The Ringer NFL Show - The NFL Draft As a Television Product | The Ringer NFL Show

Episode Date: April 27, 2020

We analyze the NFL draft as a television show, including Roger Goodell’s front and center performance (1:42). Then, we go through a list of some of the other quirks and best moments from the three-day event (17:10). Finally, we do our best to make sense of the Green Bay Packers’ confounding selection of Utah State quarterback Jordan Love (38:00). Hosts: Riley McAtee and Rodger Sherman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the Ringer NFL show and the Ringer podcast network is brought to you by World Central Kitchen. Their relief team is working across America to safely distribute individually packaged fresh meals and communities that need support. They're now serving tens of thousands of meals daily in some of our biggest cities like New York and L.A. and their launching initiatives across America to deliver fresh, hot meals to hospitals and clinics fighting on the front lines while keeping local restaurants and business as well. You can directly help the heroes in hospitals and clinics who are fighting for us, and you can help keep your local restaurants alive. Please go to the ringer.com slash WCK to donate. We're trying to raise

$250,000. And if you have the means, it's an unbelievably great and useful cause that helps our hospital heroes, emergency workers, and local restaurants. Please give whatever you can. The money goes directly to World Central Kitchen and it's a charitable donation. Once again, that's the ringer.com slash WCK. Hello and welcome to the Ringer NFL show. I'm Riley McKety and joining me today. It's Roger Sherman. Hey, how's it going? The draft happened. We got something resembling sports. It was almost sports. It was like 95% of like a normal sporting event, I think. And then there was some weirdness. But mostly, yeah, I mean, we had a sporting event. That was nice. It was normal. It was almost disappointing how normal it was.

Last week, we did a podcast previewing all of the potential glitches and failures and ways this could go wrong. And I would say for the most part, the draft went smoothly, which was great and also a huge disappointment to me personally. So that's what we're here to do today. We're going to break down kind of the draft as like a television event, how this really unique, some people were calling it a virtual draft or copy chief would tell you it was a real draft that just happened online. It wasn't actually a virtual draft. But, you know, yeah, like this weird kind of like Zoom meeting-esque draft and just kind of how it went from a television perspective and all the other weird quirks and stuff. That's what we're here today to talk about. So let's start with that kind of like 30,000

foot overview. Roger, I like totally agree with you. I think that the draft was basically mostly normal and it like really worked too. It was pretty satisfying. I almost might have preferred it to the draft most years when it feels really overproduced. This one felt almost a little bit more natural even though it should have been super unnatural. Yeah, absolutely. I don't know whether it's just because I've been sitting at home for the last six weeks doing nothing or whether because it was genuinely more entertaining. But I had more fun watching this draft than just about any draft I've ever watched. I made it through most of the 18 hours that it was on TV. I took a brief nap during round six. But other than that, I watched the whole thing. And yeah, it was like,

we got this real glimpse into the, literally the homes. and lives of NFL coaches and general managers and into way more players' houses than normal. And it brought a variety of perspectives, whereas normal, like you said, the draft is overproduced. The NFL likes to show that it can get 200,000 people to stand outdoors in any given city in April.

It's like their biggest flex that they have is that they can get people to gather for a non-football game. And this was, it almost, yeah, it felt like, it was an easier watch than just them bringing out, you know, yet another retired football player to announce another pick on day three. I think for me, too, the draft is already transactional in nature, which is kind of one of the great appeals of like all sports is like finding out where players will move and what will happen, which is why like mock drafts are so popular. It's why people like to create teams in Madden where they change all the players and stuff.

It's why free agency is such a big draw every year and why trades are so covered. And that stuff already to me makes the draft instantly appealing. Like it would be appealing if it was just Adam Schaefter tweeting out the picks every 10 minutes. Which it could be hypothetically. It could be. And, you know, like that would already be interesting to me just to be like, oh, you know, where are these players going? what's happening, what's going on. And kind of all of this other stuff that happens every year is, for me at least, mostly window dressing. It's mostly like, all right, you know, it's nice to watch

when they break down a player on a new team or you have an expert talking about a team fit or, you know, whether a pick was a good value or a bad value or whatever. And then there's a lot of stuff where it's like, you know, they get on stage, they boo Goodell, they do all that. And it's like, all right, I don't actually don't care about that stuff as much. So having Goodell and his basement and getting like the window into like the coach's homes, which I think we can talk about a little more on here because there were some notable ones and into the players' homes and families too. That was actually really cool and like added a lot to the draft to me that you normally don't really get in the same way. I like the spectacle. I agree with you. I think probably the best

