PFF spotlights Bryce Lance, Charles Demmings among top FCS draft prospects

PFF’s latest FCS draft feature put real numbers behind two players who are no longer just small-school curiosities. Bryce Lance checked in as the No. 62 overall prospect in the 2026 class, while Charles Demmings brought the kind of testing profile that can pull a cornerback into draft talks fast.

Lance’s case starts with production that already looks like NFL material. In 2024, he caught 75 passes for 1,071 yards and 17 touchdowns, a single-season total that tied the Missouri Valley Football Conference record. He followed that with another strong year in 2025, starting all 13 games, leading the MVFC with 83.0 receiving yards per game and becoming the first receiver in North Dakota State history with multiple 1,000-yard seasons. He finished that season with 51 catches for 1,079 yards and eight touchdowns, then placed 12th in Walter Payton Award voting. PFF paired that production with a 4.34-second 40-yard dash and a 9.98 Relative Athletic Score, the kind of combination that makes Lance much more than a familiar last name in Fargo.

North Dakota State has become a factory for NFL-relevant names, and Lance’s profile fits the school’s recent standard. Christian Watson and Trey Lance both helped make the Bison pipeline a fixture in draft rooms, but Bryce Lance has built his own resume with volume, scoring and verified speed. He also landed on the 2025 Panini Senior Bowl Top 300 watchlist, another sign that evaluators were already treating him as a legitimate pre-draft case rather than a late-blooming sleeper.

Demmings offers a different path to the same destination. PFF said he allowed an NFL passer rating of 39.8 in 2025 and posted back-to-back coverage grades above 80.0, including 81.6 in 2024 and 80.4 in 2025. He also logged 1,731 career snaps at outside corner, enough workload to make his testing numbers harder to dismiss as a workout-only spike.

The testing was loud. Demmings ran 4.44 in the 40, posted an 11-foot broad jump and a 42-inch vertical at the NFL Scouting Combine, and PFF described him as a “Combine king.” Stephen F. Austin’s roster bio added more context from 2024, when he played in 10 games and produced two interceptions, eight pass breakups and a tackle for loss, including a career-high three pass breakups against Utah Tech. He was also one of just five FCS players named to the Panini Senior Bowl Top 300 watchlist and later made the East-West Shrine Bowl 1000 Watchlist.

Together, Lance and Demmings show the two clearest ways an FCS player breaks through: one through bankable scoring production, the other through rare athletic traits that force a second look. Both are already on major pre-draft radars, and both gave evaluators enough in 2025 to start treating them like more than small-school names.