Our review of Mel Kiper’s 2021 Washington mock draft 4.0

With one of the league’s best defenses and several explosive offensive weapons, Washington feels very much like they’re just a QB away from being one of the top teams in the NFC. However, they find themselves in a tricky part of the draft with the 19^th pick.

Even with 5 projected 1^st round QBs, it seems like they’d have to move up too far in order to possibly get one. It would definitely be a draft night decision depending upon how the top 10 picks unravel. The most difficult aspect is that their division rivals all hold the 10^th, 11^th, and 12^th picks, meaning that Washington would need to trade all the way up into the top 10 or hope that other teams like New England or Chicago do not trade up to one of those spots and that they could grab their QB at the 13^th or 14^th pick. 

Due to all of these factors, very few project Washington to get a QB in the first round and instead to address one of their other needs such as offensive line, secondary, or linebacker. 

In Mel Kiper’s Washington mock draft 4.0, he sees them doing just this by selecting Notre Dame linebacker Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah. Linebacker and corner are the most popular projections for them, but Kiper has the three top corners all gone by the time Washington is on the clock. The fact that Patrick Surtain II, Jaycee Horn, and Caleb Farley are all off the board, makes this decision much simpler for Ron Rivera and company. 

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Owusu-Koramoah is a fast outside linebacker, who was even used as a slot corner in college occasionally. He needs to improve as a tackler, but he gives Rivera a swiss army knife in the heart of his defense that could be used in a multitude of ways against the dynamic offenses of the Cowboys and now the Giants. He could match up on the Giants slot receiver, whether its Darius Slayton or even Evan Engram. He’s a fantastic piece to go along with a dominant front four that they already possess.

The second-round is where things get really interesting for Kiper’s Washington mock draft 4.0. Instead of doubling up on defensive players, like we project, or strengthening their offensive line, Kiper’s Washington mock draft has them using the 51st overall pick on Stanford QB Davis Mills.

Mills only started 14 games in college, but at 6-4 and 225 pounds, Washington would be getting a developmental guy to sit for 1-2 years. Mills has a solid arm, but coupled that with very inconsistent play stemmed by sporadic decision-making. He’s far too much of an unknown to take on day 1, but in the middle of the 2^nd round this is a better fit. Teams behind Washington like New Orleans or Pittsburgh could take him later in the 2^nd, so there’s a good chance that Mills is no longer on the board in the 3^rd round. 

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He isn’t very mobile and would be more in the class of a Mac Jones, although nowhere near as solid in reading defenses and working through his reads. Washington would be looking to make his mechanics more consistent and improve his decision-making with the football. 

We projected another starting caliber linebacker with this pick instead of a QB. Taking Mills here still leaves the QB position as a big question mark for the team heading into the 2022 draft. They really wouldn’t know what they had in Mills until pre-season and into the season in 2022. 

With the first two picks in Mel Kiper’s Washington mock draft 4.0, Ron Rivera and company get a linebacker who fills a big need for the defense as a day 1 starter. They then follow that up by adding a possible future starting QB, who will need to sit for at least a season and can do so on this team. Although it’s not a Trey Lance or a Justin Fields, Washington makes the best with what they have and do not mortgage any future draft capital in the process. This doesn’t excite the fan base now, but its better to have an excited fan base in January than in April.