2026 NFL Draft Winners and Losers

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23:55Diante Lee:Some teams here when we come back. All right, we are back here on the Ringer NFL show. I think we got to get into this story, Deontay. New England Patriots are a loser from this weekend. It has very little to do with their draft, nothing to do with their draft. It has to do with this Mike Rabel, Diana Rossini story, which has been the biggest story in the NFL offseason. Let's just be honest. But it has been, I had thought for a while there that, well, this is kind of more of a media story than a football story. You know, if you kind of, you know, if we were making a big deal about every NFL head coach who was potentially, I'm trying to choose my words carefully here, unfaithful to their partners, you know, I think it would be probably be a large percentage of the league there.

24:45Diante Lee:So I was like, well, I don't know. nothing's really coming of this, but now as more photos come out, more reports come out that this is not just about one weekend in Arizona, that this is six years ago in New York, that this is after Mike Vrabel was fired from the Titans in Biloxi, Mississippi, all these things that are coming out from the New York post and TMZ and wherever else it becomes a different story because Vrabel has had to address it multiple times to the press. And then it kind of reached ahead draft weekend. where he says, I'm not going to be in the building for day three of the draft because I'm seeking counseling.

25:24Diante Lee:So he gives this statement to ESPN. Then he holds multiple press conferences there. He says, you know, the report said he's going to plan to be with his family outside of Massachusetts. And it just leads to so many questions here, you know? And again, if you're interested in the media aspect of this, the press box from Brian Curtis has done a great job. Joel Anderson, they all had really good discussions from the media perspective, but from a head coach football perspective, like what is he seeking counseling for? That has not been communicated to me. Like what wrongdoing is he specifically admitting to here?

26:06Diante Lee:It said he would still be able to communicate with the team on Saturday. So I'm like, is this a performative thing? Like, why are you starting this the Saturday of the draft? Is that supposed to make me think like, oh, you're really taking this seriously. And you're so remorseful that you're giving up day three of the draft year. Is it, there's more stuff that's gonna come out and I don't wanna wait for that to happen until I say I've taken steps to remedy this. I want when those things actually do come out and do happen that I can say, hey, I'm already working on it. And I told you I missed day three of the draft for counseling.

26:42Diante Lee:So you have all those things happening right here, but it is unusual for a head coach to not be in the building day three of the draft. I don't know how much it actually matters or not to be quite honest. You have the draft board. I know Vrabel has the final say on everything there, but it's like, this is the team that made it to the Super Bowl last year. This would be a big story if they were seven and 10. This team was in the Super Bowl last year. They were on the rise with the young quarterback. And now we know that it's very difficult to get back to the Super Bowl or even have a very successful season the year after losing it.

27:16Diante Lee:I think the last time, if I'm not mistaken, was the Patriots in 27, 2018. And they lose to the Eagles and then they come back and they win it the next year. But I think other than that, it has been very rare to get back the following year. And so now if you're looking at the Patriots and you're looking at 2026 and this uncertainty around the head coach and the story surrounding them draft weekend, like this is a time where most fan bases are just so excited about their teams. I mean, every fan base thinks we crushed the draft. You know, oh, screw those guys. They may, you know, they're calling us a loser, but this guy's going to be awesome.

27:50Diante Lee:This guy's going to be awesome. Don't sleep on us. You know, we're going to be a playoff team. And then you have the Patriots and their fan base, where I just feel like they've got to be thinking, we got the year from hell coming up here in 2026. And there's more important, obviously, there are children involved. There's more important stuff involved here, but we're talking about it from a football perspective. this has to be for a team coming off the Super Bowl as downtrodden as a fan base could be in late April, Deontay. So that's why I've got them in the loser category. I mean, there's just no, there's short of the most dire circumstances happening.

28:28There's no bigger gut punch. I think that could happen ahead of the draft than your head coach being roiled in this kind of controversy. And to your point, I think that if you're a fan, And I think even if you're the biggest homer that you can be, you have to be very frustrated in just how shrouded in words that mean nothing this whole situation has been, especially from Mike Vrabel. And then the fact that the things that are kind of hinted at from Vrabel also seem to undermine the stories that we were receiving, or at least the statements that we were receiving from Diana Rossini's side and Steven Ginsburg of The Athletic.

29:03And I think that all of that has played out now to this point where we can say pretty definitively that whatever internal investigation was happening at the athletic clearly resulted in something that they were displeased with. And under that kind of duress, and maybe that is why Diana Rossini ultimately resigned. But strictly speaking to the Patriots and what I do believe is probably a little bit of them being performative is the fact that you decided to do this on day three of the draft without ever really directly acknowledging what the situation is, right? That's the weirdest part, yes. Why are you leaving that to us as the public, as the media, to have to converse about when you called an entire press conference, it could not speak directly about whatever this situation is?

