After a long period of scuttlebutt that the NFL would move the draft to a streaming service, last year we started to get clarity about the future of the draft. First, the Athletic‘s Andrew Marchand confirmed previous reporting that ESPN would retain rights to the draft and share them with a “digital player”, predicting that “you will see two places have the draft in the future”. Of course, right now the draft airs in at least two places, ESPN and NFL Network, but ESPN and the league have engaged in renewed talks for ESPN to acquire NFL Media which would put both networks under one roof. Still, this might seem to suggest that NFL Network’s separate broadcast of the draft might not be long for this world… until Front Office Sports reported the following day that NFLN was, in fact, expected to retain the rights to the NFL Draft beyond this year, while YouTube was in “pole position” to land international distribution rights to the draft.
It’s not clear whether YouTube would be able to distribute its draft broadcast in the United States, though there are enough places for people to catch the draft as it stands that, on the surface, one more wouldn’t hurt. What is clear is that, in all likelihood, YouTube won’t merely be redistributing the ESPN or NFL Network coverage but producing its own oriented towards an international audience that may not be familiar with American football, or at the least college football. That would make it a fourth official draft broadcast to join the traditional broadcasts on ESPN and NFL Network as well as the more human-interest-focused coverage on ABC.
About a decade ago, the NFL prohibited reporters who work for league partners from tipping draft picks before they’re announced on air. Because picks are made and disseminated to the teams at least a couple minutes before they’re actually announced, all it takes is one person in one draft room to leak who’s been picked to a reporter who’s willing to tweet it out in the time before the Commissioner comes out to make it official. When a single reporter was able to tweet out every single pick, it made clear that what you saw on TV was just for show, that the actual pick had already happened and the draft broadcasts were effectively feigning their ignorance, and that there wasn’t much reason to watch the official broadcast if all you wanted to know was who was being picked. This effect has lessened, with pick tipping mostly restricted to individual team reporters and Pat McAfee, but it’s still there.
At the time and ever since, I felt that if the league wanted to reduce the incidence of pick-tipping, it should have one single, official, draft broadcast rather than trying to juggle two or more. As it stands, the league has to balance things by ensuring neither ESPN nor NFL Network is in a commercial break, and has to give each network’s reporter a chance to speak with each draftee. Further hurting matters is when the networks go to break when a pick is already in, meaning what could have been a delay of no more than two minutes between a pick being made and announced ends up being stretched to more than three. (It’s even worse on the second day, especially in the third round; while only going to break when a pick isn’t in may not be possible when there’s five minutes per pick, three minutes per break, and a minute to break down each pick, it sometimes seems like the league intentionally lets picks stack up like “planes at JFK” as Rich Eisen used to put it, rattled off a few at a time between breaks.)
To be clear, the league doesn’t have to cut all but one network out of the process entirely, but any network that isn’t the official one shouldn’t have any expectation that the league will hold onto a pick for them to come out of break, or that they’ll be able to interview draftees on stage before they get ushered off to clear the stage for the next draft pick. But rather than do anything to optimize the time between a pick being made and announced, the league allowed ESPN to create an additional broadcast that it would have to juggle on ABC, and now looks to be adding another one on top of that. It’s especially egregious because of Roger Goodell’s comments to McAfee about the need to “speed up” the draft, suggesting off-the-cuff a rather gimmicky change to how it’s timed. Teams taking close to the full ten minutes in the first round is a thing, but it should be an opportunity to squeeze in commercials without losing time for picks to be announced; draft coverage can go appreciably faster than it currently does, if the league and networks want it to.
To bring home this point, I’m going to present to you my notes on how this year’s first round played out from a timing perspective. My notes aren’t particularly complete, as I don’t have a DVR and I didn’t have access to a second screen to watch two broadcasts at once, so I had to manually switch between ESPN and NFL Network, rarely if ever switching to ABC and spending most of my time on ESPN because it tends to be quicker to show the next team on the clock after displaying each pick (and sometimes would briefly show the clock for the pick after next if the next pick was already in), allowing me to backdate the approximate time that the previous pick came in. Nonetheless, you can see just how much time the league could be saving and how much less opportunity for pick-tipping they could be allowing, if only they cared to. All times are Pacific time, so the start of the draft is at 5 PM rather than 8 PM (Eastern) or 7 PM (Green Bay local time).
5:04:30: We begin the rigamarole of Commissioner Goodell and various Packer stars appearing on stage to start the draft. Goodell starts the draft at 5:07:50, for three minutes and twenty seconds of grandstanding.
5:13:25: The first pick is in.
