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The NFL draft's craziness began with the Bears, and it kept on going

Say what?

<p>Mitchell Trubisky getting a Bears jersey was one of the surprises. (Photo: Kirby Lee, USA TODAY Sports)</p>

Say what?

That was the operative phrase summing up the first round of the 2017 NFL Draft, which will be remembered for the stunning moves that blew up mock drafts across the land.

Gareon Conley, the former Ohio State cornerback, was supposed to fall out of the first round while a rape allegation remains under investigation.

The Oakland Raiders took him with the 24th pick.

Quarterbacks were supposed to be a mixed bag when it came to first-round stock.

Well, three of them -- Mitchell Trubisky, Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson – were taken among the top 12 picks. And in each case, teams traded away significant chips to move up the board to get them.

Premium prices for passers are still in effect.

It was touted as a defensive draft, and maybe it was. But after the Cleveland Browns christened the draft by selecting Texas A&M defensive end Myles Garrett with the first pick, nine of the next 11 picks were used on offensive players.

Three receivers taken in the top 10? That’s never happened since the common draft began in 1967.

No doubt, the first round lived up to the expectation of unpredictability.

I mean, Western Michigan receiver Corey Davis is as confident in his game as anyone. But with many of the mock drafts predicting the receivers would start going off the board in the middle of the first round, not even Davis expected he would be taken with the fifth pick overall.

“I am surprised,” Davis said, alluding to the moment he got the call from Titans GM John Robinson. “I had my jacket off, laid-back in the green room.”

It was that type of night. Stuff just started happening. Once again, it proved that for all of the pre-draft chatter, rumors and exclusive reports, nobody really knows how it will all go down.

It started with the Chicago Bears giving up third- and fourth-round picks to move up just one slot in order to select Trubisky second overall – and that set the tone for more wheeling and dealing to land quarterbacks.

Before the first round was halfway done, two other teams mortgaged picks in trading for the opportunity to select the quarterbacks of the future.

The Kansas City Chiefs gave up next year’s first-round pick and a third-round choice to swap first-round picks with the Buffalo Bills, allowing them to draft Mahomes, the Texas Tech gunslinger. Then the Houston Texans swung a deal with Cleveland to move up 13 slots, taking Watson in the 12th spot.

Watson, who led Clemson to a national championship in January, felt he should have been the first quarterback drafted. But if he was surprised to be the third one taken, he processed it quickly.

“Timing and fitting in is the best thing you can ask for,” Watson said.

Not everyone was surprised. Temple linebacker Haason Reddick wore a red tie for some reason. He had a feeling he would be taken in the 13th slot by the Arizona Cardinals, coached by Temple alum Bruce Arians. It happened.

“If I fell below the Cardinals, I don’t know” what might have happened, Reddick said. “This draft is risky business.”

Of course, some things happened just like you might have expected.

Roger Goodell was booed relentlessly by a raucous Philadelphia crowd noted for giving little slack. He knew. After walking to the podium to open the draft, Goodell egged on the crowd – estimated to have reached 70,000 – that gathered on the Ben Franklin Parkway.

“C’mon, Philly!” Goodell said. “C’mon!”

Surely, they came out for the festival that marked a return of the draft to the city that hosted the NFL’s first draft in 1936, and hadn’t done so since 1961.

But they could not have seen all that coming in a wild first round.

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