Five Quarterbacks, And Rodgers Is One

Bijan Robinson and Amon-Ra St. Brown is as clean a start as this draft offered. Drake London next makes the receiver room genuinely dangerous. Jared Goff is a perfectly good superflex anchor, and D'Andre Swift and Bhayshul Tuten give the backfield actual bodies behind Bijan. Through seven rounds this is a very good football team.

Then the quarterback collecting began. Sam Darnold in the fifth, Bryce Young in the ninth, Aaron Rodgers in the tenth. With Goff that is four arms, the roster maximum, on a fifteen-man team with five bench spots. Two of them start. The other two sit, and one of them is Rodgers, who is forty-one and playing for his third team in four years, a quarterback whose every season now comes with a documentary crew and a farewell tour that keeps getting extended. Bryce Young is the other, a former first overall pick who has already been benched once for a career backup. Between them, that is two bench slots spent on stories rather than points.

What got squeezed out is depth everywhere else. Marvin Harrison Jr. and Stefon Diggs are the receiver support, Diggs coming off a serious knee injury and now on his third team in three years. Travis Kelce is the tight end, and Kelce at thirty-six is a player whose route tree has visibly shortened. Rachaad White is the fourth running back. Tyler Loop and the Jets defense close it out, which is exactly where those belong. Tyler had the makings of the best roster here and spent a third of it on quarterbacks he cannot start.