Broncos’ Pat Surtain II, Bears’ Justin Fields and 2021 NFL draft

10/02/2023

A week before his first draft as an NFL general manager, George Paton’s phone rang more than he picked up and dialed.

Holding the No. 9 selection, Paton knew several teams would be taking quarterbacks early. He said as much in his pre-draft news conference, speculating as many as five could go in the top 10.

“It’s very strong. Kind of depends on what flavor you want,” he said of the group a week before Trevor Lawrence went No. 1 overall to Jacksonville. “But there could be five, maybe six drafted in the first round.”

One of the teams trying to move up: Chicago. General manager Ryan Pace held the 20th pick but knew he’d have to jump up the board if he wanted to land one of the quintet of quarterbacks.

Paton, though, wasn’t inclined to be the one to move back. At least not that far. Plus, on the surface, the Broncos looked like a team that could use a young quarterback to build around themselves.

Draft day deals sometimes come out of thin air once teams are on the clock, but front offices spend the days and weeks before hand picking their marks and sometimes batting around frameworks for trades. But if your guy is there come draft day, you take him.

If the Carolina Panthers had opted for Pat Surtain II at No. 8 instead of South Carolina cornerback Jaycee Horn that night, who knows what might have happened at No. 9 for the Broncos?

But they didn’t. And Paton used his first pick on the 6-foot-2 cornerback from Alabama. Two picks later, Pace moved up to No. 11 to take Ohio State’s Justin Fields in a move that cost him No. 20, a fourth-rounder that year and Chicago’s first and fourth-rounders in 2022.

The Broncos ended up with an All-Pro. The Bears landed a dynamic quarterback who has yet to show he can cut it as an NFL passer.

More importantly, neither team has done much in the win-loss column since. The Broncos went 7-10 in 2021, 5-12 last year and are now 0-3 for a mark of 12-25. The Bears? 6-11, 3-14 and 0-3 to 9-28. They meet Sunday as teams that not only could again be picking near the top of the draft next spring, but may also face crossroads decisions with their 2021 selections after this season, though for different reasons.

The All-Pro at No. 9

Surtain quickly turned himself into one of the NFL’s best young cornerbacks with the Broncos. He played 16 snaps the first game of his rookie year and has started since.

So much of the conversation leading up to the draft was dominated by quarterbacks. Sure enough, Lawrence went No. 1, the Jets took Zach Wilson and San Francisco traded three first-rounders to move up from No. 12 and take Trey Lance.

That group, plus Fields and Mac Jones, took up a ton of airspace despite a bevy of good non-quarterbacks near the top of the board, including Surtain.

“There weren’t a whole lot of weaknesses,” ESPN draft analyst Matt Miller said of his pre-draft notes on Surtain. “He was so incredibly well-coached on top of the pedigree of having a father who was such a good player. Normally with a corner I feel like we poke holes in them, college guys especially, pretty easily. But with him it’s like, ok, you’re 6-2 and 208 pounds. Check. Check. Then you also have speed and length. Honestly, looking back on it, it’s weird that he (didn’t get more attention). I think he was almost underrated because of this rush to say, ‘Oh my gosh, five quarterbacks are going to get taken in the top 15, we’ve got to rank those guys high because they’re going to get drafted high.’”

Surtain’s not underrated anymore, though his game may still get under appreciated because shutting down opposing receivers isn’t as flashy as sacks or touchdowns.

“He’s a great player, but his best trait is his intelligence,” Broncos defensive coordinator Vance Joseph told The Post during training camp. “Obviously he’s tall, he’s fast, he’s got the ball skills, he’s quick, but his best trait is his smarts. That’s really special. He’s unique. He loves to play. He’s got something in his body and his brain that a lot of guys don’t have.”

Horn, the son of former receiver Joe Horn, showed that kind of ability in 2019 at South Carolina, too, but he dealt with injuries in college and has in the NFL, too. He played three games as a rookie, 13 last year and one so far this season.

“Both of those guys had NFL pedigrees with their fathers and everybody knew they were going to come in NFL ready right away,” ESPN draft analyst Jordan Reid, formerly of The Draft Network, told The Post. “But Surtain is just on another level and he’s already proven to be one of the better players not only in that draft but in the league overall.”

