Unexpected NFL Draft scenarios that might happen, plus a full seven-round mock and schedule release update

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Welcome to the Thursday edition of the Pick Six newsletter!

It doesn't seem believable, but as of today, we are now exactly just two weeks away from the start of the 2026 NFL Draft, so of course, that means we're going to have to go all in on the NFL Draft today.

• You want a full seven-round mock draft? We've got that.
• You want some unexpected draft scenarios that might come up? We've also got that.
• You want a reverse draft? You probably don't even know what that is, but trust me, you want it and we've got it.

To celebrate the fact that the draft is being held in Pittsburgh, we'll also be doing a Steelers mock draft where we make every pick for them. For you non-draft people, we'll have some news on when the NFL schedule might be coming out.

As always, here's your reminder to tell all your friends to sign up for the newsletter. Let's get to the rundown.

1. Unexpected scenarios that could shake up the NFL Draft

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The most exciting part of the NFL Draft is when something unexpected happens. Last year, one of the biggest surprises came in the top five when the Jaguars decided to trade up to the second overall pick to get Travis Hunter. I still haven't mentally recovered from the shock of that pick.

With that in mind, Josh Edwards decided to take a look at a few unexpected scenarios that we might see in this year's draft:

1. Cowboys or Rams trade into top 10. Dallas and Los Angeles are the two teams I have honed in on as possibilities to trade into the top-10 overall. The Cowboys seem motivated to be more competitive in 2026 and the Rams have been pushing all of their chips to the middle of the table as long as they are in the Matthew Stafford window.

**2. Steelers draft Alabama QB Ty Simpson in Round 1.**The AFC North franchise still needs a quarterback of not only the future, but the present; Aaron Rodgers remains undecided on whether or not he will play this season.

3. Veteran player gets traded on draft night. Defensive tackles Jalen Carter and Dexter Lawrence have either been linked to trade rumors or requested a trade. ... I do believe it is likely Titans quarterback Will Levis and/or Colts quarterback Anthony Richardson also get moved this offseason and it could happen on draft night.

We've got three more unexpected scenarios and you can check those out here.

2. Seven-round mock draft: Predicting all 257 picks

The start of the 2025 NFL Draft is exactly two weeks away and we're celebrating that fact today by unveiling a SEVEN-ROUND mock draft. There are 257 picks in this year's draft and CBSSports.com draft analyst Josh Edwards went through and made picks for every team. I'm assuming Josh works 140 hours per week during draft season, because that's the only possible way he could have gotten this whole thing done.

Whenever we go over a mock draft here, I usually give you the top 10 picks for that mock, but this time, we're going to look at the final 10 picks in the draft, because I feel like that's the only way we can fully appreciate the monstrous job that Josh pulled off here.

• **248.  Browns:**DL Jackie Marshall (Baylor)
• **249. Colts:**S Jakobe Thomas (Miami)
• 250. Ravens: QB Taylen Green (Arkansas)
• **251. Rams:**IOL Febechi Nwaiwu (Oklahoma)
• **252. Rams:**RB Chip Trayanum (Toledo)
• 253. Ravens: IOL DJ Campbell (Texas)
• 254. Colts: DL Brandon Cleveland (North Carolina State)
• **255. Packers:**CB Thaddeus Dixon (North Carolina)
• **256. Broncos:**DL Aaron Graves (Iowa)
• **257. Broncos:**OT J.C. Davis (Illinois)

Here are a few other key notes about the mock draft:

• Edwards has Alabama QB Ty Simpson going in the second round to the Cardinals.
• Simpson and Fernando Mendoza (Raiders) are the only two quarterbacks that Edwards has going off the board in the first two rounds. However, he does have Garrett Nussmeier going to the Steelers in Round 3 and Carson Beck going to the Lions in the fourth round. He also has Penn State's Drew Allar going to the Jets with the final pick of the fourth round.
• He has two running backs going in the first round and they're FROM THE SAME SCHOOL. First, he has Notre Dame's Jeremiyah Love going seventh overall to the Commanders. And then, with the final pick of the first round, he has Love's teammate, Jadarian Price, going to the Seahawks.
• Finally, in news that only I will find fascinating, the first specialist off the board in Josh's mock is a PUNTER. Josh has Georgia's Brett Thorson going to the Buccaneers with the 195th overall pick. In 2022, the Bucs used the 133rd overall pick on a punter (Jake Camarda), so it certainly wouldn't be out of character for them to take Thorson at 195.

