Zone Coverage: Mock Draft — You Can Still Have a Full Draft Class While Trading Up To No. 3
Over at Zone Coverage I produced a mock draft that modeled a trade up to the third overall pick to get a QB while still filling out other needs.
The rumors out of the NFL Combine are that the Vikings are going to be aggressive about rookie quarterbacks in this year’s draft. With the additional reporting that some executives see quarterbacks going 1-2-3-4 in the draft, I figured that it would make sense to take a look at what might be on the board for the Vikings if they moved heaven and earth to get their QB.
Check out the piece here.
Trade simulators do a poor job of calculating the cost of a trade when a quarterback is involved. We know about the haul of picks that the Carolina Panthers gave up for Bryce Young, the Los Angeles Rams gave up for Jared Goff, the New York Jets gave up for Sam Darnold, and – relevant to the Vikings in 2024 – what the San Francisco 49ers gave up for Trey Lance.
That’s not quite the same as what the Miami Dolphins gave up for Dion Jordan or what the Buffalo Bills gave up for Sammy Watkins. I looked at every trade into picks No. 2 through No. 4 of the NFL draft in the rookie salary cap era and found, using the values of the Rich Hill Trade Chart, that teams trading up for a quarterback give up about 100 more points than the chart calculates to be an “even” trade.
Teams trading up into picks No. 2 through No. 4 for a non-quarterback still gave up “too much,” but it was to the tune of about 40 points. The 100-point difference against the chart is about the equivalent of a mid-second-round pick, which is often expressed as a future first-round pick, while a 40-point difference is a late third-round pick.
Trading up from Pick 12, the 49ers gave up even more than that. For the third-overall pick in 2021, they traded their 2021 first-round pick as well as three future picks – two firsts and a third, with the final first-round pick coming in 2023.
Using the 50% discount rate the NFL has historically used for future picks, that means they gave up 637.5 points to receive 514 points back. An even trade would have ditched the 2023 first-round pick entirely and received a late 2021 third-round pick back from the Dolphins on top of the third-overall pick from that year.
For the Vikings, we’ll model that overpay.
And as a bonus to Wide Left subscribers, I’ve included a video of my process as I drafted these players in the simulator.
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