draft Page 23 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Detroit Lions are going for it — and why not?
When you have as many picks in the first three rounds of the NFL Draft as the Detroit Lions did — six in all — it’s easy to wager them like house money. Reach on a second-round running back at No. 12? Sure. Take a linebacker who wasn’t predicted in the first round of any of the 38,000 mock drafts? S...

Mel Kiper Jr. whiffed on Will Levis
Overreaching on quarterbacks has become a yearly tradition. Mitch Trubisky is going to work out! Carson Wentz will be healthy! Peyton Manning and Ryan Leaf? Same thing! And this year, the projection for former Kentucky quarterback Will Levis was way off, with no one being more wrong about the mayonn...

2023 NFL Draft Winner and Losers
The first round of the 2023 NFL Draft is over and Thursday proved to be one of the needle-moving days on the league’s calendar. Lamar Jackson finally got paid and several teams addressed some of their biggest needs ahead of next season. There were only 31 first-round picks this year (haha Miami) and...

Black QBs make NFL Draft history while white QB sits in green room
What happened to Kentucky quarterback Will Levis wasn’t funny. It felt cruel watching someone experience their most humiliating moment on the night in which their dreams were supposed to come true. But for African-Americans — or at least for myself — it was impossible to ignore the irony. For decade...

Will Levis the sad man out on NFL Draft Night
Don’t ever let anyone tell you to be yourself. You never know what people will find weird about your “personality.” I ate peanut butter and cheese tacos as a kid, but I would never broadcast that if I was projected to be a first-round pick in the NFL. According to the experts — Mel Kiper and some Re...

Deadspin watched the NFL Draft so you didn't have to
Welcome to the Deadspin 2023 NFL Draft tracker. If you love the NFL, but hate sitting through the NFL Draft, you’ve come to the right place. Maybe you’re out playing pickleball, or you can’t stand Roger Goodell, or the annual traditions of super-cringey interviews with players and family put you off...

So you traded the No. 1 pick — now what, Chicago?
The Chicago Bears failed in the most ideal way possible last season. They finished with the worst record in the NFL, and still found a way to unleash breathtaking athleticism from Justin Fields. ...

Biggest NFL Draft Day Trades of All TIme
The NFL Draft has finally arrived, and each year, we can always expect the unexpected once it rolls around. Most years, we see trades of all kinds, some of which have changed teams for the better, and others for the worse. We never know when it will happen, but each year brings many surprises that c...

Is the 1983 NFL Draft Class the best ever?
Today marks the 40th anniversary of the 1983 NFL Draft, which produced eight Hall of Famers at six different positions. These players ended up winning a combined seven Super Bowls and shit ton of awards....
![If you took Will Levis No. 1 to Carolina because of a Redditor, we don't feel sorry for you [Updated]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/cdd19f7e500ef5f132b41f118c5888d1.png)
If you took Will Levis No. 1 to Carolina because of a Redditor, we don't feel sorry for you [Updated]
Draft stock is as volatile as any investment traded online. In the past few years, Reddit has been surprisingly instrumental in socially engineering artificial increases in the stock of both. The reliability is iffy, but that hasn’t stopped gamblers working sportsbooks from going all in based on a p...

Do we really need 38,500 NFL mock drafts?
If I were to ask the casual NFL fan for an over/under for the number of mock drafts penned regarding the 2023 iteration starting Thursday, I don’t think anyone comes within 10,000 of the actual number. Maybe a staunch cynic gleans what the question is implying and throws out an obscene number, but t...

Five players the Dallas Cowboys could select at No. 26 in the 2023 draft
Every Dallas Cowboys draft is an adventure, just trying to figure out which direction Jerry Jones will go with the team’s first-round pick. Over the past decade, Jones and company have placed more stock in the draft than in free agency. Contrary to popular belief, Jones, his son Stephen, and the tea...

Detroit Lions WR Jameson Williams among 5 NFL players suspended by league for gambling policy violations
Always take the over. On Friday morning, the NFL announced the suspension of five players for gambling policy violations. Quintez Cephus, C.J. Moore, Stanley Berryhill, and Jameson Williams of the Detroit Lions, and Shaka Toney of the Washington Commanders apparently all ignored how Calvin Ridley mi...

The NBA’s new CBA nearly carved out a loophole which would have made the draft a choice
The annual NBA Draft Combine, hosted in Chicago, is a footnote on the offseason calendar ranking somewhere between the preseason and the Rookie-Sophomore Game in the hierarchy of trivial offseason events. The Association’s one-stop pre-draft shop for teams to screen prospects medically, conduct inte...

Could Trey Lance's 49ers career already be over?
At least the San Francisco 49ers appear to be attempting to keep all of their options open. That is the best way to describe the handling of their starting quarterback situation with Brock Purdy and Trey Lance both recovering from injury, and Jimmy G now in Las Vegas. ...

Sports leagues are ‘stepping up’ to ‘save’ you from sports betting ads
The burgeoning sports gambling industry in America took a blow Wednesday after professional leagues across the country combined forces to form the Coalition for Responsible Sports Betting Advertising, a group designed to “regulate” the boom in bookie ads currently flooding the internet and corruptin...

How’d giving away garbage bags full of draft picks work out for these NFL teams?
The NFL Draft is easily the second-most important event on the league’s annual calendar, with most teams that privately know they won’t be close to winning the Super Bowl prepping for the three-day event. Yet, there are still plenty of teams who don’t take an active role in the draft. In each of the...

Leave Zion Williamson alone. Did Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka not teach us anything?
From college to the NBA, as long as we’ve been watching Zion Williamson play basketball, he’s never had a season that wasn’t impacted by an injury. Since his one-and-done year at Duke to his four seasons with the New Orleans Pelicans, the league’s most electrifying player still hasn’t been able to s...

How every NFL team should draft, but won't because GMs are dumb
The NFL Draft is arguably the second-biggest event on the league calendar behind the Super Bowl. Every team participates and shapes its roster for the next season. And every franchise will go into the month of May thinking it has made the right moves to get closer to a championship. But of course, o...

A team should reach for Bijan Robinson in the NFL Draft
No position in the NFL has more turnover than running back. Most teams have switched to a by-committee approach rather than one superstar. And even the 49ers have suitable backups to Christian McCaffrey. With the NFL Draft two weeks away, former Texas standout Bijan Robinson will be the first tailba...