Select company: Offense will dominate first round
The NFL draft will be offensive. We’re not talking about hurt feelings. This draft has the potential to set a record for most offensive players selected in the first round.
No draft has seen more than 19 players on offense chosen in the first round. That happened three times, most recently in 2009.
Many draft experts are predicting more than 20 offensive players will go in the first round and some have up to 25.
The AP’S final mock draft had 22 going in the first round, including 10 offensive linemen, six wide receivers, five quarterbacks and one tight end.
Quarterbacks get the most attention, of course. Caleb Williams is ticketed for the Bears with the No. 1 pick.
Beyond him, there are plenty of questions.
The Commanders need a franchise QB and will choose from Jayden Daniels, the 2023 Heisman Trophy winner, and Drake Maye at No. 2.
J.J. Mccarthy’s stock has soared since leading Michigan to a national championship and he could end up in the top five, with some analysts even putting him ahead of Daniels and Maye.
Michael Penix Jr. and Bo Nix are in the second tier, but could end up drafted in the latter part of the opening round.
“The quarterback position is a hard position to evaluate and I’d say with the history of the draft, there’s guys that hit and there’s guys that don’t,” Cardinals general manager Monti Ossenfort said.
“There’s a lot of things that go into what makes a good quarterback, not only on field but off the field, and I think that’s why that position is such a challenging evaluation for a lot of people in the game.”
The Raiders own the 13th pick, so they’d have to move up to secure one of the top four guys. They enter the draft with veteran Gardner Minshew and second-year pro Aidan O’connell and could stay put to take the best player available and still end up with Penix or Nix later.
“There’s really no consensus boards, at least since I’ve been in the league,” Raiders GM Tom Telesco said. “You’ve got 32 different teams that look at things 32 different ways. So our ranking may be different than other rankings, so I don’t know if there’s necessarily a top three and a next two or a next three . ... It’s going to be a little bit different for everybody, depending on what you’re looking for.”
Wide receivers are a hot commodity with Marvin Harrison Jr., Malik Nabers and Rome Odunze not only considered among the top five potential picks but the best players in the entire draft.
“I think you could make a case the three highest-graded players in this draft are the three receivers,” NFL Network draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah said.
Brian Thomas Jr., Adonai Mitchell and Troy Franklin round out the six wideouts in the AP’S mock first round. Other potential first-round picks include Ladd Mcconkey and Xavier Legette. It’s such a deep class of receivers that teams could wait to snag an eventual starter on Day 2 or even Day 3.
Protecting the quarterback is critical to a team’s success, so there’s always an emphasis on offensive linemen, especially tackles.
Joe Alt is the consensus top lineman and is expected to be a top-10 pick. J.C. Latham, Olumuyiwa Fashanu, Taliese Fuaga and Troy Fautanu could go in the top 20. Amarius Mims, Graham Barton, Tyler Guyton and Jordan Morgan are also in the mix. Jackson Powers-johnson is the top interior lineman in the draft.
“They’re all really talented,” Jeremiah said. “When you look at that top group of guys, really I would say you’re talking about Alt, Fashanu, Fuaga, Latham. I would think those are pretty unanimous, whatever order you have them, those are kind of the top four guys.”