Confessions of a Draft-A-Holic
National Pastime? In 2023, Round 1 Drew More TV Viewers than the Average World Series Game
(Published April 11, 2024, updated April 18, 2024)
The first round of the NFL Draft kicks off 1 week from tonight, and I’m excited. But honestly, should I be? When you think about it, watching Roger Goodell call 32 names over the course of 4 long hours isn’t what most people would consider riveting, or even mildly entertaining. Sure, the booing of Goodell is fun, but that gets old after a while. It’s a sports-related TV offering, but there’s no action, other than a few awkward hugs and chest-bumps. It’s mostly highlights accompanied by incessant yapping by the commentators, interspersed with shots of players and their families sitting around, eating, and talking on the phone. It’s also an eye-popping fashion show where a bunch of the models are literally twice the size of the average human. Put it all together and it’s a spectacle. Still, the immense popularity of the whole thing is a bizarre phenomenon, and I can’t help but think that folks who don’t care about football must look at those of us who watch the draft and say “there go the mayors of Loserville”.
Well, it turns out that Loserville is a HUGE, bustling town. Thanks to the enormous popularity of the NFL, college football, fantasy football, and online wagering, upwards of 11 million people are again expected to tune in at some point to watch Round 1 unfold, and it will be even more than that if the year-over-year growth trend continues. I’ll be one of them. I can’t get enough draft content and I look forward to this event each season. I can’t really explain why, but as an avid NFL fan, I find that it’s compelling television, and not just when my team (the Dolphins) are on the clock. And I’m not alone.
The draft has come an awfully long way, and its evolution to a massive event on the sports calendar is hard to believe. I’m old enough to remember when the NFL Draft wasn’t even televised (that started in 1980, when a fledgling cable network called ESPN begged the NFL to let them air it). It took off from there, with Mel Kiper, Jr. added to the broadcast team in 1984. For about the last 15 years, it’s gone full Hollywood: A made-for-TV event that extends over 3 days, with Round 1 shown in Prime Time on Thursday night. And then there is the exhaustive media coverage, which started months ago, accelerated through the Scouting Combine and various school Pro Days, and is now a runaway train careening down a mountain. If you do an online search for “NFL Draft,” you’ll find more articles, mock drafts, scouting reports, and podcasts than you could consume before NEXT year’s draft.
I’m not going to give you a mock draft. Sorry, but you can get that anywhere. I am, however, going to share a few observations about the Annual Player Selection Meeting (that’s the NFL’s official name for the draft), which maybe can help make some sense of it all. Or not.
I’ll start with this: I REALLY don’t want to wait another week for this thing to finally happen. There are several reasons for that, but first and foremost, the buzzwords are melting my brain. Riser. Faller. Motor. Toughness. Character. Lunch-pail guy. Off-the-field issues. Bend. Swivel. Route tree. Length. Leader. Sleeper. Mauler. Traits. Physical specimen. Freak. Passes the eye test. Athleticism. Relentless. Road grader. Can make all the throws. Blue-collar guy. Catch radius. Ball hawk. Short arms. Awareness. 50-50 balls. Football IQ... And that’s before we even get to the actual draft, where those words and phrases will be joined by the holy trinity of Reach, Steal, and Value. Make it stop!
Mel’s Hair is a Physical Specimen, With Length, but no Bend
Second, the most important position in all of sports is again front and center, and I’m here for it. It’s a big part of the allure. For the 5th time in the last 7 drafts, at least 3 QBs are going to go in the first 10 picks of Round 1, and in all likelihood we’ll get 4. Lots of consequential picks will be made over the 3 days of the NFL draft, but it’s the QBs who go at the top who are almost always the biggest story. Teams with bad records (or better teams willing to mortgage their future to trade up) trying to fine the right franchise signal-caller who will lead them out of the NFL wilderness is a compelling narrative. This is especially true in the era of the rookie pay scale, where having a QB who hits right away and is playing on a cheap first deal for 4 or 5 years is a massive advantage. I see you smiling over there in the corner, Houston Texans.
