NFL Why Is Anthony Richardson Suddenly The NFL Draft's Hottest Prospect? By Josh Hermsmeyer Apr. 24, 2023, at 6:00 AM Anthony Richardson’s NFL draft value has spiked since he played his last college game. Stacy Revere / Getty Images Each spring, NFL prospects rocket up mock draft boards for both obvious and inscrutable reasons. Sometimes it’s due to a player’s performance at the NFL combine or pro day where they flash unexpected athleticism (think receiver Denzel Mims’s 4.38 second 40-yard dash at the combine in 2020 or linebacker Jamin Davis and his 4.37 pro-day 40 time in 2021). In oth ..read more

NFL Why This Quarterback Draft Class May Wind Up Better Than Expected By Neil Paine Apr. 28, 2022, at 6:00 AM PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY EMILY SCHERER / GETTY IMAGES We’ve heard it over and over and over again: The quarterback prospects in this year’s NFL draft class aren’t as strong as in previous years. Teams may still get anxious and reach for QBs earlier than the consensus mock drafts are predicting — after all, the 2022 draft, which starts Thursday night, carries tremendous uncertainty about who will be picked where. But this pool of passers simply doesn’t contain the glut of can’t-miss ..read more

NFL Can A Model Beat The Markets At Forecasting The NFL Draft? By Josh Hermsmeyer Apr. 18, 2022, at 12:23 PM Will Aidan Hutchinson go first in the NFL draft? Michael Hickey / Getty Images The first round of this year’s NFL draft stands to be pretty dull for a quarter of the league’s fan bases. Eight teams won’t be participating in the first round, having previously traded away their top draft picks. But on the flip side, fans of another eight clubs will have double the fun to look forward to next week, with their favorite teams heading into the draft with two first-round picks apiece. Th ..read more

NFL NFL General Managers Still Love The Senior Bowl. But Do Those Players Pan Out? By Josh Hermsmeyer Apr. 4, 2022, at 6:00 AM Which players from this year’s Senior Bowl will be drafted — and will see meaningful snaps? Michael Wade / Icon Sportswire via AP Spring is a season of tumult for the NFL. Team rosters are in flux as free agency reshuffles veteran talent across the league. Schemes are torn down and rebuilt as coaches try to shore up weaknesses and better exploit their playmakers’ strengths.  Even the NFL combine in Indianapolis — a constant on the NFL calendar for decades ..read more

The Los Angeles Rams are built differently. In a league that tends toward conservatism and groupthink, Rams general manager Les Snead is nothing short of a wild-eyed contrarian. For years, the received wisdom in the NFL has been that building a successful team over the long term requires a star quarterback coupled with good, cheap, young players that provide surplus value over the period of their rookie deals. This structure allows a team to compete year in and year out, and it provides cap space to fill any gaps formed through injury or ineffectiveness by paying up for players at positions of ..read more

Nothing brings more hope to an NFL franchise than a shiny first-round rookie quarterback. This year we have five of them, all selected within the top 15 picks. From San Francisco to Chicago, from New York to Jacksonville, hope was in the air. Even a famous grump like New England’s Bill Belichick felt optimistic enough to jettison last year’s starter, Cam Newton, to reportedly make 15th overall pick Mac Jones more comfortable.  But optimism can quickly turn to despair if a rookie QB delivers an overdose of underwhelm, and the team dynamics that allowed a franchise to draft at the top of th ..read more

Five NFL teams spent a top-15 draft pick on a quarterback this year, and two of them paid dearly for the chance to do it. But though it seemed to some to be a harbinger of where the draft is headed — with more teams burning more pick value on more rookie passers — the haul was nothing new. The legendary 1983 class, of course, saw six first-round quarterbacks, including eventual Hall of Famers John Elway, Jim Kelly and Dan Marino. Five first-rounders were taken in 1999 and 2018, and four were taken in 2003, 2004, 2011, 2012 and 2020. FiveThirtyEight has been covering the hot new trend of reachi ..read more

As the clock ticked down on the Carolina Panthers’ eighth overall pick in the 2021 NFL draft, many wondered if general manager Scott Fitterer would add another quarterback to the team’s roster after trading for former Jets QB Sam Darnold earlier in the offseason. But Carolina elected to go in another direction. When the pick came in, commissioner Roger Goodell walked on stage and read the name of Jaycee Horn, making the South Carolina cornerback the first defensive player chosen in the draft. Last week, Rich Eisen asked Panthers head coach Matt Rhule about Carolina’s decision to select Horn ov ..read more

FiveThirtyEight   More: Apple Podcasts | ESPN App | RSS First, we look at the results of the NFL draft and specifically the usefulness of giving teams draft grades. Turns out, they’re not very useful at all in terms of predicting teams’ ultimate success down the line (team-building is hard), although they are still a fun way for fans to contextualize their expectations for future seasons. This draft, like all drafts, was mostly about the quarterbacks, and everyone after Trevor Lawrence is basically a coin-flip. The Hot Takedown team is surprised at how many quarterback questions still re ..read more

So your favorite team just got a good grade in this year’s NFL draft. Congrats! Surely this is the first step on the path to future Super Bowls, right? Well, umm … not exactly. The NFL draft is a hard thing to figure out even if you are among the best talent evaluators in the world. There isn’t a proven formula for consistently picking diamonds in the rough — and the same goes for us media folks who evaluate the evaluators. While it’s hard to resist the urge to make instant judgments on which teams did or didn’t have a good draft, those assessments mean very little. Truth is, there is almost n ..read more