2024 NFL draft top pick scenarios: Teams, games to watch
On the other side of the standings, there’s no problem. The bad teams are very, very bad. Their chances of making it to the postseason might have fallen by the wayside, but over the next two months, they’ll have another task at hand. That’s because the top of the 2024 draft is expected to deliver two franchise quarterback prospects in Caleb Williams (USC) and Drake Maye (North Carolina).
Woeful for Williams? Make Mistakes for Drake? Bad teams have every reason to hope that they bottom out and land one of those top two picks, because those players could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars over the next five years. The value of landing a franchise quarterback is self-explanatory, but even if one of these teams has a quarterback in place, they could deal a top-two selection for multiple first-rounders. If there was ever a year to be terrible, it’s 2023.
Who will land pick Nos. 1 and 2? And what happens if they do? Let’s set the table for the race to the bottom with eight weeks to go. I’ve asked my friends at ESPN Stats & Information to simulate the rest of the season 10,000 times, and I used the results to identify the eight teams that have at least a 0.1% chance of landing the top pick in the draft. I’ll lay out their path toward the bottom, which games they’ll need to lose to get there and what might happen if they do land the opportunity to draft Maye or Williams.
Two things to keep in mind before we get started. I’m not going to make any sort of judgment about whether a team would take or prefer Maye over Williams or vice versa, in part because many of the teams themselves probably haven’t formed their opinion as of yet. There’s still college football games to go, let alone the entire pre-draft process. I’m going to assume the two quarterbacks will be the top two prospects heading into next April, but I’m agnostic about the order in which they’ll come off the board.
The other thing I’m going to discuss is whether a team might be “tanking,” and I need to clarify what that means. It does not mean that a team’s players are actively trying to lose. It doesn’t mean that a coach is deliberately playing third-stringers ahead of more talented players. Tanking is more about roster construction and is more subtle. Are injured veterans rushing their way back into the lineup? Did a team make trades, either before the season or at the deadline, to sacrifice 2023 talent at the expense of improving in 2024 and beyond? Are they giving rookies and younger players more playing time than their established level of play might warrant? Those are the factors I’m considering when I’m talking about whether a team is really tanking.
I’ll start with the team that has the best chance of landing the first overall pick and work my way down. This franchise doesn’t have the best odds by virtue of its own record, but after making a wise decision a year ago, it’s getting help from the league’s worst team:
Chances of landing the No. 1 overall pick: 40.4%
Chances of landing one of the top two picks: 70.4%
Chances of landing both the No. 1 and No. 2 pick: 3%
The vast majority of Chicago’s chances to win the top pick come from last March’s trade with the Panthers, which included a bevy of picks and looms as a potential job-saving deal for Bears general manager Ryan Poles. Carolina gave up wide receiver DJ Moore, the Nos. 9 and 61 picks in the 2023 draft, along with a 2024 first-round selection and a 2025 second-round pick, and then used the top pick on quarterback Bryce Young.
Now, the Bears’ original pick has just a 2.2% chance of getting the No. 1 pick in next April’s draft, but the 1-8 Panthers have a 38.2% chance of landing here.
Must-lose games on the schedule: Panthers at Titans (Week 12), Panthers vs. Falcons (Week 15), Panthers vs. Buccaneers (Week 18). The Bears, who just beat the Panthers in Week 10, will be rooting hard against Carolina the rest of the way, as the most important games for Chicago over the remainder of the season are actually Panthers contests. Frank Reich’s team isn’t favored to win a single game from here, but the Football Power Index (FPI) projects the Panthers to win about 2.5 games over the remainder of the season. These three games represent Carolina’s three best chances of winning over the final eight weeks.
If the Panthers lose all three of these games, the draft model at The Upshot gives the Bears a 76% chance of landing the top pick.
Are they tanking? Can they tank? No. The Bears traded away linebacker Roquan Smith and edge Robert Quinn a year ago and lost 13 of their last 14 games, but even if they lost each of their remaining games in 2023, they would have only a 59% chance of finishing with the league’s worst record, per The Upshot.
