Digging for Truth in the NFL Draft
Hearsay. Conjecture. Hypotheticals. Sources say. Heard it in the wind. What do we actually know for certain about the Cardinals and the 2024 NFL Draft?
In the lead up to the NFL draft, teams will have spent over a year sifting through steaming heaps of tape and interviews in a bid to decipher as accurately as possible which college players will make it in the NFL. Before them is a colossus of data. Hours of film on each prospect. Coaches testimonials. Background checks. Medical notes. They burrow through this strewn rubble, ardently, carefully, in the desperate hope (and it is job-fearing desperation) that in making sense of it all they can form a proud edifice. A structure that stands true and of solid foundation. A draft class that casts a shadow so deep, there can be nothing in it’s wake.
Basically, they really really don’t want to end up drafting Isaiah Simmons in the top 10.
I sympathise with them. I do. You see I am presented with my own colossus of data. All NFL fans are. To call it information would be far too complimentary. Even data is a stretch. Of course i’m referring to the bloated and bulging and consistently constant minefield of NFL draft discourse and rumour-mill. We have too much time in the calendar dedicated to the draft. Too many voices begging for clicks. Yes, I know, the irony isn’t lost on me.
What we end up with is an ever ramping-up of ‘stories’ and ‘reports’ and ‘sources’ and ‘conjecture’ and ‘well you see my uncle cleans the bathrooms of a guy who’s wife once had an affair with a guy who went to school with the second-cousin of this team’s ex-marketing intern and he said’. Like a gaggle of half-starved geese they scream for attention. “Me, me, I should be fed first, I should get the clicks, I’m the one telling the truth”. But they’re not. Of the hundreds of thousands of links and articles purporting to know something we don’t about the draft, almost all will prove to be false. And not all with malicious intent. A source may have it wrong, or be spreading a false narrative to confuse other teams, or the context may have changed. And still sometimes there will be no source at all.
Presented with this dragon’s hoard of hearsay, I’ve attempted to find 5 things we can know for sure relating to the Cardinals in this upcoming NFL Draft. The cold, hard, undisputed, verifiable truths. Take it all with a grain of salt, I’m just another hungry goose after all.
Marvin Harrison Jr will succeed in the NFL
Whether he will be a star, or even the best wide receiver in this class, isn’t for certain. But at the very least MHJ will be a good player in the NFL. The last 5 receivers taken in the first 10 picks of the NFL draft are:
Drake London
Garrett Wilson
Ja’Marr Chase
Jaylen Waddle
DeVonta Smith
That’s a pretty solid list. And that’s every receiver taken in the top 10 since 2018. Who’s the worst player here? Drake London? 1,771 yards in his first two years with some of the worst QB play in the league. Jaylen Waddle? Over 1000 yards each season to start his career.
MHJ is nearly 6ft4 and 210lbs with remarkable movement skills and every catch you can think of on tape. He succeeded outside, in the slot, at the line, when doubled. He can win with footwork, route-breaking, speed, strength, at the catch-point, you name it. There’s absolutely no way of knowing if he will be the best WR in this class, or how many All-Pro nods he will receive in his career. But the ceiling is the sky and the floor isn’t far-off. This is a player you can sit and take comfortably at number 4 in the draft. On that note.
The price of a trade-up for a QB will be steep
Caleb Williams is going number 1 overall to the Bears. That much we know. The Commanders will also be taking a quarterback at number 2, most likely Jayden Daniels. Drake Maye will likely go at number 3, either to New England or a team trading up to that spot leaving the Cardinals at 4, with MHJ on the board. But. Also on the board will be presumptive QB4, JJ McCarthy. Let’s set-aside whether JJ McCarthy is worthy of a top-5 pick (he’s not), he’s been linked with, among others, the Vikings (Pick 11), the Broncos (Pick 12) and the Giants (Pick 6) and the only way, in this scenario, that one of these teams will be guaranteed to select McCarthy is if they trade up with the Cardinals to Pick 4. All of this is true. With this in mind, if I see another ‘Hypothetical Draft Trade’ like this one I will walk into the ocean like a Derrick Henry touchdown run; swiftly, efficiently and with no small amount of force.
It will take approximately 3 first round picks to move from outside the top 10 up to Pick 4. Simple. That’s roughly what the Cardinals received last year for moving back from Pick 3. It’s what the Niners gave up to move in for Trey Lance in 2021. That’s based on precedent, demand for QBs and the quality of players available at the top of this draft. Hell, I’m not even sure if the Cardinals would move back to Pick 6 for that return. Hell, I’m not even sure if the Cardinals would move back to Pick 11 or 12 for those 3 first round picks. But that’s what will be offered. And it’ll be up to GM Monti Ossenfort to decide the price for passing up on MHJ.