way for them to give out the draft information would just be if one day they just gave us all of picks all at once. Like, even the entire fact that it's a thing that's televised live is like weird to me. But I do, I do think that this spectacle in its own way was a little bit more entertaining than the usual, you know, the usual spectacle is a little bit broke. You know, it's the same thing every year and it's always just the NFL trying to tell you how great it is. And this, by their own choice, they weren't allowed to put on the big fest. they always do. I was looking forward to boat draft 2020. I was looking forward to Vegas because I was going to go to Vegas. But, you know, and anytime you get to go to Vegas, like, things are

automatically more exciting. But yeah, the, this, it was, it was almost an improvement on the way things are. But I don't think they're going to stick with it. I don't think they're going to continue to let us, it was just this one of it once in a lifetime thing where they're not going to be able to get 32 coaches and general managers to let you put cameras in their homes next year. No, certainly not. And I think, like, I, you know, I was excited for Vegas, too. And as Goodell told us, that will be happening in 2022, although he initially, he did a very bad job. He initially said 2020. So apparently it was happening right away for a moment there. But so, you know, and I'm into that, because the draft is so glitzy and.

glamorous and also kind of fake that it's a perfect fit for Vegas. It's almost like you might as well just lean so hard into the overproduction of it by taking it to Vegas and having stuff on a boat and there being like a floating raft where the players names are called or whatever it was that they were going to do and have like the Bellagio fountains going. Like that sounds great to me because you're almost self-aware about how kind of ridiculous this all is. But on the other hand, doing the kind of the virtual draft this year, which is the exact opposite of a Vegas draft. really worked for me too, just because it felt in a way almost more intimate than any draft I'd ever seen. The NFL had this moment a few years ago where they realized they used to just always

do the drafted radio city. And then they realized that they could move it around the country and show how many people are going to turn out in Philadelphia, in Dallas. I went a few years ago to Philadelphia, and I was just like, what the hell is this? Why are we all standing outside listening to like draft picks announce over a speaker 700 feet away from me? You know, like, I can't really even hear the picks. There was no internet access because we were all outside. It was so weird. I was like, what, why is, how is this even connected to a draft? Why are we here? What's going on? this year they found that there is a way to have a spectacle without that actual spectacle. And it worked well.

I was disappointed that there were no technical glitches. I was disappointed that we didn't see anything unseemly in anyone's house besides the one second we thought someone was pooping behind Mike Rable the best 10 minutes of the draft when we thought that there could be a pooper or a roke pooper in the Rable residence who didn't close the door. but that turned out to be just a guy wearing light pins and sitting at a very uncomfortable position. Man, how much would we have had to talk about then? I was greatly disappointed with how every opportunity for something ridiculous in so many ways, there were still a few good things, and we'll talk about them.

What was your favorite thing that happened in the draft, the home draft? I will say, I think that just Goodell's performance in general was what was most interesting to me. he uh you know he started off in a suit jacket and a dress shirt he eventually moved to a sweater then he moved to like a sweatshirt and then it was like a t-shirt and then he started like sinking into his chair suddenly you can no longer stand up anymore i know you wrote a little bit about this for the ringer dot com but just his continued exhaustion of having to stand up once every 10 minutes and read a name off of an index card was incredible it's roger goddell is rarely on camera long enough for us to see him break down, you know?

He shows up, he pops up a few times a year, he gives out the trophy at the Super Bowl, you know, he gives a press conference every once in a while, he'll be in a commercial, and he's always very put together and rigid and, you know, the armor never breaks, really. Sometimes he says dumb things, of course, but really he's always very, like, presented very well,

that's his job. He shows up every once in a while and presents. But oh my God, it was just like he was physically breaking from a relatively easy task, the task of not even being on air for 24 hours like Trey Wingo. He was just, you know, they give him a card with a name on it once every five to 10 minutes. I think it's 10 in the first round and then five afterwards. And that was too much for him. And he just like by the end, he like looked worn.

and defeat it. And yeah, he couldn't stand up. You know, he, like, switched from standing up for every pick to sitting in the recliner with M&Ms. And, you know, it's, he's one of the people on Earth that I feel like it's totally okay to laugh at.

