» NFL DRAFT WILL LOOK DIFFERENT
PHILADELPHIA — Temple center Matt Hennessy expected to meet with a number of NFL teams in preparation for next month’s entry draft.
What Hennessy didn’t foresee was that those visits would take place in his mother’s living room in Bardonia, N.Y., with Hennessy staring into his laptop’s camera.
The league has shut down all team facilities because of the coronavirus pandemic, and has forbidden teams from holding their usual 30 prospect visits, which usually are supplemented by visits from local prospects who don’t count toward the 30. Hennessy had planned to meet with Howie Roseman, Doug Pederson and the Eagles as a local prospect. Now he’s a virtual prospect instead. As is the case with hundreds of other draft hopefuls nationwide.
The NFL has scrapped plans for its usual glitzy draft festival, which was to be Las Vegas’ welcome to the league, as the Raiders move into their new home. The April 23-25 draft will be held remotely, with details to come.
Football is the only major sport that hasn’t completely shut down so far, the league having determined that it could hold free agency and the draft without violating any quarantining procedures. Some people welcome the diversion, others think trying to carry on with business as usual is unseemly.
There were reports this week that a committee of general managers wanted to postpone the draft. This led to commissioner Roger Goodell’s declaring that the draft would go on as scheduled, Goodell then threatening to punish anyone who spoke out against the decision. Goodell’s letter to teams said in part: “Public discussion of issues relating to the draft serves no useful purpose and is grounds for disciplinary action.”
Teams, agents and prospects are worried about more than just the optics of taking part in such an exercise in a time of crisis. Teams are working with less information on prospects than in recent memory. Evaluators always say they base their decisions mostly on a prospect’s game film. This year, that might be more true than at any time in the past few decades.
“It’s so far less than ideal, I can’t tell you,” said agent Brett Tessler, who is based in South Florida, and whose clients include a lot of self-made players who weren’t high picks.
Will less-well-known prospects suffer from this truncated process? “It’s your non-combine, diamond-in-the-rough type guy who’s really going to get screwed the most,” Tessler said.
Another agent, who didn’t want to be quoted by name in the wake of Goodell’s dictum, said he had spoken to a number of general managers and personnel people on this issue.
“They should not have the draft,” the agent said. “Nobody wants the draft to go on in four weeks. Nobody is prepared.”