The purpose of the NFL Draft is for young college and high school football players to show off their skills in the NFL, where their talent and hard work get the ultimate platform. The NFL Draft can also help professional teams improve their rosters with younger players. The way the draft works, is that the team with the lowest record from the most recent season gets the number one overall pick. For example in the 2021-22 NFL season, the Jacksonville Jaguars got the 1st overall pick for having the worst record in the NFL; they had three wins and fourteen losses.
However, this isn’t always the case – you can trade your draft picks with opposing teams in the NFL. In 2024, the Chicago Bears have the 1st overall pick, despite not having the worst record in the NFL, because the Bears traded their 2023 first overall pick to the Carolina Panthers for multiple draft picks and star wide receiver D.J. Moore. There are a lot of risks in this trading system, but it changes the way NFL teams can improve, but there will always be that risk of doing something that’ll hurt a team in the long run. The NFL draft is important because everyone entering the draft has put in untold amounts of time and effort to try and make football their future.
Overall, there were some interesting trades made during the 2024 draft, such as the Minnesota Vikings, who had the 11th overall pick but traded with the New York Jets who had the 10th pick. There were a lot of obvious picks during this first round, however, there were some that shocked NFL fans. One of those picks was the Atlanta Falcons, who drafted quarterback Michael Penix Jr. at nine overall, when they just signed quarterback Kirk Cousins to a four year, 180 million dollar deal.
In the past few NFL drafts, there have been generational players who have entered the world of the NFL. In the 2017 draft, there were athletes like Patrick Mahomes, Myles Garrett, Christian McCaffrey, Marshon Lattimore, and Hasson Reddick, who began their lucrative and legendary careers just a few years ago. Then in the 2023 draft, you have players like C.J. Stroud, Will Anderson Jr., Devon Witherspoon, Jalen Carter, and many more. As of April 25, 2024, the first round of the draft has been completed, and the next generation of NFL players will begin their careers in the National Football League.
