11 winners and 6 losers from the first round of the NFL Draft

While six cornerbacks were taken in the first round of the NFL draft, not one safety went off the board in the first 32 picks. As with running backs, there's plenty of talent left for teams to plunder; Alabama's Xavier McKinney and LSU's Grant Delpit are both going to make fine additions to whichever team picks them. But the trend shows where teams' priorities lie when filling out a defense.

This year's wide receiver class is as loaded as any in recent memory, and that had a huge impact on how the first round played out on Thursday.

Six receivers — Henry Ruggs III, Jerry Jeudy, CeeDee Lamb, Jalen Reagor, Justin Jefferson, and Brandon Aiyuk — were taken in the first 32 picks of the draft, and even more are expected to follow in the second and third rounds on Friday night.

Fantasy football players take note.

Despite a pretty strong class of running backs in this year's draft, none were taken until the final pick of the night, when the Kansas City Chiefs made a play for LSU running back Clyde Edwards-Helaire.

This highlights something that's been true in the NFL for some time: Teams do not want to pay for running backs.

There are still plenty of backs left in the draft who are ready to make an immediate impact on the league — D'Andre Swift and J.K. Dobbins will likely be taken off the board at some point on Friday night. But if you're a young player with NFL dreams, being a quarterback, wide receiver, or corner is the way to go right now.

Eight schools sent more than one player to the NFL in the first round of the draft this year: LSU (5), Alabama (4), Ohio State (3), Auburn (2), Clemson (2), Georgia (2), Oklahoma (2), and TCU (2).

That's the four playoff teams, three perennial SEC powerhouses, and Texas Christian University. TCU is by no means a pushover, but the Horned Frogs do stick out a bit in this grouping. That could help the school's recruiting for years to come.

Tom Brady's first few weeks in Tampa Bay could not have gone better.

Days after the team traded for tight end Rob Gronkowski in a stunning deal, the Buccaneers' front office worked some magic again, trading up one spot to draft Iowa offensive tackle Tristan Wirfs with the 13th pick of the night.

Wirfs was projected by many as the top prospect at his position heading into the night, but three other tackles were taken before him. Once he was the final top-tier tackle on the board, the Buccaneers pulled the trigger, ensuring that Brady would have some extra protection in his first season in Tampa Bay.

Yes, the Packers are a promising landing spot for Love, but he'll likely face some pretty tough early days in Green Bay.

Rodgers has plenty of knowledge to offer a young player, but it's not clear he'll be the most open veteran presence to the rookie.

Watching this relationship play out on the sidelines during the 2020 season will surely be compelling.

The Packers decision to trade up to draft Utah State quarterback Jordan Love was one the most eyebrow-raising move of the first round on Thursday.

Given that Aaron Rodgers still looks like he has plenty of great football ahead of him — a fact that Rodgers himself has not been shy to tout — the decision to move aggressively to draft his successor was perplexing.

That said, there was arguably no better landing spot for Love given this year's teams in need of a quarterback. Love has plenty of raw talent, but with a heavy emphasis on raw — his flick of the wrist generates power that some compare to Patrick Mahomes, but his turnover-prone final season at Utah State raised plenty of questions.

Love needs time to develop, and Rodgers seems set on giving him plenty of time to do so.

The Green Bay Packers hadn't selected a skill position player in the first round of a draft since selected Rodgers in 2005.

Rodgers was probably hoping they'd break that streak this year, giving him and the Packers offense another weapon to help push towards a title. Green Bay did in fact break the streak, but they did so by selecting quarterback Jordan Love from Utah State.

Rodgers can't control what direction his front office goes as they plan for the future, but it doesn't take a genius to guess that the selection of his potential successor likely doesn't sit well with the former Super Bowl champion and MVP.

The 49ers made the most of their two first-round picks. First, they selected defensive tackle Javon Kinlaw to add to their already terrifying front four. Then the team picked up Arizona State wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk with the 25th pick of the night.

The 49ers were also able to add some draft assets for basically nothing, trading down one spot with New England so that the Patriots could be sure to acquire offensive tackle Tristan Wirfs.

The move was probably worth it for the Patriots, since the risk of losing Wirfs was that high. But the 49ers didn't seem to have too strong a desire to snag Wirfs for themselves, so the move let them swap the 245th pick of the draft for the 117th pick for essentially nothing.

General manager John Lynch is surely pleased with himself.

The Arizona Cardinals offseason has already been quite a ride.

After wheeling and dealing to bring in superstar wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins from the Houston Texans earlier in the year, the Cardinals took another big step forward on Thursday by drafting utility defender Isaiah Simmons out of Clemson with the eighth pick of the night.

