Who’s gonna trade up for the Panthers’ first-round pick?
Plus the draft's Oscar moment?
Carolina got its quarterback, at least for the time being, a couple weeks ago. Sam Darnold, freed from the Swamp of Sadness the Neverending Story blatantly ripped off in 1984 (Jets football, forever the inspiration for horse suicides everywhere), will split the reins with Teddy Bridgewater. While neither passer is close to a sure thing as a playoff QB, the pair should keep the Panthers satisfied when it comes to adding more gunslinging talent this spring.
Which means Thursday’s first-round pick — eighth overall — will be available to the highest bidder.
General manager Scott Fitterer told the NFL world he’s “very open to moving back” when it comes to his top 10 selection. Though he qualified that statement with a “depend[ing] on how the first seven picks go,” it’s a confirmation of what most expected as soon as the dust settled on the Darnold deal; the Panthers will be holding an auction this week. No team in the league has better odds of trading down:
It’s a smart move for a Carolina team with holes to fill across the lineup and no second- or fourth-round picks in 2022 after trading for the New York passer. It could also be a franchise-altering one for whichever team meets Fitterer’s asking price. While there’s no chance any of the first three QBs drafted will be on the board when the Panthers’ scheduled pick comes due, an unexpected slide could make potential cornerstones like Mac Jones, Trey Lance, or Justin Fields available at No. 8 — and at a lower cost than the Falcons would require to pry the fourth selection from their hands.
Who’d be interested in the fourth- or fifth-best passing prospect at a relatively discounted trade price? There are a few candidates who’d restock Carolina’s draft stock.
New England Patriots
Bill Belichick needs a quarterback. While he’s unlikely to overpay for a chance to move up the draft board — he’s only traded up four times in the first round in 20+ years in New England, and never into the top 10 — 2021 has been a very un-Patriots kind of offseason. Cam Newton re-signed for the upcoming fall, but he’s only on a one-year deal and failed to inspire confidence in his post-COVID finish to the season.
New England typically avoids bidding wars in favor of seeking out bargains, but New England also typically has an all-world passer to build around. If a player like Fields languishes, the temptation to trade up may be too much for even Belichick to ignore. Newton’s presence means any young QB could be brought along slowly, so a less polished player like Lance could make sense as well.
Theoretical deal: The Patriots send No. 15 and No. 46 for the Panthers’ No. 8 and No. 113.
Washington Football Team
The Football Team won the bombed-out trench that was once the NFC East last season despite QB starts from Kyle Allen, Dwayne Haskins, Alex Smith, and Taylor Heinicke. That decidedly low-impact passing attack has since been upgraded in the form of Ryan Fitzpatrick, who aside from a brief, dreamlike stretch in Buffalo, has never been anyone’s idea of a long-term solution.
That puts Washington in position to draft a project passer who wouldn’t have to deal with the pressure of starting right away. It would also put a player like Lance or Fields in charge of a rising offense featuring useful skill players like Terry McLaurin, Antonio Gibson, and Logan Thomas. The problem is last year’s playoff appearance gave Washington the 19th pick instead of a spot in the 13-15 range like the rest of the league’s seven-win teams. That kind of jump means new GM Martin Mayhew will likely have to surrender next year’s first-round pick if he’s gonna get a top-five quarterback this spring.
Theoretical deal: WFT sends No. 19, No. 163, and Washington’s 2022 first-round pick for the Panthers’ No. 8 and No. 113 picks.
Minnesota Vikings
The Vikings have Kirk Cousins under contract through 2022, but his uneven play and continued existence as “Pizza Ranch, but in human form” has left the QB position in flux in Minneapolis. Eighth would be a great spot to draft a developmental passer who can learn under Cousins through the 2021 season and take over in 2022 — a year in which the veteran can be traded or released while leaving only $10 million in dead cap space behind.
This could be an ideal landing spot for Lance, who grew up in southwestern Minnesota and played his college football at adjacent North Dakota State. That FCS pedigree will make his transition to the NFL more difficult than the Power 5 prospects with which he shares a class. Taking a redshirt year and then taking over an offense led by All-Pro caliber stars Adam Thielen, Justin Jefferson, and Dalvin Cook may be the perfect way to unlock his potential.
Theoretical deal: The Vikings send No. 14, No. 78, and a 2022 second-round pick for the Panthers’ No. 8 and No. 113 picks.
