If you’re ever wondering what those who call the shots in the NFL consider to be the most important positions on the field, you can always just look to the draft.
Quarterback, edge rusher, offensive tackle – that’s your top three. Over the last 20 years, 21 of the 60 players drafted with top-three picks have been quarterbacks. Another 11 have been defensive ends-slash-edge rushers and another seven have been offensive tackles. Altogether, those three positions have accounted for 39 of the 60 players picked with a top-three selection, or a whopping 65% of them.
Guess what? You won’t see any deviation from that pattern this year. The two positions with the most high-end talent this year are clearly offensive tackle and edge rusher. That’s not the case for quarterback, but that only illustrates the point even better. In a year where it’s hard to find a consensus on who the best or even second-best quarterback prospect is, you’ll still probably see at least one if not two go in the top 10.
This is reflected in my latest first-round mock effort found below. With a respectful nod to Notre Dame safety Kyle Hamilton, who some consider the overall best prospect in this draft, eight of my top 10 picks are either tackles, edge rushers or quarterbacks. I have the first QB off the board with the second pick and four offensive tackles coming off the board very quickly. None of this means I will be proven right by the real NFL Draft later this month, but I’d be willing to bet that those three positions, in some way or another, or going to completely dominate the top 10.
As for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, they are far from that range, picking at number 27 after tying for the NFL’s best record and advancing to the Divisional Round of the playoffs last season. That makes their pick significantly more difficult to predict, but somehow this exercise ended in a familiar way. Read on to find out what I mean.
We’ve put up a mock draft every week since mid-February, some of them (like this…