Winners and losers from 2024 NFL Draft: Bears feel bullish, Falcons lay rotten eggs

Only time will tell if these teams got their picks right. The 2024 NFL Draft is firmly in the books. All 32 franchises selected several players with the hopes of making them a better football team. In a league driven by parity, for someone to be good, somebody else has to be bad. Unfortunately, the cream that rises to the top may sometimes have staying power, while some bad teams are a rusted boat anchor.

There is no sense in doing draft grades at this time because we are not the ones who picked these players. Even if we claim to know more about our favorite teams more than anything else in the world, we weren't blessed to be in that war room. We may not see how the pieces fit. The only way we will know if these picks panned out or not is through the lapse of time itself. Just try and have patience.

So what I am going to do today is take a look at six teams who I think either drafted fantastically, or drafted quite poorly, nowhere in between. I would love to be proven wrong with the teams I deemed losers in this, but if your favorite team is a winner, then I deserve all the credit in the world for bestowing such high praise onto your beloved club. It is essentially a pass/fail exercise. Here we go.

Here are the three biggest winners and losers from the 2024 NFL Draft. Some are incredibly obvious.

Winner: Chicago Bears

I will be the first to admit that I was not a big fan of Ryan Poles as a general manager in his first year or so on the job. Truth be told, I think he needed to sift through a bunch of crap in Halas Hall to have any real chance at doing his job well. So, I will commend him for the Chicago Bears having easily the best draft this offseason. I don't think you can top Caleb Williams and Rome Odunze as their top-10 picks.

That quarterback/wide receiver duo has a chance to be far better than the 2011 draft class pair the Cincinnati Bengals made with A.J. Green and Andy Dalton. They made the AFC playoffs each of their first five years in the league together. Green was more talented than Odunze, but Williams has the potential to bring multiple Super Bowls to Chicagoland. Also, the Bears drafted punter Tory Taylor!

On those three picks alone, you'd have a hard time convincing me someone else had a better draft.

Loser: Atlanta Falcons

This draft hit close to home. I hate to say it, but my Atlanta Falcons had the strangest draft of any team in the league this year. General manager Terry Fontenot was off his rocker, reaching on just about every pick he made. I love the player Michael Penix Jr., but taking him eighth when you just gave $160 million to Kirk Cousins in free agency is hard to justify. Fontenot will so try to find a way.

While I do applaud Fontenot for only drafting Power Five players, he didn't address the second cornerback issue. If that means Atlanta signs Akhello Witherspoon in free agency, that's fine. However, overloaded with five of his eight picks being defensive front-seven players, including three defensive tackles, one of which was Clemson's Ruke Orhorhoro. His big board was a different one.

For a team that hasn't made the playoffs in nearly a decade, Fontenot chose to draft depth this year.

Winner: Minnesota Vikings

The other strong contender to knock the Bears off their hill for having the best draft this spring would have to be the Minnesota Vikings. They too had a pair of first-round picks, opting to trade up to get both J.J. McCarthy at No. 10 and Dallas Turner at No. 17. Both players fell enough to the point where the Vikings had no choice but to go up and get them. Kwesi Adofo-Mensah had a terrific draft, alright.

By taking these two players, the Vikings effectively replaced Kirk Cousins and Danielle Hunter in the long-term. Although they didn't have any day-two picks, adding Khyree Jackson in the secondary out of Oregon and kicker Will Reichard out of Alabama in day-three certainly moved the needle. The point in all this is Adofo-Mensah needed to have a good draft and he absolutely crushed it. Kudos to him!

Those two first-round picks alone will allow the Vikings to compete this year in a very tough division.

Loser: Denver Broncos

If not for Terry Fontenot losing his damn mind in real time, the Denver Broncos had themselves another craptastic draft. The Bo Nix pick at No. 12 was as big of a reach as Atlanta's was on Michael Penix Jr. at No. 8. I like Nix as a prospect, but the Broncos haven't done anything right organizationally since Peyton Manning retired. Also, they doubled down on the pick by trading up to get Troy Franklin.

While I do like Jonah Elliss and Audric Estime as prospects, mostly because of their great college careers at Utah and Notre Dame, respectively, I am still struggling to see the big picture with Denver. This draft will be defined by the Nix pick, as well as the accommodation in trading up to get his former Oregon teammate Franklin in the fourth round. George Paton is so beyond cooked, it's not even funny.

The fact Sean Payton was willing to more than hitch his wagon to Nix has me questioning him a ton.

Winner: Los Angeles Chargers

For as goofy of a human being as Jim Harbaugh is, his Los Angeles Chargers had one helluva first draft together. He and general manager Joe Hortiz got productive players with each of their first three picks: Offensive tackle Joe Alt out of Notre Dame in the first round, wide receiver Ladd McConkey out of Georgia in the second and linebacker Junior Colson out of Michigan in the third.

Harbaugh was also able to add another former Michigan player of his in wide receiver Cornelius Johnson in the seventh round, as well as a pair of relatives of some of the greatest athletes of all time. This includes Jerry Rice's son Brenden Rice out of USC in the seventh round and the late great Hank Aaron's great-nephew Kimani Vidal out of Troy in the sixth round. This was such a fun draft to follow!

Given that Harbaugh has spent the last decade in the college game, he has a huge advantage in this.

Loser: San Francisco 49ers

Another year, another weird draft made by John Lynch on the San Francisco 49ers' behalf. He may be a Pro Football Hall of Famer out of Stanford, but nobody takes more home-run cuts in NFL Drafts than the 49ers general manager. I did not like the pick of Ricky Pearsall at No. 31 near the end of the first round. Outside of Arizona wide receiver Jacob Cowing in the sixth round, who are these guys, man?

The thing with Lynch's drafts is that one of these random players he picked in day two or three will end up being All-Pros before they call it a career. Of course, it is truly a flip of the coin over if his first-round picks will end up amounting to anything. For a team that should be winning Super Bowls, you cannot draft this recklessly and expect for the rest of the NFC to not be nipping at your heels soon.

If the 49ers took a different wide receiver in the first round, I might be singing another tune today.