Commanders deep dive: Is 2023 the worst draft class in franchise history?

Commanders 2023 draft picks and what came next

I said earlier that we were all wrong about how the Washington Commanders draft would unfold. But how wrong were we?

If you want to be honest about this, you have to look at your final mock draft and then check to see if your selections were available to Washington. Then you can consider whether the team would have been better off with your picks or with their own.

I’ll tell you upfront, I’m not nearly that honest. So instead, I just took a look at the players the Commanders chose and then looked at the next player selected at the same position. Here’s what you get:

• Round No. 1: Emmanuel Forbes (CB). Next chosen: Christian Gonzalez
• Round No. 2: Quan Martin (DB). Next chosen: Cam Smith (CB), Sydney Brown (S)
• Round No. 3: Ricky Stromberg (C/G). Next chosen: Jake Andrews (C), Anthony Bradford (G)
• Round No. 4: Braeden Daniels (OT/G). Next chosen: Carter Warren (OT), Jon Gaines (G)
• Round No. 5:: K.J. Henry (DE). Next chosen: Mike Morris
• Round No. 6: Chris Rodriguez Jr. (RB). Next chosen: Deuce Vaughn
• Round No. 7: Andre Jones Jr. (DE). Next chosen: Desjuan Johnson

I don’t rely on Pro Football Focus ratings exclusively. But I do like to check them out to get rough overviews of the entire league.

When I do that, here’s what I find…