The Washington Commanders selected seven players in the 2023 NFL Draft, and the subsequent draft grade articles had DC's team all over the place on their rankings.
Adam Epstein broke down his thoughts on the draft grades, along with NBC Sports Washington's Pete Hailey and The Burgundy Zone Podcast's Kyle Roenick, on Tuesday (May 2) on the Fan.
I'm pretty sure I'm the only host in the DMV that's given the Commanders an A for their draft grade," Epstein said. "I love it. Maybe it's because I know Dan Snyder wasn't involved for the first time in 24 years, maybe it's just because on Friday, Fred Smoot completely sold me on Emmanuel Forbes. I don't know what it is, but I love this draft class."
"That's the first, like, firm A I've heard," Hailey said. "I could get behind it, I guess. I can at least understand why -- they made their secondary a lot better, they drafted a couple offensive linemen and then on day three, from there, they took some shots and some edge rushers and a running back who might have been a bit of a steal in the sixth round. So, if you take just a quick glance at it, if you don't stare at it too long, then yeah, I could see why there's an A grade from you.
I'm more in the B-minus range, because I liked Forbes a lot and I liked [Jartavius] "Quan" Martin a lot, but those two put together, it's a bit of an odd order for them to go DB-DB to start it off. [...] I think my favorite pick was KJ Henry, but I didn't know a ton about the guys from there. So I'll quibble with your grade, just because I think they focus a lot on defense when their offense is what really needed the most help."
Epstein also talked with Roenick about the Forbes selection.
"I'm really happy that they went made this election with Emmanuel Forbes," Roenick said. "[...] He's an absolute dog. You're gonna put him on the outside -- he had six interceptions this season [and] only gave up three touchdowns, and only gave up in -- 12 games -- 284 receiving yards throughout the entire year. I tried to do a film breakdown on him. It was very hard to do it because he was literally never thrown to.
"A guy that small, he's very motivated to come up, make tackles in the run game and to be physical. [...] He seeks contact and this is an absolute dog, Then on top that, to go and get Jartavius Martin in the second round? [...] This was like the kind of captain of that Illinois defenses at secondary, and we got the Kam Curl of that defense that could play slot, that could play deep safety, shallow safety and can even play on the outside corner at times. I'm very, very happy with what they did."
Check out more of the show below.