NFL Mock Draft 2.0 Using Only NFL Draft Odds – Jalen Carter Rises, Will Anderson Falls

• Matt McEwan has used NFL Draft odds to fill out an updated (2.0) full first-round mock draft for the 2023 NFL Draft on Thursday, April 27
• Jalen Carter is among the players rising in this latest mock draft, while Will Anderson sees himself falling
• See who your team is predicted to take in the 2023 NFL mock draft below

Five days ago, I released my first mock for the 2023 NFL Draft. I felt pretty good about it but was not so naïve to think those picks would still ring true one day before the NFL Draft. This isn’t my first rodeo. While I didn’t expect a Reddit thread would cause Will Levis draft chaos, I did foresee lines moving as we neared the finish line, therefore changing up what my mock should look like.

So, I am back with the second edition of my NFL mock draft that uses NFL Draft odds to piece together this puzzle. Please remember that note as you’re reading. While my name is on the mock, and I am the one who put it together, the NFL Draft predictions you are about to see below are coming from sportsbooks.

2023 NFL Mock Draft

All the asterisks above denote trades that I am proposing to make it all work. Again, I do not believe all these trades will happen. In order to follow the odds and make things fit as best as possible, I needed to move some teams around. You can also read this as, “there are good betting opportunities available.”

As was the case in my last mock, Bryce Young comes off the board first to the Carolina Panthers. The no. 2 overall pick looks different, though, as odds now favor the Texans taking Tyree Wilson instead of Will Anderson. CJ Stroud is still the third-overall pick, but in this version it is the Texans making a big move back up the board to take the Ohio State quarterback.

In creating this mock, I have considered all NFL Draft props, but did not treat them equally. Any prop where you can bet every outcome is going to be more telling than a prop that only allows you to bet one possible outcome.

Here are the spots that gave me the most trouble:

1. Third-overall pick is where things break down a little across the sportsbooks. FanDuel favors Will Anderson at +220 with Paris Johnson (+380), Tyree Wilson (+430), and CJ Stroud (+450) not far behind. However, Anderson’s over/under is 3.5 with the over pretty heavily favored at both DraftKings and Caesars. DraftKings favors Paris Johnson at +225 with CJ Stroud (+275), Will Anderson (+330), and Tyree Wilson (+400) as the other top contenders. While Johnson’s over/under favors him to be taken among the first nine picks, his line is still 9.5. Caesars might be the weirdest of the bunch, as they favor Anderson as well but Paris Johnson is nowhere to be found in their odds to be the third pick. I had to consider here that FanDuel gives Stroud -470 odds to be a top five pick and no sportsbook has an over/under for him. But this was the toughest pick to fill.
2. Things get a little weird with pick no. 7 as well. We have Anthony Richardson, who is heavily favored to be a top ten pick and his draft position lines favor over 4.5 but under 7.5. No sportsbook favors him to be taken with the seventh pick, but as I say, not all props are equal.
3. Both DraftKings and FanDuel favor Darnell Wright at +225 and +300, respectively, to be the ninth-overall pick. But Peter Skoronski’s over/under favors him under 10.5 while Wright’s is set at 17.5. Skoronski is also widely favored to be the second OL taken in the draft.

Here are some of the biggest differences (not already mentioned above) from my first mock:

• Will Anderson falls from #2 to #8
• Jalen Carter moves up from #11 to #5
• Christian Gonzalez falls from #7 to #16
• Bijan Robinson moves up from #19 to #12
• Joey Porter Jr falls from #16 to #22
• Emmanuel Forbes falls from #22 to #31
• Myles Murphy moves up from #27 to #20
• Dalton Kincaid moves up from the second round to #24
• Hendon Hooker & Jahmyr Gibbs move up from the second round to #28 and #30, respectively
• Bryan Bresee falls from #21 all the way out of the first round
• Brian Branch falls from #30 to the second round
• O’Cyrus Torrence falls from #31 to the second round