Welcome to Wednesday's edition of the With the First Pick newsletter. Tomorrow, when I take my first sip of coffee, I'm going to go full Shannon Sharpe drinking Diet Mountain Dew. Everything will be blissful. The 2023 NFL Draft will finally be here. Now, in my best motivational social media bro tone I'm going to say, let's knock today out of the park in anticipation of tomorrow's grand event.
Of course, the rebrand of the Pick Six newsletter isn't stopping now. And I, CBS Sports NFL Draft analyst Chris Trapasso, will be with you through this glorious week. This daily newsletter's sole purpose of existence is to track everything transpiring in the NFL and spin it into a draft angle.
Before I begin, here's your daily reminder to tell all your buddies and that one uncle who's always texting you mock draft links to sign up for the With the First Pick newsletter. Just click here and then share this link with them.
Today's NFL mock draft 🔮: Tyree Wilson to Bears
Josh Edwards wrote his annual "what I would do" mock, and it's fantastic. After some usual suspects at No. 1 and No. 2 -- Bryce Young to the Panthers and C.J. Stroud to the Texans -- he has Wilson slipping all the way to Chicago at No. 9 overall instead of landing in Houston with the second pick.
There are plenty of surprise selections late in Round 1. We get Syracuse offensive tackle Matthew Bergeron and Kansas State's Felix Anudike-Uzomah within the first 31 selections. Josh is clearly quite high on both. Here are some other notable prospect-team pairings:
13. Green Bay Packers - Jaxon Smith-Njigba, WR, Ohio State
14. New England Patriots - Christian Gonzalez, CB, Oregon
17. Pittsburgh Steelers - Broderick Jones, OT, Georgia
26. Dallas Cowboys - Dalton Kincaid, TE, Utah
31. Kansas City Chiefs - Jahmyr Gibbs, RB, Alabama
'With the First Pick' podcast 🎧: Rumors and draft favorites
In the latest episode, Ryan Wilson and Rick Spielman begin by tackling the bananas Will Levis rumor and addressing the draft impact of the Aaron Rodgers trade. After that, they dive into their 20 favorite prospects in the 2023 class then finish with their 10 favorite sleepers. And there's a difference between those two groups.
Revisiting trade-ups for non-QBs in last decade
We always get enamored with trade-ups for quarterbacks in the draft. And they are the most likely. But we typically do see a few draft-day ascensions from teams targeting non-quarterbacks. This piece from staffer Bryan Deardo is a critical refresher on the latter swaps since 2013 because it maps out those trades in detail, making it easy to discern the winner and loser of each transaction. Good to have these in the front of the cranium before tomorrow night.
Do you want your team trading up for a non-quarterback in the first round?
Predicting the draft's biggest surprises 👀
How about this juicy piece from staffer Cody Benjamin on draft eve? Getting even like 8-10 picks correct in a mock draft has all but scientifically been proven to be impossible. You know what else is comparably difficult? Predicting huge surprises. And it's even more challenging in this draft than others.
Cody has four quarterbacks going in the top 5 (!), the Patriots drafting a quarterback for the third-straight year (after the first round here), and multiple believed-to-be first-round receivers slipping onto the second day of the draft, among other surprises.
There's also some trade predictions too. OK, stop reading this. Go read Cody's article already.
News & Notes 📝
- My final 2023 mock draft. Figured I owed you this one, after penning one mock per week since the start of football season. I may make a few tweaks on Thursday, but this is my final effort to predict the first round of the draft before the Panthers make their pick.
- First two picks won't change draft for Cardinals. Arizona GM Monti Ossenfort recently stated "I think if the trade makes sense and it's the right decision for our team at the time, then we'll do it...If the right move is to sit and pick a player who've we've done a lot of work on through the process, then we'll be prepared to do that, so I wouldn't say that it's any more likely now as opposed to down the line."
- Will Brinson's final 2023 mock. I've inundated you with mocks for weeks now. Might as well keep the flood of mocks going until they're obsolete in a little over 24 hours, right? Here's Will's final attempt to predict this first round.
