In this week’s “4-Down Territory,” Kyle Madson of Niners Wire and Doug Farrar of Touchdown Wire get into the four most important questions as the 2023 NFL draft has come to an end.
- It’s time to grade these picks far too soon, before the prospects-turned-pros have actually done anything in the NFL, because that’s part of our jobs! Let’s start with overall draft classes. Which team in your mind had the best draft haul overall?
- Conversely, which NFL team had a draft that left you wondering, “Is this all there is?”
- Give us one or two of the biggest reaches in this draft in your mind – the guys who were simply taken far sooner than their tape might have deserved.
- And to finish, who are your biggest sleepers in this draft class – the guys who will perform far above their pick numbers.
You can watch this week’s episode of “4-Down Territory” right here:
1. Which team in your mind had the best draft haul overall?
Doug: I know we’ve said this before on 4-Down Territory, but at some point, the NFL will have to step in and investigate how Eagles general manager Howie Roseman keeps getting away with this. Selecting Jalen Carter with the ninth overall pick could be a franchise-defining pick if Carter is able to realize his full potential, and it’s an acceptable risk even if not. Basically, Roseman turned Trevor Penning into Jalen Carter with that 2022 trade from the Saints.
Then, the Eagles got Nolan Smith, Carter’s Georgia teammate, with the 30th pick. Smith has no off-field dings whatsoever, he would have been a top–15 pick were he healthy all the way through the 2022 season, and he reminds me of Haason Reddick, who is now his edge bookend in those five-man fronts. Then, the Eagles got Illinois’ Sydney Brown, who was my second-ranked safety behind Alabama’s Brian Branch, in the third round. Georgia cornerback Kelee Ringo in the fourth round. Texas defensive tackle Moro Ojomo in the seventh round. Top it all off with the lowball trade for ex-Lions running back D’Andre Swift, and this was quite the weekend for the NFL’s best executive.
Kyle: I’m not super sure how any team other than the Eagles is the pick here, but for the sake of conversation I want to mention the Ravens here. They used a first-round pick on Zay Flowers who I love plugging into an offense that needs some help at receiver. He’s good in all three levels and if he and Jackson get on the same page in scramble drills it could be really tough to stop that offense under new offensive coordinator Todd Monken. Their second pick was one of my favorite players in the draft – Clemson LB Trenton Simpson. This dude can flat out fly and he’s more than adequate in coverage. Plugging him in next to Roquan Smith could make the second level of that defense really, really tough to throw on. They also added Ole Miss DE Tavius Robinson who I think will be at worst a rotational end for a long time, and I love the Andrew Vorhees pick in the seventh round. He’s gonna be a starter in the NFL once he’s healthy. That’s a nice job by a well-run organization.
Seattle was also doing great until the Zach Charbonnet pick. Illinois CB Devon Witherspoon and Ohio State WR Jaxon Smith-Njigba were a strong one-two in the first round. Derick Hall the defensive end from Auburn is even a good choice. Pete Carroll couldn’t help himself with that running back in the middle of the second round though.
2. Conversely, which NFL team had a draft that left you wondering, “Is this all there is?”
Doug: I’d have to go with the Packers here, and your thoughts about the Packers’ draft would have to start with how highly you value Iowa edge-rusher Lukas Van Ness, who Green Bay selected with the 13th overall pick. I thought Van Ness to be a good, not great player, and it mystified me that they selected him with WIll McDonald IV, Nolan Smith, and Myles Murphy still on the boards. Georgia Tech’s Keion White, who went to the Patriots with the 15th pick in the second round, seemed to me to be an equivalent or better version of Van Ness as a hybrid-sized speed-to-power pass-rusher.
Michigan State receiver Jaylen Reed was another good player who I thought wasn’t quite up to the 50th overall pick the Packers spent on him. Now, I did love the selections of tight ends Luke Musgrave and Tucker Kraft, and those guys give Matt LaFleur all kinds of 12 personnel options, but just as you’re coming around to this class, there’s Green Bay picking Penn State quarterback Sean Clifford, who a lot of analysts deemed a UDFA, in the fifth round. I just saw a lot of reaches here, and that’s dangerous for a team obviously in transition in the post-Aaron Rodgers era.
