First-round grades | Rounds 2-3 grades | Round 1 winners and losers | Rounds 2-3 winners and losers | Fernando Mendoza is Tom Brady’s successor | Ty Simpson will test Sean McVay | Cardinals made the right No. with Love | Drew Allar doesn’t change Steelers’ dilemma
The 2026 NFL draft is in the books. We laughed, we cried, we got angry … and we had to come right back out a few hours later and pretend we didn’t get angry. The full spectrum of the human experience was truly upon us. And then, like a flash, it was over—at least it felt that way, but believe it or not, there were six more rounds of selections after it felt like we could pack this one up.
The NIL era is incredibly strange. On one hand, teams clung almost religiously to what we in the media industry would consider a consensus of the top 300 players in the draft. On the other, I think this season represented the widest gap in a decade between how we viewed the quarterback class going into the 2025 NCAA season, how we viewed it afterward, how we viewed it coming into the draft and what actually occurred. For the first time in more than a decade, a Heisman Trophy finalist quarterback (Diego Pavia) was not even selected.
Still, a bad NFL draft is still a great NFL draft. There were moments of great consequence. There were moments of artful maneuvering—especially for teams that utilized these flier picks to acquire proven veteran talent. And there were, I believe, certain decisions made over the course of a few hours that will alter the course of several franchises for the next half-decade.
Let’s break down the best and the worst of it all.
THE BEST
Subterfuge in L.A.
I have come all the way around on the alleged Sean McVay-Les Snead feud. I now think it’s brilliant. What I initially thought was a clear organizational dustup is now, in my opinion, one of the great (and, I suppose, transparent … upon further examination) attempts at pacifying a notoriously maniacal and temperamental aging veteran quarterback.
A quick catch-up: McVay came out on Thursday after the selection of Ty Simpson acting incredibly terse and downplayed nearly every aspect of the selection. Then in his next public appearance, McVay came out acknowledging his temperament and attributing that to issues happening outside of his day-to-day life. Behind the scenes, the Rams were keen to use their national influence to ensure that we knew the coach and general manager were totally aligned.
While that felt like a bogus attempt at covering up a simmering feud, the fact that McVay’s performance was a bit of stagecraft makes all the sense in the world. Stafford doesn’t smell McVay’s fingerprints on the Simpson selection and doesn’t feel rushed out the door. Additionally, if a coach was unchecked emotionally in the draft room after a selection he wanted no part of, there is almost no way the team would allow him to walk in front of a rolling camera (a head coach doesn’t necessarily speak after every pick, and Snead could have easily gone out and addressed the media by himself if McVay was in his office smashing fine china).
Adam Peters and the new-look Commanders
Sonny Styles was, admittedly, one of my favorite players in this draft. Scooping him up like a routine ground ball (with the seventh pick) after almost every other team ahead of them thought too hard reminded me of the Colts nabbing Tyler Warren a year ago without needing to expend any draft capital to move up despite the fact that Warren was clearly one of the top weapons in the class. Bobby Wagner is one of the great off-ball linebackers of the last quarter-century, but he was absolutely a coverage liability a year ago. While his run defense remained elite, teams were trapping the Commanders in situations in which Wagner was chasing faster receivers, backs and tight ends.
Enter Styles, whose fluidity as a coverage linebacker is exceptional. He can negate one of the modern offense’s great weapons, which is trapping defenses in base coverage and hammering their weaknesses. I love watching Styles drop into coverage where he can get to a space fast enough to shut down a potential middle-of-the-field throw, then still be fast enough to smother a receiver on a checkdown.
The league’s No. 31 defense from a year ago has a much higher ceiling. Tennessee’s Joshua Josephs also got lost in the edge class this year, but his absurd length is weaponized to a point where he can contribute to a defense right away. The Commanders didn’t have a full complement of picks, but may have had the highest singular impact from a first-round selection on the defensive side of the ball.
Yes, the Jets
The Jets, whose tendency to change personalities more often than a high schooler, are the ultimate test case in wariness over draft success. Their ability to hit on picks have been undeniable, but after the trades of Quinnen Williams, Jermaine Johnson II and Sauce Gardner—along with players like Leonard Williams and Darrelle Revis before that—it’s understandably difficult to make room for something that truly resembles hype. All that said, I thought the Jets worked the board better than almost any team in the draft.
