That’s what made the Falcons’ selection of Michael Penix Jr. with the eighth pick such a miscalculation. There’s wisdom in their belief that when a great quarterback comes along, a team should take him no matter what. And if Penix eventually becomes a top-five quarterback, the Falcons will be validated. But in hoping the fourth quarterback off the board reaches that level, the Falcons are trying to thread an awfully thin needle when they didn’t have to.
Signing Cousins made the Falcons one of the least quarterback-desperate franchises in the NFL. Penix may turn out to be great, but he’s also not the last quarterback on Earth. The Falcons had another three drafts to find someone to replace Cousins. Maybe in their minds, they won’t be picking as high as eighth again. But they wouldn’t necessarily have to. The Packers, whose model the Falcons are trying to follow, traded up to take Jordan Love 25th in 2020. The Chiefs, another team that found its future quarterback with a solid veteran in hand, traded up from 27th to 10th in 2017 to select Patrick Mahomes.
By taking Penix, the Falcons cost themselves the chance at a prospect who could support Cousins and his possible replacement. They passed on wide receiver Rome Odunze, five offensive tackles who would be taken in the first round and any defensive player they wanted. It is hard to criticize a franchise for investing at quarterback, and it is easy to believe Penix will be a productive NFL quarterback. The Falcons’ mistake was behaving with urgency when they had bought themselves patience.
The NFC North could be the NFL’s new power center. If not for a handful of plays against the San Francisco 49ers last January, the Packers would have played for the NFC Championship and the Lions would have won it. The Bears became one of the hottest teams in the NFL during the season’s second half. The Vikings were in playoff contention before losing Cousins to a torn ACL.
The NFC North was one of the toughest divisions in the NFL before the draft. After the draft, it might be the best — and definitely the most exciting — for the future. In Jared Goff (29), Love (25), Caleb Williams (22) and J.J. McCarthy (21), the division has four quarterbacks under 30 leading rosters loaded with young talent.
The Bears last won a playoff game in 2010, but that seems likely to change soon. Williams is one of the most highly regarded quarterback prospects to enter the league in years, and the Bears have created an uncommonly comfortable situation for a first overall pick. He’ll throw to D.J. Moore, Keenan Allen and Odunze, the ninth overall pick, behind an offensive line studded with prior first-rounders.
The Vikings have similarly built a strong infrastructure around McCarthy, who will likely sit longer than Williams. Justin Jefferson might be the best wideout in the league, Coach Kevin O’Connell is considered one of the best quarterback developers in the NFL and Minnesota’s offensive line is above average. There are no more easy games in the NFC North.
The Chiefs are going back in time. Patrick Mahomes averaged 7.0 yards per attempt last year, the lowest mark of his career. His average depth of target, having decreased steadily over his six years as a starter, fell this season to 6.9 yards, tied for 38th in the NFL. As more teams have defended them with shell-like defenses, the Chiefs have accepted it and moved to an offense built on short passing.
The Chiefs are acting this offseason like they are done taking what defenses give them. They traded up in the first round to take Texas wide receiver Xavier Worthy, who ran the fastest 40-yard dash ever recorded at the NFL combine. They will pair him with free agent acquisition Marquise Brown, another small wideout with sub-4.3 speed. The Chiefs also added TCU’s Jared Wiley, a receiving-first tight end with field-stretching speed, in the fourth round.
It’s unlikely the Chiefs will revert to the kind of pyrotechnic offense Mahomes operated in his first year as a starter, when his average depth of target was 9.7 yards. But their new wide receivers will at least punish teams who play safeties deep by pushing them down the field and allowing more space underneath for Travis Kelce and Rashee Rice, whose status remains uncertain after his role in a major car accident.
The Eagles hit the defensive back jackpot. No contender had a more glaring need than the Philadelphia Eagles, whose aging secondary imploded as their season collapsed. The Eagles then saw some of the best cornerbacks in the draft fell into their lap.
When the Eagles picked 22nd in the first round, no cornerbacks had been picked — the longest it had ever taken for a defensive back to come off the board. They took Toledo’s Quinyon Mitchell, filling a need at a premium position without having to move up.
The Eagles needed to be more aggressive to take advantage of another falling cornerback, Iowa’s Cooper DeJean, who could play both corner and safety in the NFL and was widely expected to go in the first round. When he remained available at 40th overall, the Eagles moved up 10 spots, trading the Washington Commanders another second-round pick and a fifth-rounder for a third-rounder and a fifth-rounder.