There aren’t 27 players with First-Round Grades in this Draft
After Pick 4, the Cardinals will be back on the clock at Pick 27. Or will they? From what we know about NFL teams scouting procedures, there are very rarely 27 players in a draft with true first-round grades. The number is normally closer to 15-20. 15-20 blue-chip, big-boy, buckle-your-seatbelt first-round prospects. Now, this number is different draft to draft, and team to team. There might be a player that Monti and the Cardinals scouting team deems a top-10 prospect that the rest of the league wouldn’t take in the 2rd round. See Cole Strange. But the most likely scenario is that in order to take two true first-round graded players with our two first-round picks, the Cardinals will need to trade up from 27. With 6 picks in the first 90 of the 2024 draft, Monti has the capital to do it, the issue will be finding the willing trade partner. At Picks 16-20 are the Seahawks, Jaguars, Bengals, Rams and Steelers. Chances are, by the time they’re on the clock, one of these teams will be out of first-round graded players on their board. It’ll be up to Monti to find them, and swoop in.
The 2024 Draft Class is unusually deep at Receiver and Cornerback
After Free-Agency the Cardinals have 3 big holes remaining on the roster. Of varying sizes. The hole at pass-rusher is reminiscent of that left by the big sinkhole that swallowed your house due to lax planning oversight in your area. The hole at receiver is that hole you imagined as a child you could dig through the center of the Earth, wondering if you’d appear in Australia or Japan. By comparison, the hole at cornerback is menial, maybe that pot-hole your libertarian neighbour half-filled with cement, blaspheming all the while where his tax dollars are spent. Good news for Cardinals fans, we could fill two of these holes for the foreseeable future in this one draft. I’ve got some bad news about your house though.
Don’t be surprised if 4 of the Cardinals’ first 6 picks are at receiver and cornerback. In the second and third round, there will be tremendous receiver prospects available in all shapes and sizes. There’s the short and explosive Malik Washington from Virginia, an AJ Brown lookalike in Xavier Legette from South Carolina or the smooth and speedy Roman Wilson from Michigan, to name a few. Pair any of these with MHJ, Michael Wilson, Dortch ‘The Torch’ and Trey McBride and the Cards should be set at pass-catcher for a while yet.
The same could be said for corner. Enis Rakestraw Jr from Missouri, Cam Hart out of Notre Dame, Max Melton of Rutgers and many more. Added to Garrett Williams, Kei'Trel Clark and new arrival Sean Murphy-Bunting and we’re looking okay. At pass-rusher, the relative lack of talent at the top of the draft compared to other position groups is consistent down the board as well. There will be some hidden defensive-end gems of course, but the sheer quantity of talented outside players on both offense and defense should leave the Cardinals with great options on the board in rounds 2 and 3.
We don’t know Monti’s Tendencies, yet
‘Projection’ and ‘sample-size’ and terms we become very familiar with during draft season. We might have to project how Troy Fautanu would look at guard in the NFL or worry about the smaller sample-size of pure drop-back reps in JJ McCarthy tape. But the terms should be used more often for new NFL General Managers as well. We know that Monti came up in the Patriot eco-system, so we might project he would trade-down wherever possible or continuously draft terrible wide receivers like a Bill Belichick. We saw him in action during last years draft, moving up and down the board with the deft but devastating touch of a bird of prey, scanning the ground below for his next target. We might ‘project’ he’d do the same this year, but we’ve only seen him do it once, that’s not a ‘sample-size’ I would want to bank on.
There’s been chatter that Monti might trade back to Pick 11 or 12, before swooping back in to Pick 5 or 6 to select an MHJ, Nabers or Odunze, in an almost identical move to last year. He might do that. But he might not. Believing that Monti’s modus operandi will be to trade back and then up every year based on last years draft would be like assuming he prefers players out of Ohio State whose first name is a European Capital city and who speak Mandarin based on his selection of Paris Johnson Jr in the top 10 last year. Maybe that’s the truth?
Or maybe last year he had a perfect opportunity, two willing trade partners, and a player he would’ve taken at 3 that he believed would still be there at Pick 6. And maybe if that’s the case again this year, he’ll pull off the same magic and take MHJ at Pick 5 after trading back up with the Chargers. Then maybe we can talk modus operandi. But maybe he’ll stay put at 4. Or maybe he’ll just trade-down. With the information we have, we can’t project that just yet.
If you enjoyed or even just tolerated this article, this hungry goose would really appreciate it if you subscribed. Only together can we sift through the nonsensical NFL Draft discourse.
I write about the Cardinals, for free, every week.