If you want to know how all 257 picks end up shaking out, then be sure to click here.

3. Steelers seven-round mock draft: Pittsburgh has five picks in top 100

The Steelers are definitely going to be the most popular team in the draft this year and that's mainly because the draft is in Pittsburgh. Even if the draft wasn't in their home city though, the Steelers would still be a team to watch this year: Pittsburgh has a total of 12 picks, which is the most of any team in the NFL heading into the draft.

Not only do the steelers have 12 picks, but they have five of the first 100, so this one team that is definitely set up for success this year. So what should we expect from the Steelers in the draft? To answer that question, we put Bryan DeArdo in charge of making all of Pittsburgh's picks and here's what he came up with for their first five:

• **Round 1 (21stoverall):**S Emmanuel McNeil-Warren (Toledo)
• **Round 2 (53rd overall):**IOL Emmanuel Pregnon (Oregon)
• Round 2 (76th overall): WR Elijah Sarratt (Indiana)
• Round 3 (85thoverall): LB Kyle Louis (Pitt)
• **Round 5 (99th overall):**TE Sam Roush (Stanford)

If you want a full explanation for the picks or if you're wondering how the other seven picks turned out, then be sure to check out Bryan's full mock draft here.

4. Reverse mock draft: How the first round would play out if the best teams picked first

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It's not easy for a bad team to stay bad in the NFL and that's the league does its best to help make the bad teams good: The NFL is literally designed to help the worst teams get better by giving them a higher pick in the draft. That's why the team with the worst record gets the No. 1 overall pick, but what if that wasn't the case????

Tyler Sullivan decided to flip things around by doing a mock draft where the top picks in the draft go to the best teams. For instance, since the Seahawks just won the Super Bowl, they'll be getting the No. 1 overall pick in Sullivan's reverse draft.

So how would things play out if the best teams picked first? Let's take a look at Sullivan's reverse mock to find out.

1. Seahawks: RB Jeremiyah Love (Notre Dame)
2. Patriots: LB Arvell Reese (Ohio State)
3. Dolphins (via Broncos): QB Fernando Mendoza (Indiana) 
**4. Chiefs (via Rams):**WR Carnell Tate (Ohio State) 
**5. Texans:**LB Sonny Styles (Ohio State)
6. 49ers: EDGE David Bailey (Texas Tech) 
7. Bills: EDGE Rueben Bain Jr. (Miami)
**8. Bears:**S Caleb Downs (Ohio State) 
9. Browns (via Jaguars): OT Monroe Freeling (Georgia)
**10. Eagles:**CB Jermod McCoy (Tennessee) OT Francis Mauigoa (Miami)

After going through the first 10 picks in Tyler's mock draft, I have to say, I am absolutely a fan of the best teams getting the top picks. If the NFL or the NBA or any other league wants to destroy tanking, then just use this system. If you finish with a bad record, you get a worse pick in the first round, so there would be no incentive to tank.

The beauty of this system is that it would turn the draft upside down. If you want to see how the entire first round played out in Sullivan's reverse draft, we've got that here.

Love ended up being the No. 1 overall pick in the reverse draft and although that won't happen in the real draft, one of our experts (Mike Renner) did outline why Love could make sense as a top five pick.

5. NFL schedule release is coming: Mark your calendar for mid-May

If you've been waiting patiently for the NFL schedule to be released, you're not going to have to wait much longer. The release date isn't set in stone just yet, but the schedule will be coming out at some point in mid-May and it appears that the NFL is eyeing one of two or three dates.

According to ESPN, the NFL is targeting a date between May 12 and May 14 to release the full schedule.

In each of the past two years, the NFL has released the schedule on a Wednesday, so if the league sticks to that plan, then the release date will fall on May 13. However, the league did release the schedule on a Thursday in both 2022 and 2023, so May 14 could certainly be possibility this year. Either way, it seems pretty safe to assume that the schedule will be coming out one of those two days, so be sure to mark your calendar.

Although we won't know the full schedule until next month, we do have learned some interesting nuggets about this year's schedule, so let's check those out.