5:15:05: Goodell announces the selection of Cam Ward to the Titans. The gap of one minute and 40 seconds is significantly less than with pretty much any other pick for the rest of the night, which I chalk up to the pick being widely assumed going in and reports in the past that the team with the first pick is asked to hold off a few minutes before turning in their card.
5:19:48: The Jaguars’ pick is in. At this time Ward is still going through his second on-stage interview, but I don’t think this changes when the pick is announced.
5:22:05: Goodell brings Walter Payton Man of the Year Arik Armstead to the stage to announce the Jaguars’ pick. The pick doesn’t actually start to be announced until 5:23:45.
5:26:15: Here’s where things start to get hairy. The Giants’ pick comes in right around the time Travis Hunter would be starting to be interviewed on NFL Network…
5:27:15: …and this is the point where that first interview ended. With a single draft broadcast this would be about where he’d be ushered off the stage allowing the minimum amount of time to pass before the Giants’ pick would be announced. Instead he still has to be interviewed by ESPN for another minute or so. I’m assuming a delay of about two minutes and five seconds, minimum, between a pick being submitted and announced, so under ideal circumstances the pick would be announced at 5:28:20.
5:29:40: Instead, this is when Abdul Carter’s selection is announced. Total time wasted for pick #3: 1:20.
5:33:20: End of ESPN’s interview with Carter (5:32 flat if the pick was announced as soon as possible).
5:34:10: 50 seconds after the end of ESPN’s interview, NFL Network ends its own interview. Somewhere around this point the Patriots have submitted pick #4, yet NFLN goes to break afterwards. This is actually somewhat understandable if ESPN has already gone to break itself, and it’s possible if not likely that if we had a single draft broadcast it would have gone to break by this point itself. Still, that’s fifty valuable seconds lost, and it’s actually even more than that because of how late the pick announcement itself was. It takes NFLN twenty seconds to go to break after the end of the interview; if our hypothetical single broadcast did that it would be back from break as early as 5:35:20, leaving plenty of time for the Patriots’ announcement to be made after the minimum delay at around 5:36:15 or so. You see how the simple step of only having a single on-stage interview can have a compounding impact on the delay facing each subsequent pick.
5:37:35: The Browns’ pick is in, and NFL Network has only just come back from break.
5:38:00: Will Campbell is announced as the fourth pick to the Patriots. Total time wasted for pick #4: 1:45.
5:41:45: End of NFL Network’s interview with Campbell, which would be 5:40 flat if we were optimizing the gap between the pick being made and the announcement.
5:42:47: End of ESPN’s interview with Campbell.
5:43:26: The Raiders’ pick is in as the Browns’ pick hasn’t been announced yet.
5:43:40: The Browns select Mason Graham with the fifth pick, 53 seconds after Campbell left the stage. I’ve rounded pick announcements to the approximate multiple of five seconds that it would have spanned, so let’s say that 50 seconds from the interview of the previous pick to the announcement of the next one is good enough. That would mean that, under our optimized single draft broadcast, the pick would be announced at 5:40:50. Total time wasted for pick #5: 2:50.
5:46:38: End of ESPN’s interview with Graham, which would be 5:44:48 under our optimized single broadcast. That would allow the Raiders’ pick to be announced around 5:45:40.
5:48:20: The Raiders select Ashton Jeanty with the sixth pick. Total time wasted for pick #6: 2:40.
5:49:28: The Jets’ pick is in.
5:51:30: End of NFL Network’s interview with Jeanty, which would be 5:48:50 for us, in other words, before the Jets’ pick came in. Going to commercial would be defensible for our single broadcast, but not for NFL Network, yet that’s exactly what they do. ESPN still has to complete its own interview, and I don’t record them as going to break until 5:53:10.
5:56:15: The Jets select Armand Membou, who is not in the green room. This is only five seconds after ESPN would have come back from break based on my notes, but at no other point in the night would the gap between coming back from commercial and the pick being announced be that low. It’s possible the pick announcement would regularly be that low without having to juggle three draft broadcasts on ABC, ESPN, and NFL Network (to say nothing of YouTube), but for the most part I assume it takes 30 seconds after a network comes back from break to make a pick announcement. So my hypothetical network would have gone to break at 5:49:10, come back at 5:52:10, and the pick would be announced at 5:52:40. Total time wasted for pick #7: 3:35.
5:57:15: The Panthers’ pick is in.
5:58:57: ESPN goes to commercial, more than two minutes and forty seconds after the previous pick was announced. It may seem strange to go to break after just one pick that wasn’t even in the green room, less than three minutes after coming back from the last break, but we’re kind of running behind on commercials and coming out of a pick that’s not in the green room is an ideal time to go to break because you don’t have to sit through the pick making their way to the stage, hugging the commissioner, and getting interviewed. Of course, it’s more defensible for us as we would get to go to break around 5:55:22, come back from break at 5:58:22, and allow the minimum amount of time to elapse before the Panthers’ pick is announced at 5:59:20; instead, ESPN and NFL Network are going to break when a pick is already in.
