NFL Draft 2017: 5 Riskiest First Round Picks

The first round of the 2017 NFL draft was full of surprises. Several teams reached for needs, and created what we see as the top five riskiest picks in the first round.

Teams are posed with a dilemma in the first round. Does a team draft for needs? Or does the team draft the best player available regardless of position? Reality is usually somewhere in-between. Teams pick players they need in the pick range where it makes sense.

Trying to get the player a team needs in the correct pick range leads to trades up and down the draft. When a team trades up in the draft to select a player outside of the player’s pick value they are taking risk.

For example, the Bears trading up one pick to take quarterback Mitchell Tribusky is a risky pick given the value of the player in comparison to the value of the pick used to select him. Throw in the extra picks used to acquire the pick and risk is skyrocketing.

Risk usually has very little to do with the player himself. But there are times when risk in a pick is directly related to the player in some way.  Players who have off-field issues or medical concerns can lower the value of the player. A team may chose to ignore those concerns creating risk in the overall selections.

With all those boring definitions out of the way, it is time to find out who took the biggest risks in the first round of the draft.