29:47To your point about maybe trying to get ahead of these things, it was very prescient by the New York Post to wait until after that press conference and then have more things published in terms of photographs. I think that the first one was after the firing in 2024 from Tennessee when they were seen kind of at this bar together. And then you get the ones from back in 2020 where they're out together and a couple takes a photo of them as well. So I think that maybe with knowledge of what's to come, you kind of start to get ahead of it. It's also very fascinating, though, that that will be the strategy because Roger Goodell, I think, has already kind of put out information to the media that this is not a league disciplinary.

30:28issue, right? This would be a team matter. So the only reason I would think that you would want to step away is if you believe that this can only get more embarrassing for you and the team from here. And I would hate to speculate because everything about this situation has been taking what facts we do have and then people who speculate for a living blowing this up as big as they can. And there are some parts of this that are very serious to your point about whether or not people were unfaithful. We don't know the intimate details of what was going on with their relationship. I think that from a media perspective, there is a conversation to have about just what these relationships are between insiders and the people that they are getting information from.

31:07And that maybe this is just the most salacious version of it. If you're talking about a potential affair or extramarital relationship between the two parties involved. But I just think there are just so many layers to this that kind of blow my mind. and maybe the most frustrating aspect of it is the fact that Mike Vrabel can't speak directly to it and that I guess we're supposed to receive him stepping away from day three of the draft, which is all about your area scouts and what information they and the GMs have been talking about and your assistant coaches and what they've kind of evaluated on film.

31:38These are the guys who are really making those picks anyways. I am not moved by you stepping away from the team in this. And this is also not going to make this story go away because there are a lot of people who have very strong feelings about the media, about, unfortunately, women in media, because we do still have to deal with the misogyny that comes from the public and from NFL fans and sports fans in general. Mike Vrabel cannot just counsel this one away. You cannot, my family needs me, this one away. This is still going to be a talking point. And I think that ultimately, like you said, when you get back to training camp, they are still going to be staring down the barrel of this thing.

32:14And I can't imagine that you can have a normal season under these conditions.

32:19Diante Lee:Yeah, it's like the consequences for this are like Rossini has already resigned. Like, so that is, you know, so that has already happened. But anything else that she's going to deal with is going to be about her home life. It's really not going to have anything to do with her professionally. Yeah, that part of it is over, at least for the time being here. But with Vrabel, he is trying to coach the defending Super Bowl champions here, you know, in 2026. And yeah, I'm with you. I just, is it, is it family counseling? Is it marriage counseling? Was there a way? It felt like what they were trying to do was get ahead of the story and be like, let's, you know, we kind of screwed it up when it, when it first surfaced and we released the statements and you can understand at that time, you're just did not, you know, we, we see this throughout different walks of life all the time with people in the news that the first move is denial, denial, denial.

33:09Diante Lee:This is nonsense. And then, you know, you hope is like there, Hey, if that sticks, then cool. a lot of times that doesn't stick because more information comes out and you can't just deny. And then, you know, then it looks like you lied or at least you went forth right there. And then you get to the next phase, which is the phase Vrabel's at. To your point, Rossini hasn't said anything publicly to indicate that she's at this phase. But Vrabel's at this point where it feels like he wants to convey a sense of wrongdoing, remorse, being apologetic. Like, yet it seems very clumsy. And, you know, part of that is probably just the NFL word.

33:48Diante Lee:Like he's speaking in NFL coach speak, you know, he's like, this is, I want to attack this, this challenge head on. It's like, wait, what are we talking about here? What are we talking about? So it's, um, it's very, it's very difficult to figure out what his next move is, what their next move is. but yet this does feel performative to me to be like, all right, day three of the draft, he's not going to be in the building yet. He hasn't said what he's done wrong. He hasn't really just indicated, you know, I know he might not want to come out and say it explicitly, but even indicating it, I haven't been, you know, a good husband.

34:26Diante Lee:I haven't, you know, whatever it is, again, we're speculating. We're all going by what eight photos or whatever it is we've seen. And then some statements, and then you're trying to connect dots left and right, But it is just a bad situation for a fan base that was all in on this guy. I mean, they thought, you know, we lost Belichick. We had one bad year with Mayo in between there. Now we got Frable. Now we got our quarterback. It's back to the promised land. And that's what it looked like last year. And now you kind of just wonder, like, what does this year look like? What do the next three years look like for this organization?

35:00Diante Lee:So, yeah, they absolutely have to be on the list of losers from the draft. All right, no easy transition from that one, Deontay. We're going to go in a different direction, but what's the next one you got, winner or loser here? I've got a loser, and I'm still kind of perplexed just at how everything has played out, and it's going to be hard to talk about their draft without bringing up 2025 and just last season and how they handled it in general. But my loser here is Jacksonville. I did not love their draft. I thought that the neighbor, I'm sorry, I'm going to absolutely butcher. I think it's Borkutcher.

35:37Yes. Nate Borkutcher pick was way ahead of where you would see him on most consensus boards. When I watch and evaluate, I don't see a tight end that you'd want to take near the top 50. Somebody who that will be, it would need to be somebody who could step in immediately and contribute and maybe have star potential. I don't know if I see that in his game. You go out and you get, you know, another tight end on day three. And not that that's a problem, but this feels very much like a reactive draft, right? Then maybe looking at how they lost games last year and saying, okay, if we just plug these holes or we have extra tight end depth, so that way, of course, range Mitch's time.

