2013 NFL Draft results: Matt Barkley, Mr. Irrelevant highlight final day

The big story of the NFL Draft was the absence of quarterbacks being taken in the early rounds. It’s not that NFL teams have stopped putting value on the quarterback position. After all, the league is in a passing-friendly era in which 4,000-yard passing seasons are no longer rare.

The combination of greater emphasis on passing, schematic evolution that make pass offenses harder to stop, rules that make pass defense more difficult, and colleges that throw frequently and therefore produce pro-ready quarterbacks have all caused the NFL to become air-obsessed.

Saturday, LSU head coach Les Miles was asked by NFL Network how he was planning to replace the school-record nine Tigers being drafted.

“Very carefully,” he replied, both proud of his program and aware of its looming challenges.

With the 2013 NFL Draft just wrapping up, expectations are fairly high for each team. Grades were mixed during the draft, but the overall hauls for each team seems to be respectable, as final grades seem to indicate. We’ll run through each team and go over their grades below.

The grades used will be from SB Nation’s Dan Kadar, ESPN’s Mel Kiper Jr., CBS Sports’ Rob Rang and SI.com’s Chris Burke.

Let’s take a look at how some of the overall grades have been shaping up around the Internet. We’ll point to some grades from SB Nation’s Dan Kadar, ESPN’s Mel Kiper Jr., CBS Sports’ Rob Rang and SI.com’s Chris Burke.

Kiper: B

Rang: B

Burke: B-

Kadar’s A+ Pick: None

Teams in the AFC South did a lot to add depth during the last day of the 2013 NFL Draft. The Houston Texans and Indianapolis Colts have the luxury of adding players to already competitive teams, but the Jacksonville Jaguars and Tennessee Titans are adding players to build a foundation. Some teams did better than others, so let’s see how the four AFC South teams checked out on Saturday.

CBS: C+

The 2013 NFL Draft is over, and there will be plenty of time for assigning grades and complaining about assigning grades this early. But for now, let’s see what people around the Internet had to say about the Day 3 selections. CBS Sports’ Jason Chilton graded every late round pick, and SB Nation’s Matthew Fairburn was on the scene in New York. Let’s see how the NFC West did on the final day of the draft.

• NFL draft grades: Who are the winners and losers?

NEW YORK - At 11 a.m. on Saturday morning, just an hour before day three of the NFL Draft was scheduled to begin, a line of fans surrounded Radio City Music Hall, waiting to be a part of the day’s events.

On the inside of Radio City Music Hall, Roger Goodell was at the podium, making a curious announcement.

The AFC West is an odd division. The Denver Broncos are clearly in a position of strength. The Kansas City Chiefs are in the midst of a total rebuild, and the Oakland Raiders and San Diego Chargers are somewhere in between. Each of these teams could use some good value picks in the late rounds of the 2013 NFL Draft, but not all of them necessarily got them. Let’s check and see how the AFC West teams did on Saturday.

CBS: B+

The SEC has long been the most dominant conference in college football and they routinely send the most talent to the NFL. This year has been no different, as a whopping 63 SEC players were picked in the 2013 NFL Draft, nearly a full quarter of the entire 254-player pool. 12 SEC players went in the first round alone, followed by the ACC with six.

Here’s a complete breakdown of the conference representation in this year’s draft, in alphabetical order:

As the last pick of the NFL Draft, Cunningham will now be celebrated at “Irrelevant Week” in Southern California. He’ll go to Disneyland and participate in various events, including the awarding of the Lowsman Trophy, a mock of the Heisman Trophy.

At 6’4, 264 pounds, Cunningham was more of a blocking tight end for the Gamecocks. He caught 23 passes for 324 yards as a senior and finished his collegiate career with just one receiving touchdown.

The world prior to the 2013 draft class was that it was a class heavy on talent, but low on skill position players. That assertion rang true as a record number of offensive and defensive linemen were selected, but an unusually low number of quarterbacks.

Update: Read our NFL Draft 2015 positional rankings.

The 2013 NFL Draft came to a close with 48 picks in the seventh round. Many of those players will never make an NFL team, but some will prove themselves in training camp and end up having long careers. All of them receive the honor of calling themselves an NFL draft pick, including Justice Cunningham, who became Mr. Irrelevant.

The story of the seventh round is just as much who doesn’t get drafted as who does. And as with the rest of the draft, the quarterbacks fell further than expected. While some of the remaining quarterbacks were taken, Tyler Bray of Tennessee and Matt Scott of Arizona slipped through the cracks.

