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NFL boldly opts for a mostly pre-pandemic style of entry draft
Glitzy stage, picks and commish in attendance, thousands of fans
winnipegsun.com
Here’s the NFL, trailblazing again at draft time during the pandemic.
Last April, the NFL became the first sports organization to prove a complex, mass-scale event could be held in the midst of the coronavirus crisis.
Safely, virtually.
That is, its 2020 entry draft.
Everyone from commissioner Roger Goodell, to selectors from all 32 teams, to the 255 players picked participated from their homes, via live video-conferencing.
That was last April 23-25. It was the first live sports event conducted anywhere in North America, following the mid-March, society-wide shutdown of almost everything. And despite the screams of criticisms from the hair-trigger finger-wagging, faux-worrying crowd — that the league was being reckless, heartless, thoughtless and yada-yada — the event went off without a hitch.
Everyone loved it, and no one was endangered.
Many expected the NFL would repeat that creative, virtual, all-sports-trend-setting template for its 2021 draft, this coming April 29-May 1. But no.
In another bold move in the midst of the continuing pandemic, the league on Monday announced that, instead, its 86th entry draft will be held mostly in a business-as-usual manner.
Pre-pandemic usual.
Indeed, the 2021 NFL Draft will be staged mostly in person, outdoors, in Cleveland, along that Ohio city’s iconic Lake Erie south-shore waterfront, with the main stage in the same area as Cleveland Browns’ FirstEnergy Stadium, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Great Lakes Science Center.
The main viewing theatre will include an “inner circle” where invited guests as well as a fan from each club (designated as its “draft ambassador”) will be seated normally, all of whom must be “fully vaccinated.”
It’ll mostly look and feel like a pre-pandemic draft, both in person and on TV.
Many, if not most, first-round picks on Day 1 will each walk onto a glitzy stage — with lights flashing and music blaring — surely wearing a sterilized ball cap of the team that just selected him.
“We’re excited … to give prospects that moment to walk across the stage, as life-changing as it is,” the league’s executive VP of club business and league events, Peter O’Reilly, said Monday on a conference call with reporters.
What’s more . . .
The usual separate TV-host sets will be built for NFL Network, ESPN and ABC.
NFL legends will be on hand on Day 2 to announce team picks, per usual.
From a safety standpoint, the league said in a statement it will “continue to partner with public officials at the state and local levels,” and all fans attending any draft-associated activities “will be required to wear face coverings and adhere to appropriate physical distancing.”
Free fan events surrounding the lakefront draft stages are being arranged. Even those from outside Cleveland will be permitted to attend, but all details and capacity counts have yet to be determined, O’Reilly said.
“And yes, @nflcommish will be in Cleveland announcing picks from the stage. Bring the boos,” NFL PR man Brian McCarthy tweeted.
New wrinkles include all team talent evaluators and selectors remaining off-site, as in 2020, but not individually isolated in their respective homes. Rather, each team’s personnel can either safely congregate in the draft room at club headquarters, or locally off-site — as the Los Angeles Rams are doing.
Another wrinkle is clubs themselves will announce their own picks on Day 3, for the concluding Rounds 4-7.
Last year from April onward, the NFL took heaps of criticism and grief from those who said it would be irresponsible and unsafe to hold, first, a virtual draft, then a training camp, then an entire un-bubbled season. But the league pulled off each one and safely, all 269 games.
Those NFL models served as bellwether templates for how other sports leagues could continue to function through the early and middle stages of a pandemic, first only virtually, then in-person sans 24/7 bubble.
The league furthermore by season’s end learned so much about physical distancing and mask-wearing — and about COVID-19 testing through its novel, but immensely costly, daily testing program involving all players and team personnel from late July through last month’s Super Bowl — that the governing body of public health in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), published the NFL’s findings, for application across society.
Is it accurate to characterize the league’s decision now — to hold its entry draft mostly in a pre-pandemic, in-person manner — as a mere continuation of a mindset that began with last year’s draft? That is, a calculated, deliberate push to boldly, but responsibly, stage all of its events and games as close to normal as possible, when permissible?
Yeah, pretty much.
O’Reilly touched on this Monday morning.
“Last year the world was shut down, the commissioner was in his basement and everyone was in their home,” O’Reilly said of the 2020 draft. “We did work our way through the year, from training camp and the season that was, and all that we learned, with 1.2 million fans in stadiums and ultimately the Super Bowl with 25,000 fans in there.
“And now as we sit here on the precipice of the draft, we are looking to reflect where society is today … and where we are all going, and showing that we can effectively and safely produce, and bring people together for, large-scale events.”
The league is even trying to organize “a taste of Cleveland” type of partnership with downtown Cleveland restaurants. How normal is that?
“We’ll continue to learn every day as we head over the next five-and-a-half weeks,” O’Reilly said, “and we’ll make sure that we’re doing this in similar (safe) ways as we head through the season, and through the Super Bowl.”
Hmmm.
Given the league’s boundaries-pushing, pandemic-fighting actions of the past 12 months, and given that O’Reilly statement, looks like we can all expect the NFL to attempt to boldly conduct its 2021 season — fans-in-the-stands-wise — as close to normal as possible, too.