Non-QB goldmine

Atlanta took Kyle Pitts No. 4, then Cincinnati and Miami both hit big at receiver with Ja’Marr Chase and Jaylen Waddle, respectively. Tackle Penei Sewell’s been a key part of Detroit’s rebuild. Then came the corners, Horn and Surtain, before Philadelphia took Alabama receiver DeVonta Smith at No. 10.

After Chicago took Fields, Dallas ended up with the pick at No. 12 that San Francisco initially dealt to move up and the Cowboys happily selected Micah Parsons, who’s turned into one of the few defensive players most analysts rank even or ahead of Surtain.

“He’s on a Hall of Fame type of trajectory,” Reid said. “And I love Surtain, but Micah’s just on a whole other level when we’re talking about the player right now.”

If a re-draft were held today, the quarterbacks outside of Lawrence would likely drop considerably because of those players.

“The New York Jets would rather have Micah Parsons,” Miller said. “The 49ers would probably rather have Surtain. And even, I love Kyle Pitts, but the Falcons have no idea how to use him. So, Surtain’s not getting past No. 4.

“He’s too talented.”

“One of the more confusing evaluations”

That’s the way many draft analysts and front-office folks thought about Fields, too. He showed every physical tool you could want at Ohio State.

He wasn’t going to leapfrog Lawrence, considered a generational quarterback prospect, but after that the door seemed wide open.

Miller and Reid each had him ranked as their No. 2 quarterback in the class.

Broncos head coach Sean Payton was then in New Orleans, which didn’t pick until No. 29, but he liked what he saw, too.

“You saw a winner,” Payton said this week. “You saw someone with a live arm and a really good skill set to run. The reason he was taken as high as he was, was not only just the arm talent, but here was a guy that led his team to a lot of wins. That’s part of the job description.”

The Jets, though, were sold on Wilson and San Francisco unloaded all that capital for Lance, who roared onto the scene in 2019 at FCS North Dakota State but had his 2020 season shortened to one game because of COVID-19.

“If you’re going to sell out for the guy with traits, which was Trey Lance in their opinion, my argument was, ‘Why wouldn’t you sell out for the guy with better traits?’” Miller said. “(Fields) is bigger. He’s stronger. He’s faster. He’s been more productive.

“Obviously neither one has really worked out, but it’s one of the more confusing evaluations of the past couple of years for me.”

Indeed, Fields has confounded.

He started 10 games as a rookie and struggled. Then Chicago overhauled its front office and coaching staff and Fields hasn’t seen any improvement under coordinator Luke Getsy and head coach Matt Eberflus. After completing 60.4% last year, he’s at 58% through three games this season.

The third-year player, though, is electric in the run game. He finished 2022 with 1,143 rushing yards and eight touchdowns despite also getting sacked 55 times.

“With quarterbacks, it’s so interesting because situation and fit matter so much,” Reid said. “We’ve seen that with Trey Lance already with him on his second team. Zach Wilson, things just haven’t worked out with him. Then with Fields, the situation, it’s just not – there’s a lot of things that are happening around him right now that maybe don’t necessarily fit him.”

The QB conundrum

Coincidentally, in early 2021 it was the Bears who were thought to be trying to trade for Russell Wilson. In February that year, Wilson’s agent, Mark Rodgers, told ESPN’s Adam Schefter that Wilson wanted to stay in Seattle, but if the club was going to trade him he’d only greenlight deals to New Orleans, Dallas, Las Vegas or Chicago. By May, a week after Chicago selected Fields, the Chicago Tribune suggested the Bears may have offered upward of three first-round selections for Wilson before turning their attention to the draft.

Denver was active on the quarterback front, too.

The Broncos traded for Teddy Bridgewater the day before the draft started. Then, as the proceedings got going, ESPN reported that Aaron Rodgers was unhappy in Green Bay and may want to be traded.

So what was Denver going to do? Trade for Rodgers? Draft Fields or Jones? No move materialized, of course, despite the rampant speculation. Eleven months later, Paton unloaded two first rounders, two second rounders and three players to acquire Wilson.

