The past few weeks have been new ground for the NFL and it will continue to be the case up through the draft and afterward. General Managers and head coaches face some challenges they have not faced before. Namely that they are not allowed to meet with prospects whether at their pro days or at the facility. The coronavirus pandemic has prohibited that.
Without face-to-face meetings, it makes the prospect of drafting a player risky in some instances. Teams have been relegated to meeting with prospects over a video meeting instead. Some old school guys have to judge the character and intelligence of these players remotely which is not the same as sitting in the same room with them. But that’s just the way it is right now.
“As far as the process is concerned in the draft, we’ve spent a lot of time on Zoom,” said Raiders GM Mike Mayock over conference call Tuesday. “Our coaches have done an unbelievable job of preparing information to challenge the college player via Zoom. I don’t even know how many we’ve done so far, but it’s been pretty cool spending up to an hour with each of these individual kids and getting to know them that way.”
What a Zoom call can’t do is examine a player’s health and perhaps eliminate some major concerns about a prospect. Specifically, those players who aren’t considered ‘can’t miss’ top picks. Those lower round players will stay there and the concerns over any recent injuries will remain.
“I think the harder thing about this draft is the medical side of it,” Mayock continued. “Just trying to verify, especially the guys that had surgery after the new year, what kind of rehab they’re having. Are they going to be in time for training camp? Then we get into the whole process of will there be a training camp? Is there any part of the offseason program that won’t be virtual?”
Mayock pointed out that nobody has an advantage in all of this. That everyone is hurt equally. At least in terms of the NFL teams. He also noted that it’s the players who are taken in the lower rounds who will suffer because they are unable to answer some questions that help a team to decide if they are more valuable than their perceived draft stock suggests.
But perhaps Mayock isn’t quite as hurt as some GM’s might be. Perhaps he DOES have a bit of an advantage.
Mayock has been judging draft prospects for some 20 years without the same access and reach as any NFL team. And his NFL draft opinion had become the most respected in the world. His conference calls, like this one which lasted less than a half-hour, would have countless participants and last around two hours.
This is his element. Even while he talks about having five huge whiteboards at his house with 1,000s of magnets of various draft prospects on it and describing it as he’s “sitting in the middle of the 1976 draft room.” He’s used to working like this. The main difference will be the part where he will literally be responsible for making the decision of who to draft when the Raiders are on the clock. Even still, he’s taking it in stride.
“I think you have two decisions to make,” Mayock said. “You can go one of two ways when the NFL decreed what was going to happen here. I think you either embrace it and say, ‘This is pretty freaking cool that we’re just going to watch film and trust who we are as evaluators and trust in who we want in our building.’ Or you can kind of look at it and say, ‘Oh, well I don’t have verified medicals and I don’t have verified 40’s and I don’t have verified height, weight and speed.’ and panic about it. I think we as a team, as a building, we’ve collectively said we’re going to embrace it.
“To be honest with you, for me personally, part of it is kind of what I’ve done for the last 20 years. It truly is. I feel very comfortable sitting at my dining room crunching tape, calling college coaches and looking to get any advantage, any information I can on every guy we’re interested in. . . we’re, as a group, embracing it. I think it’s been a great process.”
I think it’s safe to say, as comfortable as Mayock feels in this process, the Raiders organization, as well as the fans, share that comfort with him at the helm for this.
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