It’s draft day, and we don’t know who’s going first overall. That just doesn’t happen in the NFL anymore.
The Cleveland Browns have been buttoned up about their operation, to the point where Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold and Josh Allen all sit atop various mock drafts.
To find a draft when there was this much intrigue on draft day about what would happen with the early picks, you have to go all the way back to 2004, when the Chargers selected Eli Manning. That year, Manning was generally viewed as the top prospect, but he had vowed not to play for the Chargers, and there were questions about whether the Chargers would trade the pick, draft someone else or drat Manning and try to convince him to play for them.
As it turned out, the Chargers drafted Manning and then traded him an hour later to the Giants, who drafted Philip Rivers and traded him to the Chargers, along with their third-round pick and first-round pick and fifth-round pick the next year.
We don’t expect anything like that to happen with the first overall pick this year, but we don’t know what will happen. And that’s going to make draft day more fun.