NFL Draft Day 2 Features Defensive Run, Browns Win Big in Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh’s Day 2 draft crowd watched the board turn hard toward defense, with 17 of the first 21 Friday selections going to that side of the ball, while the Cleveland Browns built one of the night’s clearest value hauls with Denzel Boston, Emmanuel McNeil-Warren and Austin Barber.

The 2026 NFL Draft returned to Pittsburgh for the first time since 1948, and the city’s football backdrop fit the pace of the night. The Draft Experience was centered around Acrisure Stadium and Point State Park, with free fan entry tied to NFL OnePass registration that opened March 4. After a reported downtown crowd of 320,000 on Thursday, the host city again felt like part of the story as the event moved through Rounds 2 and 3 starting Friday at 7 p.m. ET.

The San Francisco 49ers opened Round 2 at No. 33 by taking De’Zhaun Stribling, a 6-foot-2, 207-pound receiver who ran a 4.36-second 40-yard dash and moved through Washington State, Oklahoma State and Ole Miss. The pick showed that even in a defense-heavy stretch, teams were still willing to hunt for explosive offensive traits when the profile fit their plans.

Cleveland drew the strongest praise from the national Day 2 analysis. ESPN singled out the Browns as one of the night’s biggest winners after they added Boston at No. 39, McNeil-Warren at No. 58 and Barber at No. 86, a trio that pushed the draft to 100 picks by late Friday. That kind of three-pick return in the top 86 is the sort of Day 2 work that can reshape a roster before the weekend even ends.

The grades told a broader story about how teams are building. NFL.com published Chad Reuter’s snap grades for all 32 teams after Rounds 2 and 3, while a separate Next Gen Stats breakdown identified the five best value picks from those rounds. Together with SI’s pick-by-pick grades and ESPN’s winners, losers and values, the message from Friday was clear: the teams that looked best were not always the teams that drafted the flashiest names, but the ones that matched their selections to immediate needs and scheme fit. The draft concludes Saturday, April 25, with Rounds 4 through 7 on ESPN, ABC and the ESPN App, and the real measure of Day 2 will be how quickly those picks can step into starting roles.