Instead of a surefire signal-caller, though, the Broncos got a 5-12 mark in 20222, the worst year of Wilson’s career and fired coach Nathaniel Hackett after 15 games. Then they traded yet another first round pick – swapped a second for a third – for the right to hire Payton.

What’s next

The symmetry is unmistakable.

The Bears tried to trade for Wilson before ultimately drafting a quarterback in 2021. The Broncos considered drafting a quarterback in 2021 before ultimately trading for Wilson.

Now they meet up in the early goings of 2023 looking like a pair of teams who, instead of ascending after course-defining moves, will likely once again be drafting near the top of the 2024 draft.

Wilson has improved his play in the early goings this fall, but he’s not returned to the elite level of play that defined his decade-long tenure in Seattle. He turns 35 in November and the five-year extension he signed a year ago doesn’t even kick in until 2024. In the meantime, all of those picks jettisoned in the process of acquiring him and Payton have cost Denver in roster depth and talent.

As good as Surtain is, he’s the only first-rounder Paton has actually picked in Denver. Surtain and 2021 second-rounder Javonte Williams are the only top-60 selections Paton’s made in three drafts.

Perhaps the Broncos will win the next two weeks against teams that picked quarterbacks in 2021 – Chicago and then the Jets in Week 5 — and feel like they’re edging back toward contention.

If not, the list of decisions to make gets long quickly. Some, like making a handful of veterans available at the trade deadline, could add a pick to Denver’s quiver here and there. Wilson and Surtain each represent potential offseason decisions that come with real consequence.

Surtain’s eligible for an extension after this year and will reset the cornerback market, meaning he could be looking at a deal anywhere from $22 million to $25 million per year.

He is also by far the most valuable asset Denver could trade and get something significant in return.

“Two first round picks is probably a start?” Miller suggested of a Surtain asking price. “But he’s the type of player I’d want to build around. I think any time you have a guy at one of the four or five positions who looks like a perennial All-Pro when he’s in his third year, personally I think it’d be horrible to trade him away.”

As fate would have it, 2024 is shaping up to be a quarterback class ballyhooed like the 2021 group. USC’s Caleb Williams is the intractable frontrunner like Lawrence was. North Carolina’s Drake Maye, Notre Dame’s Sam Hartman and Texas’ Quinn Ewers also project to go early and others, like Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders, Washington’s Michael Penix, Jr., Oregon’s Bo Nix and Michigan’s J.J. McCarthy, could move up boards.

Will it play out like 2021, where the Broncos stand pat at quarterback and address other issues while the Bears – who have their own first-round pick plus Carolina’s – take another swing at signal-caller? Will they flip roles?

Only time will tell, but one thing is certain: Neither wanted to be in this position in the first place.

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2021 NFL Draft

Pick	Team	Player	Pos.	Comment
1	Jacksonville	Trevor Lawrence	QB	Made Pro Bowl and won playoff game in 2022.
2	N.Y. Jets	Zach Wilson	QB	Benched in ’22; now starting after Aaron Rodgers injury
3	San Francisco*	Trey Lance	QB	Injured most of ’22; traded prior to ’23 for 4th round pick.
4	Atlanta	Kyle Pitts	TE	Selected to ’21 Pro Bowl; 105 catches, 1,482 yards in 30 games.
5	Cincinnati	Ja’Marr Chase	WR	Offensive Rookie of Year in ’21; two-time Pro Bowl selection.
6	Miami	Jaylen Waddle	WR	Yards per catch (18.1) leader in ’22 with 1,356 receiving yards.
7	Detroit	Penei Sewell	OT	Selected to ’22 Pro Bowl as anchor of Lions offensive line.
8	Carolina	Jaycee Horn	CB	Missed 18 games over first two NFL seasons.
9	Denver	Pat Surtain II	CB	Named All-Pro and Pro Bowl CB in second season.
10	Philadelphia	DeVonta Smith	WR	Heisman Trophy winner had 1,196 receiving yards in ’22.
11	Chicago*	Justin Fields	QB	Has 5-23 record over 28 starts and 78.1 QB rating.
12	Dallas*	Micah Parsons	OLB	Defensive Rookie of Year and two-time All-Pro.

* Denotes trade

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