With Mitchell and DeJean, the Eagles instantly solved a massive need. They addressed another in the fifth-round, taking Clemson middle linebacker Jeremiah Trotter Jr., the son of an Eagles legend at the same position.
The Bills did the right thing. The recent era of Bills football has been defined by their inability to surmount the Chiefs, which made their first first-round trade unusual. They dealt the 28th pick to Kansas City for the 32nd pick, handing their rival and tormentor the chance to draft Worthy, who plays the position the Bills needed most.
If Worthy turns out to be the piece that makes Kansas City even more insurmountable, it’ll look bad. But the Bills have to do what’s best for their roster, and that’s what they did, adding more draft capital by moving out of the first round altogether in swapping the 32nd pick with the Carolina Panthers for the 33rd.
The Panthers took another wideout (South Carolina’s Xavier Leggette), but the Bills still seemed to read the board appropriately. At No. 33, they took Keon Coleman, whose athletic ability and production at Florida State made it reasonable to prefer him over Worthy or Leggette.
Having maxed out their salary cap and cut a confluences of veteran already, the Bills needed to restock their roster. By adding extra picks, they took 10 players they can use to cheaply rebuild around Josh Allen. By taking Coleman 33rd instead of 32nd, they lost a fifth-year option on his rookie contract but saved $1 million per season. That’s not much, but for a team as tight against the salary cap as Buffalo, every little bit matters.
The Patriots are already trying to build around Drake Maye. New England slogged through Bill Belichick’s final season with the worst set of offensive skill players in the NFL. In Jerod Mayo, the Patriots have a first-year head coach from the defensive side of the ball. Even though a similar set of circumstances worked for C.J. Stroud in Houston last year, Maye walked into the worst situation of any first-round quarterback when the Patriots picked him Thursday night.
Wisely, the Patriots immediately started to remedy that. They used their next four picks on offensive players, starting with silky Washington wideout Ja’Lynn Polk at No. 37. They took two linemen, Penn State tackle Caedon Wallace and Texas A&M guard Layden Robinson, before adding big-play wideout Javon Baker out of UCF. The Patriots curiously used a sixth-rounder on Tennessee quarterback Joe Milton, whose rocket arm made him a decent flier at that point but was odd for a team that shouldn’t need a developmental quarterback. In the seventh round, they added Florida State tight end Jaheim Bell, whose speed and versatility could make him a productive player right away.
If the Patriots made one misstep, it’s that they allowed the Broncos to swoop one spot ahead of them to take Oregon Troy Franklin — clearly the best wideout left entering Day 3 — with the second pick of the fourth round and reunite him with quarterback Bo Nix. But New England had a sound plan and stuck to it. They used six of their seven post-Maye picks on offense, five of which could help their rookie quarterback right away.
Talent filters up in college football. The dearth of small-school talent picked stood out. Players from Power Five programs made up 62 of the first 64 picks and all but nine picks of the first four rounds. In all, only 34 of 257 selections (13.2 percent) came from outside the Power Five.
Among the first 13 picks, North Carolina’s Maye was the only player who didn’t play at a blue-blood powerhouse. The other 12 came from USC, LSU, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Washington, Alabama, Georgia, Michigan, Penn State and Oregon. Schools of that profile dominated the draft.
The NFL isn’t finding diamonds in the rough, largely because college football is identifying them and pushing them into the sport’s highest level. Recruiting has grown more sophisticated and nationalized, causing fewer high school players to slip through the cracks. Transfer rules have prompted lower-level players with NFL skills to move to bigger schools.
The most intriguing pick from outside college football’s apex may have been Giovanni Manu, a 6-foot-8, 350-pound offensive tackle the Lions took in the fourth round out of British Columbia. It’s a swing reminiscent of the Eagles taking Jordan Malaita — a rugby player at the time — in the seventh round in 2018. Malaita has developed into a franchise left tackle.
Remember two day-three picks. Two players landed on teams that perfectly fit their talent. The 49ers took Louisville running back Isaac Guerendo in the fourth round, and while Christian McCaffrey’s presence will limit his role, Guerendo is the perfect kind of running back for Kyle Shanahan’s zone running scheme: strong enough to break one tackle, and fast enough to turn one cut into a long run.
The Miami Dolphins benefited from an inexplicable fall. Virginia’s Malik Washington led the NCAA with 110 catches and for 1,426 yards, turning a lousy offense into a serviceable unit by himself. He’s only 5-8, but he catches everything — he had just four drops in his entire college career — and has the speed and strength to break tackles. In Mike McDaniel’s system, Washington will add an immediately dangerous underneath threat.
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