As I mentioned, the real driver of Chicago’s chances are down in Carolina, and the Panthers have no motivation to hand the Bears the top selection. If anything, a Carolina coaching staff and front office that moved up for Young would prefer if the Bears didn’t land a more exciting and successful quarterback prospect with the Panthers’ own picks, thank you. The Panthers will be as motivated as any hopeless team over the next two months to win.
What would they do with the No. 1 pick? Draft a quarterback. Poles resisted the urge to take Young or C.J. Stroud last year and moved forward with Justin Fields, but the third-year quarterback struggled with consistency before going down with a dislocated thumb. Fields ranks 26th in QBR this season, and while the offense around him looked broken for the first few weeks, Chicago would be passing up a higher-caliber prospect in 2024 to stick with Fields, whose fifth-year option decision for 2025 comes due next spring.
What would happen to the incumbent QB? Fields would become a trade candidate to teams that aren’t going to be in position to land a top-two pick and/or don’t love the other quarterbacks available later in Round 1. There won’t be a leaguewide clamor to acquire Fields, but his skill set and highlight reel will appeal to teams that think they can get more out of him with better offensive infrastructure than what Chicago has sported.
The Bears wouldn’t have much leverage in making a Fields trade, given that other teams around the league would know they were moving on, but we’ve seen this situation before. When the Jets were about to draft quarterback Zach Wilson with the No. 2 overall pick of the 2021 draft, they dealt Sam Darnold to the Panthers for second-, fourth- and sixth-round picks. The Panthers picked up Darnold’s fifth-year option, a move that seemed foolish when they benched him during his first season with the team. Carolina eventually paid Darnold about $23.7 million for 17 middling starts.
Fields would probably net the Bears a similar return. He has been better than Darnold, but he’s not as neat of a plug-and-play fit as Darnold is in offenses around the league. An extra second-round pick would help compensate for the Bears sending their second-rounder in 2024 to the Commanders for Montez Sweat.
What if they land pick Nos. 1 and 2?? The Bears and Cardinals each have two first-round picks, but as I’ll get to in a minute, Arizona’s second pick via Houston isn’t a realistic candidate to finish in the bottom two. There’s absolutely a universe, though, in which the Panthers and Bears finish with the two worst records in football, which occurred in just under 3% of the 10,000 simulations.
Landing a franchise quarterback would be fun enough for the Bears, but what would they do with the top two picks? Most teams would probably try to use one pick on a quarterback and trade the other one for multiple first-rounders, setting up the possibility of either landing several starting-caliber rookies or various valuable veterans in deals over the years to come. The Eagles turned this sort of situation into wideout A.J. Brown and defensive tackle Jalen Carter, while the Dolphins landed receiver Tyreek Hill and edge rusher Bradley Chubb.
Poles & Co. don’t always think that way; these are the same people who traded second-round picks for Sweat and wideout Chase Claypool in the hopes of adding players who can make a difference right now. Getting three or four first-round picks might sound great in theory, but would the Bears really be able to pass up wideout Marvin Harrison Jr. (Ohio State), offensive tackle Olumuyiwa Fashanu (Penn State) or pass-rusher Dallas Turner (Alabama) to add an immediate impact player at No. 2? At the very least, the Bears could consider moving down in the top five, letting another team take a quarterback while they land more draft capital and one of those potential difference-makers at key positions.
Chances of landing the No. 1 overall pick: 39.8%
Chances of landing one of the top two picks: 70.1%
The Giants are a half-game ahead of the Panthers and tied with the Patriots and Cardinals for the second-worst record. They have the single best chance of landing the No. 1 overall pick, although the Bears have slightly better odds by virtue of being able to combine their own chances with those of Carolina. Why are Big Blue’s chances of landing the top pick so much higher than the Pats or Cards, then?
For one, the Giants have been worse on a play-by-play basis than their competitors. The Patriots and Cardinals have been outscored by about 9 points per game this season. The Giants have lost by just under 15 points per contest, including a 49-17 shellacking at the hands of the Cowboys in Week 10. Brian Daboll’s team ranks last in offensive expected points added (EPA) per play and 28th in the same metric on defense.
The other concern is at quarterback. The Cardinals just got back Kyler Murray from a torn ACL. The Patriots aren’t exactly thrilled with Mac Jones, but they still have their Week 1 starter in the mix. The Giants have been forced to turn to replacement-level rookie Tommy DeVito after Daniel Jones and Tyrod Taylor suffered significant injuries. Jones is out for the season because of a torn ACL, while Taylor is on injured reserve after hurting his ribs against the Jets and might not be ready to return when eligible in December.
