Dearolf declines Josh Allen at 25, drafts Bo Nix instead

Fourteen picks and not one of them autodrafted, so Chris Dearolf was awake and present for every decision on this page. He opened from the eighth slot with Jaxon Smith-Njigba, took Nico Collins at 25 and Malik Nabers at 40, and the receiving room he built out of that is the best thing about this team by a comfortable margin: the third-best WR1 in the league at 269.2 points, the third-best WR2 at 211.7 points, and Nabers at 202.0 points in the flex. Sam LaPorta at 160.0 points is a fifth-best tight end. That is four starting spots handled before the draft was half over. It also came with a bill. Josh Allen and his 370.0 points were sitting on the board when Collins went at 25 and survived three more picks, and the third receiver was still tagged Questionable on draft day with a torn ACL behind him and a new quarterback, a new coach and a new playcaller waiting for him.

The bill arrived at running back, where the first back Dearolf drafted showed up in round four and is now the man he starts every week. Rhamondre Stevenson, 185.2 points, 15th of 16 among this league's RB1s in a year when the best one is worth 335.2 points, and ESPN's own write-up files him as a bench body splitting New England's carries with TreVeyon Henderson. The depth behind him is Jonathon Brooks, who has torn the same ACL twice and appeared in one game across two seasons, RJ Harvey in a Denver timeshare, and Braelon Allen at 87.9 points, who does not play while Breece Hall is upright. Quarterback tells the same story from a different angle: Bo Nix at 295.7 points is the 15th-best starter of 16, and the number at the top of that list is 370.0, which is Josh Allen's, which is the pick from paragraph one. Having assembled that backfield, Dearolf used his eleventh-round pick on a second quarterback.

The defense is the one that will age badly. Dearolf drafted the Eagles D/ST in 2017, 2023 and 2024, a three-year habit that asked nothing of him and worked fine, and the first year he goes shopping elsewhere he comes home with the 49ers at 93.7 points, dead last of sixteen, taken off a write-up that reads like an instruction not to draft it. All of it adds up to 1560.3 points and 10th of 16, which is the shape of a team that is excellent at one position group and starting from a hole at three others. The man who won the whole thing in 2022 and lost the final in 2021 will spend this season watching his wide receivers do beautiful work and then handing the ball to Rhamondre Stevenson.