Buzz at the top of the board … Again, its smoke and mirrors season in the NFL and one never knows whether what one hears is genuine or misinformation or even a little bit of both, but there is clearly some buzz at the top of the 2024 board. On the one hand, it does appear to be pretty much a lock that Chicago and Washington take QBs with the 1st and 2nd picks respectively. However, quite literally from the day the draft order was set there have been rumblings that New England, with new management in what seems like forever, need not necessarily also take a QB with the 3rd pick. Initially the whispers were that the Patriots could eschew the QB and select star Ohio State WR Marvin Harrison, the consensus top non-QB prospect, and worry about the QB later. More recently, there have been rumblings that the Patriots weren’t all that enamored with North Carolina’s Drake Maye and would pass on him at #3; and not to confuse the issue, but there have been other rumblings that the Patriots weren’t all that enamored with LSU’s Jayden Daniels and would pass on him if he was the last of the three top available to them with the third pick. All that suggests that its is possible that the Patriots just might pass on a QB at #3 if they didn’t like the choice and either select Harrison or trade the pick. And just in the last few days there’s a bit of a buzz that the Patriots could actually consider Michigan’s JJ McCarthy at that spot.
Indeed, there’s just a lit bit of buzz out there that McCarthy is getting some legitimate top 5 consideration by teams around the league and it should not come as a surprise to anyone if QBs go 1-2-3-4 for the first time in history. At the same time, there are some major questions with both McCarthy and Maye that NFL teams have 37 days to chew on. With McCarthy,for example, he’s got all the intangibles aced, but he just doesn’t a big arm and there just aren’t that many really QBs in the league that can’t really zing it. On the other hand, no one questions Maye’s arm strength; indeed, he likely has the strongest arm in the 2024 draft class, but the accuracy and decision-making at UNC were too often inconsistent. At the same time, we have wondered how the NFL would be looking at the two if Maye had played at Michigan and McCarthy at North Carolina. And that’s why NFL execs get the big bucks!