I think he knows it, too. Normally I wouldn't make fun of it. He did lean towards being self-aware about it. He was like, yes, please, boo me. You know, ha-ha, I'm eating M&Ms. I'm not sure he knows why we're laughing at him. him. I don't think he gets that. I wouldn't go so far as to say he's self-aware, but he understood that it was a good thing for people to laugh at something and that he was the thing we were going

to laugh at. He, of all the people on earth, the guy who makes $40 million to run the league that naturally just kind of sells itself and progresses through American life as a undefeatable mammoth, that guy we can laugh at. Absolutely. I mean, I think it's funny when he like leans into like the booing and stuff, but then even the way that he does it is so, so stiff and unnatural and bad that then you're not even, you know, you're still like laughing at him. It's not even ever really like laughing with him. It's like still kind of a joke. But I think that he, I think he just doesn't care, you know, I mean, I think it's like, well, like, that's his job. If you're the commissioner

of a major American sports league, your job is to basically take the beating for the owners and be kind of like the punching bag for all criticism, whether that's like serious criticism about the league

or just people having fun booing the commish because he's the commish. You're totally right that he like tried to lean into it but was still so rigid and awkward or he was like, come on guys,

boo a little bit louder. Yeah, every team was the same. It was like, Come on, Kansas City. And it was just so stiff. It was like, man, get this guy a drink. Yeah, I will not be bidding on the opportunity to watch games in Roger Goodell's

basement as they tried to get me to do. That does not seem like it would be a fun, a fun way to spend the Sunday. Not the best. No, definitely not. You should donate money to charity, please, although maybe donated through a service besides the NFL. But so if you want to bid on,

spending a day in Roger Vodal's basement. And, you know, his basement was also just kind of weird. Did you see how many? I think they tried to convince us that he likes football by just putting as many footballs there as possible. Guy has like 30 footballs down there. And he has a lot of items with the NFL logo on it. And I don't get the sense he actually watches football down there.

Although he tried to tell us he did. I would not be surprised if we found out that he just like doesn't really watch football. at all, that he's an executive of like a massive organization or whatever and maybe he just doesn't even really watch that much. The end of the second day, I had been watching

the draft for like six hours and I was sort of like, you know, I can just read about whoever the 107th pick is later, but I really wanted to see how degraded Roger Goodell would get. And like even his dissolution

in the chair from being sitting upright to sort of just like slouching. and being like, ah, with 107th pick. Degrading Roger Goodell, falling apart, deteriorating at a rapid pace, was a highlight of the draft, which is kind of funny. He's never been the highlight of anything for me before. Yeah, I think that that's probably a great way to put it.

The only real highlight that we can recall with Roger Goodell. He also messed up to Vegas moment, too. He not only said 2020, he also got the city around. He said Dallas instead of, Las Vegas. It was like he had two important pieces of information. Charlie, it got zero of that. It was impressive. Very rough. What else besides Goodell's performance, which I think we could talk about a lot longer,

but maybe it's not worth going the entire podcast on, what else stood out to you that was just really good about this draft? We had probably about 100 coaches, general managers, decision makers on camera. One of them made a good joke. And the person who made the good joke, joke was somehow Bill Belichick. He would have been dead last in my ranking of which coach is going to make a quality joke

during this draft. The swapping in the dog to make the pick was really the only time someone was invented. I'm surprised Bill Belichick is a dog lover. I'm surprised he loves anything besides punters. He loves punters a lot and dogs and punters are different. I almost just assumed that that was on accident, that his dog was just sitting there when it cut to it. Dogs will jump into whatever seat you've been sitting in most recently,

but it seemed like he had a sentence. Well, because he gave it the treat afterwards. So I think it was intentional. I believe that he, I firmly believe he intentionally chose to give that dog a treat, to play that joke on the world, and to make it look like a dog was drafting a Division II safety. He did it.

Bill Belichick made a joke. the only other joke he's ever told is when he pretends not to know what Instagram is called and he's used that joke like 70 times doesn't he call it like Facegram or something like that? He just takes different names of social media services that exist like Snapchat and Facebook and then it says like Snapbook or FaceChat

and that he's run with that he's run that joke into the ground over the last nine years ever since Facebook was invented saying Insta-chat or whatever. And this time he got off a genuine gag. Mike Rable's kids tried to get off a gag, and then they were superseded by the previously mentioned rogue potential pooper in the background. But other than that, Bill Belichick somehow stole the entertainment show. The hardest working man in show business, Bill Belichick.

