The 2021 NFL Draft was weird. It wasn’t as weird as the 2020 draft, where we had to watch Roger Goodell read names in his basement, but it was still weird. This was the first draft where players who sat out the 2020 college football season were draft eligible, and there was no scouting combine.
It turns out that those two things might be kind of important, because of the 32 guys drafted in the first round, only 12 of them are with their current team, and four of them don’t have a team (currently). Let’s channel our inner Animal House and see where the 2021 draft class is now, and how they got there.
1. Jacksonville Jaguars: Trevor Lawrence, QB
- Current Team: Jacksonville Jaguars
- Current situation: Finally looks like a franchise QB after surviving chaos, injuries and Urban Meyer
It took a minute, but Trevor Lawrence is finally starting to look like a first overall draft pick. That delay isn’t completely his fault, though. He’s had to deal with injuries, a lack of real talent around him, more injuries, Urban Meyer, and even more injuries on top of that.
They like him enough that they gave him a cool $275 million and signed him through 2030. That’s what you’re hoping for when you grab a quarterback at the top of the draft. And hopefully he plays that long, because every one of his highlight reel-worthy plays starts off looking like it’s going to be a disaster. The dude is a human blooper reel.
2. New York Jets: Zach Wilson, QB
- Current team: New Orleans Saints
- Current situation: Still cashing checks despite zero evidence he should be
Did you know the Saints are paying Zach Wilson to be on their roster? I didn’t until right now. That’s wild. He started bad, then he kept being bad, then he was bad when Aaron Rodgers got hurt. He went to Miami last year and never found the field, and now he’s in New Orleans. I’m going to make a prediction: if he plays, he’ll be bad. It’s crazy that he’s still getting a paycheck, but good for him.
3. San Francisco 49ers: Trey Lance, QB
- Current team: Los Angeles Chargers
- Current situation: Former No. 3 pick now firmly in backup purgatory
The 49ers moved mountains to trade up and draft Trey Lance third overall. Turns out, that wasn’t such a great idea. He started a total of four games and threw just over 100 passes for San Francisco before he annihilated his ankle early in the 2022 season. Then Brock Purdy took over, and yada yada yada, they found a franchise quarterback.
Lance was traded to the Cowboys in 2023 (for a fourth-round draft pick), hit free agency in 2025, and now he’s Justin Herbert’s backup with the Los Angeles Chargers.
4. Atlanta Falcons: Kyle Pitts, TE
- Current team: Atlanta Falcons
- Current situation: Elite talent being squandered in Atlanta
It’s tough to say how Kyle Pitts’ career has gone so far. The dude is an athletic specimen and clearly has the tools in his body to be amazing, but he spent his first three seasons in an Arthur Smith offense, where he was locked in a basement and fed metaphorical breadcrumbs.
Now he’s going into his sixth season in the NFL, turning just 26 years old, but the Falcons haven’t given him a contract. They exercised his fifth-year option in 2024 and franchise tagged him this year. The dude should be getting paid big money on a big contract, but it seems like the Falcons are kind of just squandering him.
5. Cincinnati Bengals: Ja’Marr Chase, WR
- Current team: Cincinnati Bengals
- Current situation: Exactly what you dream of when you draft top five, he’s a superstar and paid like one
Ja’Marr Chase played his first NFL game on September 12, 2021, and he’s been a top-three wide receiver ever since. He won the Triple Crown in 2024 and then signed a four-year extension for $161 million, making him the (then) highest-paid non-quarterback of all time.
Sometimes players fall straight into your lap in the draft, and the Bengals got extremely lucky that the four guys who were picked before Ja’Marr Chase were picked before Ja’Marr Chase.
6. Miami Dolphins: Jaylen Waddle, WR
- Current team: Denver Broncos
- Current situation: Change-of-scenery candidate trying to get his explosiveness back
Jaylen Waddle must have the patience of a saint. We know that he’s capable of being one of the most dominant downfield threats in the NFL because he showed it during the first three seasons of his career.
Then the wheels fell off of the Dolphins’ offense. Their identity started to die, their quarterback couldn’t stay healthy, Tyreek Hill’s attitude was poison. But Waddle was still the same player that he’d been, just with less production. Luckily for him, he was traded to the Broncos and will be playing an offense that hopefully will return him to his rightful role as a home-run hitter.
7. Detroit Lions: Penei Sewell, OT
- Current team: Detroit Lions
- Current situation: Dominant All-Pro who somehow made offensive line play fun
Drafting offensive linemen isn’t fun. It’s the one position group that doesn’t get to make plays, in a traditional sense. But Penei Sewell is different. The Lions have used him as a weapon. He completely shuts down the right side of a pass rush, and he’s dominant as a run blocker on the line and even more so in space.
He’s been a first-team All-Pro for the past three seasons, and he’s earned at least two of those (probably should’ve been second-team behind Lane Johnson in 2024).
8. Carolina Panthers: Jaycee Horn, CB
- Current team: Carolina Panthers
- Current situation: High-end corner when healthy, which is the whole question
When Jaycee Horn is healthy, he’s a pretty special cornerback, but he’s not always healthy. He missed a bunch of time in his first three seasons with a handful of different injuries. Fortunately, he’s been on the right track for the past two seasons, and he’s had a pretty clean bill of health.
