It happens every year ahead of the NFL Draft: A player suddenly rises up boards between January and April without playing a snap of competitive football.

That’s when NFL scouts start to really grind tape, and when the Underwear Olympics — err, the NFL Scouting Combine — takes place in Indianapolis, where players are measured and complete a series of speed and agility tests.

As the NFL insiders write mock drafts throughout the offseason based on information they hear from teams, it starts to become clearer who may hear their name called sooner than expected when the 2023 NFL Draft starts on April 27.

Here are five players who are rising up draft boards:

Richardson had a ho-hum college career, only starting one full season with the Gators and putting together pedestrian passing numbers (2,549 passing yards, 17 touchdowns and nine interceptions on 53.8 completion percentage).

Richardson is an electric runner and playmaker, and he was always expected to play on Sundays.

But before the pre-draft process began, he was dealing as high as 100/1 to go No. 1 overall.

Then came the combine.

Kent Lee Platte of Pro Football Network created a highly popular metric of measuring a player’s athleticism called Relative Athletic Score (RAS), which takes into account combine measurables such as height, weight, 40-yard dash time, shuttle time and 3-cone time.

Richardson, who measured in at 6-foot-4, 244 pounds and ran a 4.43 40-yard dash, scored a perfect 10 — the highest score for a QB in the history of the metric.

At one point, he was down to 6/1 odds to go No. 1 overall until Bryce Young became a runaway favorite.

He’s settled in as the co-favorite to go No. 3 on FanDuel, with many expecting the Cardinals to trade out of that pick with a QB-needy team.

Van Ness wasn’t a full-time player during his time at Iowa, logging 13 sacks in 26 games over two seasons while playing around 35 snaps a game in 2022.

While he isn’t a complete player, his large frame and explosiveness as a pass rusher appears to have piqued teams’ interest.

After a combine performance where he ran a 4.58 40-yard dash, Van Ness now seems likely to go at least in the middle of the first round, if not earlier.

Currently at FanDuel Sportsbook, Van Ness is the third-favorite to go No. 8 overall, a pick the Falcons currently hold.

While this isn’t expected to be a strong wide receiver class — especially compared to the recent ones that produced Justin Jefferson, Ja’Marr Chase and Garrett Wilson — some of the pass catchers at the end of the first round have started to move their way up draft boards.

In particular, Zay Flowers, a 5-foot-9, 182-pound wide receiver out of Boston College, has garnered interest at the top of the draft, with the Patriots (who currently hold pick No. 14) recently holding a full-day visit with him.

Flowers has obvious size concerns and probably won’t be a true, alpha-dog WR1 in the NFL, but he can fly — and proved it at the combine with a 4.42-second 40-yard dash.

Now consistently mocked in the first round, Flowers is the second-favorite to be the first wide receiver drafted at +650, well behind the heavy favorite in Jaxon Smith-Njigba.

As an undersized, explosive interior pass rusher out of the University of Pittsburgh, Kancey has drawn (completely unnecessary and unfair) comparisons to Aaron Donald, who is among the greatest defensive football players of all time.

That said, their combine numbers were remarkably similar, with Kancey actually beating Donald’s 40-yard dash, shuttle and three-cone times and measuring in a half-inch taller.

The main difference is in arm length; Kancey is a historical outlier with 30.625-inch arms, one of the shortest measurements for his position at the history of the combine.

Still, Kancey has shot up mock drafts since his explosive performance in Indianapolis, and is frequently being mocked at the end of the first round.

You’re going to sense a theme here: If you’re a defensive lineman and you show out at the combine, you will fly up draft boards.

Adebawore, a three-year starter at Northwestern, did not put up the production one might expect from an early draft pick, racking up 12.5 sacks in 36 career games.

But, similarly to Kancey, he put up elite scores in every athletic testing category at the combine besides the size-related ones.

His 4.49 40-yard dash time is in the 100th percentile of defensive linemen ever measured at the combine.

At one point considered to be a mid-round pick, the former Wildcat is now commonly mocked in the top 50, and even at the end of the first round by some.