Barring a last-minute trade, every team will enter the NFL draft with its 1st-round pick
This year’s NFL draft is on target to achieve a first.
Barring a last-minute trade, every team will go into the draft with its original first-round pick for the first time in the common draft era that began in 1967.
That’s in stark contrast to recent years when teams were much more willing to trade away or swap first-round picks, with an average of more than seven teams entering the last five drafts without their original first-round picks. That peaked in 2022 when 11 teams entered draft day without their own first-round pick thanks in part to previous deals for players like Deshaun Watson, Russell Wilson, Trey Lance, Tyreek Hill and Davante Adams.
The closest the league has come in the common draft era with every team holding its own first-round pick, according to research by ESPN, came in 1993 when Kansas City dealt its first-rounder to San Francisco for Joe Montana five days before the draft.
The static picks are unlikely to hold through the first round on Thursday night as teams are likely to make moves up or down the board depending on which players are available. Just last year there were five draft-day trades involving first-round picks that saw picks change hands eight times.
It looks like a quarterback once again will be taken first in the draft, with the odds that Cam Ward goes No. 1 to Tennessee exceeding 99%, according to the latest odds from BetMGM Sportsbook.
That would mark the seventh time in eight years that a QB went first, with Jacksonville’s pick of Travon Walker in 2022 as the only exception. That’s been part of a long trend as the NFL has prioritized passing. Quarterbacks have been taken first overall in 20 of the previous 27 drafts.
But that wasn’t always the case.
Drew Bledsoe (1993 to New England) was the only quarterback from 1991-97 to be taken first, and there was an 11-year stretch from 1972-82 that had only one QB taken with the No. 1 pick: Steve Bartkowski to Atlanta in 1975.
Almost every team has taken a shot on a first-round quarterback in recent years, but the team with the longest drought could snap it on Thursday.
New Orleans hasn’t drafted a quarterback with its first-round pick in the common draft since taking Archie Manning in 1971, but it could snap that streak this year given the uncertainty surrounding the status of Derek Carr.
The only other teams that haven’t drafted a QB in the first round in the past 15 drafts are the the Cowboys (1989), Seahawks (1993), Raiders (2007) and Lions (2009).
The Tennessee Titans are set to pick first in the draft for the first time since the franchise took Earl Campbell in 1978 when the team was known as the Houston Oilers.
The Titans traded away the top pick in 2016 to the Rams but now have a chance, marking the seventh time that the top pick has gone to an AFC South team since the start of the eight-division era in 2002.
The AFC South will be the first division in that span with every team making the No. 1 pick, with Houston having done it three times since 2002, Jacksonville twice and Indianapolis once.
Next up on the list is the AFC North, where Cleveland and Cincinnati have both had the top pick twice, and the NFC West, with the Rams having the top pick twice and Arizona and San Francisco once each since 2002.
The AFC West and NFC South have each made the top pick three times in that span, with the NFC North doing it twice and AFC East doing it once.
The only division that hasn’t made the top pick since 2002 is the NFC East, although that comes with a bit of a caveat. In 2004, the Chargers drafted Eli Manning first overall but traded him during the draft to the New York Giants. The last time a team in the NFC East made the No. 1 pick was in 1991, when Dallas drafted Russell Maryland.
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AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl
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