Week 18 of the 2022 NFL season did a major number on the top of the order of the 2023 NFL draft. The Houston Texans lost by winning, dropped from first to second after beating the Indianapolis Colts, and fired head coach Lovie Smith for good (or bad) measure. The Chicago Bears went from second to first after losing to the Minnesota Vikings, the Arizona Cardinals went from fourth to third after losing to the San Francisco 49ers, the Colts moved from fifth to fourth after that Texans loss, and the Seattle Seahawks moved from third to fifth by dint of the Denver Broncos (who traded that pick and others for Russell Wilson) beating the Los Angeles Chargers.
What that does to the draft overall, and the quarterback market in particular, should be fascinating. The Bears and Cardinals are not in need of franchise quarterbacks, while the Texans and Colts very much are. That leaves the Seahawks — who may decide to roll with Geno Smith on a new contract, select a developmental quarterback later in the draft, and focus on their defense up top.
Now, the Bears will be the kings of the offseason. Not only do they have the first overall pick with which to transact, they also have an utterly insane amount of cap space once the 2023 league year kicks over in March. Per OverTheCap.com, Chicago has an estimated $101,054,326 in effective cap space, and there are moves they can make to add even more. The Atlanta Falcons rank second in effective cap space right now at $55,728,872, which gives you a sense of how far ahead of everybody else the Bears are.
Now, add in a quarterback-needy team to take that first overall pick off Chicago’s hands, and you have (potentially) the kind of offseason that could alter a franchise in a radically positive sense that we rarely see.
For the purposes of this particular mock draft, the quarterback-needy team in question is the Detroit Lions. Not that Jared Goff played badly this season — he actually did quite well in Ben Johnson’s highly-schemed, play-action-heavy structure. But Goff has no capacity to add an extension to his ceiling, so to speak, and we’ve already seen him collapse under another brilliant play-caller in Sean McVay when everything wasn’t just right.
If the Lions are to get to the next level under Dan Campbell, and they appear to have just about everything else in place to do so, perhaps the move is to entice the Bears with enough draft capital to move up and get a truly transcendent player at the game’s most important position.
Here, the Lions give up the sixth overall pick (which they got from the Los Angeles Rams along with Goff in the Matthew Stafford trade), and their own 18th pick, along with their 2024 first-round pick, for the privilege of moving up to first overall and taking Alabama quarterback Bryce Young. That still gives Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud to the Texans with the second overall pick, and given what Stroud showed in the College Football Playoff semi-final against Georgia, that’s a pretty good second place.
So, without further ado, let’s take a look at one version of how the first round of the 2023 NFL draft may go, based on those particulars.
