Latest NFL.com Mock Draft has Steelers Trading up for Desmond Ridder

Another mock draft has the Pittsburgh Steelers taking another quarterback, this time not Malik Willis or Kenny Pickett, but University of Cincinnati quarterback Desmond Ridder in a first-round trade.

Ridder was well-considered a day two pick prior to the NFL Combine, but his impressive performance has apparently skyrocketed him to where the Steelers would have to trade up to pick 12 to select him, according to this mock by Chad Rueter of NFL.com.

It’d be a big haul for the Steelers to move up eight spots to select a quarterback that many still have falling to the second round. In Rueter’s hypothetical Steelers trade, they would send the Minnesota Vikings their 2022 and 2023 first round draft picks and swap picks in the later rounds.

Also in the mock, despite being a weak quarterback draft class and very few teams needing a signal caller for next season, there are five quarterbacks going within the first 14 picks and two of them in the top three. Three teams traded up to get a quarterback as well. In order, the quarterbacks drafted in the first round are: Malik Willis (No. 2 – Detroit Lions), Kenny Pickett (No. 3 – Atlanta Falcons in a trade), Matt Corral (No. 6 – Carolina Panthers), Ridder (No. 12 – Steelers in a trade) and Sam Howell (No, 14 – Tennessee Titans in a trade).

In a weak quarterback class seeing three teams trade up for a quarterback and five teams selecting a quarterback within the first 14 picks is tough to imagine. But keep in mind that most mock drafts released around this time are more to generate readership than actually predict the draft, as most experts have already released their top predictions followed by a second and third round of mock drafts. In the case of Rueter, this is his first four-round mock draft, but his second mock draft overall. In his first mock draft, a three-round draft, he had the Steelers trading up to get Howell.

In the rest of this draft, Rueter has the Steelers selecting wide receiver Christian Watson (second round, 52nd pick) from North Dakota State, safety Nick Cross (third round, pick 84) from Maryland and edge rusher Jesse Luketa (fourth round, pick 138) from Penn State.