The 4 riskiest first-round picks in the 2023 NFL Draft

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Which teams will spin the wheel on these high-ceiling, low-floor prospects?

The NFL Draft has never seen a quarterback prospect like Anthony Richardson. At the 2023 scouting combine, Richardson broke positional records for the broad jump (10’9) and vertical (40.5”), while posting the second-fastest 40 time for a quarterback in the history of the event.

If draft decisions were based on athleticism scores, Anthony Richardson would be running away with the No. 1 pick at 4.44 speed. But if teams picked solely on production and college film, there’s little reason to suspect that the Florida quarterback would have even declared for the draft because he needs a lot of work to get up to speed for NFL Sundays.

Richardson spent his first two years at Florida as a backup, failing to beat out Emory Jones as a sophomore in 2021, and then going 6-6 during his lone season as starter in 2022. That includes wins over teams like Eastern Washington and South Florida, while rarely (as in two times) completing over 60 percent of his attempts. Richardson completed 54.7 percent of his passes, throwing 24 touchdowns against 15 interceptions, but also rushing for 1,116 yards and 21 more scores.

It is because of how unprecedented Richardson is as a prospect that his projections in the draft have ranged as high as first overall—though that player is now expected to be Alabama’s Bryce Young, a QB who entered college the same year as Richardson but won a Heisman and consistently performed at a high level for two seasons—to some grading him as a late first-round pick and finding the top-5 talk to be ridiculous for someone so raw.

Even most of the skeptics agree that Richardson’s measurables and arm strength is too tantalizing to hope he’ll still be available in the second round, but the potential to be a first-round bust is exponentially higher than average because nobody knows how probable it actually is that a coaching staff can mold him into the next Josh Allen.

How risky of a pick is Richardson? That will depend on how early he goes this weekend, but signs are pointing towards a franchise in the top 10 picks betting the farm on his all-world arm and high ceiling. He could be the riskiest pick of 2023, but he won’t be the only one.

DT Jalen Carter, Georgia

While Anthony Richardson is an incredible athlete who did not play well in college, conversely Jalen Carter was perhaps the country’s most dominant individual talent but looked out of shape and ill-prepared for his pro day. But his size on the scale is perhaps the least of concerns for teams evaluating Carter at the top of the draft.

There has been no argument among draft experts that Carter is a unique 3-tech defensive tackle who scouts rarely see the likes of coming out of college. Many have said that on a defense that launched five first-round picks in 2022 and perhaps at least three more in 2023, that Jalen Carter was the best singular talent on Georgia’s back-to-back National Champion roster.

He’s been compared to some of the greatest players to ever play the position, which is probably unfair to anybody coming out of college before they’ve reached the NFL, but speaks to how unique he is and the probability that Carter has the potential for an immediate impact at a major position of need around the league.

But none of that talent matters if Carter lacks motivation, discipline, and maturity. There’s been a growing list of red flags over the past three months alone that raise the risk considerably.

Probably the most pressing matter that NFL teams will need to resolve before using a top-10 pick on Carter is finding out how hard he is to coach and if he’s a valuable addition to a locker room, practice field, and film room. We already know that Carter is an elite college football player on Saturdays, but it’s a different beast to keep pace with the pros on Sundays for many years to come. It requires intense work and a strong motivation to be the best, which can be difficult to maintain after a rookie signs a fully guaranteed contract worth anywhere from $30 to $40 million if he’s a top-10 pick.

Georgia head coach Kirby Smart has had to call out Carter in the past for his practice habits and though he said last fall that “he has matured” and “his practice habits have actually improved,” it implies that his effort is known to suffer. Smart added, “Most practices he’s given us a full day’s work.”

“Most”? Not every time?

Then even if teams are comfortable with Jalen Carter in practice and game day, they must next clear him off of the field. Carter had to leave the scouting combine in March because an arrest warrant was issued for him for reckless driving and racing in relation to a January car crash that killed two people, a UGA teammate and a Georgia football staff member. Carter pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor and received no jail time, but teams must weigh whether or not he is mature enough to take his football career and life seriously enough to avoid any troubles with the law again.