36:15We don't only have to be one style of team. And they did not get players, in my opinion, that fit that offensively. And then on the defensive end, I don't know exactly what you expect to get out of Albert Regis, right? I think that he's a fine player. again no star potential there and maybe i guess for me and the reason why i have them as a loser is well we were all laughing and joking and really enjoying james gladstone and liam cohen last offseason game of football you know like and they were just speaking in all this flowery language about how they wanted to attack this process to add talent and ultimately where we landed now was an objectively excellent 2025 season.

36:55An objectively excellent 2025 season. Out of nowhere, they absolutely caught fire after like mid-October and were one of the toughest teams to beat in the NFL. In this offseason, all we have heard is that Travis Hunter is probably not going to be the same kind of two-way player that they thought they were trading for, right? You have not really made any market improvements on this roster outside of that. Some of that is just because some of their money is tied up and they're going to have to start making difficult decisions in the future because some of their young guys, they're going to have to make decisions on how they're going to pay them and how much they're going to pay them.

37:29And you've got the Trevor Lawrence money kicking in. This is the kind of draft where even though you don't have a first-round pick, you have to nail it because you do have a ton of top 100 draft capital. And those all need to be players that you see either having a high-level trajectory where they could be stars in a couple years' time or can step in and be average to better starters right this moment. I don't necessarily see that in this draft. I don't want to be a total prisoner to the consensus board because if these are good players, like I do believe Emmanuel Pregnant can be a good player as a guard, that could work out for them.

38:05I do like their wide receiver duo as day three picks and Josh Cameron and CJ Williams, those can end up being decent depth for them. But if you just look at it on the whole or you kind of aggregate these picks, it's really hard to find a lot to be excited about, I think. And for that reason, for a team that is going to have championship aspirations in a very competitive division, I don't know if they took the extra step forward to make sure that they stay at the top of the AFC South.

38:30Diante Lee:Yeah, we talked about the Contensus Board stuff a little bit on our last pod. And I think it's fun to look at certainly day two and day three. And the idea is not, oh, just go with what everyone's saying. That's not it. But the idea is if a guy is at one spot in the contensus board and you take him way higher than that, then it's fair to question, could you have traded back? Is there a way you could have got him while doing something else rather than just taking him at the spot you took him? And Nate Borkutcher, this tight end from Texas A &M, they took him 56th and the contensus boards had him, I believe at 162.

39:06I mean, it was just nowhere close to being ranked that high in the tight end class by just about anybody you would ask.

39:13Diante Lee:Right. So it's, it's just, you know, if you just look at the difference and where a guy got taken and that where he was ranked on the consensus board, I mean, that qualifies as one of the biggest reaches in the second round. And this is coming off, like you mentioned, this is a draft where he didn't have a first round pick. So, you know, you certainly could be thinking about, Hey, what are some ways we can get additional resources? They did make a bunch of picks. Like you said, they did still have a bunch of top 100 picks. So it's not like they only drafted four players, but I think you open yourself up to criticism by taking a guy 56, who's 162 on the consensus board.

39:47Diante Lee:And then you're right about this does go back to last year because as you were just, you know, discussing that with Gladstone, which I'd kind of forgotten, like has a GM ever set up a prospect worse for success than the way he managed that last year? It's hard to think of one. It's hard to think of one. he's going to change the game of football and the guy has not played a snap in the NFL and here we are a year later you used two first round picks on him and I think you like Travis Hunter, I like Travis Hunter I hope he's an all pro corner this year and I think that's in the cards, he could be you just have him focus on corner we could be saying he's one of the five best corners in the NFL by the end of the year but that remains to be seen has to be proven and I'm with you I think it was a great coaching job last year from Liam Cohen.

40:38Diante Lee:Like I think he proved, hey, I can go from one place to another place, one quarterback to another quarterback, and I can get the most out of this guy in Trevor Lawrence, and we can have an offense that really cooks here. And they did that, and they got a nice defensive season. I thought they overachieved on that side of the ball. But I do think it's fair with the team-building aspect of this is now they try to make the step from, hey, plucky playoff team, fun team, to know this team can actually contend for a Super Bowl. now's when you have to like the stuff around the margins has to be really sharp and you got to build the roster in a certain way and i do think that remains to be seen for the jaguars yeah yeah it's just i'm stuck and then you look at like where other teams are at in their division like i think specifically you look at where houston is at and the way that they were able to plug needs that i do think will help move the needle for them in the afc hierarchy i look at jacksonville And I think that we're just right back in a position where you're going to be asking your head coach to have to absolutely maximize every last player that you got in in order to be able to hold your spot.

