Ranking every team's 2021 NFL Draft class: Patriots, Cardinals, Broncos crush it, Rams and Ravens struggle

Keep reading to see how your team did, everything from our favorite picks, to best values to most surprising selections

The 2021 NFL Draft is over, all 259 selections have been made, and all that's left to do is brace for the knee-jerk reactions from media folk, ourselves included. We liked what most of the teams did over the weekend because, in reality, this is nothing more than an exercise in checking boxes -- Did Team X fill those needs it was unable to fill in free agency? If the answer is yes, then Team X typically got a favorable grade. Variations in those grades might occur when the player Team X selected wasn't as popular among the mock-draftniks as NFL evaluators. Again, this is what happens when you try to rate a draft that's a few days old when a few years is what's needed. So instead of the traditional post-draft grades we're all used to, we're doing something a little different here. We're comparing where he had each draft pick graded with where they were actually selected. So, for example, if a team took a safety in the middle of the third round but we had him going in the middle of the second round, that team got second-round value in Round 3. Likewise, if a team takes a safety in Round 3 who we had graded as a fourth-rounder then they've overdrafted that player. Again, this is one person's draft board vs. an entire organization of evaluators. Put another way: this list isn't identifying the "best" or "worst" draft classes, but instead showing how the actual draft stacked up against our draft board. It's more instructive than definitive and hopefully that's how you'll take it. (In related news: we're already bracing for the social-media outrage.)