I suspect that we get so few glimpses of him in this type of setting that's hard to say, but I suspect that Belichick is actually self-aware in the way that, like, Roger Goodell maybe wishes he was self-aware or, like, almost thinks he is. I think that Belichick understands that people think he's like a curmudgeon and, you know, is all serious and all business, and we'll just cut any player at any time or whatever. And so he gets like these spots where if he does something with a dog or something, it actually comes across as like really cute and great. Also, part of the pressure is lifted. Tom Brady's not there. anymore. If the Patriots never win a championship ever again, he's still the greatest coach ever.

And he doesn't, I mean, maybe, you know, he can actually make a joke on TV. The other thing is that maybe he's trying to let everyone else see how great it is to spend time at home with your family and to love your dog and to make jokes. And then next year, all the other general managers are going to be, like, loving their families and creating lasting bonds with, their loved ones and Bill Belichick is just going to be grinding, dude, and Bill Belichick is going to have like a leg up on everyone else who finally realize. Because you saw there was a tweet by Ian Rappaport that was like, all the coaches and general managers are now sort of realizing that they don't have to do so

much goddamn work in the run-up to the draft because they did this from home and it worked. And telling you, Bill Belichick is going to seize, he used this opportunity, he made everyone look at his dog and make it. look like he thinks there are things in life other than football. Another trick play by one of the all-time great coaches. So I thought that tweet by Rappaport was really interesting because every year across multiple levels of the sport, college and professional, you get these stories of coaches who are like almost competing to be who can be the hardest worker. You know, it's like guys who will come in every weekend, which one will get to the office at

6 a.m. actually at 5 a.m. actually at 4 or 3 a.m. Some of them will, you'll get stories about where they'll be like sleeping under their desks and they'll be, you know, just grinding tape constantly. And it's like most of these coaches have like kids and like families and like wives and they're like, you know, performatively being like, I work 100 hours a week. Oh, I actually work 110 hours a week. And it's ridiculous. left his kid's birth to work out with Peyton Manning. And it was just like a regular workout. It wasn't like the day before the Super Bowl. Right. It's always played off as like a good thing. It's always like, oh, wow. Like what a hard worker. We like salute this dude for, you know, like leaving in the middle of his wedding. So you go grind some tape or something. And it's like, this is actually like this sucks. Like maybe we shouldn't really celebrate this because like what the hell? This is like, you know, kind of crazy person behavior. And yeah, I thought it was funny. having some of the coaches being like, wow, like I got to spend, you know, like a few hours

with my kids and my wife and it was great and it was, you know, good. And it was like, yeah, like think about work-life balance. That could be really good for you guys. I mean, I don't know. I thought there was no way in how they would have their wives and kids in the rooms with them when they were drafting. I thought we were going to be looking into these, you know, men bunkered down with no distractions. And they were kind of just hanging out with their families and enjoying it. I think they've finally been forced to spend time. with their families and find out that they're wonderful people to be harassed after, after never having met their 11-year-old child.

Like, wow, this kid looks like me and has interesting opinions. Yeah, that was my thought, too. That was really, like, charming and humanizing for a lot of these coaches who, my inclination would have been, I would have figured that, yeah, they'd be bunkered down in a cave showing how serious they are with, like, lists of players around them, you know, maybe, like, with yarn pinned to, like, cork-bor. words, it's like attaching different names to other names, just kind of who could do the most ridiculous stuff. But actually it was mostly like they put on an image of being like, you know,

like family men kind of. And I don't know, it worked for me. Yeah, we also got all these warnings about how difficult the draft was and how they'd be like really struggling to, you know, focus on things. And then it turned out it was just normal. And then we also had like all of the great houses and stuff. We had, you know, from like, we haven't, talked about Cliff yet. We haven't talked about... Cliff, who's in like a, you know, a basically like parasite-esque style mansion house in Arizona somewhere, all the way to Joe Judge, who looked like he was just in the corner of a completely blank room with like one computer in front of him. I thought that it was

great. It said a lot about what these guys prioritize and what their different personalities are, just based on the room that they choose to do their drafting in. Cliff is actually like kind of an interesting case study there because like he's, I, think there he's i think the one unmarried NFL coach basically every football coach gets married to like their high school sweetheart or something like that and then they're like okay we're married i'm the coach i'm going to go work 90 hours a week and we'll i'll see you again when i get fired but cliff has been a bachelor his entire life prominently like that's like a thing people know about him he uh right yeah he famously said that

He does better recruiting with the moms of players at Texas Tech because he's like a good-looking 36-year-old guy at the time. And yet, he had no family members distracting him, no wife around, no kids. He was just in his, like, very beautiful and possibly terrifying house by himself, hammering out those picks. And honestly, had one of the best drafts of anybody. so possibly proves the point that you, that having a family is a negative for a coach. It was kind of posed though too. You know,

he was like sitting on the couch with his feet up, dressed in like very kind of, you know, fashionable clothes and everything. He's got the window behind him showing like his yard with the very modern, like landscaping work that's out there. He's got the TV.