41:41That is part of coaching. Right. And if we get to October and November and the Jags are definitely underperforming, I am going to come back and say, hey, Liam Cohen, at the end of the day, we got a what, 12, 13 win season out of you last year. I want to see that level of coach on a year-by-year basis. There is some accountability to be held there if we do get there. But just as a GM, this is one of the few opportunities for a team that wants to contend when you do have as many picks, because they were able to approach this draft with high volume, to be able to come out with guys that you can at least feel like are either contributing to push you into that Super Bowl conversation right now, or in two or so years, are going to be able to supplant some of your vets and be able to fill in roles to be able to hold you at whatever spot you're at.

42:25And I just don't know yet if they've accomplished either. And based off my evaluation of some of the players they picked, I just feel a little bit more kind of bearish on where they are right now.

42:35Diante Lee:All right, let's take one more break. We come back with some more winners and losers. Want to support your gut health? Take Activia's Gut Health Challenge by enjoying two Activia yogurts a day for two weeks and see if you feel a difference. With billions of probiotics and 20 years of scientific expertise, Activia is one of the easiest and tastiest ways to start your gut health ritual. Try Activia today. Enjoying Activia twice a day for two weeks as part of a balanced diet and healthy lifestyle may help reduce the frequency of minor digestive discomfort, which includes gas, bloating, rumbling, and abdominal discomfort.

43:07Diante Lee:From the 2026 NFL Draft. All right, we are back here on the Ringer NFL Show. I've got another loser, Deontay. Let's hear it. Matthew Stafford. I mean, the Ty Simpson pick is the story of the draft. If you had to say, what's the one thing that we're going to remember from this three years from now, five years from now? And so we discussed it when we were discussing the moves in the first round. Since then, I was reading kind of the coverage just from Les Snead and Sean McVay's media availability. And if you read about that, I was reading about this in The Athletic. It's like they couldn't really, they weren't like in a state to be excited about it.

43:52Diante Lee:You know, like they were trying to manage the situation, knowing how the pick of Ty Simpson at 13 was going to be perceived by the public, by the media, trying to keep their current MVP quarterback, Matthew Stafford, happy. I was reading this from Nate Atkins from The Athletic. He wrote, across beats covering the Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions, Indianapolis Colts, and now the Rams. This was the first time I've covered a first round draft pick news conference where the regime showed so little excitement about the player selected, which I thought was very interesting context. It was an 11 minute news conference where they almost seemed like sullen rather than excited.

44:32Diante Lee:And, you know, McVay, the first thing he was asked about Simpson, I guess, was about if he's going to be the backup. And he said, we'll see. He's going to compete with Stetson Bennett. who was somebody who was never once threatened to like be their top backup. They wouldn't have had Jimmy Garoppolo there if they thought the Setson Bennett actually should have been their backup quarterback. Yeah, he had something going on off the field. I don't think it's been reported, but he was away from the team for a little bit. So this is what they're saying about the guy they drafted 13th overall in a season where, again, they are contending for a Super Bowl.

45:07Diante Lee:They are among the Super Bowl favorites. And if I'm Stafford, on just looking at all the guys taken after him. And it just feels like, now they can still win the Super Bowl. They still have a very good team. There's a chance this works out for them if they win the Super Bowl in the next year or two with Stafford. And then if Simpson takes over, they look great with all this. But I even more, and more impassioned that they've outsmarted themselves here and that they felt like, hey, this is going to get criticized, but this is the right thing to do. I really feel like there's going to be a moment during the 2026 season where we all look around and we go, man, they could have really used player X right now.

45:52Diante Lee:Whoever that is, Makai Lemon, Kenyon Sadiq, whoever it is, a tackle, whatever, whoever was high on their board that we're going to say they really could have used this player right now as they try to compete for a Super Bowl. And I just think they've created such an awkward situation with a player who they've had some, For as well as that marriage has worked out with Stafford and McVay, it's gotten prickly a couple times. It's gotten prickly. They've had these rocky off seasons where it's usually based on financials and how much Matthew Stafford wants to get paid and whether he wants more guaranteed money or an extension.

46:26Diante Lee:But again, a year ago, we were talking about this guy shopping himself to other teams. There were teams that are on the record with, man, we thought we had a shot at him. we wanted to bring him in. And then he goes back and has an MVP season. So now this kind of just hangs over their entire 2026 season. And I just think it was unnecessary. And I continue to want to know the intimate details of whether everyone was on board with this. Cause they obviously feel like we got to manage this and make it look a certain way. Cause we don't want to upset our MVP quarterback right now. Absolutely. And you know what?

47:04It's so funny. I think I was willing to, I might've been willing to accept that, hey, you just take Ty Simpson because it's a good process. You know that you're eventually going to have to find a replacement at quarterback down the line. They must not have been interested in getting someone like Kenyon Sadiq in the building. They must not have been interested at all in getting some of these other options in. And then with their second round pick, they take Max Clair. And I was like, wait, if you guys were in the market for tight ends, in the top two rounds of the draft, why would you not go get Kenyon Sadiq, who is a much more dynamic version?

