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By Lindsay Jones Apr 26, 2020
The massive television ratings for the 2020 NFL Draft weren’t merely a result of stay-at-home orders across the country and the fact that millions of Americans were starved for any sort of live sports content.
This virtual, work-from-home NFL draft was actually pretty great and, in many ways, better than the spectacle the NFL typically throws to welcome 250-plus new players to the league.
Don’t expect the NFL to abandon plans for a massive draft party in Cleveland next year or in Las Vegas in 2022 — a second chance for Sin City after the coronavirus pandemic canceled draft events planned for the past weekend — but that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of things the NFL should take from the virtual draft and make permanent.
“I was actually talking about that with my wife last night. She was actually making a similar comment that it was actually pretty cool because it brings perhaps more of a human element to a lot of the key people in this weekend,” Browns executive vice president Andrew Berry said Saturday evening. “I think everybody can appreciate that this was certainly a unique draft, but there were some pretty cool things that came out of the weekend as well.”
Here are five things that should become a staple of all future NFL drafts, no matter the location:
Keep up with technology
This year’s draft showed that many parts of a typical draft process are out of date, from needing dozens of people in the same room to make a draft pick or negotiate a trade to the actual mechanism of making a draft pick. No longer should general managers need to call a team employee stationed at the draft site (on a landline, no less) to turn in a pick.
Surely head coaches, general managers and other key personnel staffers and coaches will gather in draft rooms in 2021, but there’s no reason scouts who live in other cities can’t join the draft room remotely. Now that we’ve seen a draft run successfully from living rooms and basements and luxury yachts — with kids, wives and pets included — there’s no reason draft rooms must be considered sacred spaces.
Teams should continue to embrace video-conferencing platforms, and not just for internal communications. Teams hosted news conferences via Zoom all weekend, allowing reporters (and fans, who could stream the news conferences live) face time with prospects immediately following their selection.
Show us the prospects
It was delightful to watch so many NFL prospects celebrate receiving their draft call with their family and friends, thanks to draft kits provided to 58 players by the NFL. There is no reason this shouldn’t continue even after the top crop of prospects resume attending the draft in person.
In fact, it should be expanded.
These cell phone cameras, mounted on tripods in prospects’ homes, were unobtrusive and allowed viewers to feel what it was like to be with the Burrow family in Ohio or the Wirfses in Iowa in the first round, and with the Winfields and Hurtses, both near Houston, in the second round. These videos weren’t performative or ostentatious. These were real moments with real families.
Send these cell phone setups to 100 prospects next year, and let Verizon slap a logo in the background if it’ll help make it affordable for more prospects. If the NFL truly wants to humanize its new players, this is the way to do it.
A more relatable Roger Goodell
When NFL commissioner Roger Goodell opened the draft Thursday night from his basement, he was wearing a blazer over a button-down shirt. When he closed the event Saturday evening, he was wearing a T-shirt. This is the most relatable Goodell has ever been, and it worked for him.
When he opens the 2021 draft from a stage in Cleveland, he should channel the T-shirt-wearing, TikTok- dancing version of himself from 2020. Goodell doesn’t always need to be so buttoned up. He should dance more. Laugh more. Hang out with his dog, Blake, more.
Goodell was the driving force behind pushing forward with the draft this weekend, even as tens of thousands in our country have died from COVID-19 and most Americans have seen their lives greatly impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. Ultimately, proceeding with the draft turned out to be the right call.
Do good
Goodell announced Saturday that the NFL’s “Draft-a-thon” had raised more than $100 million that will be distributed to six coronavirus-related charities, including the American Red Cross and Feeding America’s COVID-19 Response Fund.
The streaming Draft-a-thon broadcast was a fun alternate viewing experience, with appearances from NFL stars and celebrities as well as NFL media experts.
This is a format that can be replicated in the future, even when the United States isn’t in the middle of a global crisis.
No more gimmicks
Maybe Mike Mayock was right all along. In his previous life as NFL Network’s main draft analyst, the Raiders general manager despised broadcast gimmicks, most notably the third-day presentation when the NFL would announce late-round picks from ski slopes and beaches and zoos. This year’s third day sped along without any of the added theatrics (we’re pretending the Luke Bryan song never happened), and we won’t miss them if they never return.
All of this said, that doesn’t mean there weren’t several things we missed during this virtual draft. These are the things we can’t wait to see in 2021 in Cleveland:
• Throngs of fans booing Goodell in person when he takes the stage for the first time. And every time after that.
• Watching a defensive tackle lift Goodell off his feet, which is an annual draft tradition. We also missed seeing players hug their college coaches, and fans hugging each other.
• ESPN and NFL Network were limited in how they could deploy their personnel this year, and the joint broadcast largely abandoned the work of the stable of reporters. We missed the insights that on-the-ground reporters provide to television viewers, and the joint broadcast suffered from a lack of storytelling, which stood out as ESPN focused on prospects’ heartbreaking personal stories.
• Speaking of the broadcast, it wasn’t the same without draft analyst Todd McShay, who announced Thursday that he’s battling coronavirus. We send McShay our best wishes and eagerly await seeing him on our televisions during the 2021 draft.
