American Football

2023 NFL Draft: Best available players going into Day 3

April 29, 2023

COLLEGE FOOTBALL: OCT 22 Northwestern at Maryland — Photo by Tony Quinn/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Two prospects projected to be top-50 selections remain on the board heading into Saturday

After two days of NFL draft selections, it can be tough to keep a grasp on who is and isn’t available on the board. We’re here to help, as Acme Packing Company has put together a list of the best prospects remaining, along with some other fun notes.

Using the Industry Consensus Draft Board, we’re able to rank players based on where the majority of analysts had them graded going into Thursday. After excluding the players who have already been taken, we have the best players remaining. Added to these best players remaining tables, though, are also the player’s Relative Athletic Scores (RAS) and a note for players who have taken visits with the Green Bay Packers. Last year, the team drafted six prospects who took a trip to Green Bay, but the Packers’ first four picks in the 2023 draft have been used on non-visitors.

Below is the full table of the best players available, their aggregate athletic score and their reported interest status by the Packers.

I decided to break out two other individual tables, based on how the draft has shaken out for Green Bay. Going into the draft, we polled our readership on the top five positions of need for the team. The answers, overwhelmingly, were receiver, tight end, defensive line, edge rusher and safety. With an edge rusher (Lukas Van Ness) taken in the first round, a receiver (Jaylen Reed) taken in the second round and a double dip on tight ends (Luke Musgrave and Tucker Kraft) on Day 2, that leaves the safety and defensive line positions as the major needs for the Packers moving forward.

2022 Green Bay starting safety Adrian Amos is currently on the free agent market. At the moment, his replacement looks to be rotational player Rudy Ford, who played in the starting lineup for Darnell Savage for a short amount of time last season. Both Ford and Savage are set to be free agents in 2024, meaning that the team has no long-term answers at the position. Recently, it was announced that 2022 seventh-round pick Tariq Carpenter has moved positions, which only makes the safety room even thinner.

On the defensive line, the Packers need to replace two players’ worth of snaps after Dean Lowry and Jarran Reed signed elsewhere in free agency. At the moment, three of the four top defensive linemen on the team — Kenny Clark, TJ Slaton and Jonathan Ford — are true nose tackle types, which leaves just Devonte Wyatt as a base 3-4 defensive end. This is a position where Green Bay might want to add multiple bodies on Day 3.

Now you can track which players are available at safety and the defensive line with the tables down below.

As a reminder, here are the picks that the Packers own going into Day 3. Maybe you don’t think general manager Brian Gutekunst makes all nine selections, but we didn’t think he was going to turn in all four of the team’s seventh-round picks in 2022, either. Be prepared for anything on Saturday.