NFL Draft 2021: 49ers, 4 other teams who may want Mac Jones
By Peter Panacy
No. 3: Broncos may want to move on from Drew Lock
The Carolina Panthers and Denver Broncos were two losers in the wake of the 49ers’ blockbuster NFL Draft trade, making their prospects to land a quarterback in Round 1 much tougher.
Carolina responded by trading for former New York Jets quarterback Sam Darnold, making its incumbent quarterback, Teddy Bridgewater, something of an excess commodity.
The Broncos could be one of those teams in the market for Bridgewater’s services, although one could make the argument it would be smarter for Denver to start anew, giving both head coach Vic Fangio and general manager George Paton a fresh start over the Broncos’ current starter, Drew Lock.
At No. 9 in the NFL Draft, the Broncos would have had a decent chance to see Mac Jones fall to them. With all the Niners buzz about Jones picking up, and there being no realistic chance for a player like Justin Fields and/or Trey Lance falling that far in the draft order, suddenly Denver’s prospects for a rookie quarterback in Round 1 just became much tougher to assess.
This could create some scrambling on the Broncos’ part, either punting on their needs for a signal-caller or engineering some sort of aggressive trade-up.
Yet the same thing could still happen if San Francisco ultimately pass on Jones, too, altering the Broncos’ draft plans at the very last minute.