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April has arrived! The NFL offseason is rolling along in free agency, but we are now exactly four weeks away from the 2021 NFL Draft. Pro Days will wrap up over the next week or so, and then teams will hunker down to finalize their draft boards. Teams likely won’t make many significant changes to their draft boards, but mock drafts will only get crazier in the coming weeks.
ESPN’s Todd McShay is back with his latest mock draft, which is his first since the 49ers, Dolphins, and Eagles shook up the top six picks of the draft board. The 49ers swapped picks with the Dolphins to move from No. 12 to No. 3, and then Dolphins swapped that 49ers pick with the Eagles to move from No. 12 to No. 6.
McShay goes with the crowd and mocks Alabama quarterback Mac Jones to the 49ers. That follows Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence and BYU’s Zach Wilson in the first two picks. He then has the Panthers trading up to No. 7 to pick North Dakota State’s Trey Lance and the Patriots trading up to No. 11 to pick Ohio State’s Justin Fields.
McShay moved to a two-round mock draft this time around, and he has two more quarterbacks going in the second round. He has Washington selecting Texas A&M’s Kellen Mond at No. 51 and the Bears selecting Florida’s Kyle Trask at No. 52.
The mock draft shows the significant drop-off in talent with 40 picks between the fifth QB and sixth QB in this version of the draft. It makes it that much clearer how busy the top 15 picks of the draft could prove to be. After the Patriots at 15, Washington, Chicago, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, and maybe even Tampa Bay are all teams likely in the market for a QB at some point in this draft. We’ll see other teams invest a day three pick in the QB market, but this is the group that seem more obvious in the short term.