NFL Football Betting: Odds To Be First Pick In 2021 NFL Draft

The 2021 NFL Draft is roughly three months away. The NFL season has just one game left, the Super Bowl, which means that for the 30 teams not playing in the big game, the focus goes to the NFL Scouting Combine, free agency, and the draft, the basic building blocks of a team’s offseason evaluations. The plans need to be integrated, too. It’s not as though a free agency plan is divorced from a draft plan. What teams want to do in free agency has to be connected to what they do in the draft. With that in mind, let’s look at the three players which are most likely to be taken first in the NFL draft.

Trevor Lawrence, Clemson

The likely No. 1 pick for the 2021 NFL Draft is Lawrence. There is at least some drama surrounding this choice if only because the team with the No. 1 pick, the Jacksonville Jaguars, are coached by Urban Meyer, who used to coach at Ohio State. Could Meyer take Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields instead of Lawrence? It’s possible, but it’s still not likely. Lawrence is viewed as the generational quarterback candidate in this year’s draft class. One of the qualities which separates him from Justin Fields is that he is much taller than Fields. He can therefore survey the field a lot more easily and have fewer passes batted down at the line of scrimmage. Urban Meyer is paid to win, not to give jobs to former Ohio State players. He took on the challenge of coaching in the NFL so that he could win and achieve, not so that he could make friends. Lawrence isn’t a lock to be the top pick, but he is certainly still the clear favorite.

Justin Fields, Ohio State

The Ohio State quarterback could be Urban Meyer’s choice, but as said above, it’s still very likely that Trevor Lawrence will be the No. 1 pick. If Fields is the choice, however, there will be a clear reason for it: He outplayed Lawrence and Clemson when Ohio State blasted the Tigers in the Sugar Bowl, the College Football Playoff semifinal, on January 1. Fields displayed toughness, intelligence, agility, and poise, and he certainly looked a lot better than Lawrence did. That performance might have changed the Jaguars’ minds. As it is, the New York Jets – at pick No. 2 – might have the tougher choice to make between Fields and the next player on this list:

Penei Sewell, Oregon

The Jaguars are not likely to take Sewell at No. 1, but maybe Urban Meyer has a plan and a vision in which he wants to wait for a quarterback and see what he has this season. Again, that’s not likely, but if it’s Urban’s thought process, maybe Sewell – an elite offensive tackle – could rise to the very top of the board. As it is, the real intrigue for Sewell concerns the New York Jets. If they don’t take Justin Fields with the second pick, they would probably invest that pick in Sewell as a pass protector for Sam Darnold. The Jets’ overall plan will determine what they do with the second pick, and they haven’t yet indicated whether Darnold will be on the trading block in the coming weeks.