Must-lose games on the schedule: at Commanders (Week 11), vs. Patriots (Week 12), vs. Packers (Week 14). The three most important games for the Giants in their attempts to lock up the No. 1 overall pick come in their next three contests, all of which might be started by DeVito. Their new backup is Matt Barkley, who hasn’t started an NFL game since 2018 and has 22 interceptions on 363 career attempts. The Giants are projected to lose each of their last four games by double digits.
If you’re looking for the game that could come to define the race for the top two spots in the quarterback landscape, the Patriots-Giants tilt in Week 12 looms as perhaps the most important contest to come. To exhibit how little the FPI thinks of the Giants, consider that the Patriots are seemingly falling apart at the seams and project to beat the Giants at MetLife Stadium by nearly 9 points.
Are they tanking? Can they tank? Not on purpose, perhaps, but the injuries to Jones and Taylor leave the Giants without many viable quarterback options. General manager Joe Schoen wasn’t exactly going out of his way to trade for Joshua Dobbs, put it that way. Schoen did eat some money to get a second-round pick from the Seahawks for Leonard Williams at the trade deadline, although New York didn’t go for bigger moves to get rid of salary and add more draft capital.
What would they do with the No. 1 pick? They would probably draft a quarterback, right? Schoen has been scouting the top quarterbacks in this class over the past few weeks, and while Jones’ season has been marred by injury, he struggled before going down. Daboll and Schoen inherited Jones from another regime and declined his fifth-year option before last season’s breakout campaign, so there’s a good chance they would want to start over with their own guy. At the same time, ownership makes the final calls in New York, and it seems telling that Jones ended up landing more than $81 million guaranteed over his first two years after one solid season in four tries.
The Giants were willing to commit significant money to Jones this offseason; would they really give up on him after six disappointing games behind a dismal offensive line?
I think the Giants would draft a quarterback at No. 1. Still, I wouldn’t rule out a scenario in which they moved forward with Jones, traded down to No. 3, picked up a massive haul of draft picks from whichever team landed there (with the Bears and Cardinals as the most likely holders of the No. 3 overall pick right now) and used their new selection to take a much-needed playmaker in wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. (Ohio State). I would rather take the QB1, but I also wouldn’t have signed Jones to this deal to begin with, and here we are.
What would happen to the incumbent QB? If the Giants do draft a QB, Jones would become the highest-compensated backup quarterback in NFL history. They would owe him $35.5 million guaranteed next season. Plus, $23 million of Jones’ $30 million salary in 2025 is guaranteed for injury, so with multiple neck injuries and a torn ACL in his recent past, my suspicion is the Giants would probably leave him on the bench in 2024 to avoid triggering those guarantees.
With significant guaranteed money and coming off a torn ACL, it would be a surprise if Jones had any trade value. The Giants could try to land a swap of late-round picks from a team that gets left in the proverbial quarterback lurch, but I don’t suspect Jones would be an appealing candidate given his salary and modest level of production. The most likely scenario would see him spend 2024 on the bench before being released in March 2025.
Chances of landing the No. 1 overall pick: 12.3%
Chances of landing one of the top two picks: 33.8%
The Cardinals had one win going into last Sunday, but depending on what you’re hoping for, they were either saved or hurt by the return of quarterback Kyler Murray. The 2019 No. 1 overall pick looked like his old self in his return from a torn ACL, throwing for 249 yards and running for 33 more while leading a 25-23 comeback victory over the Falcons. Arizona had been positioned to claim the top pick in next year’s draft, but now it has fallen out of the top two.
Whether it has been with Murray or Joshua Dobbs, the Cardinals have generally been feistier than expectations heading into the season. Yes, 2-8 is 2-8, but they blew out the Cowboys and have been competitive into the fourth quarter in games with the Bengals, 49ers and Seahawks. It seemed telling that general manager Monti Ossenfort wasn’t more aggressive in dealing away veterans at the trade deadline; the Cardinals seem to like what they have in terms of culture, even in a season in which they’re expecting to lose.
