Draft SZN
Darius Butler says he’d take Drake Maye no. 1 overall after playing golf with him, let NFL Draft season commence
Grant Halverson
There is just one game of the 2023-24 NFL season left. After Super Bowl Sunday, it will all be over, and the NFL's 32 franchises will reset and reload for another lap around the pigskin-shaped sun. For the Chicago Bears, Washington Commanders and New England Patriots, that means one thing and one thing only:
Quarterback, quarterback, quarterback.
Occupying the top three spots in April’s draft, the Bears, Commanders and Patriots are expected to select USC’s Caleb Williams, UNC’s Drake Maye and LSU’s Jayden Daniels. Conventional wisdom has them going in that order, but conventional wisdom rarely survives draft season, which began in full on Wednesday when former NFL cornerback-turned-Pat McAfee show regular Darius Butler said he would take Maye no. 1 overall following an impressive round of golf with the former Tar Heel signal caller.
“Big country guy … loves talking about ball a lot … [there was] a lot of sh*t-talking from the family which I love, I grew up like that,” Butler said of his impressions of Maye the dude. “If I spent four-and-a-half hours with Jayden or Caleb, that may sway, but where I’m at right now, as far as being a locker-room guy … A.J. [Hawk], Pat [McAfee], you guys know.”
Maye certainly wouldn’t be the first person to earn themselves a promotion on the golf course, but unfortunately for him, Butler doesn’t work in the front office of the Chicago Bears and Chicago G.C. is under two feet of snow this time of year. Then there's the fact the Bears, who currently have a stranglehold on the first-overall pick, already stuck out on one late-rising UNC quarterback in Mitchell Trubisky this century. Needless to say, it's not exactly adding up for Maye right now, but this is the NFL Draft we’re talking about. Stranger things have definitely happened.