Bears, Cards ace opening round … We are always loathe to anoint winners and losers out of the first round of any draft -let’s wait to see who can actually play in the NFL – but it was hard not to like what Chicago and Arizona accomplished in last night’s draft. As we noted last night, the Bears only have 2 picks remaining over the final 6 rounds, but even if they had gone home last night they’d still have one of the most impactful draft classes after selected QB Caleb Williams with the first overall pick and WR Rome Odunze, a big-play target with the 9th pick. Meanwhile, Arizona didn’t get cute and sat tight at #4 and selected WR Marvin Harrison, the consensus top non-QB prospect, and just maybe the best overall prospect period. Then the Cardinals got a sneaky good prospect in DE Darius Robinson, a 285-pounder who had 8.5 sacks at Missouri last fall and dominated at the Senior Bowl, with the 27th selection. At the same time, Minnesota at least made things interesting last night orchestrating the only two trades in the first 20 picks. Certainly, the Vikings had to be thrilled that they were able to get QB JJ McCarthy without having to give much in the way of draft capital, but he was still the 5th QB taken and to our eyes looks too much like Mac Jones; however, its much easier to like what the Vikings did in trading up to get DE/ER Dallas Turner, who many thought would be the first defensive player off the board, with the 17th pick.
We mentioned in an earlier dispatch the several teams that had to be thrilled with the guy still on the board when they picked including Las Vegas (TE Brock Bowers at #13), the LA Rams (making their 1st opening round pick in 8 years getting Jared Verse at #19), Philadelphia (CB Q Mitchell at #22), Jacksonville (WR Brian Thomas at #23) and Detroit (CB Terrion Arnold at #24.) Other picks we liked as being good fits included New Orleans getting OT Taliese Fuaga at #14, Cincinnati getting OT Amarius Mims, who may have as much upside as any player in the draft, at #18, and Pittsburgh getting G/T Troy Fautanu at #20.
On the other hand, we’ll leave it those with higher pay grades to figure out what the heck Atlanta was thinking when they shocked the world selecting QB Michael Penix with the 8th pick. Of course, that comes just after they signed Kirk Cousins to a huge free agent contract. Maybe they take a QB who was just too good to pass on, but its not at all clear that Penix is all that close to that. We also felt that maybe Tennessee could have done more to help Will Levis with the 7th pick. OT JC Latham certainly addresses a need for the Titans but there were some legitimate big-play threats like WR Rome Odunze and TE Brock Bowers still on the board at that spot.
We are also still monumentally perplexed what Buffalo was thinking trading down with Kansas City, the team they are ostensibly chasing every year in the AFC, which allowed the Chiefs to address the one glaring need in their offence, a lack of speed at WR, by selecting Xavier Worthy, he of the record 4.21 40. One has to wonder if maybe the Bills, who lost WRs Stefon Diggs and Gabe Davis this off-season might have used Worthy themselves. To boot, it doesn’t appear as if the Bills got much in return as the compensation didn’t amount to much more than a flip of a couple of picks, including one in the 7th round. And with the addition of the speedy worthy the other AFC contenders have to worry that the Chiefs who have already won three of the past 5 Super Bowls suddenly got exponentially better with the addition of even just the threat of Worthy’s speed. The other team, that we suspect may have gotten significantly better with their opening round pick are the NY Giants who finally got a legit #1 wideout to spark up what has been a very pedestrian offence in WR Malik Nabers and has the potential make a lot of people around him better including embattled QB Daniel Jones.