Kyle: Honestly, the 49ers were always sort of destined to land here given their lack of draft capital, but they just really put themselves in a bind. They traded up to take Penn State safety Ji’Ayir Brown No. 87 overall. Love that for them. He should offer a long-term answer at free safety and he’s a turnover machine. After that they went with Michigan kicker Jake Moody at No. 99, and then Alabama tight end Cameron Latu at No. 101. After that they wound up with South Alabama CB Darrell Luter Jr., Georgia edge rusher Robert Beal Jr., TCU linebacker Dee Winters, Oklahoma TE Brayden Willis, Michigan wide receiver Ronnie Bell and Purdue linebacker Jalen Graham.
Perhaps it’s the lack of premium draft capital, but this entire draft class feels like the 49ers reaching to plug very specific holes in the depths of their roster. Maybe it’ll be fine, it just wasn’t anything inspiring and it’s hard to imagine any of these players help them right away.
3. Give me one or two of the biggest reaches in this draft in your mind.
Doug: Not that the two guys the Lions took in the first round – Alabama running back Jahmyr Gibbs and Iowa linebacker Jack Campbell – are bad players. I would deem them each to be borderline first-round talents. But they each play at “fungible” positions, and Detroit took Gibbs with the 12th overall pick, and Campbell with the 18th. I didn’t think that Gibbs or Campbell were the best players in this draft at their positions, and in Detroit’s case, you’ve got a two-pick haul in the first round, and you’re taking guys who may well not merit those picks. That’s tough to reconcile.
Kyle: THE 49ERS TOOK A KICKER NO. 99 OVERALL, AKA THEIR SECOND PICK IN THIS YEAR’S DRAFT. AND HE MAY NOT EVEN BE THAT GOOD OF A KICKER. If Kyle Shanahan thought whiffing on a third-round RB was bad, wait til he sees what happens if Jake Moody doesn’t pan out. Woof.
Doug: Yeah, but per the 49ers’ PR department, Moody was once so jacked to meet Matt Prater, his kicking hero, in a Detroit pizza parlor, that he totally blew off Calvin Johnson, who was with Prater at the time. Say what you will, but this kid was obviously born to be a kicker.
4. And to finish, who are your biggest sleepers in this draft class?
Doug: On offense, I’ll go with Iowa State receiver Xavier Hutchinson, who the Texans somehow stole with the 206th pick in the sixth round. I had a third-round grade on him at worst, and easily thought of him as a top-10 receiver in this loaded class. Hutchinson doesn’t have burner speed, but he’s a big target at -foot-2 and 203 pounds, and he’ll create openings at the NFL level with outstanding route awareness, and a neat nuance – he does really well with subtle pushoffs to win contested catches before the battle even starts. 107 catches on 161 targets for 1,171 yards and six touchdowns last season, and on passes of 20 or more air yards, he caught nine passes on 19 targets for 234 yards and two touchdowns. Now, he’ll have C.J. Stroud throwing him the ball, which should up his chances for excellence to an extreme degree. I’m not engaging in hyperbole when I say that he might be the Texans’ best receiver in 2023. Like, right now.
On defense, let’s go with TCU cornerback Tre’Vius Hodges-Tomlinson, who the Rams got with the 182nd pick in the sixth round. If he was six feet tall and weighed 200 pounds, we’d have been talking about him as we were talking about Devon Witherspoon, Christian Gonzalez, and Joey Porter Jr. He’s 5-foot-8 and 178 pounds, which bombed his draft stock to a much more extreme degree than it should have. My NFL comparison for Hodges-Tomlinson was Antoine Winfield Sr., but you could also compare him to Darious Williams, the 5-foot-9, 187-pound undrafted free agent the Rams got out of UAB in 2018, and who eventually turned into one of the team’s best defenders. As the kids say, he’s got that dog in him.
Kyle: I’m gonna go with one on each side of the ball. Arkansas linebacker Drew Sanders went No. 67 to the Broncos. If they don’t try to pigeonhole him into an off-ball LB role, he could be a legitimate problem as an off-brand Micah Parsons who impacts games in part because of his versatility. It’s not that playing him off the ball is wrong or impossible, Denver just needs to let him stand up on the edge and get after the quarterback with at least some regularity.
On offense, Texas A&M running back Devon Achane is going to be a problem in Miami. Friend of the show and noted Seahawks enthusiast Danny Kelly did not want Achane to land with Shanahan. Well, now he’s with Mike McDaniel, perhaps the most creative disciple of the Shanahan run game. Achane is extremely quick with home run speed, and he’s a legitimate receiving threat in ways the other Dolphins RBs aren’t. His floor rose exponentially by going to Miami, as did his ceiling. He’s going to be a really good player in that offense and a steal with the No. 84 pick.
