Commanders HC: ‘It’d be fair to envision we’d be taking a quarterback,’ but open to trade. What does it mean for Patriots?
The Commanders, who hold the second pick, will likely choose between Drake Maye and Jayden Daniels.
The top two picks of the 2024 NFL Draft appear to be taking shape.
Caleb Williams was further cemented as the favorite to be the Bears’ selection with the No. 1 overall pick when they traded Justin Fields on March 16. Exactly a week later, Commanders head coach Dan Quinn heavily insinuated that his team will take a quarterback with the second overall pick.
Quinn told NFL Media’s Tom Pelissero that “it’d be fair to envision we’d be taking a quarterback” on Saturday, but he did leave the door ajar for a possible trade.
“To say where it’ll be happening, I think that’s a better question for Adam,” Quinn said, referring to Commanders general manager Adam Peters. “As the next weeks unfold there’ll be a lot of discussion, and that’s why we’ve had a great trip out seeing some guys, we’ll do that some more in the weeks ahead, but I’ve enjoyed that process with Adam, and going through it. He’s somebody that is an absolute expert at this position, what it looks like, where to go, and so going through that process has been really cool.”
It’s no secret that the Commanders need a quarterback. Just like the Patriots, they traded their starter from last season when they moved Sam Howell to the Seahawks.
But even before that trade, nearly everyone speculated that the Commanders had their eyes on a quarterback with the No. 2 overall pick. Howell’s struggles in 2023 helped the Commanders make a regime change in the first offseason for their new ownership group.
For much of the 2023 season and the early parts of the offseason, UNC’s Drake Maye was the heavy favorite to be the No. 2 overall pick. Maye has been favorably compared to Williams by many draft evaluators over the last year, with some believing he could be the top draft pick in other years.
However, Jayden Daniels recently became the betting favorite to be the No. 2 overall pick and the Commanders became the betting favorite to draft the LSU quarterback. Additionally, Daniels is projected to be the No. 2 overall pick in most mock drafts, with the consensus mock draft board at NFLMockDraftDatabase.com having him going to the Commanders.
Some have speculated that the Commanders’ decision to sign Marcus Mariota is a tell that they prefer Daniels over Maye. The veteran has similar mobility to Daniels and new offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury likes using mobile quarterbacks in his spread offenses.
If that’s the case, that would leave the Patriots to select Maye if they’d like with the No. 3 pick. However, Quinn said that the Commanders haven’t landed on who they’d like to draft yet.
“I still have a lot of work to do into that space,” Quinn said. “Adam’s way further ahead from going through it, but we really dug in hard on our own team, and then the free agent process. And now as we’re getting finalized and on the draft side of things, we still have more visits, people to come in, it’s been more time. So, I’d say we’re getting closer, but to say we’re there yet, not yet.”
Similar to the Patriots, the Commanders have also had a heavy contingent on hand for a pair of the top quarterback prospects’ Pro Days this past week. Both teams were strongly represented at USC’s Pro Day on Wednesday while Jerod Mayo joined the Patriots crew for Michigan’s Pro Day on Friday, where surging quarterback prospect J.J. McCarthy performed.
As Quinn, Peters, Kingsbury, and other members of the Commanders were in Ann Arbor, they were reportedly scheduled to meet with McCarthy for dinner the night before his Pro Day.
If the Commanders were to trade down and still target a quarterback, McCarthy would be the likely option. The Michigan quarterback is projected to go 11th overall in NFLMockDraftDatabase.com’s consensus mock draft.
A possible trade down from the Commanders could mean a team wants Maye bad enough to move up to the No. 2 overall pick to grab him. Quinn said though that the Commanders don’t anticipate fielding trade calls from teams that don’t have a top six or seven pick, which would rule out the Vikings, Broncos, and Raiders. He also implied that it might take a historic haul for a team to get the No. 2 overall pick.
“I certainly walked past it in the hallway when I was with the Cowboys, years ago for a trade that involved Herschel Walker and many draft picks and changed a lot of their organization,” the former Cowboys defensive coordinator said. “So, I think anybody in personnel with the skills of Adam, they’re going to listen, but there’s only so many things that you’d consider, and it’d better be really good.”
Of course, the Patriots fall within that range of picks the Commanders are most likely to field trade calls from. If the Patriots wanted to move up to the No. 2 overall pick, they might also have an advantage over other teams so that the Commanders could still land one of the top three consensus quarterback prospects.
There is some recent precedent of a team moving up from the third pick to the second pick to draft a quarterback. The Bears gave up their third- and fourth-round picks plus a future third-round pick to move up one spot in 2017 to draft Mitch Trubisky with the second overall pick.
Whether that’s a price that the Patriots would be willing to pay obviously remains to be seen. But, as Quinn alluded to, it could take more than that to make a deal happen.
Regardless, it seems like a near certainty that a quarterback will be selected with the No. 2 overall pick, likely leaving the Patriots with the third-best quarterback prospect at No. 3.
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