stitches

All of the QBs this year are either projects or low ceiling types. I personally like Malik Willis and Desmond Ridder the best. Willis has elite physical and athletic traits(best athlete and best arm in the class) but has some way to go when it comes to the mental part of the game - command of the offense, anticipation... Ridder has been growing on me more and more lately. He doesn't look like an elite athlete on film but tested like one... Tested better than any of the super athletes at QB that have entered the league lately(Lamar refused to test at the combine). Everything in his tests is above the 90th percentile. And in addition, there are raving reviews of his leadership and mental qualities from interviews and blackboard work with teams. And you can see it on tape too... He does look like a QB, looks like he knows what he's doing, goes through progressions well, finds his hot reads and his outlets with consistency. The knock on him is - he looks a bit robotic with his throwing and his accuracy and placement are inconsistent. His arm strength is not great too(might be improved if he fixes some of his mechanics issues), some of his deeper balls die in the air. About the next draft - it's very possible there will be better all around QBs in the next draft - Stroud, Young both seem to project like top 5 picks... But after that I'm not sure what will happen. For example, last year at the same time people thought Spencer Rattler would be top 5 pick this year, but instead he lost his starting job in Oklahoma and has now transferred and noone really would project him to go high anymore. My point is - we don't really know what will happen next year... Maybe some new stars emerge, maybe the ones we think highly of now falter. Anthony Richardson is another potential high pick. I personally have a dark horse for next year already - while watching Wan'dale Robinson, I kind of started falling in love with his QB - Will Levis. He looks very promising to me. He was a big recruit for Penn State, but it seems like for whatever reason he couldn't win the starting spot so he transferred and he has the look of a starting NFL QB to me - big, strong, athletic, good arm... I have to watch more of him but that's my very early favorite. So... To sum up , it's very possible next year will give us better QB class, but that doesn't really tell us much about whether or not teams like the Vikings or the Colts will be able to get in position to draft those better QBs. Maybe what's left after the teams in the top 3 pick their QBs is players of similar uncertainty and question marks as the QBs in this current draft... That's why I'm advocating for going to get our guy now if our GM and coach actually love any of the prospects and think they can develop him into a franchise QB in this year's draft.

Thanks for organizing and running it, NFLfan. I can participate in another round or two... But most probably through PM again.

With the 63d pick the Bengals select Josh Paschal, EDGE, Kentucky.

Can't believe Pickens fell here. He was no. 1 player on my board at the start of the round... I think I can get Aaron Rodgers off my neck now.

Thanks @NFLfan for making my picks for me. I'm very nervous about my picks because Aaron Rodgers has been banging on my door all night long and shouting something about doing his own research on the WRs.... but I just had to go by the board and I got two players I had valued very highly. NFLfan can confirm both of them were among my options for pick 22... About the pick for the Bengals... best guard in the draft IMO. I am continuing what the Bengals FO started in FA and trying to save Joe Burrow from Andrew Luck's fate. This OL will be much better next year with La'el Collins, Jonah Williams, Alex Cappa and Ted Karras and Kenyon Green. That's 4 significant upgrades on the line compared to last year and IMO this line has the chance to actually be a strength for the team going forward. I love it.

Let me put it this way - I am not missing the end of the 1st round. If they love any of the QBs and he's still there, I absolutely expect Ballard to trade up to get him.

As the Packers GM I just got visited by Aaron Rodgers:

A+

Grigson was horrible on that scale. His only redeeming achievements were drafting Luck... which about 99.9999999% of people who have ever seen a football game would have доне and drafting TY Hilton. Fair play to him! That's a great move. ONE... among TONS AND TONS AND TONS of horrible. I will never let Grigson and Pagano live down the way they managed to ruin a generational talent like Luck. Neither of them deserve any decision-making power in the league ever again. Your assessment of Ballard is probably fair. I have some hopes that he might jump into the higher categories, but at least on words he continues to profess the same flawed philosophy.

My biggest beef with Ballard has never been that he doesn't spend money on the FA market. Would I like him to have a bit more strategic FA spending? Sure... but that's not anywhere close to a crucial mistake IMO. I absolutely understand his thinking here. My biggest grievances have to do with the way he's handled some of the positions of highest value in football. IMO that's what is hindering us from taking the next step to being a legitimate contender.

Chris Reed is gone, signed with Minnesota:

You should always pick an elite player at any position over mediocre players at the highest value positions... but... that's not comparing same for same. The question is not does DL impact winning? Of course he does. The question is does he impact winning at the same level as a top 5 EDGE or top 5 WR or top 5 CB? And the answer is quite easily - no. This doesn't make DL any less of a player. I love DL and I've loved him since we drafted him and we probably cannot find a better player to spend our money on... but make no mistake - we are indeed strong at the positions of least value on a football field - LB, IOL, RB... And there are far worse options than having strong players at positions of low value. You can have no strengths at all... then you will be the Lions or the Jets. The very fact that we have DL, Q and Taylor puts us in that .500 range. They are valuable players. They do bring wins. Just not as valuable as the top players at other positions. If you let me choose top 5 QB, top 5 WR and top 5 EDGE over them, I'm picking those over our strong positions. As a final sentiment I want to point out that the problem of this team is not the presence of Q, Leonard or Taylor. The problem of a team is never the strongest players on the team. The problem is that we have noone even close to their level at the most important positions in football. If we had a top QB, top receiving weapons... top pass rushers, noone would care that we are spending top resources at those other positions too. The problem is we don't have those positions taken care of and people are redirecting their discontent toward the wrong targets.

This can be a great season for Pittman. But he's not enough. We need multiple other playmakers to take serious steps forward if we are not going to be adding any new talent.

You know I'm not the biggest fan of the conservative nature of Reich's playcalling, but I feel like personnel has a bit to do with it too. I also don't think just any speedster would do. There are tons of super fast receiver that are not good players and even though they have speed they can't get open and/or can't locate and catch what's thrown their way. We need good players that can do it all, while being fast. QB's chemistry and trust with his WRs is important too. Some QBs just refuse to throw to players they don't trust to catch the ball. It's weird because Wentz was actually launching it relatively frequently at least in the beginning of the season. He got really lucky with some late/underthrows where we got DPIs... I wonder if Ryan will develop a good timing and trust with any of our WRs. I really hope the offense won't be as limited as it was with Rivers(although watching Rivers operate was joy for me too... he just seemed to always know what he has to do and where he has to go, he was really impressive for how limited physically he was). Hopefully Matt Ryan gives us some of the same cerebral play but we get some more big throws downfield too.

We need some weapons to give the QB confidence to throw deep, too. I really think we need a speedster who can threaten both after the catch and on deep routes. Not sure TY can still do that.

Armstead to Miami:

Give me more compensatory picks! All of them! ALL! Ballard with compensatory picks:

We have a QB... WOHOOOO!

I don't think I've heard him signing somewhere.

IMO if they sign him(doubt it), it will be to be LT, not to move Braden to LT. Collins has experience at LT in college, but indeed he's been playing mostly RT in the league, mainly because Dallas have Tyron Smith at LT.