Due to ongoing shelter-in-place orders around the United States, the 2020 NFL draft will be conducted in an entirely virtual manner. Front office executives and scouts won’t be allowed to congregate at team facilities, meaning general managers and personnel directors will be making selections from the privacy of their own homes.
As anyone who has ever participated in a fantasy football draft can attest, unforeseen technical issues have the possibility to threaten the entire endeavor. As such, the NFL considered implementing some sort of “timeout” system that would have alleviated concerns about technical problems, according to Mike Garafolo of NFL.com (video link). While the league doesn’t seem to be putting any formal process into place, the NFL will be flexible if a decision-maker has a “genuine technical breakdown,” a source tells Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk.
Other safeguards are also in place, as Dan Graziano of ESPN.com writes. The NFL will have an ongoing conference call throughout the entirety of the draft, so if a general manager loses internet access, he could simply announce his pick to the league via phone. Teams can also send in their selections via email, per Graziano.
Additionally, the league plans to hold a complete dry run of the draft before the actual event takes place, as Tom Pelissero reported on NFL Network (Twitter link via Bob Condotta of the Seattle Times). Presumably, that exercise will help team officials clear up any questions they may have about technology or the draft’s format.
For those of us watching at home, the presentation of the draft will be a bit different than in recent years. ESPN and NFL Network typically produce their own broadcasts of the draft, but because the NFL Network’s studios in California and New Jersey remain closed, the two networks will run a joint presentation, according to Andrew Marchand of the New York Post.
Guarantee someone’s gonna try to hack the streams. So NFL should be prepared for that.
Excuse me Egon but you said hacking the streams was bad
So does the joint presentation mean it’s going to be on espn? YouTube tv doesn’t have nfl network yet
I would think they air on both networks with the exact same stream but we shall see
Since there’s no hoopla this year, they ought to start the draft at 10:00 AM. Have the first two rounds on day 1, and the last five rounds on day 2.
Y not 3 the first day then 4 the next