We are incredibly fortunate that a few remnants of our sports culture have persisted through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chief among them, the NFL draft is set to take place April 23 completely online and remote, requiring team officials to be isolated from one another and somehow still make informed decisions for their teams’ futures. This will include draft day trades, countless video chat delays, and championship hopes hanging in the balance.
Count me among the skeptical that a bunch of 40-70-year-old men who use terms like “old-school toughness” and “establish the run” unironically as people that will suffer from increased reliance on technology.
Of course, some teams are going to be better prepared than others but watching millionaire team executives royally screw up will always be more fun than watching them boringly select a sturdy left tackle with leadership qualities. The only question is, which beleaguered franchises will be outmaneuvered?
Houston Texans
There is low hanging fruit, and then there is calling the Texans a mismanaged front office. Head coach/general manager/out-of-his-depth czar of the franchise Bill O’Brien is the bane of the modern Houston franchise. In less than two years, O’Brien traded away offensive lineman Duane Brown, defensive end Jadeveon Clowney and wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins for a collection of mid-round draft picks, backup linebackers and a past-his-prime running back.
Brown and Hopkins are two of the five best players in franchise history by Pro Football Reference’s metrics, and Clowney is far better than two linebackers who combined for 17 tackles in 2019 and the 2020 third-round pick that Houston got from Seattle for him.
These miscues were all made with every resource available to O’Brien and his staff. It doesn’t take an active imagination to foresee O’Brien forgetting to make a selection or trading quarterback Deshaun Watson to the Patriots (and his former mentor Bill Belichick) as his remaining staff have their screams delayed on video calls in the background. The question is not if the Texans will screw this up, but how badly O’Brien will further kneecap the franchise.
Minnesota Vikings
The Vikings have all the signs of a team stuck between competition and rebuilding. Minnesota is in a sweet spot with a team that is too good to tear down, but far enough from the cream of the crop to compete for the Super Bowl. This can seduce teams into thinking they are one or two hits in the draft from making the leap, which is exactly the kind of thing the Vikings have no recent experience in. It is a strategy to avoid in a year of limited scouting and impeded draft day communication.
After taking seven swings at addressing the secondary since 2015, the Vikings still have glaring holes (or at the most generous, upgradeable deficiencies) at corner and safety opposite Harrison Smith.
Wide receiver Stefon Diggs’ departure leaves Minnesota with even more questions of how to elevate the play of quarterback Kirk Cousins. All the while, the brutal fact remains that the Green Bay Packers are firmly two or three wins better than Minnesota before any transactions are even made.
The Vikings are not even the best team in their own division, yet stalwarts on veteran contracts like Cousins and linebackers Anthony Barr and Eric Kendricks push general manager Rick Spielman to act like this team is close to contending.
The draft is a terrible time to be desperate, and extenuating circumstances make this year a terrible time to take any risk at all. Teams have less information on players who didn’t get a combine or pro days. No in-person draft war rooms will make it difficult for trade-ups to occur unimpeded. This is the year to play conservatively, which the Vikings simply cannot afford to do.
Expect Minnesota to either get fleeced in a draft-day trade or reach egregiously on a “sleeper star” that turns out to be a bust that could have been avoided in normal years with more information.
Las Vegas Raiders
Despite spending 17 of Las Vegas’s 27 draft picks on defense during head coach Jon Gruden’s tenure, the Raiders sank to the bottom third of the NFL’s defensive units last year. With two mid-first round picks and five in the top 100, the Raiders would project to be one of the draft’s bigger movers in regular years. This year’s draft is well-balanced in a way that could fit many of the Raiders’ needs in perfect circumstances.
Obviously, there will be plenty of additional roadblocks to a perfect draft this year. The Raiders have a firebrand coach and an unproven general manager in Mike Mayock who could very well wake up on draft day and decide that franchise quarterback Derek Carr is not good enough to keep them from taking Utah State quarterback Jordan Love at the 12th or 19th overall pick. Conventional wisdom says the Raiders have bigger needs like a wide receiver and the secondary in a historically talented class of wide-outs, but any franchise that employs Gruden is using conventional wisdom sparingly.
In what would be an entertaining draft year under normal circumstances, Mayock and Gruden are the wild cards to watch in an all-virtual draft. With reduced staff and communication, two guys who have managed to fuel the Antonio Brown saga and trade Khalil Mack and Amari Cooper, the team’s best first-round picks since 2003, in consecutive years are bound to cause some havoc.
We may be starved for any form of entertainment, but you can count on Jon Gruden to bring football fans the sweet relief of content once draft day comes around.
Jonah Baker can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @jonahpbaker