2022 NFL Draft Day 1 Winners and Losers | You Pod to Win the Game
Yahoo Sports’ Senior NFL Writer Charles Robinson and Yahoo Sports’ Lead NFL Draft Analyst Eric Edholm discuss their favorite and least favorite moves from Round One of the 2022 NFL Draft. Did the Jets win Day 1? What about the Lions? What were the Titans thinking? And Lamar Jackson does not seem happy with what many believed to be a strong first day for the Ravens. Hear the full conversation on the You Pod to Win the Game podcast. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
[CROWD CHEERING]
CHARLES ROBINSON: All right, welcome to Winners and Losers brought to you by You Pod to Win the Game. Make sure to check out the draft podcast from Thursday night. I'm here with Eric Edholm, our draft analyst. I'm Charles Robinson, senior NFL writer for Yahoo Sports.
Eric, we're going to do Winners and Losers from Thursday night. I want one of each from you. Who you got?
ERIC EDHOLM: All right, for the winners I got to go Detroit Lions. [LAUGHS] I'm very, very excited about not only the Aidan Hutchinson pick, but coming up and making a bold move for Jameson Williams. Love that right there.
We knew they needed receiver, Charles, right? We've been talking about what kind of receiver would they get, are they going to grab one at the end around one, maybe swing back in early round two? No, no, no. Screw all that. Forget that. Trade all the picks, move up, get, potentially, the best receiver in this draft.
Look, they're not in no hurry to compete, right? They're trying to get the best talent available. They're not worried about his ACL and the comeback from that. When he gets on the field he will be a deep threat, the likes of which they have not had in quite some time.
Yeah, that's Aidan Hutchinson, I wouldn't say falling in their laps, but let's face it. It was a stroke of luck that the Jaguars were going in a different direction, number one.
So a little bit of luck to begin the day. And then a bold stroke by Brad Holmes, I thought, to package up and get Williams. So that's got to be my winner. Charles, who do you have on the high end of the first round of the draft?
CHARLES ROBINSON: Yeah, I would say my winner, Robert Saleh, the head coach of the New York Jets, because, look, anytime you can go into a draft and get defensive bodies to work with, that's great. But to be able to get two first round defensive bodies in Ahmad "Sauce" Gardner, at the number four overall pick, and then swing back a trade late in the first round to get Florida State's Jermaine Johnson-- we go back to what Robert Saleh get hired for? Because he can take a defense, he can take talented players and mold a squad that gets after it.
They just did not have the bodies, I think, necessary for-- The New York Jets could not put enough guys out on the field who are difference makers. At least you're taking a shot to get to difference makers here. And by the way, it's great you also get Garrett Wilson. Obviously, not a defensive player for them, but a third first round pick at number 10 overall.
Conversely, and I hate to say losers, because, I mean, let's be honest, no one's really losers in this. But there's some downside that always happens in the first round of the draft, who would you say comes out of this maybe not feeling so great?
ERIC EDHOLM: Don't like what the Titans did. Can't say I do. I mean, look, AJ Brown, really talented receiver. Understand there are financial considerations there. That's the reason he was traded.
But this whole concept of, oh, Treylon Burks, he's just AJ Brown starter kit, I don't believe it. I think they're different players. I know they're similar, body-wise, but the way Burks was used in college suggests to me that he's not ready to take on an advanced route tree. That's what Brown was able to do right away when he stepped in the league.
This is not a one-for-one trade, in my opinion. This is a drop off, and it's going to take him a while to acclimate. So they've gotten worse, talent-wise, in the short-term, I think. Do you have a one team or one loser that sticks out predominantly for you?
CHARLES ROBINSON: Well, it has to do with other veteran wideout trade that happened. Hollywood Brown, the Baltimore Ravens, they ship him to the Arizona Cardinals. But to me, the one who loses out in this, Lamar Jackson. Lamar Jackson is on social media tweeting, WTF.
ERIC EDHOLM: [LAUGHS]
CHARLES ROBINSON: He's retweeting other people who are clearly shocked by this. You have to think that Lamar Jackson really was not let in on this. This, he clearly found this out the way a lot of us found this out as the trade went down. That's not a great situation for Baltimore.
But for Lamar Jackson, in particular, sitting there going, hey, they want to do a contract with me. They want to do a contract extension. I have not been inclined to push that process up until this point-- Taking away a player who I valued and who I was close with sure isn't going to help out. So I'd have to say that somebody walks away from round one feeling negatively, it's probably Lamar Jackson at this point.