6:03:00: Tetairoa McMillan is announced as the Panthers’ pick more than a minute after ESPN came back from break. Total time wasted for pick #8: 3:40.
6:04:20: The Saints’ pick is in.
6:06:40: End of NFL Network’s interview with McMillan, which would be 6:03 flat for us. That’s enough time that if we wanted, we could go to break again, although more than half of the Saints’ allotted time would have expired by that point. For our purposes let’s say we don’t go to break and allow the minimum amount of time to elapse before the Saints’ pick is announced at 6:06:25 – before the first McMillan interview is completed in real life.
6:08:45: Kelvin Banks Jr. is announced as the Saints pick. Total time wasted for pick #9: 2:20.
6:09:50: Approximate time for the Bears’ pick to come in. Because Banks was not in the green room, we could have gone to break at around 6:09:05-10, but the NFL will waste a bunch of time on its own with the bizarre song and dance to announce the date of the schedule release announcement, before Goodell spends some more time remembering Steve McMichael and Walter Payton before finally announcing the Bears’ pick. I don’t know if the schedule release sketch could have happened sooner if we’d saved up enough time earlier, or if it was always planned to be timed with a point where a pick was in, but I’m going to assume it’s best if we don’t go to break at this point.
6:14:00: This is the point where Goodell’s spiel begins. I’m going to say the soonest it could have started was 6:11:55, or the minimum amount of time after the previous pick being in. Colston Loveland is not announced as the Bears’ pick until 6:15:25. Total time wasted for pick #10: up to 2:05, though it’s possible we’d only be back in sync at this point.
6:15:27: The 49ers’ pick is in (yes, at the same time Goodell is announcing the previous pick).
6:18:08: ESPN goes to break despite a pick being in. The soonest our hypothetical draft broadcast would have reached this point is 6:16:03, so this is the first time we have to make a decision not to go to break when the real draft did.
6:22:33: We begin playing a message from soldiers stationed in Japan in the lead-up to the 49ers’ pick, about 1:25 after ESPN would have come back from break. Trying to figure out when this would have happened under our hypothetical single broadcast is pure guesswork; I’m going to just add the 1:25 to the 2:05 minimum time after the pick comes in, which would bring us to 6:18:57.
6:23:35: Mykel Williams is announced as the 49ers’ pick. Total time wasted for pick #11: approximately 3:35.
6:24:45: The Cowboys’ pick is in. Our hypothetical network is running behind on commercials at his point, both in terms of where they should be taken and relative to real life, but luckily it could have gone to break potentially as early as 6:22:40 or so. That would allow it to come back at 6:25:40.
6:26:25: Tyler Booker is announced as the Cowboys’ pick; note that this is only 1:40 after the pick came in, which I believe is the only time we get a gap this short outside the first pick.
6:29:40: Booker’s interview with NFL Network ends. This would allow our hypothetical network to go to break at 6:30 flat.
6:31:10: The Dolphins’ pick is in as ESPN is going to break, with Mike Greenberg taking extra time t set up a promo for the Thunderbolts movie. If we went to break at 6:30, the pick announcement could come as early as 6:33:15 if there’s little need to wait after coming back from break, but I’m going to be nice and allot the same amount of time for the pick to be announced after coming back from break as ESPN gets.
6:34:55: The Dolphins’ pick is announced as Kenneth Grant, 40 seconds after ESPN comes back from break. Total time wasted for pick #13: 1:15.
6:35:31: The Colts’ pick is in. This is about 50 seconds before the soonest point our hypothetical network might have gone to break if it wanted to.
6:37:55: Tyler Warren is announced as the Colts’ pick. I’m assuming this is the soonest it could have been announced regardless of other factors, but there is a possibility of a minimum three-minute gap between pick announcements even if neither pick is in the green room, and that without that this pick could have been made before 6:37:45. That’s especially the case because a three-minute gap would be only 20 seconds or so longer than the gap between a non-green-room pick and ESPN going to break.
6:40:48: Speaking of which, more than 2:50 after the pick announcement, ESPN starts a sponsor read as it’s going to break. Luckily by the time it comes back at 6:44:03, the Falcons are still on the clock. We’re going to skip ahead to the next point where my hypothetical network would do things differently than the NFL, because the next few picks aren’t in the green room either except for Shemar Stewart to the Bengals, whose ESPN interview ends right as the Seahawks’ pick comes in with the pick announcement able to be made exactly two minutes later.
