Four FCS Players Drafted, North Dakota State Lands Two Picks

Four FCS players came off the board in the 2026 NFL Draft, but the sharper story was how late the subdivision had to wait. For the first time in FCS history, no player was selected in the first three rounds, and the first name did not come until Southeastern Louisiana defensive tackle Kaleb Proctor went No. 104 overall to the Arizona Cardinals.

The rest of the class clustered in the fourth and fifth rounds, underscoring both the thinness of this year’s draft haul and the steadiness of the programs still producing pro-ready talent. North Dakota State wide receiver Bryce Lance followed at No. 136 to the New Orleans Saints, Stephen F. Austin cornerback Charles Demmings went No. 163 to the Minnesota Vikings, and North Dakota State quarterback Cole Payton closed the FCS group at No. 178 to the Philadelphia Eagles. The four picks were split evenly by position, with one defensive lineman, one quarterback, one wide receiver and one defensive back, and they came from just two conferences, the Southland and the Missouri Valley Football Conference, which each had two selections.

North Dakota State again sat at the center of the FCS draft conversation. Lance and Payton made the Bison the only FCS program with multiple selections this year, and the pair pushed the school’s NFL Draft total to 17 since North Dakota State joined the subdivision in 2004. That gives the Bison 16th and 17th draft picks from the FCS era and extends a pipeline that has become one of the clearest talent validators in the subdivision. Lance arrived in the draft as one of the top FCS prospects in the country, a 2025 Walter Payton Award finalist, a 2025 Stats Perform FCS All-America first-team selection and a 2026 NFL Scouting Combine invitee. He also backed that résumé with back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons. Payton, meanwhile, was one of the 30 finalists for the 2025 Walter Payton Award as well, giving North Dakota State a rare duo of decorated offensive prospects in the same class.

The other selections carried program-level milestones too. Proctor became Southeastern Louisiana’s first draft pick since Harlan Miller in 2016, a notable return for a program in Hammond, Louisiana that had waited nearly a decade for another player to hear his name called. Demmings became the seventh Stephen F. Austin player drafted since 2000, another reminder that NFL teams still mine FCS rosters for cornerbacks who can handle man coverage and special-teams value. The 2026 draft did not produce the top-end surge the subdivision has seen in other years, but the names that did come off the board showed the FCS pipeline is still alive, still watched, and still capable of sending polished players to Sunday football.