Will There Be an NFL Draft This Year?
Right now, the NFL Draft is scheduled for April 23-25 in Las Vegas. It will be held without the fanfare of past drafts because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But there are rumblings...and not everyone in the NFL thinks it's a good idea.
A subcommittee of the NFL's General Managers believes the draft should be pushed back. But Commissioner Roger Goodell and the NFL owners want it to go on as scheduled.
General managers are concerned that, in this current environment, with offseason activities canceled and some teams' facilities closed, there won't be enough time for player physicals, gathering psychological testing, getting further verified information about the players and some teams having to conduct the draft from home.
Count Saints' GM Mickey Loomis among those who believe holding the draft on the April dates is a mistake.
"I'd be personally in favor of delaying the draft, so that we can get some of the work done that our scouts and our personnel people ordinarily do," Loomis said. "And then just the logistics of trying to conduct the draft, with not having access to your draft rooms and your offices, creates a lot of logistic problems.
"This is not a fantasy draft that you conduct out there with ojust a list of things on a piece of paper. There's a lot of work that goes into it to prepare, and there's a lot of work that is done during the draft. Listen, it'll be very, very difficult to conduct that and do it in a way that you're doing justice to the process."
This could be a developing story worth keeping an eye on.