Final 2021 Detroit Lions dueling speed mock drafts

It’s officially Draft Day, which means it’s time to close out our pre-draft coverage with one final set of mock drafts. All week, we’ve dropped mocks, whether it be 6 different options from our staff, one created by Lions Twitter, or one that was just random names pulled out of a hat. Now, it’s time to finish this thing.

On Wednesday night, I congregated with Erik Schlitt and Ryan Mathews to fire up the mock draft simulator one final time with our live audience. The rules were simple: using The Draft Network’s Mock Draft Machine, we had only three minutes to decide our pick and we were given the option to trade down just one time all draft. After we finished, we let our live audience create a mock draft under the same stipulations. We talked about which draft was better and voted on the results.

Here’s what happened (final results are around the 1:13:00 mark):

And for those that just want to see the picks, here’s how each draft mapped out:

Team POD

Round 1, Pick 7: WR Ja’Marr Chase, LSU
Round 2, Pick 57: S Richie Grant, (via trade)
Round 3, Pick 72: LB Pete Werner, Ohio State
Round 3, Pick 88: CB Tyson Campbell, (via trade)
Round 3, Pick 101: NT Alim McNeill, NC State
Round 4, Pick 112: OT Walker Little, Stanford
Round 5, Pick 153: S Ar’Darius Washington, TCU
Round 7, Pick 252: WR Racey McMath, LSU (via trade)

Team Chat

Round 1, Pick 9: OT Rashawn Slater, Northwestern (via trade)
Round 2, Pick 40: CB Asante Samuel Jr., Florida State (via trade)
Round 2, Pick 41: S Jevon Holland, Oregon
Round 3, Pick 72: WR D’Wayne Eskridge, Western Michigan
Round 3, Pick 101: CB Aaron Robinson, UCF
Round 4, Pick 112: G Quinn Meinerz — Wisconsin-Whitewater
Round 5, Pick 153: LB Monty Rice, Georgia
Round 7, Pick 237: WR Josh Palmer, Tennessee (via trade)

Though we had the same option to trade down with the Broncos, we opted not to for two reasons. First, it seems a bit unrealistic to trade with Denver now that they have acquired Teddy Bridgewater. Chase was too tempting to pass up, especially since the Lions reportedly tried to trade up and get him. After that, we went heavy on defense, picking up potentially four starters on that side of the ball thanks to a significant trade down in the second. Our most risky pick was Walker Little in the fourth round, but if he can overcome his injury issues, we may have found a starting right tackle in the fourth, which is no easy thing to do.

Meanwhile, chat hit on a ton of value early after picking up an extra second and seventh-round pick via the Broncos. Slater-Samuel-Holland is a hell of a start to the draft, though it’s worth noting they passed on Justin Fields at 9, and he subsequently fell to the Chicago Bears. Eskridge adds some much-needed help at wide receiver, while Quinn Meinerz is an incredible value at 112. They did wait until Round 5 to address the linebacker position, but for the value at every pick before that, it’s hard to fault them.

So who won?