The NFL’s future starts here. On Thursday night, 30 of the NFL’s 32 teams will find the players tasked they hope can lead them to the Super Bowl. The 2018 NFL Draft will be the first step in a long professional journey for the NCAA’s top stars — one that will end in Hall of Fame speeches for a select few.
Quarterbacks will be the focus of this year’s event, as offense-needy teams dot the top half of this year’s draft. The Browns, Jets, Broncos, Dolphins, Bills, and Cardinals could all be in the market for a class of passers that could wind up tying the 1983’s NFL record by pushing six quarterbacks into the first round. That crop includes two Heisman Trophy winners (Lamar Jackson and Baker Mayfield), two west coast standouts (Sam Darnold and Josh Rosen), and an NFL prototype built on the lonesome practice fields of Wyoming (Josh Allen).
All eyes will be on Cleveland as the league’s perpetually-doomed franchise will begin its Sisyphean task of drafting a player with unbridled promise with the first overall pick. The Browns will be back on the clock at No. 4 — the kind of haul that can jump start a total rebuild or confirm suspicions of a supernatural curse hanging over the franchise. General manager John Dorsey will be on the clock for the first draft pick of his Cleveland tenure starting at 8 p.m. ET.
You can follow all the action from Arlington, Texas here.