Las Vegas Raiders
The Raiders have Derek Carr under contract through 2022 at a reasonable salary for an above-average but ultimately unexciting quarterback. They also have Marcus Mariota on the roster after he agreed to a pay cut for 2021. Vegas doesn’t need a quarterback … but it’s also run by the knee-jerk whims of a Skechers pitchman usually good for one massively baffling decision per year. Jon Gruden may not be the team’s general manager, but his influence over the roster is clear, and he’s never been a big fan of Carr’s competent work behind center.
If a prospect Gruden’s fallen in love with slides on draft day — and there could be a few, considering all the work the team’s done scouting QBs this offseason — the Raiders might make a splash. They’d have to spend big to move up from No. 17 to No. 8, which may mean sacrificing 2022’s Day 1 pick along with this year’s first-rounder and one of their three Day 2 selections. It’s not a move that would make a ton of sense, but if there’s one darkhorse candidate to overspend in the process of making a move that appears to be completely counterproductive to winning, Las Vegas is it.
Theoretical deal: The Raiders send No. 17, No. 80, and a 2022 first-round pick for the Panthers’ No. 8 and No. 73 picks.
Denver Broncos
Denver lurks at No. 9 and could wait out a sliding prospect, but swapping up with the Panthers — think 2017’s Bears-Niners trade that moved Chicago up from No. 3 to No. 2 in order to draft Mitchell Trubisky — would prevent other teams from jumping the line and getting their guy. If Carolina isn’t overwhelmed with trade offers, it could squeeze something for nothing and glean a couple of mid-draft picks by dropping one spot and still getting the player it targeted at No. 8.
The Broncos have a solid roster but have been lost in the woods the past four seasons due to lackluster quarterback play. They could try and squeeze another season of below-average play from Drew Lock and hope he makes a Josh Allen-style leap, but GM George Paton doesn’t seem especially enthused by the idea of building around the former second-round pick.
None of the QBs that should be available in the latter half of the first round fit the profile of a typical John Elway prospect — i.e. none are taller than 6’4 — but Lance has the kind of arm and physical tools Denver has coveted in the past, Jones can rely on a stellar 2020 at Alabama, and Fields can take solace in the fact he’s a better football player than both those guys.
Theoretical deal: The Broncos send No. 9, No. 114, and a 2022 fourth-round pick for the Panthers’ No. 8 pick. — CD
NFL Draft, don’t be like the Oscars
Last night, we saw the biggest Oscars shocker since La La Land was incorrectly announced as the Best Picture winner. No, I don’t mean Glenn Close’s impressive knowledge and demonstration of “Da Butt.” I’m talking about the final moment, when an absent Anthony Hopkins won Best Actor over Chadwick Boseman and then the show abruptly ended.
It was an unexpected result — not because Hopkins wasn’t amazing in The Father (I was blown away by his devastating turn as an elderly man struggling with dementia). It was because Boseman, who tragically passed away from cancer last August, had given an Oscar-worthy performance in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (and Da 5 Bloods, which he wasn’t nominated for) and had won every major award before that. Also, the production team changed the usual order of awards so that Best Actor, instead of Best Picture, was the final one announced. That set an expectation that the night would conclude with a posthumous honor and an emotional farewell to a brilliant Black actor taken away from us far too young.
When that didn’t happen, this year’s ceremony — already a bland slogfest — ended on a confusing, anticlimactic note.
And now, for the first time ever, the Academy Awards and the NFL Draft are being held the same week. That means the NFL has a chance to one-up Hollywood in the entertainment department — perhaps with its own “wait, what just happened?” moment.
What would that moment look like in this year’s draft? I’m not even sure I can, in my wildest imagination, come up with a scenario in which the Jaguars don’t select Trevor Lawrence. And if you compare the odds, Lawrence not being the top pick would be a far, far bigger upset than Boseman not winning the Oscar. So let’s rule that out.
I think a more comparable situation, in terms of the surprise factor, would be the Jets not taking Zach Wilson with the second pick. For the past two months, Wilson has been the assumed No. 2 pick, but it wasn’t always that way. Justin Fields was, and for some (ahem) still is, considered the second-best quarterback in the draft. If the Jets decided to draft Fields instead, it’d be a twist, but not as much as if they chose Trey Lance (who probably shouldn’t start right away) or Mac Jones (who is not worth such a high pick).
That last option does sound pretty Jets-like, but I still wouldn’t count on the draft bringing that much chaos early on. The Athletic’s Dane Brugler weighed in on how he thinks the first part of the draft will go, and minus any trades, it makes a lot of sense:
Personally, I’d be fine with those picks. Most of all, I want the draft to offer us plenty of developments worth talking about, without the needless drama. That alone would make this three-day event more fun and rewarding than this week’s three-hour Oscars ceremony. — SH