The pick of Kenyon Sadiq was only mildly popular among the fan base, but 12 personnel is such a modern staple and the Jets’ tight end depth chart didn’t allow for any multiplicity. The Jets had the third-highest usage of 11 personnel in the NFL last year behind the Titans and Buccaneers—two teams that fired their offensive coordinators, by the way. I think the sky is the limit in terms of how Sadiq can be used, which, in the hands of an experienced coordinator such as Frank Reich, can finally help change the math on offense for this Jets defense. Some of my favorite snaps from Sadiq were watching him carry the ball on jet sweeps. He looks incredibly comfortable as a runner. At the same time, I think he has been wildly misunderstood as a blocker and is, frankly, an ass-kicker. I’d love to see him as a power slot, h-back or in-line tight end.
Speaking of attitude, D’Angelo Ponds may have been my favorite second-round pick of the draft. Aaron Glenn lacked that kind of competitiveness in the secondary last year, and after feeling like he was a dead man walking going into the draft, may have changed the narrative on just how much say he had in certain selections.
An identity in Carolina
Some of my favorite picks in each draft are selections that are clearly in service of a team’s greater investments, and defensive tackle Lee Hunter in the second round for the Panthers checks so many boxes for me. Watching Hunter move is like watching a utility shed in one’s backyard suddenly grow arms and legs and possess 4.8 40-yard dash speed.
Pairing him with Derrick Brown sets free Devin Lloyd in an Ejiro Evero defense, which may be the singular most exciting sentence I’ve typed to this point in the exercise. The NFC South is loaded with talented backs and coordinators who want to run the ball effectively. This is a firm step in the right direction, away from the historically awful campaign of 2024.
The Bengals’ approach
Dexter Lawrence and Cashius Howell are one hell of a 1-2 punch. I think there is such a fallacy in long-term planning when coaching staffs rarely make it past a three-year period anyway. We don’t know when premium quarterbacks will fall off and when a team’s window will suddenly alter its complexion.
The Cincinnati defense is going to have a field day against an AFC North that saw Pittsburgh draft an inexperienced Max Iheanachor at left tackle (and presumably will line up an aging Aaron Rodgers under center), and they now match up formidably with the beefier Ravens—who took guard Vega Ioane in the first round—and Cleveland, which went with Spencer Fano to pair with the additions of Zion Johnson, Elgton Jenkins and Tytus Howard.
I think the committee approach to the pass rushing position in the absence of Trey Hendrickson is a masterstroke, especially once a motivated Lawrence is willing to take on double teams again. Cincinnati can now hurl a ton of stylistic complements at offensive lines in the form of Howell, Boye Mafe, Myles Murphy and Shemar Stewart. None of them may be dominant pass rushers, but like a MLB team with a deep bullpen of pitchers with different arm slots, the Bengals can find different combinations that work for them.
THE WORST
AI strikes again
Mike Greenberg had to issue an apology for calling Denzel Boston the son of David Boston. The fact that this became a talking point underlines just how ridiculously uninteresting this draft was in terms of storylines. In his apology, Greenberg noted that there was an issue in “my research,” though clearly anyone who has ever worked in television knows, there really was an issue in the massive information booklet that was handed to Greenberg by an employee whose job it is to compile these factoids.
This is almost certainly indicative of AI impacting the information-gathering process and our inability to cut through the barely semi-reliable swath of data that tops our search results. I’m glad Greenberg protected the research team as best he could, but I’m also preparing for a future in which the rash of misinformation on the internet generates more embarrassing public gaffes like this one once a generation that has grown up on AI is placed in charge of validating that information and passing it on.
The Vrabel situation
I don’t blame the Patriots just like I don’t blame the Rams as an organization for what happened in a slew of bizarre press conferences this week. The truth is that football is a collection of egos, and even the most well-meaning and experienced PR professional can be rendered to a third base coach whose stop sign is blown through by an overly eager baserunner.