He's kind of chilling. I mean, it almost could be like, I almost expected him to turn toward the camera and find out that it was all an ad for Jim Beam or something. And I don't know. It was like funny the way that like some coaches like Cliff put in time and effort into like how they wanted to be viewed on this live stream and other people set up like a folding table in a blank room and we're like, all right, and I have a chair here. I guess I'm ready to draft. I don't know. That to me was

also a highlight just because like this tells you so much about the different coaches and what they prioritized, just focusing on their rooms. Yeah, there was a, there was a story a couple years ago. Just, just I wanted to clarify on this Okay, yeah. He's, there are other unmarried coaches in the NFL, Sean McVeigh is one, but he

has a girlfriend. There was a story a couple years ago where 61 of the 64 power five college football coaches were married and two of them were divorced and the other was Cliff. So he's basically like the only unmarried football coach. And he lives in the other house I saw someone compare it to was the 50 Shades

of Grey House. I haven't seen 50 Shades of Gray. But yeah, that's what we're going. There's definitely someone, either Parasite or 50 Shades of Gray means that someone else is in his house and we weren't able to see them. Yeah. What else can we talk about? The other thing, I feel like one of the other notable moments that came out of this draft as far as the players go, because we also got the look in with them. And usually they had, I think, a few more people around them than the coaches, although the coaches did have their family. Yeah, you know, all their parents. There was a lot of social distancing. There was a lot of social distancing. Right. So we didn't, it would have been cool if the draft had been done this way,

but there wasn't so much social distancing that you would have had, you know, like 50 people in a house, like a player's entire family. And that didn't always happen. Usually it was only a few people. There were still like 8 to 10. I think more than we're supposed to be there. Yeah, I think some people got away with bending the rules a little bit. There were agents. You would see there was one due to the background who is not a member of the family and you're like, some people you definitely don't live with for sure. Has this agent been quarantining in this guy's house or are we breaking some rules out here? No one was, no one's stitching though on the happiest day of someone's life that, oh God, why did you let your agent into your home? So, but then

there was this moment where C.D. Lamb grabbed the cell phone out of, I guess, his girlfriend's hand, I think it was. That kind of like went viral. And I sort of felt bad for the guy because it's like, that could, that might have been like a misunderstanding or who knows what happened there. But it kind of like immediately blew up on Twitter and was like, oh boy, this became a big thing. The two big viral moments of the draft were the cell phone snatch and the, when Isaiah Wilson's mom sort of forced Isaiah, Wilson's girlfriend to stop hugging him and swooped in. That was the other one. So the other thing was normally you get like they hug their families.

At the NFL drafts, they hug their families, they go up on the stage and they shake hands and then they do an interview. But we didn't really get any interviews with anybody. They interviewed Joe Burroughs. So we basically have our entire opinion of these players based off of these eight second snippets of what happened when they celebrated. and it took a cell phone snatch or a mom hating a girlfriend to really break through. Yeah. And I don't know. It's just kind of indicative of how like one of these eight second snapshots that you're talking about can really color the view of a player in the minds of a lot of fans, you know, because we get so little of them or what we get goes through so many layers

of sort of vetting or reporting or whatever that it's very. produced and not necessarily authentic or genuine or real. So then you get something like a camera in a person's home and it can catch them at like a bad moment where it looks like they're like snatching a phone out of someone's hands or just like shoving somebody away or whatever. And it's kind of like, oh, this is like pretty dicey. And you just put a camera on someone's home. Like you don't know what you're going to catch. I think it ended up being pretty benign. Listen, you got it. Yeah, I don't think it's going to like tank anyone's career or whatever. But I was just thinking about it in the moment like, oh boy. When you're a.

