After focusing on tragedy, NFL Draft seeks to change tone

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Follow our live coverage of the 2023 NFL Draft.

The NFL Draft is a pinnacle for many players, most of whom have dreamed for years of hearing their names called out by commissioner Roger Goodell in front of millions of viewers.

But in 2020, as players celebrated their rise to the professional ranks, the show zoomed in on their personal tragedies.

In a widely condemned case, as Clemson University wide receiver Tee Higgins was picked 33rd overall by the Cincinnati Bengals, he donned the team cap and hugged family and friends who sat next to him in Knoxville, Tennessee. ESPN then showed viewers a graphic that, among other biographical details, shed light on her mother’s drug addiction history.

It was one of many dark cases of what is otherwise a celebratory event enjoyed by millions of football fans on television, but which comes with aspects that can be dehumanizing for the people who should be part of it. the stars. Viewers learned, for example, that the sister of catcher Jerry Jeudy, whom the Denver Broncos selected 15th overall, died while he was in high school. The package featuring Michael Pittman Jr., a receiver picked 34th by the Indianapolis Colts, revealed his stutter. Trevon Diggs, a cornerback picked 51st by the Dallas Cowboys, reportedly lost his father to heart failure in 2008.

The spotlight on the heartache in the lives of the players selected, most of whom are black, by the producers of the shows broadcast by ESPN and the NFL Network has drawn criticism for wading into so-called tragic porn, an indulgent focus on the personal trauma.

We still think it’s a big deal, acknowledging the hurdles they’ve had to overcome on their journey to the NFL, said Seth Markman, who led ESPN’s draft coverage for 11 years and who apologized to Higgins in 2020. But what we’ve realized this year is that we can probably do a little better balancing and making sure that all the stories aren’t about those obstacles and those backgrounds. Not everyone needs to be some sort of cliché storyteller, if you will, and I think that year it was.

Markman and his NFL Network counterpart Charlie Yook said they’ve also become more aware of repeatedly not focusing on issues in prospects’ lives.

You don’t want everyone crying every time, Yook said. It’s the celebration of a dream come true. This is not a game of gotcha. We want to tell your story and it will be unique to the player.

This is not the only part of the draft process that has been denounced for its indignities. As the NFL last year reassessed the workouts, medical tests and physical measurements players undergo before the draft, Troy Vincent, a league vice president who is black, reportedly told team owners that the combine harvester had the characteristics of a slave market.

We just feel like the overall experience, talking to the players, we can be better in that particular aspect, Vincent said of his meeting with team owners in March 2022. So there was, I would say, a good discussion of what that looks like. , where we could be, bearing in mind that the combination is the players’ first experience with the National Football League, and in that experience there must be dignity.

The scouting combine is an annual audition for 300 college players who are interviewed by team staff, undergo medical exams and perform drills in front of team scouts and coaches. After numerous complaints from agents and players, including some prospects who refused to attend the event, the league is now holding one-day practices, instead of two.

It has simplified the sharing of medical records so players don’t have to be tested multiple times. The interview process was also standardized after complaints about intrusive questions. And last year the league stopped administering the Wonderlic test, a 50-question IQ test long criticized for racial and socioeconomic bias, replacing it with the S2 Cognition test.

Players only undergo one full orthopedic exam, the results of which are presented to all 32 teams, and there is no longer a built-in window for teams to administer their own behavioral assessment tests.

Despite these changes, perhaps the most potentially dehumanizing aspect of the combine remains: players still wear form-fitting outfits during drills as dozens of mostly white scouts assess their physical attributes.

Joby Branion, a longtime player agent, said the process had notes of slavery.

He added: It’s about as dehumanizing at this point in this process as it can get. It’s not about you. It’s about how your body looks.

This year, 17 top prospects will attend the first round of the draft in Kansas City, Mo., on Thursday, with the league paying for airfare and hotels for the players and several family members and friends. There, they’ll wait to hear their names called in the Green Drafts Room, which the NFL says will be more like a living room than the rigid table setup used in years past, when some prospects waited in partitioned rooms.

Markman said the networks have also reduced some of the close-ups of players worrying while waiting for their names to be called.

Yet the evening can quickly and unpredictably turn sour if a player’s name is not called for hours, if at all. The potential for stress and embarrassment is why Brad Blank, a longtime agent who represented former offensive lineman DBrickashaw Ferguson, former defensive lineman Chris Canty and other high profile players , tells his top prospects to skip the draft.

My advice to everyone is: don’t go. Stay home, no pressure, he said.

But some players ignored Blanks’ advice because they viewed the draft, including the ability to wear their new team caps, hold a jersey and kiss Goodell on national television, as a rite of passage. Blank recalled that the mother of one of the top prospects pushed back on his advice.

She castigated me: It’s our time. Went and went to kiss the commissioner, Blank said.

Markman said ESPN started moving away from zooming in on players in the Green Room after 2013, when quarterback Geno Smith went the entire first round without being picked.

Every time someone was picked, the camera was looking at me and it created this perception of negativity that wasn’t there, Smith said.

Realizing that his name was not going to be called, Smith left before the end of the first round so he could celebrate his mother’s birthday. His departure, however, led to suggestions that he was bitter.

As TV producers, we were kind of, this is going to capture the ratings and it’s going to be a juicy story, and make sure we have cameras with these guys, Markman said. Now, we don’t have to show these kind of guys who are supposed to have the best days of their life and it turns into a nightmare. Let’s not take advantage of him in this situation.

Smith, now with the Seattle Seahawks, said he only realized after the fact how he was represented. He hadn’t planned to return the next day, but his mother persuaded him to attend.

When the Jets drafted Smith in the second round with the 39th overall pick, he visibly expired as cameras followed him to shake hands with Goodell and his voice cracked as he described his relief in an interview.

After Smith saw quarterback Malik Willis, a projected first-rounder, fall to the Tennessee Titans in the third round last year, he called to reassure him. Smith also said he told Lamar Jackson, who was the last player in the green room before the Ravens selected him with the final first-round pick in 2018, that he should have gone higher. I texted him, make them pay.

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