Vrabel was so clearly obsessed with making sure we knew he was committed to the team that he obscured the point of his mission, which was to work on his life away from football. The evolution of his decision-making process, which included announcing he needed counseling but only on Day 3 of the draft and still insisting on calling the first-round pick, then having it known that he would still be in contact on Day 3 of the draft before clarifying that point to ensure we knew he was all in on counseling, just muddies the seriousness of what we hope is taking place. Had Vrabel simply bundled all these messages into one succinct press briefing, noting he needed to tend to his family, asking that reporters not ruin draft night for the players by asking about his alleged affair and stepping away “indefinitely,” I think there would have been fewer opportunities to gawk at the optics of this situation.
Arizona’s Grand Plan
I liked the Jeremiyah Love pick insofar as I don’t have a problem with his salary versus positional value (more on that here). What I don’t like is that the Cardinals went in a kind of reverse order of attacking needs, selecting a quarterback in the third round, offensive line help in the second and offensive weapon in the first, even though they will most likely depend far more on QB Carson Beck and OG Chase Bisontis than they will Love, especially if QB Jacoby Brissett continues to make noise on the financial front.
While I agree with the sentiment that Arizona probably did not have anything close to the offers it wanted for the third overall pick, its inability to generate a market was also concerning. We saw the messaging around the third overall pick change to suit what teams may be wanting to move up, first what looked like dangling LB Arvell Reese (who was not atop the Titans’ board at No. 4), then Love. By the time messaging out of Arizona indicated that the Cardinals were fine drafting Love, it was too late.
This was a year that the Cardinals needed to find a way to generate multiple impact starters. Instead, they netted a timeshare running back, then the third-best guard, then the third-best quarterback in a draft that was not known for quarterback depth.
I can’t talk out of both sides of my mouth and despise the Ty Simpson pick for the Rams, but I wonder how this wasn’t on Arizona’s radar and how the team couldn’t have gotten ahead of their division rivals for QB2.
There are teams with massive question marks across their roster, especially at quarterback, that used this draft as a foundation for when it finally does find a quarterback (see: Cleveland). Then there was the Cardinals, who seemed to get boxed in on taking best player available at a position that was not a need, then needing to take a quarterback as a potential bridge option out of desperation later in the draft.
Buffalo missing a chance to max out
At the risk of shaking a beehive, there seemed to be a pronounced discount for teams attempting to move up in this draft. Cleveland took a net loss in the Chiefs trade, for example, and while Buffalo had a much longer way to come up in this draft, I was curious why the team felt that trading back and accumulating more second, third, fourth and fifth-round selections in this draft without getting any 2027 capital felt like the best move. Perhaps similar to my complaint about the Rams taking Ty Simpson, Buffalo needs to maximize any chance it possibly can to whiff extraordinary cost-controlled talent. The Chiefs traded up for the draft’s premier cornerback, for example. The Chiefs likely won’t be picking in the top 20 again for the next few years.
When a draft class like this materializes, even a poor one (take 2013 for example) still nets some really good players, such as Lane Johnson, DeAndre Hopkins and Desmond Trufant. For a team that doesn’t need to be in the 2027 draft for the same reasons the Jets, Cardinals and Browns do, I wonder why there was such a fear in adding some of next year’s capital to move up in 2026 for a player that can help now. In terms of value, the Bills were fine. Ten picks in the top 250, including T.J. Parker and Davison Igbinosun, who, if our biggest fears about him are overaggression and penalties, I think will be just fine.
But with Arizona practically begging to get rid of the No. 3 overall pick and Cleveland all but posting a “for sale” sign at No. 6, then offering the pick to Kansas City for about 10% off, how much different would the vibe be heading into Year 1 of Joe Brady with Arvell Reese, Caleb Downs or Sonny Styles?
More NFL on Sports Illustrated
- Deion Sanders Sends Message to Diego Pavia As Heisman Finalist Remains Unsigned
- How Ty Simpson Plans to Bring a Nick Saban Mindset to Rams
- What New Steelers QB Drew Allar Said About His Previous Meeting With Mike McCarthy
- Watch Fernando Mendoza’s Mom Elsa Give a Tear-Jerking Speech After Son Was Drafted No. 1
- Biggest Surprises From the 2026 NFL Draft
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Conor Orr's Best and Worst From the 2026 NFL Draft.