about to be drafted by an NFL team, you have to have the phone. The NFL team could call you. Was it pre or put? I don't, I don't remember the details of the phone snatch. I'm not sure either if it came pre or post because then there was also, there was sometimes some delay too. Like, you know, you might find out on Twitter, but then that doesn't necessarily mean the prospect is found out or perhaps they found out before on Twitter, but that's not when it was announced on TV. So I don't know. Sometimes it's unclear the way the information is traveling. I'm glad C.D. Lamb has good hands. It will serve him well in the NFL. Definitely. And I'm glad Isaiah's Wilson's bomb taught him how to block. And then the other thing that that's hilarious,

the other thing that I wanted to talk about, this is something you noticed, Roger, behind Goodell on his, kind of next to his TV, is this bobblehead that was moving throughout the draft. Did you ever find out what the story was there or what was happening with that? No, I didn't. So I tweeted about this. Yeah, there was, it was sort of a, I couldn't tell whether it was supposed to be like an Easter egg that they did intentionally that we were supposed to notice. But yeah, the bobblehead behind Roger Goodell kept moving in between the picks. And the NFLPR guy whose Twitter account is at NFLPR guy, like hit me with one of those like tweets that's just like the eyeballs.

emoji. So that could mean anything. Which makes it always implies that there's something brewing that's more interesting. And then they never explained it. So I just think Roger Goodell is getting up there and playing with his dicka and moving around. Either that or Roger Goodell's house is haunted by a little mini dicka and it's going to kill him. It's just so bizarre though.

Because it was like every shot, it just, you know, like the camera goes and it comes back and then the thing has just moved a little bit. And it didn't move in any meaningful way. just got like turned 20 degrees and then it got turned back and then it moved two inches over and it's like what the hell it did look like Roger Goodell was so exhausted that you don't think that he would be getting up in between picks to go adjust it it really looked like he was down for the count in that chair it's a it doesn't mean anything either you know it's not like it's a it's like a cool little like there was some kind of like meaning there like if they've been

changing out the bobblehead for like a different player based on the team he was announcing or something i'd be like okay i get it's a cool little little like there's like the little Easter egg there. I get what they're going for. This was just the same bobblehead, just moving slightly. So what was the point? It's one of the great mysteries. We'll never learn the mystery of the Dicca. And someone was moving it, though. Someday, 30 years, it's going to go up there in the great NFL mysteries. Did Deskatch it who moved the bobblehead? Yeah, I'm sure we'll be talking about this for for decades. Yeah, this is the big story of the Cliff Kingberry's house, Bill Belichick's dog, and the night of the living bobblehead.

Hey, it's Bill Simmons. I wanted to tell you about a new podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network that we are launching this week. It's called TV concierge. It's only available on Spotify. These are 12 to 15-minute mini-podcasts that review the latest TV shows streaming on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBO, Showtime, FX, Apple TV, wherever else. We'll preview new shows that are launching.

We'll break down the biggest shows that just. launch. We'll review the biggest binge watch seasons that drop as they happen. On Monday, we're launching three of these, all mini pods. You can listen to one. You can listen to all three. It's up to you. It's our new TV concierge podcast from the Ringer podcast network. Think of it like a little bit of a playlist. Pick and choose the ones you want to listen to. It's available only on Spotify. I think the other thing kind of for a hard pivot here that we have to talk about when we talk about this draft as a television product and how it worked for TV audiences was the level of tragedy that was just focused on. It seemed like almost every prospect or maybe every third prospect.

You know, ESPN was talking about personal things that happened in their lives, family members dying, people getting sick, just over and over all of these tragedies. And it really felt a little overdone to me. I mean, yeah, what was up with it? it feels like in the past, if someone had had a tragic story, they would let the player tell us an interviewer. I've seen players go on stage with a picture of someone in their family who passed away. But it was weird how every pick ESPN shows, okay, this person's having the happiest moment of their life.

Now we're going to put on slightly different sadder music. And Tray Wingo is going to tell us about the saddest thing ever to happen to them. It felt like an intentional choice. And I don't know why ESPN thought that was the right moment or the right way to introduce us to these players. They put up the graphic about T. Higgins' mom having a drug addiction. Yeah, that one really stood out to me too. And they ended up apologizing for that. It's just I get that you're trying to sort of shape the start of someone's life.

