The draft is hardly the be all, end all when it comes to improving a team — but ideally it should represent a long-term vision. The NFL Draft is all about building the foundation, then free agency is about patching the holes. The most successful teams know this and find ways year in, year out to ensure they have a steady rotation of good players ready to step up, allowing them to pivot away from aging, expensive veterans.
Obviously every front office has a vision for how they build. At least one would hope. But still there’s work to be done for a lot of the teams around the league. Let’s focus in on the teams we hoped would take massive steps forward in the draft, but fell just short of the mark.
Minnesota Vikings
I absolutely see what Kevin O’Connell and Kwesi Adofo-Mensah are trying to do when it comes to overloading the offense to give J.J. McCarthy his best chance to succeed, but that doesn’t mean I’m still not scratching my head a little bit.
Donovan Jackson was really good value at pick 24, and I’ll never hate going with a player you need at a key position like interior line. That said, taking Jackson over a safety like Malaki Starks feels a little too reminiscent of Minnesota moving out of the No. 14 pick in 2022 and letting Baltimore get Kyle Hamilton. Still, I can forgive this one.
It’s the selection of Tai Felton in the third that I really don’t like. Sure, he can take the top off the defense and be a kick returner — but receiver was too much of a luxury with a day two pick when you only have five picks in the draft. At some point you have to give Brian Flores some help without continually expecting him to work wonders with a bad cast.
There’s more than one way to help a young QB, and ensuring you have a defense that’s good enough so he doesn’t need to constantly win in shootouts is one of them. I would have liked to see the Vikings do a lot more with their secondary and defensive line in this draft.
Houston Texans
The Texans draft really wasn’t bad. I just detest the lack of positional awareness. If the general idea is to let C.J. Stroud throw for 5,000 yards and get sacked 50 times then this is a good way to do it.
Currently Houston has more receivers than they know what to do with. The front office backed themselves into a position where they had to load up on the offensive line to protect their franchise QB, and instead they spent two of their first three picks on pass catchers.
This is an organization that just needs to keep throwing bodies at the OL until they get good protection. Stroud being an intermediate-to-deep thrower means he needs more pocket time, and this draft didn’t do nearly enough to address that.
New Orleans Saints
It’s fair to question whether this team has a plan. Mickey Loomis hasn’t done nearly enough over the last 13 years as GM to justify the benefit of the doubt in his regard.
The Saints were locked into the idea of taking an offensive tackle at No. 9 to the point they reached horrendously for Kelvin Banks Jr, who might end up being a guard when everything is said and done. Had they accounted for that then there were better guards on the board.
Let’s say we give that one a pass though and Banks ends up being good. After night one you could say “the Saints are going to tank for a QB in 2026.” Then they take Tyler Shough with the 40th overall pick.
How many mediocre quarterbacks are y’all trying to collect? Spencer Rattler, Jake Haener, now Shough — who is older than Rattler and only six months younger than Haener. There is no vision behind this process. If we even look at this through the most rose-tinted of glasses Shough might get the Saints back to picking No. 9 or 10 next year. They miss on the elite QBs as a result once more, and potentially have to trade up, with the pressure of people thinking Shough can be the guy, when he’s destined to be mediocre at best.
There was so much mediocrity in this draft class when this team desperately needed to find reliable starters. I just don’t get it.
Cincinnati Bengals
It feels like this team being in the Super Bowl and transforming into a perennial stud was a million years ago. I love Shemar Turner as a prospect, from there this draft went a little off the rails.
Cincinnati was forced into picking EDGE due to worries about Trey Hendrickson leaving, I get that. This is still a team that allowed 48 sacks last year and didn’t do nearly enough to bolster their OL in the draft. Dylan Fairchild and Jalen Rivers just aren’t enough help, and I don’t think either can become starters.
There was a clear need to get better defensively, I understand that — but not at the expense of continuing to get Joe Burrow killed.
