Surprise! Trubisky, Watson among 3 QBs in first 12 picks
PHILADELPHIA — With defensive studs everywhere in the draft, NFL teams instead turned to offense. With an emphasis on quarterbacks.
It would not have been stunning in a pass-happy league, except that no quarterbacks in this crop were highly touted. Yet three went in the first dozen Thursday night, with three trades putting the Bears, Chiefs and Texans in position to grab quarterbacks.
Chicago paid a whopping price to move up one spot to second overall for North Carolina’s Mitchell Trubisky. Kansas City gave up its firstrounder next year in a deal with Buffalo to go from 27th to 10th and take Texas Tech’s Patrick Mahomes.
Houston traded up from No. 25 to No. 12 with Cleveland and drafted QB Deshaun Watson of NCAA champion Clemson.
Altogether, eight of the first dozen picks were to aid offenses.
All of which overshadowed the predictable first pick: Texas A&M defensive end Myles Garrett went to Cleveland. Garrett, a junior and All-American considered the best pass rusher in the draft, is the first Aggie selected No. 1 overall.
Garrett was not at t he draf t , instead watching with family and friends at home in Arlington, Texas, but he promised Cleveland fans “great things are coming.”
Cleveland went 1-15 last season and has holes everywhere. It ranked 31st defensively and made only 26 sacks.
The Bears then sent a third-round pick (No. 67 overall), a four throunder (No. 111) and a 2018 thirdrounder to San Francisco to get Trubisky, who some analysts thought would be available to the Browns at No. 12. He started only 13 games at UNC, all last season as a redshirt junior.
“It was crazy,” Trubisky said. “There was no call. I didn’t think I was going to be picked, until the commissioner said my name.”
San Francisco was up next after the trade, and new general manager John Lynch already looked good for bringing in such a haul to drop back to No. 3. The 49ers took defensive end Solomon Thomas from Stanford.
Next was pretty much an offensive onslaught.
“We had a lot of scenarios, but we did not have any scenarios like what’s happened here,” said Howie Roseman, the Eagles’ executive vice president of football operations.
LSU running back Leonard Fournette, whom some scouts compared to Adrian Peterson, went to Jacksonville; new Jaguars boss Tom Coughlin is enamored of powerful running backs.
“He’s special,” Coughlin said. “We need playmakers. We need people to put the ball in the end zone. We need to do something about balance. We need to do something about creating a better situation where the quarterback doesn’t have the entire game on his shoulders.”
Another LSU player, safety Jamal Adams, whose father, George, was an NFL player, was taken by the New York Jets at No. 6. That was one pick after Tennessee, needing an upgrade at wide receiver, selected Corey Davis of Western Michigan. Davis is the FBS career leader in receiving yards with 5,285 and was a key to the Broncos’ 13-1 season.
Two more skill position offensive players went seventh and eighth. Receiver Mike Williams, who came off a serious neck injury in 2015 to help Clemson to the national championship last season, was taken by the Chargers.
Then Christian McCaffrey, son of former NFL wideout Ed McCaffrey, wound up with Carolina.
The Panthers, eager to get back to the form that won them the 2015 NFC title, got a versatile running back from Stanford who also can play receiver and return kicks. Quarterback Cam Newton sure must be smiling.
“Can’t wait to grind every single day for that team, the fans, for everybody there,” McCaffrey said.
More picks and more offense followed. A third receiver, John Ross of Washington, was taken by Cincinnati, which desperately needs a complement to A.J. Green. Ross tore a ligament in his left knee in 2015, but that didn’t slow him down much. He ran a record 4.2 in the 40 at the scouting combine.
The next trade saw Buffalo’s new coach, Sean McDermott, deal with hi s mentor, Chiefs coach Andy Reid. The Chiefs surged up to take Mahomes, whose stock soared in workouts this year. Mahomes comes from a spread attack at Texas Tech and will need to learn a pro-style offense, but Kansas City has Alex Smith in place right now.
“Right now, Patrick isn’t absolutely ready to play. He’s got some work to do,” Reid said. “But he’s coming into a great room, he has an opportunity to learn from Alex, which will be great for him. We have to have some patience with him, but he has tremendous upside.”
The Texans addressed their need at quarterback by trading with Cleveland to select Clemson’s Watson with the 12th overall pick.
The Texans traded away the 25th overall pick as well as their firstround selec tion next season to nab Watson.
The Browns already have Houston’s second-round pick in 2018 after receiving it in the trade for Brock Osweiler this offseason. But Houston was in desperate need of a quarterback after trading away Osweiler, who had an inconsistent season after the Texans signed him to a $72 million contract in 2016.
The only quarterbacks on their roster before the draft were Tom Savage and Brandon Weeden, giving Watson a great chance to start as a rookie.
He joins a team featuring star receiver DeAndre Hopkins, who also went to Clemson.
Hopkins, Houston’s first-round pick in 2013, expressed his excitement about the pick by simply tweeting a smiling face emoji soon after the Texans selected Watson.