And in many ways, I'm sure those tragedies have shaped these players. but it feels like something you'd want to tell them. And over and over again, they chose not to interview the players or ask them about it or give them the opportunity to voice it. We just got sort of Trey Wingo telling us, by the way, this guy's family passed away in some accident. And then moving on to show us his tape

of how he played against Georgia in the SEC championship game. And it's like, you can't segue way from telling us the guy's stats to telling us about his parents dying to telling us his 40 time and just have it smoothly run in like that. I would say ESPN nailed this draft in almost every way. I don't know why they felt it was so necessary to exploit the tragedy. I've never seen a draft where they've done that before. It's not the first draft for players have had family histories. Yeah, I agree with you. I think it's mostly an issue of presentation and maybe also of just the number of tragedies that they highlighted. It's like if you're going to have a sit-down

interview with the player, with members of his family, and you do kind of the reporting and the work to let him tell this story about what motivates him on the football field and what has helped propel his success, that's one thing. That can be done in a very, very good way, I think. And often, I think, does help humanize the players, which is really important because these guys are more than just football players, they're people. But when it's something that's just wedged in on a graphic that also tells the players like 40 time and their vertical jump and how many yards they accumulated in their college career or whatever, that no longer feels appropriate to me. And I would hope that ESPN at least probably cleared with the players beforehand that they were going to tell this. stuff and kind of ask them. I hope they didn't just do a bunch of research and then throw it in there without talking to the players first because, you know, some of that stuff was deeply personal

in a way that I just don't think needed to be shared publicly, especially on draft night when it's like one of these guys, you know, one of the best moments of their life, basically, that they're going to want to go back and relive. And we haven't heard of any prospects, at least I haven't seen any that have said, you know, wow, this was inappropriate and like flamiest, you know, on Twitter. That hasn't happened. So perhaps it was. all cleared in advance, but in general, it's like, I don't know, maybe don't lean so heavily into that stuff. And when you do lean into it, make sure you're doing it the justice that kind of deserves instead of just throwing it in there for every prospect that you can find it

on. Yeah, I hope that if I ever got drafted into the NFL, which at this point is not seeming likely, they are just saying which of my family members have died. Don't give up hope, Raj, man. You got to, you know, just keep training, keep grinding, keep working. You'll get there. Keep a lot of teams need podcasters these days. Yeah. I mean, that's probably unironically true. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of teams have podcasts.

And then as far as like other weird stuff, I feel like we've covered everything from like a TV angle, unless I'm forgetting anything. It was a lot of TV. I watched 20 hours of TV. I watched 20 hours of TV. I watched like, I could have gotten through like half of the Sopranos, and I still have half of the Sopranos to go. So that was a sacrifice I made. And it broke all of the records, too, which probably has more to do with coronavirus and everything.

We're all at home and there was no, you know, normally the NFL draft is held on a date at the NBA playoffs are also happening. Right. And it goes back to that what we were talking about, where the NFL has started to move cities just to show how they can get people. I mean, it's a flex in every regard, too. To break the draft up into three days is completely ridiculous for any other sport. And yet the NFL, if there had been playoff basketball on, probably would have out drew it anyways. And without playoff basketball and anything else on, it just smashed every record and had like half of America watching. It's really... I can't believe the NFL pulled it off.

I was so ready for something to go wrong. I know, me too. I was waiting for, I talked a lot about Dave Gettleman sending out a, you know, sending out malware by accident by clicking something wrong on Facebook. And he didn't do it. He got through the draft without clicking the wrong button. I can't believe it. And even in like the actual draft as far as things going wrong, I think some of the stuff that we'd highlighted on our preview pod, you know,

it didn't end up happening. It was a pretty dull, yeah. Two goes over Herbert. No one takes a running back until pick 32. No trades really in the first half of the first round. I think the first one was at 14 or 15 when the Buccaneers traded up. And it wasn't particularly eventful. The first five picks, the first six picks really were all what you expected going in.

Yeah, chalk until the Derek Brown pick by the Panthers. I think if you had to highlight one pick that stood out, I think we all know which one it would be as a weirdo pick. Yeah, I think it's the Packers trading up for Jordan Love, I think is what you're hinting at. Yes, no one is quite sure why you would trade up for Jordan Love, even if your quarterback isn't Aaron Rogers. Yeah, I did not love this pick, especially given that I feel like the Packers are just a few pieces away, and one of those pieces is probably a wide receiver, and this was probably the best draft for wide receivers ever. it broke the record for the number of wide receivers to go in the first two rounds of the draft.

