2017 NFL Draft: What Happened?
A new crop of NFL players have officially been given their new homes as the 2017 NFL Draft is finished and all 32 teams have some new weapons heading into the new season.
As with every draft, there are certain to be some surprises as players taken really late could turn out to be superstars.
Some players taken early could turn out to be massive busts too as the draft in any sport is an inexact science.
Teams put mass amounts of resources into scouting players and figuring out if they have the mental and physical makeup to be successful in the NFL.
They aren’t always right in their evaluations and the history of the NFL is full of names that should have been great and couldn’t last even a few seasons in the league.
That will happen again but nobody knows who will be that player and who will rise up to do something special until they get on the field in September.
These risks taken in the draft are something that every team lives with but they are also something that can end or boost a career as an executive.
These management teams have a lot riding on their choices through the few days of the draft and as a result, the pressure is on the entire time.
No more so than in the first round where the teams have to pay more money for the players they consider to be the best in the draft.
The players taken in the first round are the players that teams see as their building blocks and the futures of the franchise.
One wrong pick and a GM could be out of a job within the year but making the right choice could propel a GM into becoming a Super Bowl winner.
That right decision could be any type of player as long as it fits a need but more often than not the biggest difference for nay struggling team is a quarterback.
The NFL Draft continues to be proof of the obsession with that position in a league where the passing game has taken over.
The quarterback is the position that will always make the biggest difference for any team.
There could be talent at every level of a team but without a quarterback that can steer the offence correctly a team will never win the Super Bowl.
It doesn’t mean that the QB needs to be the best in the league or an unbelievable athlete but the right leader with a good enough arm to move the ball around can lead a team to the Super Bowl.
With the importance of the quarterback in the league teams are constantly trying to find their leader.
The demand for a good quarterback is high and so the price to get one tends to be higher than anyone is willing to pay.
Therefore the place that everyone looks to in order to find that QB is the draft where they can get a young star and shape him.
As the draft approaches the demand for a quarterback is made clear as rumours swirl about the top picks and the top quarterbacks in the draf.t
In 2017 the quarterback pool was not necessarily the best with a lot of analysts not seeing any of the pivots good enough to start right away.
Yet despite that belief, the rumours continued to build about who would take the top quarterback and when that pick would be made.
Someone was going to reach in order to get a quarterback that they thought could lead their team the only question was about who it would be and who they thought had the talent.
It turned out the answer to those question came pretty quickly as the Chicago Bears traded up to the second pick in the draft and took Mitchell Trubisky.
It was the biggest surprise of the draft as the Bears were in need of a QB but moving up that far to get Trubisky seemed like a massive reach.
The Tarheel QB was considered one of the best in the draft and for a long time has traded positions with Deshaun Watson as the best QB in the draft.
Chicago seemed to think that they were going to miss out on taking him and traded up which now puts Trubisky as the top QB in the draft leading the Bears to likely face pressure to start him immediately.
That reach also launched a bit of a panic in the room as every team in need of a QB now knew that one was gone and the rest were going to follow.
They began trying to move up in the draft to get the QB they thought to be the best and you could feel the tension in the air.
In another big surprise the Kansas City Chief moved to the 10th pick and instead of taking the next best quarterback they drafted Patrick Mahomes.
Mahomes has massive potential but is very much unpolished, which makes Kansas City a good place as Alex Smith could provide a proper mentor but moving up to take him might have been another reach.
Only a few picks later the Texans took Watson while the Browns had a great draft staying patient and eventually finding a future QB in DeShone Kizer in the second round.
The obsession around quarterbacks was once again a major theme this year as the biggest surprises came when teams reached to find their next pivot.
They will remain the main story as the QBs who have been taken now have the real work ahead of them as the pressure is on for all of them.
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