With a little under 2 weeks to go until the 2026 NFL Draft, we are entering the home straight of an epic, exhausting and seemingly at times never ending evaluation process. Commissioner, Roger Goodell will finally declare Round 1 open in Pittsburgh on 23rd April and the speculation, smoke screens and outright lying can finally come to an end! Teams will be finalizing their draft boards after hours of meetings, discussions and debate, and players will be nervously waiting for the call that will determine their immediate future in the NFL.
The Washington Commanders own the 7th pick of the 1st round and could potentially go in any number of directions with the selection. The team’s front office is extremely good at saying very little publicly and not allowing leaks to escape their Ashburn headquarters, but it is fair to surmise that the formulation of the Commanders draft board will be the subject of intense and hopefully highly strategic discussion within the organization.
Zooming out to 30,000 feet for a second may help us understand why, at this stage, there are as many as 8 (in my opinion), potential selections for the Commanders at number 7.
The first and most obvious is that outside of the Las Vegas Raiders taking Indiana QB, Fernando Mendoza, there appears to be absolutely no consensus on the make up of the next few picks, all the way to the Commanders selection and beyond. The mock drafts of the most widely respected draft analysts have been all over the map for every pick from 2nd overall to the Commanders pick at 7. Washington could have the player at the top of their board taken with the 2nd overall pick but could feasibly have their preferred option still available at number 7, such is the wide-open nature of the draft and the way the team views the prospects and their fit with the organisation.
The second reason for the wide range of potential options is that the Commanders still have multiple needs to address on the roster. Adam Peters and his front office received generally positive reviews for the players brought in during the first wave of free agency, and the signings certainly mean that there are no longer the glaring holes in numerous positions on the roster that existed at the end of the 2025 season. Peters and co are not boxed in to having to address a specific position, and they should indeed be credited for the work done to strengthen the roster, allowing them to be flexible on draft night and not be held hostage to hoping, for example, that one of the 3 top edges is on the board at 7.
However, the strong free agency period should not fool anyone into thinking that the Commanders roster is suddenly elite. There is still a glaring lack of ‘blue chip’ players on the roster, a result of multiple swings and misses dating back to the previous regime and the slower than preferred development of many of the 2024 draft class. The 7th overall pick offers the Commanders the opportunity to add a real ‘blue chip’ player, and the way the draft falls will determine, to a large extent, the path that they choose to take.
This takes us back to the potential options that may be available at pick 7. I mentioned earlier that I think there are as many as 8 players that could be taken with the selection, depending obviously on who is available and how their own board looks at that point. There are plenty of draft guides out there that break down the various attributes of the potential options, so you won’t get that here, but the contenders are (in alphabetical order):
- Rueben Bain, Edge, Miami
- David Bailey, Edge, Texas Tech
- Mansoor Delane, Corner back, LSU
- Caleb Downs, Safety, Ohio State,
- Jeremiyah Love, Running back, Notre Dame
- Arvell Reese, Edge/Linebacker, Ohio State
- Sonny Styles, Linebacker, Ohio State,
- Carnell Tate, Wide receiver, Ohio State
Arguments can be made for any of the players listed above, and frankly, whichever one ends up being the selection, it will be difficult to argue that it’s not a good pick. Similarly, whichever player is selected, it will be possible to make an equally strong argument that the Commanders would have been better taking someone different! Such is the nature of the draft and the needs that Washington has overall.
The evolution of the draft ahead of the Commanders pick at 7 will clearly play a major role in influencing the direction that they ultimately go in. Basic math’s tells us that assuming the Raiders take Mendoza first overall, there are 5 more picks before the Commanders are on the clock. More basic math’s (which is about my limit) determines that there will therefore be at least 3 of the 8 players on the list who will be available with the 7th pick, possibly more if for example a Tackle is taken in the top 6.
The potential permutations of who goes where in the top 6 are too numerous to dive into but it’s fair to consider a couple of philosophical questions for the Commanders to examine. Prior to free agency, it was almost taken as a given that the Commanders would go defense with the 7th overall pick. The additions in free agency addressed all 3 levels of the defense, but a strong argument can be made that the unit is still very much a work in progress, and taking their top overall ranked defensive player would be the logical pick here.
The counter argument is that surrounding Jayden Daniels with as much talent as possible, creating a dynamic, high scoring offense is the best approach to take, with the hope that the defense can improve enough to be somewhere closer to league average. In 2024, the defense was far from great, but Daniels and the offense scored enough points to secure 12 wins. This approach becomes even more pertinent if Jeremiyah Love is on the board, but even without him, there is a huge need for another top wide receiver, both for 2026, and beyond. An offensive player may therefore be more of a consideration than it possibly may have been a couple of months ago.
The Commanders will need to ask themselves; how do they want to approach their roster construction? Strengthening the defense further makes a ton of sense but if they go that way and it’s still no better than league average, they are then still reliant on the offense to carry them to victories which puts a lot of pressure on Jayden Daniels and a solid, but unspectacular supporting cast. Giving your franchise player more weapons to potentially light up the scoreboard therefore also makes sense, so a lot will depend on how the board looks when it’s their turn to pick and what the Commanders determine is the best approach to winning games in 2026 and beyond.There are so many questions, arguments and debates to be had about the direction that the Commanders should take with the 7th pick, and they all have their merits. What is undoubtedly true, is that however the board looks when the Commanders are on the clock, there will be at least 3 or 4 excellent options available for them to select. Once the pick is made, the debate will begin as to whether it was the right choice to make, and no doubt the views will be numerous and certainly not unanimous!