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Unfortunately for the Cardinals, their move to emulate the Bears and land a possible top pick in 2024 has been foiled by the success of Texans rookie quarterback C.J. Stroud, who has led his team to a 5-4 record. Houston drafted Stroud at No. 2 in April, then traded back up to No. 3 with the Cardinals to take edge rusher Will Anderson Jr., giving Arizona its first-rounder in 2024, along with more picks.
That Texans pick is now out of the running for the top two. Across ESPN’s 10,000 simulations, Houston didn’t land the top pick and finished with the No. 2 selection only three times. We’ll see whether moving up for Anderson turns out to be a stroke of genius, but the pick currently projects to fall in the middle of Round 1.
Must-lose games on the schedule: vs. Rams (Week 12), at Bears (Week 16), vs. Seahawks (Week 18). The FPI gives the Cardinals at least a 30% chance of winning in five of their seven remaining games, with the games against the 49ers and Eagles as exceptions. Losing to the Bears is probably a must if they want to claim one of the top two picks.
This week’s Cardinals-Texans game would have felt like the equivalent of the Bears-Panthers game we just saw in a different universe, but Houston has played its way out of the top of the draft.
Are they tanking? Can they tank? It looked like the Cardinals were tanking when they cut DeAndre Hopkins before the season and traded away would-be starter Colt McCoy, but they have played hard. Benching Dobbs for Clayton Tune looked a little curious after Tune was overwhelmed against the Browns, but it’s tough to make the case they are tanking when they welcomed back Murray into the lineup in mid-November. Nobody would have batted an eye if they had let their top signal-caller heal before giving him a late start or two in December.
What would they do with the No. 1 pick? There’s a real question here. Murray is the best quarterback on any of the rosters we’re going to mention in this piece, and the 26-year-old should still have plenty of good football ahead. He has never quite put together a dominant season, though.
The Cardinals would have the flexibility to make a decision around talent. If they love one of the guys in this draft, they could land a franchise quarterback prospect, trade Murray for a meaningful return and move forward with an exciting core of prospects and picks. If the Jonathan Gannon regime thinks Murray is its guy, it could land the sort of draft haul that helped kick-start the Dolphins’ rebuild in Miami.
When the Cardinals moved out of the No. 3 pick this past April, they were able to add a future first-round pick and still stay in position to land much-needed tackle Paris Johnson Jr. I suspect any sort of trade in 2024 would be similar, with Arizona moving down a few spots and remaining in position to add a difference-maker in the top 10 while adding significant draft capital in the years to come.
What would happen to the incumbent QB? If the Cardinals decide they want one of the quarterbacks, Murray’s days in the desert would be numbered. What he shows over the remainder of the season could determine what his trade value looks like; there will definitely be teams interested in Murray, but a Murray who looks like the guy we saw at his best during the first half of the 2021 season would be much more valuable than the one who couldn’t find any sort of consistency in 2022.
There will be teams who pass on Murray, though. At 5-foot-10, he’s undersized, and everyone else heard about that contractual clause, too. More importantly, perhaps, his contract is expensive. Any team acquiring Murray would be on the hook to pay him $38.9 million in 2024, $32.6 million in 2025 and $42.6 million in 2026, given the guarantee structure on his deal. The earliest a team would realistically be able to get out of the contract would be 2027, and even that would require paying his $19.5 million base salary if the new team couldn’t find a suitor for him via trade.
Paying $38 million or so per season over the next three years for Murray isn’t an exorbitant sum in a league in which Daniel Jones is making north of $41 million per year over two, but that’s going to cap the return the Cardinals would get for their quarterback in a trade. I would expect them to land a first-round pick if Murray plays well down the stretch, but Arizona fans hoping for much more might be disappointed.
Chances of landing the No. 1 overall pick: 5.2%
Chances of landing one of the top two picks: 15.3%
I wrote at length about the Patriots and how they ended up here earlier this week. They have the worst record in the AFC. Their chances of landing the top spot are compromised by the fact their two victories are over the Bills and Jets, who are a combined 9-10. The Giants’ two victories, meanwhile, came over teams that are 6-14.
