April 23, 2024
Each week during the NFL regular season we lay out a rooting guide for non-Eagles games on the schedule. Let's do some version of that for the 2024 NFL Draft, shall we?
• The Commanders could draft a quarterback who doesn't want to be there.
Actual draft positioning aside, if you were an NFL draft prospect and there were one team you wouldn't want to pick you, who would you choose? We all know the answer.
Throughout the draft process, it has felt all along like USC's Caleb Williams would go No. 1 overall to the Bears, and LSU's Jayden Daniels would go No. 2 to the Commanders. Except... Daniels has reportedly communicated that he'd rather be somewhere else, per Adam Schefter. If you hang in there past the cringy "swinger" stuff at the beginning of this interview on the Pat McAfee Show, you'll see what I mean:
Transcribed:
“It’s tracking towards Jayden Daniels [to be the Commanders' pick], which is has been. The signs point to Jayden Daniels, which they do, and the Commanders are going through it after this week when, I think it’s a situation where from the outset, Jayden Daniels has had an interest in being other places. He just has.”
Yikes.
From a pure football standpoint, Daniels has more upside than guys like North Carolina's Drake Maye or Michigan's J.J. McCarthy, and fans of the Eagles, Giants, and Cowboys should prefer that the high upside guy not land in Washington. However, if the guy doesn't want to be there and the Commanders say, "Don't care, we're taking you anyway," I think that has some potential for combustible hilarity for a franchise already very used to embarrassment.
If indeed Daniels doesn't want to be there, I think Eagles fans should root for the Commanders to take him.
• The Giants had an extraordinarily miserable season and they still might not get a shiny new quarterback out of it.
The Giants started the 2023 season 2-8, and their season was over by Thanksgiving. Week 1 was one of the worst opening day drubbings in NFL history that essentially killed any reasonable Giants fans' hopes immediately to begin the season.
However, they won 4 of their last 7, and as a result landed at No. 6 in the draft order. It feels likely that quarterbacks will be taken with the first three picks of the draft and possibly four. If the Giants can't trade up and get one, their fans will likely have to endure another season with Daniel Jones as the starter, which would feel especially unfair given their season was over in 2023 before it ever really got started.
And sure, maybe they'll land a good receiver with the sixth overall pick instead. But who cares if there's nobody to get that guy the ball? It's feels pretty clear that the best outcome for rival fans would be to watch the Giants have to settle for Jones for one more season.
• The Cowboys wouldn't draft a quarterback with their first-round pick, would they?
Prescott doesn't seem certain that he'll be a Cowboy in 2025.
"Right now it's with the Dallas Cowboys, it's where I want to be, and that's where I am, and that's the focus. And after the season we'll see where we're at and if the future holds that."#Cowboys QB Dak Prescott, on potentially leaving Dallas in 2025: https://t.co/eePeEEmzp5
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) April 20, 2024
Prescott is probably a top 10 quarterback in the NFL. Whatever you think of him and his chances of leading the Cowboys to a Super Bowl, one thing is objectively true — he has had a lot of great games against the Eagles, and the Eagles would probably love to see him on some other team in 2025.
If the Cowboys were to draft a quarterback in the first round, say, like a Bo Nix or a Michael Penix, that would throw that team into total chaos, which would be fun to watch from afar. To be clear, that feels extremely unlikely, but you never know.
• The 49ers could find a soft market for WR Brandon Aiyuk.
Aiyuk caught 75 passes for 1342 yards and 7 TDs in 2023. He finished seventh in the NFL in receiving yards. By comparison, Deebo Samuel had 60 catches for 892 yards and 7 TDs, plus another 225 yards and 5 TDs on the ground. Samuel makes $24.5 million per season, while Aiyuk is scheduled to make $14,124,000 on his fifth-year option in 2024.
Aiyuk wants to be paid like the top-earning wide receivers in the NFL, and has voiced frustration with the 49ers' reluctance to pay him as such. He is now the subject of trade rumors, and from what I've seen the expectation for what kind of return he would net the Niners are irrational. For example, in a mock draft for ESPN Bill Barnwell had the following trade idea:
49ers get: 1-5, 6-181
Chargers get: WR Brandon Aiyuk, 1-31, 3-94
If you were to substitute Aiyuk for a draft pick that would even out for both sides based on the draft value chart, he'd be worth the 16th overall pick.
And then you have homer articles like this one, suggesting a variety of unrealistic trades, like Aiyuk to the Bears for the 9th overall pick, or to the Jets for the 10th overall pick, or to the Texans for their first-round pick plus a "future early Day 2 pick."
In an offseason that that saw Haason Reddick, L'Jarius Snead, and Brian Burns get dealt for packages well below their perceived worth, the Niners could find a soft market for Aiyuk, in my opinion, when a trade for him would also necessitate a lucrative contract extension.
I think that if you're a fan of contending NFC team, you'd be happy to see the Niners trade Aiyuk for something less than a first-round pick.
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