• The Christmas tripleheader will be returning in 2026. For the fourth time in five years, the Christmas tripleheader is back. The first two games of the holiday will be shown on Netflix and Fox will get the prime-time game. One team that could end up playing on Christmas is Kansas City. The Chiefs have played on Christmas for three straight seasons, and now, they want to make it four in a row. "We'd love to play on Christmas," Donovan said, via ESPN. "We respect that the league wants to spread it around. We get it. Right now, we expect to be in a lot of prime-time games. We've made it pretty clear that our preference is to play at home on Christmas."
• Thanksgiving Eve game could happen. In other scheduling news, the NFL could he holding a Thanksgiving Eve game for the first time ever. The league is giving serious consideration to playing a prime-time game on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. "We're actively looking at that window," Schroeder said, via PFT. "We think when we look at the calendar and look at other natural nights that we could aggregate and serve our fans, and deliver a unique-size audience, that's a night that jumps out to us."
• Second Black Friday game might be in play. The NFL added a Black Friday game three years ago and there could be a second onecoming in 2026 to go along with the Thanksgiving Eve game. Back in December, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said the league was considering the possibility of having a Black Friday doubleheader this year.
• No more Monday doubleheaders. Since 2023, the NFL has been holding multiple Monday night doubleheaders each season, but that will no longer be the case starting this year. "When we did the deal (with Disney) five years ago, we thought adding two games on Monday night would be a great thing for fans," Schroeder said of why the league is dumping the Monday doubleheaders, via The Athletic. "It was more free football that was sort of outside of a Sunday afternoon. I think we collectively struggled and realized that fans felt that they were conflicted to choose between those games."

If you want more rumors about the schedule, I covered those here.

The 2026 schedule will feature 272 games and although we don't know the time or date for most of those games, we do know who each team will be playing and you can check out the home-and-away opponents for all 32 teams by clicking here.

6. Extra points: Falcons sign Super Bowl champion after being hit by surprise retirement

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It's been a busy past few days in the NFL, and since it's nearly impossible to keep track of everything, I put together a quick roundup for you.

• ****Falcons fill unexpected hole at right tackle.****The Falcons were hit by a surprise retirement on Wednesday with Kaleb McGary making the decision to call it a career. The former first-round pick spent seven years in the NFL, which all came with the Falcons. To fill the hole left by McGary, the Falcons immediately went out and signed former Chiefs right tackle Jawaan Taylor. The 28-year-old won a Super Bowl in Kansas City during his three seasons with the Chiefs. Taylor has the third most starts by any tackle since 2019, but he does get penalized a lot (He's had the most accepted penalties against him since 2019 with 79). Right tackle is a key position in Atlanta because the Falcons will have a left-handed quarterback, so Taylor will be protecting the blindside of either Tua Tagovailoa or Michael Penix Jr.
• Department of Justice opens investigation into NFL. The NFL is being investigated by the DOJ about whether the league has "engaged in anticompetitive tactics that harm consumers," according to the Wall Street Journal. The DOJ didn't offer any details of the investigation, but it seems to revolve around whether the NFL's broadcast antitrust exemption that league receives the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 (This allows the NFL to sell the television rights for all 32 teams as one unit. If the the antitrust exemption was taken away, then each team would have to sell its own rights). Apparently, the DOJ is concerned with the fact that the NFL is airing so many games on subscription-based streaming services. It will certainly be interesting to see where this goes.
• Top receiver to hold his own pro day This is something you don't see every day: Arizona State's Jordyn Tyson has decided to hold his own pro day. Tyson has been injury-prone throughout his career and he likely wants to show NFL teams just how healthy he is heading into the draft. Tyson, who's expected to be a first-round pick, didn't run at the combine or at ASU's Pro Day on March 27 due to a hamstring injury. Tyson has invited NFL teams to the workout day, which will come on April 17.
• **NFL is soon going to start training replacement refs.**The NFL just took another small step toward possibly using replacement officials this year. With the league and the referee's union at a standoff in the negotiations for a new CBA, the NFL has informed teams that it will be sending replacement refs to team facilities starting on June 1 if a new deal isn't in place. This would allow replacement officials to work practices and train for the upcoming season. The current CBA for the NFL Referees Association expires on May 31.
• John Harbaugh brings another former Ravens player to New York. At the rate things are going, John Harbaugh is going to bring the Ravens' entire 2025 roster to New York. The Giants new coach has already added four former Ravens in Isaiah Likely, Jordan Stout, Patrick Ricard and Ar'Darius Washington, and now, he's adding another one. The Giants have signed Daniel Faalele to a one-year deal and he could end up being their starting right guard this year. Faalele is heading to New York after spending the first four years of his career in Baltimore.