We’ve reached the final episode of our divisional draft & roster review series for 2025! And we’re closing things out with the AFC West, who just sent three teams to the playoffs and saw the other one make some drastic changes to the key figures of their organization!
Once again, switching conferences as part of this extensive video series, we’re taking a deep look at what the Texans, Colts, Jaguars and Titans did in the draft and the offseason as a hole to improve their rosters!
Closing out the first half of our divisional draft and roster review series with the Bills, Dolphins, Patriots and Jets. We’ll once again break down every single player they selected in the draft, their projected role on their new team and the overall construction of those rosters throughout this offseason!
Entering week two of our divisional draft & roster review series, we’re headed East and start on the NFC side with the Cowboys, Giants, Eagles and Commanders.
Another draft cycle comes to a close, as we started with all 32 teams being in control of their first-round pick for the only time in the common era, yet it only took until the second overall selection for us to get a major shake-up, when the Jaguars’ new regime moved up three spots with the Browns to add two-way superstar Travis Hunter. And Cleveland would be the ones to end one of the most prominent draft slides we’ve ever seen, which ended up being the biggest storyline of the weekend.
To recap everything that happened, I will once again outline who I believe were the biggest winners and losers, steals and reaches across those three days. As always, my thoughts are purely based on evaluating the skill-sets of prospects at this moment and without access to all the information about medical reports and potential character/off-field concerns. However, I will disregard some names for the “steals” category if either one of those clearly applies based on the reporting out there.
If I don’t talk about your favorite team specifically today, in just two weeks I’ll start my divisional draft and roster review series, where I give the spotlight to all 32 teams in podcast form, discussing every single player they selected, their projected role and how it all fits with the other roster moves they’ve made. And of course, I have scouting reports on over 130 prospects here on my site, as part of my positional draft rankings, if you want to dive deeper into individual names.
Let’s break down the biggest storylines and selections today!
The 2024 NFL Draft is in the books and it’s time to recap all the action. Thursday started off pretty chalky until the Atlanta Falcons sent shockwaves across the internet when they selected Washington quarterback Michael Penix Jr. eighth overall. We didn’t see a defensive player selected until pick number 15. Late in the first round leading into day two, we saw a big run on wide receivers, which the depth of the class was illustrated by 35 total names coming off the board. Offensive tackle came in close behind that with 27 selected and cornerback actually edged out the WRs by one more taken (36), as the two other quality position groups. The big surprise was that we didn’t just get six quarterbacks inside the top-12 to set a new record, but then it took 138 additional spots before we got to QB7.
In this article, I’m going to break down the biggest winners and losers from the weekend, which can be teams overall in terms of the hauls they put together, individual players, coaches or general managers. After that, we’re getting to the biggest steals and reaches, based my individual rankings, consensus boards and general circumstances. All of this of course comes with a certain level of subjectivity and it’ll be another three years before we can make any definitive statements on these new members of the NFL, but I strongly believe in team-building through the draft, understanding where you can acquire value, how to maneuver around the board and how this piece fits into the puzzle, as you consider the way you’ve positioned yourself coming in and the vision behind the operation.
Let’s get into it:
The 2023 NFL Draft is in the books and it’s time to break down everything that happened over the weekend! Obviously everybody got better by adding young talent, but some teams used their draft capital better than others – whether that’s just the players they picked or their overall strategy – and there are selections I was a bigger fan of than others.
So in this article, I will lay out my five biggest winners and losers, as well as my ten biggest steals and reaches respectively. Plus, I added a few more contenders for each category at the end. As far as winners/losers go, this can be a specific team that did really well in terms of how they used their assets, individual prospects, position groups or NFL veterans, due to how they will be affected. The steals/reaches portion is pretty self-explanatory, as I will judge the names selected based on my personal rankings in correlation consensus boards and looking at who was still available or how these picks fit into the overall picture of the draft.
One name I considered as a winner here was Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson, since he signed the contract that in terms of average annual value is the largest in NFL history, before his team got him a new stud receiver in the first round. However, I didn’t want the first half of this equation to factor in too much here, even though in terms of Thursday, nobody had a better 24 hours than him personally.
Let’s break it all down now:
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