Last year, Bryce Young (1), C.J. Stroud (2), and Anthony Richardson (4) were the headliners. In 2021, it was Trevor Lawrence (1), Zach Wilson (2), and Trey Lance (3), with Justin Fields (11) and Mac Jones (15) also going in the first half of the first round. Look at those names, and take a deep breath, CHI, WAS, NE, MIN, DEN, and LV. There’s a reason the top QB prospects spend an eternity under the microscope. For this year’s promising group of young passers, there are varying opinions as you’d expect, but anyone who tells you they KNOW who will be great and who will bust is full of it. Landing spot will factor into QB success in a big way and it may take a few years before we know who in this class has a chance to be elite, and who is never going to make it as a starter in the league. By the time we get to the draft there may be very little suspense, but as of now, after pick 1, how the rest of the top 4 QBs come off the board will be exciting, even if you aren’t a fan of one of the teams taking them. At least one big trade-up for a QB is at least a 50-50 proposition and would be some nice icing on that cake.
No Suspense In ChiTown: Caleb Williams Is the Presumptive #1 Pick
OK, we’ve delved into the history of the draft, the buzzwords, and the QBs. Now let’s talk about us, the fans. For that, I want to switch gears and explore human psychology for a moment. I’ll freely admit that I don’t follow college football all that closely, whereas I consider myself a very well-informed NFL fan and analyst. I can’t tell you what separates the top offensive tackles in this draft, but I do feel equipped to assess the positional strengths, weaknesses, and needs of each NFL team heading out of free agency and into the draft. It turns out that a funny thing happens to football fans in the lead-up to the NFL draft. We all become laden with knowledge but also with biases, gleaned not from our own hours of crunching film and preparing detailed scouting reports, but rather from reading too many draft articles and poring over too many mock drafts. The information from so-called draft experts is helpful in that it enables NFL fans to learn the names of the top 40-60 players and to get a decent sense of the draft landscape, but that rudimentary knowledge shouldn’t be confused with an understanding of what NFL team draft boards actually look like, or of how the draft will unfold in reality.
Here’s an example that shows how this bias works. If I see a dozen or more mock drafts and almost all of them have Alabama tackle J.C. Latham going somewhere between pick 12 (DEN) and pick 21 (MIA), a subconscious value assignment and related opinion of the player is going to take hold in my brain. It’s hard for it not to. And that value assignment tells me that Latham SHOULD go in that range on draft night. If he goes at pick 7 to the Titans (who need OL help), my brain will shout “REACH” and if he falls to the Ravens (who also need OL help) 23 slots later at pick 30, my brain will scream “STEAL”. But the truth is that his true draft value isn’t a consensus mock draft ranking, but rather the actual spot where he is selected by an NFL team. Further, he could wind up being a very good value for that team wherever he is taken. Or a bad one, or something in-between. Only time will tell. When the draft unfolds, I’ll try to keep this in mind, and to remember that despite how closely I’ve tried to follow the pre-draft process, my opinions are mostly shaped by what I’ve read and heard, and I don’t know how good (or bad) any of these players are going to be when they start playing on Sundays.
Marvin Harrison, Jr. has the Name, and the Game
One last thought: A great deal of focus is placed on Round 1 of the draft, but the draft doesn’t end on Thursday night. Lots of mock drafts only cover the first round, and I think the tendency of some analysts is to place too much emphasis on team needs in round 1. In practice, teams often don’t address their biggest need in the first round, because the board values don’t line up in a way where doing that makes sense. Obviously, the earlier a player is taken, the more likely he is to be a quality starter, but the draft is 7 rounds long and not only do most teams have multiple positional needs, but there are positions that offer greater (or less) depth of quality. NFL GMs have to factor all of this in when it’s their turn to act. As the draft unfolds, trading up and down is a key tool that GMs use to try to match draft spot with value, while addressing needs. A record 41 trades were completed during last year’s draft, including 6 in the first round. Watch for much more of that when the draft unfolds later this April.
My motor isn’t relentless, so I’m just going to swivel on out of here. Enjoy the draft, folks.
DH