Must-lose games on the schedule: at Giants (Week 12), at Broncos (Week 16), vs. Jets (Week 18). Next week’s Patriots-Giants game is the Super Bowl of Sadness. It’ll be tough for the winner to make up the ground it needs and finish with the top pick. Even if the Patriots won that game and then lost their six remaining contests afterward, The Upshot projects them to have only a 21% chance of landing the No. 1 pick.
Are they tanking? Can they tank? You go to a Patriots news conference and ask Bill Belichick if his team is tanking. See how that goes for you. They aren’t tanking. They’re just bad.
We’ll see if they bench quarterback Mac Jones after the bye, which could limit an already disastrous offense by turning to Bailey Zappe or Malik Cunningham. The Pats also have no reason to rush back edge rusher Matt Judon (torn right biceps) and cornerback Christian Gonzalez (shoulder) from the serious injuries they suffered during the Cowboys game.
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What would they do with the No. 1 pick? Belichick would have the ultimate chance to trade down and amass a franchise-altering amount of draft capital, but let’s be real: The Patriots would take a quarterback. Jones’ collapse over the past two seasons has altered his trajectory, and New England will almost certainly decline his fifth-year option after the season, barring a stunning turnaround over the next seven games. This team needs to start over with one of the quarterbacks at the top of this class.
What would happen to the incumbent QB? Jones would have some trade value, although probably not as much as what the Jets got for Darnold. Jones is owed $2.8 million in 2024, but I can’t imagine a team picking up his fifth-year option. I could see a hybrid scenario like the one the Packers pursued with Jordan Love, where they guaranteed Love $13.5 million in Year 5 as opposed to picking up or declining an option that would have been worth $20.3 million. If a team guaranteed Jones $14 million for 2026, as an example, it would essentially be signing him to a two-year, $16.8 million pact. That’s high-end backup money.
I keep coming back to the idea of the 49ers being the team that trades for Jones, given that Kyle Shanahan reportedly traded up to the No. 3 overall pick in 2021 to get ahead of the Patriots in their pursuit of Jones, only to instead take Trey Lance. With Lance on the Cowboys and Jones possibly being available this offseason, it’s not hard to imagine the 49ers acquiring Jones to serve as competition for Brock Purdy.
Chances of landing the No. 1 overall pick: 1.2%
Chances of landing one of the top two picks: 3.7%
The post-Aaron Rodgers era isn’t off to a great start in Green Bay. Sunday’s frustrating loss to the Steelers left Matt LaFleur’s team at 3-6 in advance of games against the Chargers, Lions and Chiefs. The schedule gets much easier after that, but the Packers rank 22nd in DVOA this season; other mediocre teams might be circling matchups against them as rare chances for victory. Green Bay would probably need to win one of the next three and then its final five games to advance to the postseason.
The most likely scenario for the Packers is they end up somewhere toward the bottom of the top 10. If they lose three straight and drop to 3-9, though, the wheels could come off, leaving them an outside path toward the No. 1 overall pick. Green Bay would also have had an added chance from the Jets’ first-rounder as part of the Aaron Rodgers trade, but because Rodgers has missed so much time with his torn Achilles, the pick that will convey in next year’s draft will be a second-rounder.
Must-lose games on the schedule: at Giants (Week 14), at Panthers (Week 16), vs. Bears (Week 18). The Packers don’t control their own destiny, but they might be the spoiler for the Giants and Bears as they battle for the top of the draft. The Upshot also has their chances around 1% right now, but if they lost all three of those games, their odds would jump to 16%. Losing out altogether would leave Green Bay with an 84% shot of landing the No. 1 selection, so if they can emulate what the Bears did down the stretch last season, there’s a real chance they could sneak up on the competition.
Are they tanking? Can they tank? They’re injured, that’s for sure. Offensive tackle David Bakhtiari (knee) is out for the year, while defensive backs Darnell Savage (calf) and Eric Stokes (hamstring) are on injured reserve and linebacker Quay Walker (groin) and cornerback Jaire Alexander (shoulder) missed the loss to the Steelers. Wideout Christian Watson hasn’t looked right all season, but the Packers are more of a bad team than a tanking one on the whole.
