Despite a lack of quarterback talent, teams should be able to find starter-level talent deep into the second and third rounds.
We’ve got more, a little more about “What I’m Hearing” 24 hours out from Thursday’s first round …
• I asked a few teams Wednesday how many first-round grades they have on their draft board. One told me 18, another said 16, and two more told me, without giving a specific number, their number is in that range. Which means, depending on how things fall, and with quarterbacks factored in, these teams probably will be into their second-round grades in the 20s.
Now that doesn’t sound great, but it’s not unusual. And that, I think, is pretty illustrative of this class—lacking in blue-chippers, but catching up with the normal value around the teens, with solid, unspectacular starter-level talent available into the third round.
This is where I tell you, again: This draft reminds me of 2013, from the lack of top-end quarterback talent to the class strengths (offensive line/pass rushers), to the fact there are good prospects well into Friday’s second and third rounds. And that makes it a bit of a scout’s draft, with it being on the personnel departments to dig out a Travis Kelce or Zach Ertz who could develop into something more down the line.
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• The biggest question I’ve gotten when asking about teams trading up this weekend is “For what?” I think I can now answer that question—corners.
Depending on how long Cincinnati’s Sauce Gardner and LSU’s Derek Stingley Jr. are on the board, there could be action in the back half of the top 10, with teams moving up to land one of the two. Both could become, in the right situation, the best player in the entire class. And so a few teams sitting between nine and 14 have had talks on moving with the teams in front of them.
• For what it’s worth, Seattle’s done a lot of work on Stingley. Taking him in the top 10 would be a pretty big departure from the team’s standard operating procedure under Pete Carroll and John Schneider—they haven’t taken a corner higher than 90th overall over the 12 drafts they have run together.
There’s a real chance it happens this year, with new coordinator Clint Hurtt in the saddle.
• The way I think the league sees the corners right now—Gardner and Stingley, in some order, then a dropoff, then Washington’s Trent McDuffie, then a dropoff, then Florida’s Kaiir Elam, Washington’s Kyler Gordon and Clemson’s Andrew Booth in some order. And McDuffie’s behind Gardner and Stingley mostly because of his size/short arms.
“There’s a difference,” one GM said. “But McDuffie’s a really good player, a really sound player.” And an AFC exec added that McDuffie’s “cleaner than Stingley for a lot of reasons. The size really is the only knock on McDuffie. He can cover, he can tackle. He’s not very big or strong, but he can play inside and out, zone or man. He’s a safer pick than Stingley.”
As for the next group, Booth’s medical is an issue for a lot of teams, and Gordon didn’t run as well in Indy as expected. So I believe Elam, who posted a better 40 than anyone thought he would and has done really well in interviews, has an excellent shot to be the fourth corner off the board, maybe in the late teens or early 20s.
• I could also see movement for pass rushers (Philly’s one team that’s explored moving up and it could be for a corner or a rusher) or receivers. On the former, there’s a real dropoff after the first four prospects—Michigan’s Aidan Hutchinson, Georgia’s Travon Walker, Oregon’s Kayvon Thibodeaux and Florida State’s Jermaine Johnson II.
As for the latter, I’ve heard the Giants connected to Bama burner Jameson Williams, and the Falcons are seen as strong candidates to take one at No. 8—the two names I’ve heard for them are USC’s Drake London and Ohio State’s Garrett Wilson. So it’s possible, with the Giants very open to moving down with their second first-rounder (the seventh pick), or even out to next year, and the Panthers similarly motivated at No. 6, that some team tries to jump in front of Atlanta to have their pick of the litter.
• While we’re there, there’s been a lot of speculation of the Chiefs trading up—and they’ve made those calls through the 20s the past couple days. I understand why a lot of people think it’s for a receiver. And it might be. But I’ve heard it could be for a pass rusher or a corner, too, and I have a scenario that I think is realistic.
The first piece would be moving from 29 to the upper reaches of the 20s to select Elam or Gordon. The second piece would be to take a receiver at 30. And to that end, keep an eye on Georgia’s George Pickens as a potential wild card. Pickens, I’m told, is off some teams’ boards altogether, due to maturity and reliability concerns. That said, he’s wildly talented, and the type of risk that Andy Reid and Brett Veach have hit on consistently.
In fact, if Pickens’s character was clean, and he hadn’t torn his ACL last spring (which cost him most of his final season), there’s a decent chance he’d be a top-10 pick. So while the 30th pick might be a little rich, I could see the logic in doing it—and other teams can, too.
“It’s early for the kid,” one exec said. “But it’s not early for the player.”
• The biggest of Pickens’s Georgia teammates, mammoth defensive tackle Jordan Davis, has come up a lot in my conversations over the past couple days. I could see him going to Philly, Baltimore or New Orleans, which pick 14th, 15th and 16th in the middle of the first round.
To take Davis that high, you’d have to be comfortable you can get a little more consistent effort out of him than what showed on tape last year, when even in a heavy rotation with other linemen, his effort could be spotty at times.
• I’d take note of what Panthers GM Scott Fitterer said at his press conference the other day about looking at trading into the teens. Going that far down, rather than making a shorter move, would allow Carolina to recoup the second-round pick it lost in the Sam Darnold trade.
If you consider, perhaps, a trade with Houston, you can see how it would work. The Eagles pick 13th overall, and that pick is worth, per the draft value chart, 1,150 points. Houston’s second-rounder, 37th overall, is worth 530 points. That gets you to 1,680 points, which is right in the neighborhood of the value of the sixth pick (1,600 points).
We also, for what it’s worth, did a fake trade in the Tuesday rumors column that illustrated all this, and showed that to get Washington’s second-rounder in a move down from 11 to six, they had to package a fourth-rounder with their pick.
• I have corner penciled in for the Bills at 25, but their flexibility reflects the job they’ve done building the roster. Someone mentioned to me Wednesday how the Bills are in a spot now where they have to take a more targeted approach just to make sure they’ll have the right job open for the guy they take in the first round. Which is actually what could wind up leading them to consider a running back if, say, the right corner isn’t there.
• I’m still not ruling out an offensive lineman going first overall to Jacksonville.
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