2023 NFL Draft: Aligning the consensus big board with the Chargers’ top picks

It’s almost here.

The 2023 NFL draft is less than two weeks away which means we will start seeing a lot more information beginning to leak out from multiple sources which will both make things clearer and muddy the waters at the same time.

With that in mind, I wanted to get a baseline of where various media outlets have certain players and who could be the “realistic” pool of players for the Chargers to pick from when they are on the clock during the first two days of the draft.

For this exercise, I am going to use the consensus big board from NFL Mock Draft Database and look at the groups of players around the Chargers’ picks. Their consensus big board is compiled from 134 different big boards and, as of the writing of this article, was last updated less than a day ago. So this should give us a pretty good look at how the draft community as a whole has players ranked.

The Chargers have picks 21, 54, and 85 in the first three rounds. For pick 21, I’m going to look at players within five picks above or below 21 on the board, at 54 I’m going to look at names within 15 either direction, and for 85 I’m going to look at players within 20 ranking spots in either direction. This should start to give a decent look at the names that feel more realistic.

After getting a look at those names there are a couple things that jump out to me.

First, it looks like the sweet spot for wide receiver is going to be either round one or round three. Round two for edge rusher could be a lot of value as most of the names in that round come from ahead of the Chargers pick at 54. This could be a tricky draft for the Chargers to add an inside linebacker, which they need to do, and still keep some value. Unless one of those names in round two falls, they’ll likely have to reach in round three or again hope someone falls to grab a linebacker in round four.

There likely won’t be much movement on the big board between now and the draft so I’ll just be using it as a baseline from here on out.

Check back tomorrow and we will take a look at the consensus mock draft chart and see how those names line up with our consensus big board.