47:37And I would say if you're comparing Claire to Sadiq, Claire does not project nearly as well as a blocker, in my opinion right now, as what you could get out of someone like Sadiq. So you can't even, to me, make the sales pitch of like, hey, we wanted to go get one of these 6 '6", 255-pound guys who are just going to be on the backside of whatever our little run scheme, and we're using him to be, you know, kind of like an honorary sixth offensive lineman. That's not what they went on to draft it. Claire is going to go be another receiving type guy, which is why you'd go take him that high. So that one really kind of flummoxed me.

48:12And then to come back to the pick itself, which obviously we covered on day one of the draft, when in writing about it, right, like one of the biggest thing is you always want to go and see, like, what's the precedent here, right? What are the trend lines? Historically, what can we expect? And when I went back over the last decade and was looking for first round quarterbacks who only had a year's worth of starting experience, and you start seeing names like Mac Jones and Anthony Richardson and Trey Lance and Dwayne Haskins and Mitchell Trubisky, right? And the only real hit in that crop is Kyler Murray, who physically is worlds apart from anyone else in this cluster.

48:51You have to be concerned if you're a Rams fan. You've got to be concerned if you're Sean McVay. And you can try to pitch me until you're blue in the face about it's not going to be the same with those guys because Simpson gets to sit and learn behind Matthew Stafford. But Simpson's game is not Matthew Stafford's game. They're not the same. And if they were similar, he wouldn't have been available at 13. because the Cardinals might've taken them number three overall. The Jets might've taken them number two overall. If you genuinely believe that a guy like that had that level of ceiling. And like you said, I think to wrap up my point on this, this does not mean that I'm not going to pick the Rams to win a Superbowl when it's season preview time.

49:29They're my pick right now. I have no reason to waiver on that. They went out and they address their defensive back room with Trent McDuffie and Jalen Watson, basically within the same week, they already had one of the most high octane offenses, both on the ground and through the air in the NFL. And hell, for the last two postseasons, they have taken the eventual champions down to the brink and can very much feel like if we had one more chance with the ball, if we had one more opportunity, if we can make one more play call, that might be us holding up the Lombardi trophy in each of the last two seasons.

50:00I get it if you're the Rams and you're arrogant enough to believe that you've done enough work and now it's time to be a little forward-looking. I just feel like that pick specifically, if you were going to go take a project, you could have taken a project elsewhere. You could have gone and taken like a Max Ahonich or a Monroe Freeling and say, hey, we're going to take our time with this guy. He's going to be our right tackle of the future. Or he's going to compete with Warren McClendon to go play right tackle right now. We'll just see where that lands. Ty Simpson at the absolute best case scenario doesn't have to play until maybe 2028, 2029 because that's the level of development I think he'll need.

50:36And there's still no guarantee that his ceiling is high enough to justify this pick right now.

50:40Diante Lee:And you know what else I was thinking was about like McVay and Stafford and why they have this sort of superpower together. They're both obviously very, you know, great on their own, but put them together. And I really thought their superpower has been the ability to figure things out during the course of a game. Like this is why, you know, Vic Fangio defense isn't going to shut them down because they say, all right, we're coming in with this game plan, but this guy's really hard to go against. We need to, if we see this, hey, what do you see? I see this. Hey, what do you see? I see this. Okay, let's pivot to this.

51:10Diante Lee:They are awesome at doing that against the most complex defenses in the entire NFL. Who's the only team that could do anything against that Seahawks defense? Like we forget now they were going up and down the field against the Mike McDonald Seahawks defense. That was incredible against everyone else because they had the ability to figure it out. You know why? Because McVay's a great offensive coach, but also So Stafford has seen everything. He has seen everything. He has this library of reps. Doesn't mean every game is going to be perfect. But when some of the physical tools start to diminish, he can make up for it because he is so smart.

51:49Diante Lee:He's able to make high degree of difficulty throws. I mean, the no-look throws are not like performative. It's like he is literally holding the defender. It's kind of built into the design of this now. He's opening a window because he's looking here and the defender's not closing his own window. and now he can throw it there. I mean, it's incredible. And so if I'm like thinking about the Rams and in the future and life after Stafford, I'm going like, we're going to be able to, veteran quarterbacks are first of all, going to want to play for Sean McVay. And we have a talented roster and it's Los Angeles.

52:19Diante Lee:I don't think you're going to have trouble, you know, attracting veteran, the next version of Matthew Stafford. It might not be as good, obviously, but you can get veteran quarterbacks to come play there. And now if McVay's superpowers, the ability to figure things out on the fly and he's going to be doing it with a quarterback who started 13 games post high school at some point. That doesn't align with me. Those things don't mix. They don't mix. It's not going to look as good. I don't care how good McVay is and how good the supporting cast is. So yeah, the more I thought about it, the more I'm just leaning into, I don't think they should have done that.

52:55Diante Lee:And man, I would love to be a fly on the wall of Matthew Stafford's private conversations with family, with friends, with his agent, with whoever. I'm sure he will try to be the good soldier at his next press availability and say, I'll take him under my wing. I was young once. I'm trying to give back to the game and all that. And he probably, I'm sure he will be. He seems like a great teammate. Everybody likes him. I can almost guarantee he will be. And you know why? Because Matthew Stafford is going to say, you can do whatever you want with that draft pick. But since you made that decision, you are going to pay me what I'm asking for.

