Bolts From The Blue
In our first 7-round mock draft of the offeason, we have Jim Harbaugh letting his Big Ten bias show by filling his first draft with familiar faces.
The 2024 NFL Draft is just two days away and it wouldn’t be a normal draft season unless I got out at least one seven-mock draft for you all to criticize ahead of Thursday night.
As we know, the Chargers are reportedly on the fence in regards to taking a wide receiver or offensive tackle with their first-round pick on Thursday night. Some reporters are stressing how much Jim Harbaugh has said he wants to run the football which leads them to believe offensive tackle is the pick. However, Joe Hortiz has stressed that they’re going to focus on a “best player available” strategy and it’s hard to believe a tackle is deemed the better player over one of the class’ top pass-catchers.
Either way, we’ll finally have all of our answers when Thursday night rolls around.
With that said, have at it.
Heading into Thursday, I’m not allowing myself to fall for the potential scenario in which the Chargers can draft Marvin Harrison Jr. I believe the Cardinals will stick-and-pick someone they feel could have the biggest impact on winning more games in the immediate future.
If Harrison goes at No. 4, I just can’t imagine the Chargers choosing an offensive tackle over Nabers. Like the Cardinals, the Chargers need to win as many games as fast as possible under Jim Harbaugh. No one wants to wait multiple years to be a legit contender again. Nabers will raise the floor of the passing offense significantly and I just don’t think an offensive tackle will have the same effect.
The Chargers are almost certainly going to leave this week’s draft with a former MIchigan player and my bets are either Jenkins here or cornerback Mike Sainristil. In this draft, I chose to go with Jenkins here because I believe the quickest way to turn this defense around is to finally get some bullies up front. Jenkins isn’t a polished pass-rusher but he’s stout at the point of attack and defensive coordinator Jesse Minter would love to have one of his former top players at Michigan join him in LA.
Benson is my favorite running back in this class and he’s also the only running back I’d be comfortable with taking this early. There have been too many mocks with Blake Corum being the pick here and I just can’t see the value being there. He was productive at Michigan, but I don’t see his game transitioning nearly as well as some of the other top backs.
The 6’1, 223-pounder had just under 1,900 yards and 23 touchdowns over the last two seasons while breaking a whole bunch of tackles. In 2022, he broke PFF’s record...