7:45:10: Matthew Golden is announced as the 23rd pick to the hometown Packers. Packers President and CEO Mark Murphy announces the pick in person after taking nearly a minute fifteen seconds talking up the Packers and their ownership structure, and then Golden comes out of the green room and hypes up the crowd.
7:46:52: While the above is going on, the Vikings’ pick comes in.
7:49:12: ESPN’s interview with Golden ends, which would, for us, allow the Vikings’ pick to be announced at 7:50:05 or so.
7:51:10: When the Vikings’ selection of Donovan Jackson is actually announced. Total time wasted for pick #24: 1:05.
7:53:58: The Giants’ pick comes in right as ESPN is going to break. The break is already defensible as the pick hadn’t come in yet, and it’s all the more defensible for us as we’d have gone to break over a minute sooner. In fact, we’d come back from break around 7:55:53 when the soonest the pick announcement could have been made is 7:56:05, though realistically there’d still be a bit of a delay on top of that.
7:58:10: Jaxson Dart is announced as the Giants’ pick over a minute after ESPN would have come back from break, allowing some time for the networks to react to the trade and speculate over who the Giants might be picking. The Falcons’ pick doesn’t come in until 7:59:03 (although it takes over three minutes to announce), so we’re going to fast-forward a bit again.
8:10:00: Malaki Starks, who is in the green room, is announced as the 27th pick to the Ravens.
8:11:42: The Lions’ pick is in.
8:13:55: End of ESPN’s interview with Starks, which for us, would allow the pick to be announced at 8:14:45.
8:16:00: When Tyleik Williams is actually announced as the Lions’ pick. Total time wasted for pick #28: 1:15.
8:17:47: ESPN goes to break only 1:47 after the last pick announcement.
8:19:33: Washington’s pick is in. If our network went to break around 8:16:30, this would be right as it was returning from break and the pick could be announced after the minimum amount of time at 8:21:40.
8:22:15: When the selection of Josh Conerly Jr. is actually announced. Total time wasted for pick #29: 35 seconds.
8:25:45: The Bills’ pick is in. I note that, based on what we’ve seen earlier in the night, ESPN could have gone to break at 8:24:55 or so and gone the rest of the way without a break, and our hypothetical network could have done so 35 seconds sooner; it would hardly be the first time we’d gone to break after just one non-green-room pick. This is going to become relevant fairly shortly; for now, let’s just assume that the effect on when the Bills’ pick can be announced is a wash.
8:27:55: The delay after the pick comes in is relatively normal at this point, but Goodell’s job here is actually to introduce the kid from the Make-a-Wish Foundation that will actually announce the pick a minute after this point. Said pick is Maxwell Hairston, who is in the green room.
8:31:21: The Eagles’ pick is in.
8:32:16: Here’s where things go off the rails right at the end of the night. NFL Network’s interview with Hairston ends and they go to break even though a pick is in. There are only two picks left to announce so the desire to get a break in is understandable, but even if we hadn’t taken a break a pick sooner, there won’t be a break after the Eagles’ pick so they could have held off a pick. That would allow the Eagles’ pick to be announced after the minimum amount of time at 8:33:30.
8:33:45: This is when ESPN goes to break after their own interview.
8:34:21: The Chiefs’ pick is in. I think I may have been able to determine this by the time that the clock on the stage was frozen at? Or maybe ESPN briefly showed that time before switching to “Pick is In”?
8:37:25: Jihaad Campbell, who is in the green room, is announced as the Eagles’ pick. Total time wasted for pick #31: 3:55.
8:40:50: ESPN’s interview with Campbell ends. This would be 8:36:55 without any delays, so if we’d held off on going to break after the Washington pick we’d need to take a break now with a pick in. For now, however, let’s assume we did take a break earlier and can make the next pick announcement as soon as 8:37:45. That may not be a safe assumption, as the pick isn’t actually announced until more than two minutes after this point, so the league may have intentionally relaxed a bit before making the last announcement of the night.
8:43:05: Josh Simmons is announced as the last pick of the first round. Total time wasted for pick #32: up to 5:20.
While much of the middle part of the first round is handled much the same as I would have, thanks to relatively few picks being in the green room, for much of the first half of the round picks are being announced two to three minutes later than they could be if each pick only gets one on-stage interview, which is plenty of time for an enterprising reporter to tweet out the next pick to impatient fans and even for those fans to start to react to it. The league has committed to the draft being a television show, which is fine, but if they don’t want to deal with reporters tipping picks they should be minimizing the demand by minimizing the time it takes to announce each pick once they come in. At the very least, the least they could do is find a way to make it a television show, not three and certainly not four.