53:29you're going to give me the years or I'm playing somewhere else next year. Absolutely. If not, I will go hit the open market and I'll see what Matthew Stafford is worth to the rest of the league because I've already proven I can step into a place. I can be at this advanced age and still bank me to make an NFC championship game, to be a playoff contender if I'm healthy. Yeah, if I'm him, you're going to pay me. And then after you pay me and give me the years that I'm after, now I can come in and be quarterback developer. But outside of that, yeah, I can't imagine that he's feeling the warmest about this pick, this decision, and what it means within this timeline of this team trying to get back over the hump.

54:10Diante Lee:All right. So, all right, let's wind down here. Deontano, do you have any more here that you wanted to get off your chest? I can hit you with a couple quick hitters here. Otherwise, in a minute. Let's do some quick hitters. I got winners and losers. One winner, one loser. And then I think just one conversation that kind of interests me before we get out of here. Winners here is kind of like the obvious. It's the good process teams. It's the teams that take multiple bites at the apple. It's the teams that are willing to trade up to go get guys who are high on consistent draft boards because they believe they won't be available later.

54:42And it's the usual suspects in that respect. Right. I think about Dallas. I think about Baltimore. I think about Philadelphia. I would say that all three of those teams, while maybe their worlds have not changed as franchises and Dallas maybe takes the biggest leap. because they did take multiple bites at the apple as far as defense. And if all those guys hit, they will be able to kind of catapult themselves maybe into being more closely into the playoff contender pool of teams in the NFC. But those three teams and teams that just approached the draft that way always seem to come out of the draft with everybody feeling like they got a little bit better, at least.

55:14They got marginally better. And I will say that all three of those teams got at least marginally better by addressing needs. And then the loser for me would be the rebuilding teams in a light draft. So I'm thinking about Miami. I'm thinking about Arizona. And it's probably I'm trying not to slam them because the truth be told, like there just wasn't a lot to choose from deep in this draft. I would say that day three of this draft is one of the lighter ones that I can remember since I've been working in the media, trying to find players that you think have high upside. And maybe they weren't drafted as high because they didn't produce a bunch or they might have bounced around a bit or maybe even miscast.

55:51There's really not a lot of that in this draft. So you look at like Miami who has a boatload of picks. It's like, yeah, I think they did the right thing with each of these picks individually. But I look at these names and I try to judge the upside after you get out of the second round. And you're just kind of crossing your fingers that something happens with these guys. None of these guys, I think, strike me as players who will be stars or plus starters by the end of their rookie deals. And obviously with Arizona, I think that we hit that pretty hard on Thursday with the Jeremiah Love pick. And I would say that most of their picks after do still leave me kind of scratching my head.

56:24Diante Lee:Although, Deontay, did you see after we spoke that they spoke to the media and said they had the wrong phone number down for Jeremiah Love? I don't know if you caught that or not, but they were having a hard time getting in touch with Jeremiah Love. And the question was, why are you like the clock was kind of winding down there? You know, what was going on? And Monte Austin Ford said we had the wrong phone number down for Jeremiah Love. Why can't you just say we were trying to trade out and we couldn't trade out? It's okay. I think it was Bidwell who was next to him was trying to be like, yeah, please don't say that.

56:58Diante Lee:Don't make us look dumber than we already looked here. But it's just, I mean, poorly run franchise, bad ownership, no direction. I honestly don't even know if it's Austin Ford who makes that pick. If it came out in 48 hours, that ownership just kind of put their foot down and was like, hey, we got nothing going for us. Let's go take the exciting running back, sell some jerseys, get people excited. That would not shock me as well. And you're going up against, I mean, Rams, Seahawks, Rams, and 49ers in your division. It feels just about as hopeless as it gets for a franchise and a fan base post-draft, like we were kind of saying with the Patriots, for a very different reason.

57:35Diante Lee:But yes, I think the Arizona Cardinals definitely deserve a mention there as well. Let me see. What else did I have written down? I did have the Cardinals. I was like, we got to hit him for being a loser once again here. So I'm glad you brought that up. We did that there. What did you think, Deontay? This was one, this was like just missed the cut for me. Where I'm like, I don't think I want to go totally go in on them, but I have some questions about what they did. And that's the Los Angeles Chargers, who I think are going to be. I'm there with you. You're with me? Okay. Because I think they're going to be a pretty trendy, maybe Super Bowl pick next year.

58:10Diante Lee:And I get it. Mike McDaniel being there, that's exciting. O-line gets healthy. That's exciting. We talked about Mesidor, 25 years old in the first round. Maybe he'll be good. I would not be spending my biggest draft resource on a guy who's 25 years old. And then in the second round, they take interior offensive lineman Jake Slaughter from Florida. Now, usually you would say interior offensive lineman. Great. Makes sense for the Chargers. However, he played center exclusively in college. and they signed Tyler Biotish, which I think was a good signing in the off season. And I think they announced Jake Slaughter as a guard.