In five years, we could either be talking about Carter as far and away the best player from the 2023 NFL Draft, or as a sad cautionary tale of what might have been.

RB Bijan Robinson, Texas

Someone’s going to do it. The team that drafts Texas running back Bijan Carter with a first-round pick, perhaps in the top 10, will hope that he’s every bit as good as the scouting report and never gets seriously injured. But even then, there will be those that criticize drafting a running back in the top-10 picks, no matter what he does in his career.

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As a player, Robinson has often drawn comparisons to Saquon Barkley, the last running back to be drafted within the top 23 picks. Barkley was a dominant player right away, leading the NFL in total yards, scoring 15 touchdowns, fumbling zero times, averaging 5.0 yards per carry, and catching 91 passes for 721 yards as the NFL’s 2018 Offensive Rookie of the Year. He gave the Giants everything that they wanted as the No. 2 overall pick and more, but New York also went 5-11 that season because there was only so much that Barkley could do for them.

And we haven’t seen that same Saquon since.

Barkley was hit with injuries from 2019 to 2021, missing a total of 21 games, and though he was healthy again and very good last season, he wasn’t quite as impactful as the Saquon Barkley from 2018. Robinson brings an incredible profile into the league, with some grading him as the best all-around prospect in the draft regardless of position, showing elite athleticism, vision, and dual-threat receiving abilities that could make him a top-3 running back from the day he enters the league.

A team will most likely pick Bijan in the top 20, and they will risk not getting someone who might end up being more valuable just because he plays a different position. But the teams that pass on Bijan will also be taking a risk, because the odds are that most of them won’t get players as good as him.

Any first-round receiver

In the last five years alone, there have been 21 first-round wide receivers, including many of the NFL’s top stars at the position: Justin Jefferson, Ja’Marr Chase, Jaylen Waddle, DeVonta Smith, D.J. Moore, CeeDee Lamb, Chris Olave, Garrett Wilson, Drake London, Calvin Ridley, Marquise Brown, Brandon Aiyuk, and Jerry Jeudy.

The hit rate on first-round receivers has been great lately and even many of the top veteran receivers to change teams recently, including Tyreek Hill, A.J. Brown, and Davante Adams, cost at least a first-round pick in trades.

But the 2023 receiver class is lacking anyone even close to a guarantee.

There is perhaps no greater evidence for risk in the incoming crop of receivers than its leading man, Ohio State’s Jaxon Smith-Njigba. Expected by many to be the first receiver drafted, Smith-Njigba is “an incredible route runner with the agility and smooth hips to create separation” per DraftKings, and he had a team-leading 1,606 yards in 2021 despite sharing targets with Olave and Garrett Wilson.

However, he has only 15 catches to show for his other two college seasons, including missing all but three games in 2022. JSN’s most recent touchdown came almost 16 months ago, although it was during a 347-yard performance against Utah in the Rose Bowl.

The team that drafts JSN should get a high-floor slot receiver at worst, but some are concerned that he will never play on the perimeter and that his 4.48 40-yard dash at the Ohio State pro day is probably more like a 4.6 and that he won’t be blowing by any corners in the NFL.

And yet there is a chance that Smith-Njigba will be the only receiver to hear his name called during the first night of the draft.

Boston College’s Zay Flowers, TCU’s Quentin Johnston, USC’s Jordan Addison, and Tennessee’s Jalin Hyatt are hoping to break in as well. Each of them has a number of believers, but also a number of skeptics, and certainly every team has Day 2 and 3 fallback options in a class that could be middle-loaded with talent (UNC’s Josh Downs, Tennessee’s Cedric Tillman, Oklahoma’s Marvin Mims, Cincinnati’s Tyler Scott, Purdue’s Charlie Jones, Ole Miss’s Jonathan Mingo, Nebraska’s Trey Palmer, and Houston’s Tank Dell are just some of the names to watch) rather than front-loaded.

Typically, the first round is where teams raise their odds of finding a star receiver. In 2023, it appears that’s where a team will deciding if it’s worth the risk.