Patrick Mahomes, T.J. Watt skyrocket in 2017 NFL re-draft

The 2017 NFL Draft included some spectacular players with Hall of Fame upside. Here’s where the top players land in a 2017-redraft.

It’s always fun to look back on an NFL Draft years after we start to see results. As a Steelers fan, I vividly remember sitting at my uncle’s house watching the 2017 NFL Draft — anxiously hoping that T.J. Watt would fall past a plethora of edge-needy teams to Pittsburgh with the 30th overall pick.

Obviously, we don’t always know which players are going to turn out to be superstars in the NFL. The 2017 draft was interesting for a number of reasons. It included some colossal busts early in the draft who are essentially already out of the league in addition to mixing in some generational talents with Hall of Fame upside.

Recently, Gary Davenport of Bleacher ReportNFL Draft

re-drafted all 32 picks in the first round of the 2017 NFL Draft. The results were quite interesting.

Myles Garrett didn’t go number one this time around. While Garrett is a two-time First-Team All-Pro player and has been as good as we expected, it would be impossible for Cleveland not to take NFL MVP and Super Bowl champion, Patrick Mahomes, with the first overall pick.

With the Browns going with Mahomes in this re-draft, Davenport has the 49ers taking Myles Garrett. This is an interesting choice that I know a lot of Steelers fans would have an argument for. Personally, I don’t think San Francisco could go wrong with Garrett or T.J. Watt here.

With the third overall pick in the 2017 re-draft, the Chicago Bears go with Deshaun Watson. Now that the legal issues have mostly been resolved, the Bears would love to go back and select Watson as opposed to moving up for Mitch Trubisky.

Because of the way the first three picks fell, the Jacksonville Jaguars cannot pass up Watt in a re-draft. They select the three-time All-Pro defender and current Defensive Player of the Year recipient.

In the consecutive picks that followed, names like Cooper Kupp, Christian McCaffrey, Mike Williams, Alvin Kamara, Chris Godwin, Tre’Davious White, Marshon Lattimore, and George Kittle all fly off the board. Kittle and Kupp grossly improve their draft stock five years later.

The final three picks of the draft include Chidobe Awuzie, Marcus Maye, and Kenny Golladay.

Who was the biggest winner of the 2017 NFL re-draft?

With a draft class that includes some remarkable talent at the top, it’s hard not to call the Cleveland Browns the biggest winner. They didn’t necessarily make a bad choice the first time around with Myles Garrett, but Patrick Mahomes is a franchise-altering player that would change their fortunes.

The teams who would improve the most from their original 2017 first-round pick might be the 49ers and the Jaguars with the 4th and 5th picks, respectively.

After taking Solomon Thomas the first time around, the 49ers wise up and take their franchise QB in Deshaun Watson. Likewise, the Jaguars go from selecting Leonard Fournette — a running back who didn’t even make it through his rookie contract with the team — to getting one of the best defenders in the league in T.J. Watt.

I’m always intrigued by NFL re-drafts. The 2017 NFL Draft was particularly interesting and there were some pretty big shakeups five years later. If some of these franchises had made different decisions back then, their team would be in a much better place right now.