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Originally Posted by DRM08
Cardinals were hoping to get him with the #13 pick. It turns out 3 teams would have taken him earlier with the Chiefs at #10, Saints at #11, and the Texans at #12.
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‘We would have taken him’
Across the league, other teams reacted to the grenade dropped in the middle of the first round.
Steinberg believes, based on information he learned during and after the process more than guesswork, the Saints would have taken Mahomes with the 11th pick. In October, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that Coach Sean Payton had informed Drew Brees that they might take his successor as the Bengals were on the clock, and
Payton also said in a radio interview that Mahomes was a “target” of theirs at No. 11. Instead, with Mahomes off the board, they passed on other possible heirs — including Watson — and happily took cornerback Marshon Lattimore.
The Browns traded the 12th pick to the Texans, who took Watson and left the Cardinals out of luck at No. 13.
Arizona had made its interest clear, so much that at the Mahomes family draft party, there was a Cardinals cap ready. They had been a “hot, hot team,” on Mahomes, Steinberg said, but the Chiefs outmaneuvered them.
“We would have taken him,” former Cardinals coach Bruce Arians said this fall. “Oh, there’s no doubt.”
The Cardinals’ inaction showed how well the Chiefs had concealed their affection for Mahomes. ESPN draft analyst Todd McShay recalled there being little to no industry scuttlebutt regarding the Chiefs’ interest in moving up for Mahomes.
“You never see it coming,” said Arians, who was hired this week as coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. “They had Alex Smith. We never thought K.C. was going to jump in front of us. We thought Houston might move up. … I don’t think anybody in their mock draft would have had K.C. moving up for a quarterback with the type of year Alex Smith had. He was awesome.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sport...d-with-chiefs/