What would they do with the No. 1 pick? Nothing about Jordan Love‘s performance has suggested the Packers would pass up a shot at the top quarterbacks in this class. He’s still developing after spending the better part of three years on the bench behind Rodgers, but he ranks 22nd in QBR and is entering the final year of his contract in 2024. He ranks last in completion percentage (58.7%) and completion percentage over expectation by a considerable margin; he’s at minus-5.1% and the next-worst regular is Deshaun Watson, who comes in at 2.8%.
What would happen to the incumbent QB? Well, the Jets could use some competition for Rodgers. In all seriousness, Love wouldn’t have much of a market as a player with limited experience and $6 million in compensation due next year. He would likely stick as a bridge quarterback and backup to whomever the Packers drafted before leaving in free agency in 2025. Any trade interest in Love would be as a flier as part of a quarterback competition.
Chances of landing the No. 1 overall pick: 0.5%
Chances of landing one of the top two picks: 2%
The Will Levis era at quarterback got off to a great start when the Titans beat the Falcons, but returns have been diminishing. The rookie second-round pick has completed 52.6% of his passes, averaged 5.9 yards per attempt and posted a 29.9 QBR over the past two weeks in losses to the Steelers and Buccaneers.
Reports from Nashville during the preseason suggested Levis wasn’t likely to be ready to play at a high level in 2023 even before he suffered a lower-body injury, so the four-touchdown performance against Atlanta might have prematurely raised expectations. The Titans named him as their starter ahead of Ryan Tannehill, who’s returning from a high ankle sprain, so it appears they’re committing to him for the remainder of the season. That might actually increase their chances of making a run for the top pick.
Must-lose games on the schedule: vs. Panthers (Week 12), vs. Colts (Week 13), vs. Texans (Week 15). Beating the Panthers or Colts would all but take the Titans out of the race for No. 1. They would need to lose out and get help to have a realistic shot of landing the top selection. They have a 1.7% chance of landing the No. 2 overall spot, so that appears to be a more plausible path for them.
Are they tanking? Can they tank? … Maybe? General manager Ran Carthon traded away veteran safety Kevin Byard at the trade deadline, and the team committed to Levis as its full-time starter after exactly one good performance. (If Tannehill doesn’t play again, the Titans will have paid him $27 million in 2023 for six starts with a league-worst 33.1 QBR; it seems there are better ways to spend $27 million.)
Tennessee is basically out of the playoff picture at this point; I’m not sure Tannehill would solve its problems, but it certainly seems like the team is thinking more about 2024 than 2023.
What would they do with the No. 1 pick? The Titans have used second- and third-round picks over the past two drafts on Levis and Malik Willis, respectively, so they probably would prefer to find that they already have their quarterback of the future on the roster. If Levis struggles enough over the rest of the season for the them to end up with one of the top two picks, though, I can’t imagine they would let those sunk costs get in the way of taking a top signal-caller. The Panthers didn’t let Jimmy Clausen get in the way of drafting Cam Newton in 2011, and the Browns moved DeShone Kizer out of the way for Baker Mayfield in 2018.
What would happen to the incumbent QB? Tannehill is a free agent after the season. Levis would likely move into the backup role, depending on how he performs over the remainder of 2023. If he does well, there could be some trade interest in a passer who was taken toward the top of the second round in the 2023 draft, although it’s tough to picture a universe in which Levis plays well and the Titans end up with a top-two pick.
Chances of landing the No. 1 overall pick: 0.4%
Chances of landing one of the top two picks: 2.3%
At two games under .500 and with narrow losses to the Eagles and Seahawks in recent weeks, it seems like the Commanders are closer to the playoff picture than they are to competing for the No. 1 pick. It would take some help elsewhere to get Washington in the running, but it is about to face a brutal schedule down the stretch, which should push it out of the playoff race. The Commanders still have games remaining against the 49ers and Dolphins and a home-and-home with the Cowboys. The FPI thinks there’s a 38% chance they lose all four of those tilts.
Must-lose games on the schedule: vs. Giants (Week 11), at Rams (Week 15), at Jets (Week 16). The Commanders would fall out of the race for the top spot if they beat the Giants. If they lose, though, things could get interesting. They would be only one game up on the Giants in the NFC East, and by virtue of sweeping their divisional rivals, New York would hold the head-to-head tiebreaker and finish in third place in the NFC East if both teams finished with the same record.