58:51Diante Lee:So with their second most valuable draft resources, again, they didn't have a lot. They had one top 50 pick. They had two top 100 picks. Their second most valuable draft resources. They're taking a guy who played 33 games at center over five seasons. And now it sounds like they're going to move him to left guard. So maybe it'll work out great. I do kind of trust Mike McDaniel to figure it out and know what he's looking for. But that's like a lot of uncertainty with my two biggest draft assets when I feel like I have a team that could really contend next year. I mean, Keelan Rutledge went later in the first round.

59:26If you were looking for a guard, you could have went out and gotten Rutledge, right?

59:29Diante Lee:Yeah, they really could have. That would make me feel better about them, honestly, if that was the move. Chase Basantis could have been an option, right, for them. That would have made a lot of sense to put him in that guard. And his play style matches perfectly, in my mind, with everything that I think about Jim Harwaugh, right? Playing tough, being able to win between the tackles, being able to play bully ball when you want to and control the line of scrimmage. So to pass on that and then ultimately land on Jake Slaughter, who I think his skill set might be able to slot over to guard. But like you said, you're taking a guy who kind of was playing a specialty role.

1:00:04He only really knows center. And you're telling me you're going to slide him over in the league with an interior offensive line that already has had a reputation that these guys are just kind of on a revolving door from one spot to the next. And you have no idea who's going to be lined up in what spot on a weekly basis. And none of them seem to be able to move people on the interior in the run game or keep Justin Herbert from being pressured up the interior. I'm really kind of concerned, I think, on the whole of their offseason. And we talked about this again on Thursday where he didn't spend much money in free agency, which, OK, I mean, the Chargers have never been notorious for being big splash guys in free agency, even though I think there were a lot of players that have gone elsewhere in the league that they should have been in on.

1:00:47And you're thinking, okay, maybe in the draft is because they're planning to go take high upside players. And then you look at the list and Akeem Mesador at 25 years old does not strike me as a high upside player. Could be good, but that is really more of a eventual Khalil Mack replacement to me than somebody who's going to have some high upside or star potential. Jake Slaughter, again, a projection because you're moving his position. I think even Brennan Thompson, right? Like, I don't see guys that I can squint and convince myself that they are going to be changing the way we look at the AFC West or changing the way they will look at the hierarchy in the NFL because the Chargers now have shot to the top of, you know, what we think contenders are.

1:01:31These are still maximizers at the end of the day. Jim Harbaugh knows how to get the most out of these guys. Mike McDaniel has a long track record of getting the most out of his offensive pieces. We will see about Chris O 'Leary as a defensive play caller. But I am definitely waiting with bated breath to find out how exactly this picture is supposed to come together and why they believe this year is going to be any different than the up and down nature that 2025 was.

1:01:54Diante Lee:Yeah, I think that's well said. All right, what else did I have here? All right, here's another loser, Deontay. Headlines about the Pittsburgh Steelers. You ready? I'm going to read one for you. This is a sad headline. I'm sorry, Steelers fans. Pittsburgh looked beautiful on TV. Have you been to Pittsburgh, Deontay, before? I have not. I have not. I've heard it's a great city. Yeah, great city. I like a Pittsburgh. I thought it looked great on TV. Record number of fans showed out. So this is not a shot at Pittsburgh, the city. Love Pittsburgh, the city. But headline, this is in The Athletic. Mike McCarthy bet on himself.

1:02:31Diante Lee:Let the Drew Aller versus Will Howard competition begin. I feel like every word of that made me feel worse than the one before. I mean, and this is, by the way, I didn't even mention Aaron Rodgers who they're just, you know, waiting on still where we thought, all right, I think their owner or what said, Hey, we're going to get an answer from him before the draft. That didn't happen. Okay. Definitely didn't happen. No, now you'll get an answer, I guess, after the draft. So that's the QB competition. Meanwhile, while you wait for Aaron Rodgers, This is just not a good time for anyone. They had the thing about wanting Makai Lemon in the first round, which I still don't understand how you call the prospect before it's your turn to be on the clock.

1:03:13Diante Lee:Like, isn't there always a chance that someone's going to trade up and take the guy? So for those who missed it, that was an NFL Network report that they're on the phone with Makai Lemon and now the footage is out there thinking that the Cowboys are going to... At the very least, that's a horrible job of gathering intel because they absolutely could have been making calls to 2019, 18, and 17 to just see if those picks were up for sale. So that way you can gauge whether or not somebody might be making a leap to go get a player that you're interested in. Exactly. Yeah, so they thought the Cowboys were taking a defensive player.

1:03:44Diante Lee:We're on the phone with Makai Lemon. You're going to be a Pittsburgh Steeler. And then he gets the call from Philadelphia during that call with Pittsburgh and his agent comes running in saying the Eagles just traded for you. So I don't know. Not a great... It just feels like the Steelers are, you know it's kind of like they're in the place there they always are except they don't have Mike Tomlin which I don't think you know that does not make me feel uh great about them either all right I'm scrolling around here let me see all right here's one more for you we can finish uh on this one unless you have anything else I had the Minnesota Vikings maybe as a loser here I I was on the frame I was saying with the Chargers I was kind of on the fringes yeah I'm not like all in with my chest that, oh my gosh, they blew it.

