Welcome to another episode of Building the Beast. I am Dave Hellman. I'm really excited about

today's episode. Dane Bruegler and myself took a little bit of a detour. The usual goal here

is to talk about college prospects, the upcoming NFL draft class, who is worth drafting

and why, right? That's what we're usually talking about on the show.

But this week, we're a little more than halfway through the NFL season.

And for our purposes, not talking about the playoff race, the race for us is the race to the top pick.

And what the top of the NFL draft order is starting to look like.

It is by no means set in stone.

But unfortunately, for a handful of NFL teams, you can kind of take an educated guess

where they're going to be picking in this 2026 draft.

So with it starting to take shape, we wanted to look at who's at the draft order,

who's at the top of the draft order,

what they might need, where they might be picking,

how it influences the politics of trades and

quarterback discussions and all that type of stuff,

how it might influence which players get drafted.

Fun early check-in on the top of the draft order

this week with Dan Bruegler and myself.

Let's get into it.

And I am joined now, as always, by my friend, my colleague, Dane Bruegler.

And Dane, this week's episode comes well-timed, because I'm going to step outside the box a little bit

and not force us to revisit Ty Simpson's performance against Oklahoma too much.

...