South Carolina Football: NFL Draft analyst moves Spencer Rattler up draft board

South Carolina football fans have been trying to tell the world that Spencer Rattler is something special.

Putting up solid production numbers behind a bad offensive line in 2023, dominating at the Senior Bowl, and dispelling character concerns with his maturation in recent years, Rattler has started to convince others of the same.

Believed by some to be a late draft pick just a couple of months ago, Spencer Rattler almost is universally thought of as a Day 2 selection (meaning 2nd or 3rd round) in April's NFL Draft. Some analysts even have begun to insert Rattler into the discussion of future starting quarterbacks.

In recent days, NFL Draft analyst Cody Carpentier of Roster Watch moved Rattler up into the 2nd round of his latest mock draft, pushing him ahead of Oregon's Bo Nix. In Carpentier's hypothetical, he has the Las Vegas Raiders trading up (swapping with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers) to snag Rattler with the 57th pick of the draft.

Most draft projections have seen Rattler going 7th (behind Southern Cal's Caleb Williams, North Carolina's Drake Maye, LSU's Jayden Daniels, Michigan's JJ McCarthy, Washington's Michael Penix Jr., and Nix), and some even have had him going 8th, 9th, 10th, or 11th (also behind Tennessee Joe Milton, and/or Tulane's Michael Pratt, and/or Florida State's Jordan Travis, and/or Western Kentucky's Austin Reed).

Carpentier says that the film on Rattler is better than Nix's. In a short clip shared by Roster Watch, the draft analyst argued that the former South Carolina football star has done things "the right way" since arriving in Columbia in the offseason before the 2022 season. He also added that Rattler grades higher on film, he has put all maturity questions to bed with his growth as a person over the past two years, and he proved that he was better than Nix at the Senior Bowl and NFL Combine.

Carpentier is a bit lower on Gamecock wide receiver Xavier Legette, however, mocking him to go late in the 3rd round to the Indianapolis Colts with the 82nd overall pick. He is higher than most of Carolina tight end Trey Knox, though, projecting him to be taken in the 5th round by the Cleveland Browns as the 3rd and final former Gamecock selected in his 5-round mock draft.

He also mocked former Gamecock tight end/wide receiver/running back Jaheim Bell (who transferred to Florida State) and running back MarShawn Lloyd (who transferred to Southern Cal) to be taken in the 4th and 5th rounds of the NFL Draft, respectively.