1:04:28Diante Lee:But here's the case for the Vikings. I am just concerned about how they are navigating the league-wide waters without a real GM. They fire Questia Dofamensa late in the process. It's a bit of a surprise there. Kevin O 'Connell obviously has the keys. His guy is Rob Brzezinski is sort of acting as their GM here. And you're like, all right, let's see how this goes. And they take Florida defensive tackle, Caleb Banks, in the first round at 18, he was 44 on the consensus boards. So that is one of the biggest reaches of the entire first down. So even if you like the player, and I absolutely see the upside with him.

1:05:08Diante Lee:Like I think there's a case where three years from now, we're like, man, he is absolutely one of the best defensive players from this draft. But he's had injuries, there's uncertainty, there's question marks. It seems like if you had a stable infrastructure structure, stable GM in place. Could you have navigated that a little bit better? Maybe traded back, got some additional draft capital and then still taking him. Maybe you're taking him, you know, in the late twenties or whatever it is in the first round. So that's one. And then the Jonathan Grenard trade. I mean, it really sounds like this just came down to money where if you read some of Kevin O 'Connell's quotes, he's like, he's like, I love Jonathan Grenard.

1:05:48Diante Lee:Like he was great leader. He was a captain. He was good for our culture. He was very productive when he was healthy. He was playing through injury last year. Now he wanted more money and they didn't want to give him more money, but that's like on the short list of things that GMs have to deal with. Player isn't happy with contract. Okay. Like this is another day in the NFL. In the office. Yes. In the office. And a lot of times if you believe in the player and you're trying, you're kind of in win now mode, which I think they are, you're trying to come to some sort of agreement. Hey, can we guarantee you this much?

1:06:18Diante Lee:Hey, can we throw in some incentives? Hey, what if we do this in this year. Like those are the things that GMs have to deal with. And instead they end up just trading him, you know, and they're, uh, you know, Brzezinski, this is from the athletic said very difficult decision for our organization. It's something we understand is not making us a better team today where he just like, huh, man, I don't know. It just does. It feels like that doesn't inspire confidence. Yeah. So that's why I kind of had them in the loser category, even though I'm kind of bullish on the Vikings, I think. Let's see where I land in August or September.

1:06:53Diante Lee:But I feel like they have a chance to be a pretty good team in 2026, but I don't necessarily love how these things along the margins are going for them. I feel like the reason why I really don't love the Caleb Banks pick is because it immediately felt like the Dominique Orange pick is a way to kind of backstop against the fact that if he does break his foot or if he continues to have foot issues, that you have another interior defender that can come in and play. I don't love that, right? If the big swing is Caleb Banks, then the big swing is Caleb Banks because you believe that his health is not going to preclude him from being a contributor for your team.

1:07:28I look at Jay Golday, who's like by size, a really by size and athletic profile, a very interesting linebacker, but they have this exact style of linebacker, a straight line, run ahead, try to get across the line of scrimmage and make a tackle in the backfield, good blitzer type. their roster is not hurting for players who can do that that's been the entire build of this defense i would think again that if you're going to be picking at or near the top 50 you'd want to bring in a guy who's either going to break the mold or who shows it's either instant production or a high ceiling if you're not breaking the mold especially at a non-premium position it's entirely possible that jay golday is going to be the 51st pick and just kind of hanging around their linebacker rotation, right?

1:08:14Caleb Banks, if he gets hurt now, it's just going to be another guy hanging around your D-line rotation. And if there's one thing that has dogged the Vikings since drafting Justin Jefferson, which should have been transformative when he was there with Kirk Cousins, it's the fact that their drafts have just led them nowhere. And they have continually been forced to spend extra money on veterans to try to build up depth by overspending in free agency. And it has not netted the type of team that I think they ultimately want it to be. And this draft doesn't feel like much of a break from those decisions.

1:08:47So yeah, if I'm Kwezi Adolfo Mensah, I'm looking around like, hey, this might not have just been a me problem. Clearly, it seems like just this entire decision-making process is maybe a little bit more flawed than what we were giving it credit for in Minnesota over the last few years.

1:09:03Diante Lee:Yeah. It's like, are they up for this? is sort of the question you ask when you look at some of these decisions. All right, those were some winners and losers from the 2026 NFL draft. We, of course, have much more time to talk about the teams, the decision, the picks, and everything else that we didn't get to in this episode or the previous episode. We will do that in the future for sure. All right, thank you to Deontay Lee, my friend, from The Ringer for joining me throughout draft weekend here. Thank you to Christopher Sutton for producing Stefano Sanchez on video. and additional production supervision by Connor Nevins and Arjuna Ramgopal.

1:09:40Diante Lee:I'm Shil Kapadia. We will talk to you next time on the Ringer NFL Show.

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