I’m excited for the draft.
You’re excited for the draft.
The teams at the top of the draft, though, aren’t quite as much, and that’s thanks to the makeup of a class that’ll have GMs in its upper reaches holding their … breath as they turn in their cards. There’s a lot to like, sure. But there’s plenty to worry about, too, and that’s from the top of the first round all the way to the bottom.
“If you have 15 first-round grades, then the class sucks,” said one general manager Saturday. “And I got less than 15 this year.”
On top of that, the landscape of this draft’s blue-chip tier is covered with potential landmines. After dozens and dozens of calls and text exchanges with GMs, coaches and scouts the last few weeks, a few themes emerged.
• Most teams I’ve talked to believe that Alabama’s Bryce Young and Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud are the best, and easiest-to-project, quarterbacks, though each comes with some perceived limitations. Taking Florida’s Anthony Richardson or Kentucky’s Will Levis, conversely, comes with a lot of risk, but also potential reward on the back end. (We’ll have a lot more on the quarterbacks in our annual coaches-on-quarterbacks breakdown on Tuesday). So which QB teams have atop their boards will vary. There’s no completely clean prospect here.
• I’d peg the league consensus as having eight non-quarterbacks in the top group, with three pass-rushers (Georgia DT Jalen Carter, Alabama OLB Will Anderson Jr., Texas Tech DE Tyree Wilson), two corners (Illinois’s Devon Witherspoon, Oregon’s Christian Gonzalez), two offensive linemen (Ohio State’s Paris Johnson Jr., Northwestern’s Peter Skoronski), and Texas tailback Bijan Robinson in that crew.
• Each of those guys have questions. Carter’s are off the field. Anderson’s are on his ceiling as a player. Wilson’s are medical. Witherspoon’s concern his size, and Gonzalez’s are on his physicality as a player. Johnson’s are on his playing strength, and Skoronski’s related to the fact that most teams project him as a guard, rather than a tackle. And Robinson? Well, he’s probably the cleanest prospect in the class, but he’s a running back.
So that sets the stage for what should be a wildly unpredictable first round—which is to say, yes, what all those teams are worried about, you should go ahead and get excited over.
It also sets the stage for our annual analysis of what all 32 teams will actually do.