The Panthers gave him a four-year contract extension for an even $100 million before the 2025 season, so if he can keep his body in one piece, he’ll be a staple in that defense for the foreseeable future.
9. Denver Broncos: Pat Surtain II, CB
- Current team: Denver Broncos
- Current situation: One of the best defensive players in football, full stop
It’s really got to stink to be Jaycee Horn and have Pat Surtain be the guy drafted immediately after you. That means Horn is always going to be compared to a guy who is not just a perennial top-three cornerback but also a perennial top-10 defensive player.
Surtain might not have had a Defensive Player of the Year-worthy season in 2025 like he did in 2024, but he’s been amazing, is amazing, and will continue to be amazing for as long as he’s with the Broncos… which will be for at least two more seasons.
10. Philadelphia Eagles: DeVonta Smith, WR
- Current team: Philadelphia Eagles
- Current situation: Proven winner who could slide back into WR1 role at any moment
Did you know that DeVonta Smith is the only non-retired first-round pick from the 2021 draft class who has won a Super Bowl? Now you do.
Playstyle-wise, personality-wise, and fashion-wise, there might not be a smoother wide receiver in the NFL than DeVonta Smith. When the Eagles drafted the Heisman winner in 2021, he slid right in as the team’s WR1 and broke the franchise record for receptions by a rookie wide receiver.
If they do trade A.J. Brown come June, Smitty will take back the mantle as WR1, carry a full workload, and he’ll keep doing that probably for the rest of his career.
11. Chicago Bears: Justin Fields, QB
- Current team: Kansas City Chiefs
- Current situation: Last chance, best chance under Andy Reid
Justin Fields has had a hell of a six-year career. He got drafted by the Bears, and they tried to do the thing where he rides the bench for all (or most) of his rookie season. But in Week 2, Andy Dalton got hurt, and Fields came in to be the guy for the rest of the season (except for three games that he missed with cracked ribs).
Would sitting that season have helped him in the long run? Maybe, maybe not. He’s an elite runner, but he has not grown as a thrower even a little bit. He’s gone from the Bears to the Steelers to the Jets, and now he’s with the Chiefs and Andy Reid.
If there’s a coach who can get him to turn into something, it’d be Reid… And if Patrick Mahomes isn’t ready to go by Week 1, it’ll be Fields that gets QB1 snaps to start the season. No pressure.
12. Dallas Cowboys: Micah Parsons, LB
- Current team: Green Bay Packers
- Current situation: Still a defensive wrecking ball, just doing it somewhere much more likable
It feels like forever ago when the Cowboys were using Micah Parsons as a linebacker/edge hybrid in his rookie season. The next season, they tossed him primarily on the defensive line and never really looked back.
He came into the NFL, was a Pro-Bowler, All-Pro, and Defensive Rookie of the Year… and then just kept repeating that production every single year. So obviously, the Cowboys did the only logical thing: they traded him to the Packers, who have been a source of exceptional postseason pain for Dallas over the past decade.
For everyone who dislikes the Cowboys, it’s been fantastic to finally be able to root for Parsons. It turns out that it’s actually a lot of fun because he’s awesome.
13. Los Angeles Chargers: Rashawn Slater, OT
- Current team: Los Angeles Chargers
- Current situation: Elite tackle trying to come back from a brutal injury
On July 27, 2025, Rashawn Slater signed a four-year $114 million contract extension with the Chargers. 11 days later, on August 7, 2025, he tore his patellar tendon and missed the entire season. The Chargers would then go on to have arguably the worst offensive line in the entire NFL.
The point is that while it’s been a minute since Slater has played, and if he can come back off this injury (which isn’t easy to do) and then get back to the Pro-Bowl and All-Pro caliber that he’s played at (which is even harder to do), everything will be peachy… But, you know… That’s just really hard to do.
14. New York Jets: Alijah Vera-Tucker, OG
- Current team: New England Patriots
- Current situation: Talented but constantly injured, and now a high-risk investment
Nothing has gone right in Alijah Vera-Tucker’s professional career until free agency this year, when he signed a three-year, $42 million contract with the Patriots. In 2021, he played 16 games. In 2022, he tore his triceps in Week 7. In 2023, he popped his Achilles. He was healthy in 2024. In 2025, he tore his triceps in his other arm.
We’ve seen good stuff from Vera-Tucker in the past, but the Patriots made a hell of a gamble paying an oft-jacked-up offensive lineman real money.
15. New England Patriots: Mac Jones, QB
- Current team: San Francisco 49ers
- Current situation: Career backup who could become trade bait
You don’t want to be the guy after the guy. Fortunately for Mac Jones, that wasn’t the case. After Tom Brady left New England, they did a season of Cam Newton. Unfortunately for Jones, he wasn’t any good… despite that Pro-Bowl season his rookie year.
He stuck around through 2023 before he was traded to the Jaguars for a sixth-round draft pick in 2024. After a year there, he went to San Francisco in 2025, which was kind of a ‘this is his destiny’ situation.
All through the 2021 pre-draft process, it seemed like Jones was Kyle Shanahan’s guy. Then they did the whole ‘trade the future for Trey Lance’ thing. Jones started eight games last season while Brock Purdy was dealing with a turf toe, and now Mac Jones feels like a guy who could be traded if a starting quarterback goes down during training camp. It’s been a roller coaster for ol’ McCrockle Jones.