Simmons is a mind-bending defender, having lined up at nearly every position on the defensive side of the ball for the Tigers last season. While the Cardinals are still in need of an offensive tackle that can help protect Kyler Murray, Simmons was too great a talent to pass up at their spot. They'll worry about a tackle later.

The Denver Broncos held fast at Number 15 and walked away with Alabama's Jerry Jeudy, who was widely considered the sharpest route-runner in this stacked class of receivers.

Alongside fellow receiver Courtland Sutton and last year's first-round draft pick, tight end Noah Fant, the Broncos now have an impressive young group of skill position players to build around over the next few years.

If quarterback Drew Lock can put it all together next season, Denver will be a team to watch.

The Philadelphia Eagles were in desperate need of wide receiver depth heading into the first round of the draft. They walked away with TCU's Jalen Reagor — a talented player who could fit in nicely with the Eagles' offensive scheme, should all go according to plan.

That said, watching CeeDee Lamb drop further than expected only to fall to a division rival had to hurt. The move sparked memories of the Eagles second-round pick in 2018, when the team traded up one spot in front of the Cowboys to select tight end Dallas Goedert. just as news broke that veteran Dallas tight end Jason Witten would retire.

This year, Dallas got their revenge.

Football fans on Twitter had wondered whether Jerry Jones would go rogue during the league's first virtual draft, but the Dallas Cowboys owner played the night perfectly.

After drafting from his $250 million yacht, he walked away with Oklahoma wide receiver CeeDee Lamb as 17th overall pick — arguably the steal of the draft.

Lamb was graded by many as the top wide receiver in the loaded draft class of 2020, but wound up being the third receiver off the board after the Raiders selected Henry Ruggs III and the Broncos took Jerry Jeudy.

Further, the Cowboys were able to rub a bit of salt in the wound of their division rivals, since Eagles fans had been drooling at the possibility of their team trading up to snag Lamb as he began falling further than expected.

The Cowboys are now set to run a receiving corps of Amari Cooper, Michael Gallup, and CeeDee Lamb for the coming season. Opposing defenses beware.

When the Miami Dolphins took Alabama quarterback Tua Tagovailoa with the fifth pick, they were able to fulfill the "Tank for Tua" prophecy that was set in motion more than a year ago.

For a while, though, it seemed the Dolphins might go wild: Oregon's Justin Herbert rose up draft boards as teams expressed concerns that Tagovailoa's hip injury would last into the 2020 season.

But the Dolphins held strong, and in Tagovailoa, they have a player who could prove to be the best quarterback out of the 2020 class.

With their other two first-round picks, Miami made more progress towards building what they hope will be a championship team in the near future. They picked up offensive tackle Austin Jackson to help protect their new star quarterback, and cornerback Noah Igbinoghene to shore up their defense.

After Thursday, the future is looking bright in Miami.

It's tough to see the reasoning behind either of the Raiders first two picks. To start the night, the Raiders selected wide receiver Henry Ruggs out of Alabama. Ruggs is a speedster, and was considered by many to be the third-best receiver in this class — he's plenty special — but he wasn't even the best receiver at Alabama last year. That would be teammate Jerry Jeudy, who fell to the Broncos just a few picks later.

Still, the Raiders took Ruggs as the first wide receiver off the board.

Then with their second pick of the night, the Raiders picked up cornerback Damon Arnette out of Ohio State — a prospect so far down on most draft boards that ESPN hadn't even sent a camera to capture his family's reaction to his selection.

Of course, no one knows how the current draft class will play out. It's possible that in three years, Jon Gruden and Mike Mayock's decisions will prove to have been prophetic. If they thought these were the best two players to fit into the Raiders game plan for their first seasons in Las Vegas, more power to them.

But from a perspective of strictly draft value, both moves were baffling.

A year ago, no one would have predicted Burrow's ascent to the top of nearly every mock draft in the country — he was considered, at best, a fifth-round pick heading into the 2019 season.

But completing 76.3% of your passes for 5,671 yards, 60 touchdowns, and just six interceptions en route to a national championship will change a lot of opinions in just a few months.

Expectations are high for Burrow in Cincinnati; carrying the hopes of a city on your shoulders is no easy task, but if anyone is up for the challenge, it's him. If he plays well through the first three or four seasons with the team, Burrow could be looking at an astronomical contract extension in a few years.

With the first overall pick in the draft, the Cincinnati Bengals didn't flinch before taking Heisman winner Joe Burrow out of LSU to be their future quarterback.

The Bengals were so sure they'd be welcoming Burrow to Cincinnati that the team sent him and his family jerseys the day before the draft.

Burrow is coming off the greatest college season a quarterback has ever had, leading the LSU Tigers through a hell-fire schedule in the SEC to emerge as undefeated national champions. He's a proven winner, and the Bengals are hoping he can bring that same magic to Cincinnati for years to come.