Kiper picks winners and head-scratching picks from Round 1: Which teams crushed the night

Mel Kiper has served as an NFL draft analyst for ESPN since 1984. He is a regular contributor on SportsCenter and ESPN Radio and writes weekly for ESPN Insider.

Wow, what a night. I wrote in my final Round 1 mock draft that there would be chaos, and it didn’t look that way after the first 10 picks. Then we just kept getting trade after trade, and my head was spinning trying to keep track of which team was picking where.

The first round of the 2022 NFL draft did not disappoint. It was the second time in draft history that the first five picks were used on defensive players (1991). That included two corners in the top four for the first time in the common draft era. And we had nine draft-day trades, which is the most in a first round since 2010 (and we only got three of them last year). Oh, and there was only one quarterback.

There were a few picks I loved and few that surprised me (including one really big reach). Below are the picks I liked and didn’t like from the first round. I’m basing these on my rankings and how I have prospects graded, along with whether teams got value with their selections.

Come back Saturday night for my post-draft grades for all 32 teams. And we’ll be back for Rounds 2 and 3 on Friday (7 p.m. ET on ESPN, ABC and the ESPN App).

Winners from Round 1

New York Jets

The picks: Ahmad “Sauce” Gardner, CB, Cincinnati (No. 4) and Garrett Wilson, WR, Ohio State (No. 10) and Jermaine Johnson II, DE, Florida State (No. 26)

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