The FPI has the game between the Commanders and Jets as a coin flip, which would make for a fun watch on Christmas Eve.
Are they tanking? Can they tank? The Commanders traded away starting edge rushers Montez Sweat and Chase Young for draft picks at the deadline, which was the most significant set of moves made by any team. They have one sack of Mac Jones and Geno Smith across 92 dropbacks after shipping off Sweat and Young, so it’s fair to suggest the moves aren’t doing wonders for their 2023 defense.
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What would they do with the No. 1 pick? This is an interesting one. Sam Howell has been compelling at quarterback this season, and while he was running an impossible sack rate for most of the season, he’s down at a more reasonable 4.8% mark over the past three games. Over that stretch, he has thrown for 1,034 yards with eight touchdowns against two picks. His 62.0 QBR over that stretch ranks 12th in the league.
Like Levis and the Titans, it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which Howell plays well and the Commanders lose out to get this draft pick. If he does play well, though, I wonder whether they would be more open to netting a massive trade haul with the first pick than most teams. New owner Josh Harris also took over the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers and handed the reins over to general manager Sam Hinkie for one of the most famous rebuilds in modern sports history. The Commanders have already hired an analytics lead in former Jaguars executive Eugene Shen, who reportedly played a role in helping value the deadline moves. Washington will not be naive about the value of adding three or four first-round picks to its cupboard as it rebuilds its roster.
At the same time, the primary reason teams amass draft picks is to land a franchise quarterback on a rookie deal. If the Commanders are in position to take one with one of the top two selections here, it might take something truly extraordinary for them to move down.
What would happen to the incumbent QB? Howell has shown enough to be an interesting option for teams who need a quarterback prospect. The Commanders could keep him around as a backup or bridge option, but he would be worth more than the fifth-round pick they used to draft him in 2022. Teams that expect to fall in the middle of the pack and don’t have a future starter lined up at quarterback — such as the Raiders and Vikings — could be plausible landing spots in a Howell deal.
Chances of landing the No. 1 overall pick: 0.1%
Chances of landing one of the top two picks: 0.8%
The Falcons are the last team that landed the top pick at least 10 times across the 10,000 simulations; they finished as the worst team 13 times. To get there, they would need to lose out and see the Patriots, Cardinals and Giants all pick up at least two more victories. The Panthers would need three wins, but the Falcons can help the cause by losing to them when they play in Week 15.
Must-lose games on the schedule: at Panthers (Week 15), vs. Colts (Week 16), at Bears (Week 17). Even a single win from the Falcons down the stretch would take them out of the running for this pick. If they had held on to their late lead against the Cardinals last week, they would have knocked themselves out of the race and kept Arizona atop the rankings.
Are they tanking? Can they tank? I don’t think they are, but it would explain a lot of this organization’s more curious decisions. Why would Arthur Smith lament “toxic groupthink” in defending quarterback Desmond Ridder, insist the film proved criticism of the second-year passer to be invalid and then bench Ridder the following week? Why would the Falcons deemphasize top-10 picks Kyle Pitts and Bijan Robinson to highlight Jonnu Smith and Tyler Allgeier? I’d like to draw a line through Smith’s curious choices, but I doubt we’re looking at the him playing 4D chess to land a quarterback.
What would they do with the No. 1 pick? Draft another running back? A blocking tight end? The Falcons clearly view value differently than many other people around the league, so there’s always a scenario in which they do something off the board with the first pick. Given that Ridder has been inconsistent and new starter Taylor Heinicke is 30 years old, however, this pick would almost certainly be used on a quarterback, even if Atlanta then refused to let him throw the football inside the red zone for six weeks.
What would happen to the incumbent QB? Ridder has taken too many sacks and turned the ball over too often to excite many teams so far. He isn’t about to drop out of the league, but no team is going to move a quarterback they like to carve out a spot for Ridder in their starting lineup. He would likely end up as the backup behind whichever rookie the Falcons prefer.
The Rams, Broncos, Jets, Raiders and Buccaneers all had at least one scenario in 10,000 in which they ended up with the selection. Those teams were also in the mix for the No. 2 overall pick, where they were joined by the Saints and Colts.
The Texans have a minute chance of landing the No. 2 selection, which marginally boosted Arizona’s chances of landing one of the top two picks.