So it was a deep, deep wide receiver class. And the Packers actually didn't draft a single wide receiver. And then not only they take Jordan Love, they took a kind of two down between the tackles running back with their second round pick. And with their third round pick, they drafted a tight end who Matt Lafleur came out after. And was like, yeah, we think we're going to convert this guy to full back. And it was like, so you drafted a backup quarterback, a two down running back when you have Aaron Jones. and a fullback with your first three picks. That's not a team that's gearing up for a Super Bowl run,

even though I feel like the Packers are kind of like knocking on the door of the Super Bowl. Maybe they aren't anymore. And then Mike McCarthy goes and gets C.D. Lamb with the Cowboys. I think the one explanation for the Packers draft is they're just trying to piss off Aaron Rogers to motivate him. But that did not work with Mike McCarthy. That's the only possible explanation.

I actually kind of like that because one of my sort of like critiques of Aaron Rogers over the past few years is he's been a little bit too conservative. He throws too many balls away. He seems to on the field worry a little bit too much about his interception rate. He's at an unbelievably low number of interceptions for the last couple of years, but hasn't had enough big plays to kind of make up for that. And I'm a person who views quarterback says it's more important to make the big play than it is to avoid interceptions at all times. Like interceptions are kind of, people think that they're a bigger mistake than they actually are. Now, granted, I don't want a quarterback to be

James Winston, but I think Rogers could be a lot more aggressive. And I don't know, man, if you draft Jordan Love and it lights a fire under Rogers, maybe that is better than a receiver. At least I hope so. I'd love to get, like, vintage Rogers back. Plus, there's the good old Riley McAtee

quarterback drafting guide says, you know, either have to be a hitter or a bust. And a guy who threw 17 interceptions, at his last college season. A guy who threw more interceptions at his last college season than Aaron Rogers did in his entire career at Cal.

You know, that guy could be a bus, which would set the Packers up nicely in 2020. Love is at least a high-ceiling, low-floor quarterback. True. The problem is, is you won't get to play him while he's on his rookie contract

because when he's most valuable. Aaron Rogers is very, very highly paid because he's good. It's just such a misunderstanding. It feels like they just wanted to recreate the Aaron Rogers thing that happened in 2005, where they already had Brett Farr, but they got Aaron Rogers anyway. But the thing is Aaron Rogers is a guy who fell, who could have been some thought he might get drafted over Alex Smith that year,

and he fell all the way to 26. And instead, the Packers traded up for a guy who sucks, which you got the, you did the thing that you tried to recreate the thing, but in spirit, none of it is the same. at all. And I don't think any other team besides the Packers would have done something like that because they already have that idea that this is something that might work and their fans might accept it. But they just didn't get any of the details right. And I feel like the details of Aaron Rogers were really important to why it was an acceptable decision. I'm actually writing

a little bit about this for The Ringer for Tuesday. The other thing that's very different about those situations. You're so right about Rogers falling is that Farrve had kind of not really fully denied that he was considering retirement for a few years leading up to the Packers making that pick. Whereas Rogers has been adamant that he wants to play like he's not quite Brady level like, oh, when I'm 45 or whatever, but he clearly still thinks he has a lot of his career left. He's not toying with retirement. So there's not like this uncertainty factor about whether he'll come back or not or when you'll need a new quarterback. You know that you have Rogers under contract for the next two or three years. You know he's highly paid. You know you can't get out of the deal.

And why would you want to anyways? Because even if he's not a world destroyer like he was, you know, five or six years ago, he's still a pretty above average quarterback. Definitely somebody you can build around a win with. So those details are very important. The Packers should be trying to win the Super Bowl with the quarterback they have. And I just, I hate that Jordan love pick. Maybe I'll be proven wrong one day. and they'll get the last laugh again, but it's kind of like trying to catch lightning in a bottle twice. It's going to be very hard.

Aaron Rogers, very good. George Love. Right. That's the other thing, too. Yeah, Rogers was like a top, top tier prospect coming out of Cal. Obviously, I love him because I'm a Cal grad, so, you know, I didn't thought that Rogers was great stuff, but, man, Jordan Love, it's not quite the same.

Did not one of the best quarter of, of the Mountain West last year. All right. I think that's a good note for us to end it on. This has been The Ringer NFL show. I'm Riley McAtee. That's Roger Sherman. Bobby Wagner is our producer today. I don't know when will be back, Roger, but hopefully we are back. We can keep talking about all the weird stuff in the NFL because it just keeps delivering.

Although this was distressingly normal. Very sad. Thanks, Raj.