2019, the SEC had the most draft picks for the 13th consecutive year, and the conference finished with a record 64 players selected.

Predicting that number, in my opinion, is far too difficult. But analyzing the mock drafts to get some sort of idea about how the 1st round could shake out is manageable, so that’s what I did.

Here’s the breakdown of 1st-rounders by Power 5 conferences in mock drafts from ESPN and 2 from NFL.com (1 via Jeremiah and 1 via Bucky Brooks):

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(For what it’s worth, I’d usually include Matt Miller and Todd McShay in a mock draft roundup chart like this, but neither put one out since the underclassman deadline passed. Miller had 16 SEC players in his 1st round a month ago, and he actually had a whopping 18 SEC players in the top 32 in his way-too-early big board 9 months ago.)

I mean, my goodness. In all of those mock drafts, the SEC has more players coming off the board in Round 1 than the other 4 Power 5 conferences combined. That’s, um, significant.

Thirteen SEC players were listed in all 3 of those mock drafts, and a total of 19 SEC players appeared in at least 1.

In other words, yeah, it’s fair to say that 1st-round record is very much in play.

As I wrote last year, obviously this is still early in the process. A lot can change between now and the draft with the combine, pro days and meetings with NFL teams.

Generally speaking, I tend to think that the SEC gets the benefit of the doubt at this point because the chances to perform on a big stage have been more plentiful. Sometimes, it takes the combine or breaking down more footage of a Group of 5 cornerback to determine that he’s 1st-round worthy.

That’s why I’m banking on that early average of 16 SEC 1st-rounders to take a slight dip over the next few months. Maybe once the buzz of LSU’s national championship wears off, it hurts some of the borderline 1st-round guys like Justin Jefferson, Kristian Fulton and Patrick Queen. Perhaps a prospect like D’Andre Swift isn’t deemed 1st-round worthy with so many elite backs like Travis Etienne, Najee Harris and Chuba Hubbard all returning to school.

Things like this always seem to happen.

Could that work in the other way? I suppose. Perhaps getting Jake Fromm away from James Coley’s restrictive system will make someone think he’s worthy of a late 1st-round pick. Or maybe if one of Florida’s edge defenders like Jon Greenard or Jabari Zuniga run a Montez Sweat-like 40-yard dash, they could suddenly creep into that 1st-round conversation.

One thing we know — opinions are going to change over the course of a few months. Draft stocks rise and fall on a weekly basis this time of year.

We also know that draft quantity doesn’t always equate to NFL quality. Of those 12 1st-round picks from the SEC in 2013, half are out of the NFL. In the past 5 seasons, the only one to make a Pro Bowl was Cordarrelle Patterson, and he made it as a kick returner. The 2 best NFL players from the SEC out of that draft were Darius Slay and Tyrann Mathieu, neither of whom was a 1st-rounder.

But, for the sake of this argument, we’re talking about the conference continuing to dominate the draft. Given how lopsided those early mocks are, it’s tough to envision a scenario in which the SEC doesn’t have another historic draft.

And really, it would cap a historic year. We just saw an SEC team win a national championship in unprecedented fashion, and we just saw the SEC finish with 4 of the top 8 teams in the Associated Press Top 25. Depending on how things unfold next week, the SEC could cap off the 2020 recruiting cycle with 6 of the top 8 classes.

What more could accomplishing that 1st-round feat possibly do for the SEC? Well, it’d allow those muscles to be flexed even harder this offseason.