Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
A night made for trades
There should be plenty of pick-swapping in Round 1
The No. 1 pick in the NFL draft already has traded hands, with the Panthers sending it more than a year ago to the Bears in a trade to move up to take Bryce Young first overall in 2023.
Based on recent history, plenty more first-round picks should change hands Thursday night with teams either looking to move up a spot or two for a specific player or to make a bigger investment with future picks to trade up for a franchise quarterback.
Over the last five drafts, there have been 28 trades during the first day of the draft that included first-round picks, with five of those deals involving picks in the top 10.
Three of those five draft-day trades involving top 10 picks came last season, with Cardinals GM Monti Ossenfort making two of them. The Cardinals traded down from No. 3 to No. 12 to let the Texans take eventual defensive rookie of the year Will Anderson Jr.
The Cardinals then moved back up to No. 6 to take tackle Paris Johnson.
There were six trades during last year’s opening night of the draft involving first-round picks, with the Jaguars also making two. The Jags moved down from No. 24 to No. 27 in a pair of deals that netted them picks in the fourth, fifth and seventh rounds.
The busiest draft day in terms of trades in recent memory came in 2022 when there were nine trades on opening night involving first-round picks.
While trading first-round picks during the draft is common, giving up a first-round pick before the season that turned out to be the No. 1 overall pick is quite rare.
The last time it happened before the Panthers’ trade with the Bears was in 1983 when the Bengals dealt QB Jack Thompson to the Buccaneers.
The Bucs went 2-14 in 1983 and had to send the top pick in the 1984 draft to the Bengals, who then traded that pick to the Patriots, who took receiver Irving Fryar No. 1.
The same thing happened five years earlier when the 49ers traded the pick that turned out to be No. 1 overall to the Bills for O.J. Simpson.
The Bills used the pick on Tom Cousineau, who went to Canada instead of signing with the Bills and then later was traded to the Browns when he came back to the NFL.
Running back wait
In a draft that is shaping up as a potential record breaker for offensive players in the first round, running backs might have a long wait to start going off the board.
No running backs are projected to go in the first round as teams are shying away from investing big resources in a position that has a short shelf life and often has many viable options later in the draft.
This could be the third time in the common draft era that started in 1967 that no running back is picked in the first round, with it also happening in 2022 and 2014. The high for running backs came in 1971 when eight of the 26 first-round picks were used for the position. There were five first-round backs taken in 2008, which is equal to the total from the previous four first rounds combined.
The latest for the first running back to be selected is No. 54 when the Titans took Bishop Sankey in 2014.
This could be the fourth draft ever with quarterbacks going with the top three picks after it previously happened in 1971, 1999 and 2021 and possibly the first with four QBs going in the top nine picks.
The 2018 draft had four quarterbacks taken in the top 10 in Baker Mayfield (first), Sam Darnold (third), Josh Allen (seventh) and Josh Rosen (10th).
Small school gems
One byproduct of the transfer portal in college football is fewer players entering the draft from colleges outside of the Power Five conferences.
Last year’s draft was the first in the Power Five era when no players from schools outside the biggest conferences and Notre Dame were taken in the first round. North Dakota State offensive lineman Cody Mauch was the first player from outside the Power Five to be drafted when he went 48th to Tampa Bay.
There’s only one player this year from outside the Power Five ranked in the top 50 on the big board for Pro Football Focus, with Toledo cornerback Quinyon Mitchell projected as a first-rounder.
In the 10 previous drafts, there were 34 smaller school players taken in the first round, with at least two going in every year outside of 2020.