The closer the 2024 NFL Draft gets to actually kicking off, the wilder some of the rumors get. This tends to happen every year, but the latest rumor surrounding the Los Angeles Chargers is a doozy. As it goes, the team could be looking to draft a quarterback in the first round and then trade Justin Herbert.
Of course, if the team were to draft a quarterback in the first round, the logical option would be J.J. McCarthy, the same guy new Chargers head coach Jim Harbaugh won the College Football National Championship with last season. After all, Harbaugh has been McCarthy's No. 1 hype guy leading into the draft.
Could this actually happen? If it seems preposterous, that's because it is, and ESPN's Adam Schefter stated as much the day before the draft.
Adam Schefter throws cold water on Mike Greenberg using ESPN BET odds to push the idea that the Chargers could use their first-round pick on J.J. McCarthy and trade Justin Herbert.
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) April 24, 2024
"You'd be absorbing the largest cap charge in NFL history to trade one of the elite young… pic.twitter.com/a5x5KHncyF
The Chargers have one of the top signal-callers in the NFL and need to build around him. For Harbaugh to jettison him out of Los Angeles in favor of a rookie with a lot of upside but just as many questions about how good he will be, would be incredibly hard to understand.
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Instead, the Chargers will likely do what most predicted them to do all along, and that is to get the best offensive player they can at the No. 5 overall spot. So when we really dissect this rumor, it leads to a more likely possibility about how it all got started.
What Harbaugh would really like to do is build up his former quarterback so a team such as the Minnesota Vikings trades up to the No. 4 spot in order to take him as their next franchise quarterback. Assuming the first three picks before that were also quarterbacks, which everyone expects them to be, Harbaugh is suddenly in prime position to take the player of his choice.
That could be Marvin Harrison Jr. That could be Brock Bowers. There are many directions that he could go in, but all signs would then point to Harrison Jr., who is the best wide receiver prospect in quite some time and if the Cardinals don't trade the No. 4 pick, they will likely take the former Ohio State product.
Harbaugh, despite being back in the NFL for the first time since 2014, knows how to pull off some great gamesmanship. And that is likely what this rumor is really all about.
