My Realistic / Idealistic Arizona Cardinals 2017 NFL Draft

I call it "Realistic" because the players taken in each slot have at least a 50/50 shot at being available when the pick comes up and that any trades shown are dead-even with respect to the commonly-used trade value chart (if not slightly favoring the Cardinals' trading partner). If the Cardinals had to trade a back-of-the-roster player in each trade to make it work -- DO IT!

I call it "Idealistic" because it does involve moving lots of picks from the Cardinals to three other teams. Steve Keim would win my Jedi Mind Trick award for getting the other GMs to take these even trades.

First, the draft... then the trades that would make them possible.

The Realistic, Idealistic Draft 

# 21 (R1-21) QB   - Kizer (Notre Dame) or Mahomes (Texas Tech) 
# 41 (R2-09) LB   - Cunningham (Vanderbilt) 
# 45 (R2-13) CB   - Awuzie (Colorado) 
# 81 (R3-13) WR   - Smith-Shuster (Southern Cal) 
#104 (R3-40) S    - Johnson (Boston Coll) 
#123 (R4-12) OL   - Sharpe (Florida) 
#138 (R4-31) TE   - Sprinkle (Arkansas) or Roberts (Toledo) 
#216 (R6-32) EDGE - Nwachukwu (West Virginia) 
#231 (R7-13) WR   - Stringfellow (Mississippi) 

With the above, we get a QB of the future, an ILB who can learn from Dansby, an "island" CB, a guy who can work in to the WR1 role by 2018, a S to fill the Jefferson/Swearinger void, a guy who can play OG & OT (perhaps compete for the starting RG spot) and a blocker-first-receiver-second TE2... all by the end of the 4th Round.

The Trades 

Cardinals send

• # 13 & #179 to DET for # 21 and # 53 (give 1169.4 pts for 1170 per trade value chart)
• # 21 & #157 to KC for # 27 and #104 (give 398.2 pts for 396 per trade value chart) 
• # 27, #197 and 2018's 3rd & 6th Round Picks to CIN for # 42, #138, and #217 (give 537.2 for 530.7 per trade value chart)

A future 3rd and 6th rounder may seem expensive, but the Cardinals' in-house Unrestricted Free Agent class isn't terribly special, the team will have more cap space (i.e. to buy UFA, not let them go as in 2017) and due to all the UFA losses from 2017, the team holds its Round 1-6 regular picks AND will have 3-4 Compensatory Picks... certainly one, if not two, at the end of Round 3.

If there was ever a year to borrow from next year's draft to pay for this year's... it's this year.