The Adam Gold Show · 99.9 The Fan | Raleigh, North Carolina

What’s the deepest position in the 2026 NFL Draft with 1st qualifiers that might go into the 2nd?

April 2, 2026·20 min·2 clips

Ryan Wilson, America's foremost draft authority, debates whether anything has significantly changed in the month before the NFL combine.

Three weeks from the draft, Adam Gold asks what has actually moved. Ryan Wilson says the biggest change is not a neat board reset. It is the usual quarterback noise, where projection starts doing too much work. The short-start resume is the sticking point. Cam Newton comes with an asterisk, then Mitch Trubisky, Anthony Richardson, and Dwayne Haskins make the comparison list feel a little uncomfortable. Gold keeps pressing the logic. Wilson does not write off talent, but he keeps circling back to experience, context, and how little patience teams tend to show. Arizona, the Jets, and Carolina come up as places where urgency can bend development the wrong way. Bryce Young is still unresolved. Gold says he has defended Young, but he treats the coming year as the real franchise-quarterback test. Then the Browns take over. The Deshaun Watson report sounds familiar to both men, and neither can make it sound clean. Wilson calls it a huge indictment. Dylan Gabriel went in the third round, got his month, and now sounds more like emergency depth than the answer. The fifth-round quarterback becomes the strange competition point. Watson leading that room in 2026, after two and a half years away, lands more like organizational absurdity than a plan. Picks six, twenty-four, and thirty-nine matter. Wilson has heard Cleveland could look at more than one offensive tackle early, while Ty Simpson stays in the weird-but-real pile. On depth, offensive linemen and edge rushers look ready to run. Wide receivers and safeties could slide because of positional value, with Caleb Downs as the obvious exception.

As heard by us

A draft-room debate about quarterback projection and which positions could rise or slide.

The episode is a draft room debate over where this class actually matters, with Ryan Wilson and Adam Gold working through offensive line, edge, receiver, and safety while Ty Simpson stays in the quarterback mix.

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Why you'd press play

You want the first-round board before the combine.

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