Not surprisingly, an Alabama team that won three out of the last four national titles had a few players good enough to get drafted, including three back-to-back-to-back in the first round. The record for players from a single school drafted in one year is 17, an honor belonging to Ohio State in the 2000 NFL Draft.

Alabama kept hearing their players’ names called from the podium on all three days of the draft, too. By the time the event was over, the Crimson Tide had a school-record nine players selected, beating the eight Alabama players picked in 1987 when the draft was 12 rounds.

Despite the late rounds of the draft equating mostly to depth, teams still looked to add valuable pieces. The biggest shock of the day came from Philadelphia, as the Eagles moved up to the first pick of Day 3 to land USC quarterback Matt Barkley.

After letting Steven Jackson go, the Rams needed to take a running back in the draft. While they didn’t elect to get one of the elite talents, they waited to trade up and take Stacy. He lacks elite speed, but has excellent vision — and an ability to hit gaps. With his skills you might mistake him for a dual-threat running back, but he does not have much talent in the passing game.

The 2013 NFL Draft has come to a close with several good players still available. Among them are a handful of quarterbacks that have the tools and potential to make an NFL roster. Tyler Bray of Tennessee had one of the best arms in the draft. If anyone was looking for a tired Russell Wilson comparison in this draft, many cited Matt Scott of Arizona.

Here are my best players available following the 2013 NFL Draft:

The 2013 NFL Draft is almost over as we approach the tail end of the 7th round. The Falcons doubled up on safeties with promising upside, while the Lions went with a linebacker and the 49ers added another offensive tackle.

Let’s recap picks 243-247:

A very productive receiver in the FCS, Mellette has the size and skillset to develop into a starter in the NFL. He’ll first have to overcome a significant jump from Elon to the pros.

King is a versatile lineman who split time between the inside and the outside on the Oklahoma line. King can be moved playing against the run on the inside and struggles to gain the corner in pass rush on the outside. He is most effective as a pass rusher on the inside.

With the later picks in the 7th round, some players are in better position by not getting selected by stronger teams without much room for competition and instead can benefit from hitting undrafted free agency where they can select the team that is a strong fit for them.

After the Raiders took their first pass rusher of the draft with the No. 233 pick, the Broncos and 49ers, two playoff-level teams, selected quarterbacks that will have their work cut out for them as they try to find their way on to NFL rosters:

Here’s a look at pick 228 through 232:

Dawkins was limited by Florida States defensive line rotation but he is strong and has the potential to get on the field early in his career. He has a quick first step and should add depth to the Vikings’ defensive line.

Let’s recap picks 223-228:

Standing in at 6’5, 309 pounds, the former Samford prospect flashed some impressive athleticism with a 4.84 40 and 33 inch vertical leap. He had eight sacks in his senior year. The kind of raw small-school prospect that’s a dime a dozen in the 7th round.

In the seventh round, most teams are selecting players who will be fighting for roster spots — but the Philadelphia Eagles might have found a player who will actually see the field in cornerback Jordan Poyer. Later in the round, another quarterback was taken as the Chargers selected Brad Sorensen. Picks 218 through 222 are listed below:

The sixth-best cornerback on the SB Nation pre-draft big board, Poyer hurt his stock with a poor showing at the combine and on his pro day. He’s a great route-reader and a true student of the game with great hands. With the Eagles thin in the secondary, he could see playing time as a rookie.

Had it not been for three ACL tears during his time at Penn State, there’s plenty of reason to believe that Mauti wouldn’t have been a 7th-round pick in the 2013 NFL Draft. At 6-2, 243 pounds, he has the build of a starting middle linebacker and has the instincts to match.

Bohanon was a relatively unknown fullback at the 2013 NFL Combine until his 36 reps on the bench press caught eyes. At 6-1, 246 pounds, he has the stout size of a prototypical fullback and clearly has the strength as evidenced by his combine performance, but is limited as a ball-carrier with 4.81 speed.

Here’s a look at picks 208 through 212:

The Jaguars added some depth at the cornerback position early in the seventh round with New Mexico State’s Jeremy Harris. Harris ran a 4.48 at the university’s pro day and will likely fight for a spot in the secondary as well as on special teams.

Here is the complete list of sixth round selections.

• NFL draft grades: Who are the winners and losers?

The 2013 NFL Draft is heading down the stretch. The sixth round is now in the books, and the Chiefs continued to add prospects by taking a fullback and defensive end. The Ravens took a flier on a Division II project, and the Raiders gave a chance to a guy with multiple off-field incidents.

Let’s recap the 203rd-207th picks: