Two Kickers, One Great Draft Gone Wrong

Jalen Hurts, A.J. Brown, Kenneth Walker III, C.J. Stroud, Davante Adams, George Kittle. Six rounds, six real players, a genuine superflex quarterback pairing and the best blocking tight end in football who also happens to catch things. Adams is deep into his thirties and Kittle's body has an injury history you could read as a novel, but this is a starting lineup that wins weeks.

Round seven is where it stops. Eddy Pineiro is a kicker, taken while actual starters were still on the board, and then Harrison Butker arrives in the eleventh as the second kicker on a fifteen-man roster. The cap is two, so this is legal. It is also two roster spots spent on a position where one guy who kicks is functionally the same as any other guy who kicks, on a team that has five bench spots total. That is forty percent of the bench dedicated to the game's most replaceable job.

The rest of the back half is swing after swing. Mike Washington Jr., Camden Brown, Brian Robinson Jr., Tyjae Spears, deep names hoping for a depth chart to open up. Kirk Cousins closes the draft as a third quarterback, and Cousins right now is a veteran holding a clipboard behind somebody younger, which is a strange thing to want on purpose. The Ravens defense in the eighth was early for a unit, but at least a defense plays every week. The top six here belong in the playoff conversation. Rounds seven through fifteen belong in a cautionary tale about the special teams budget.