Wrapping up a weird, unique NFL draft
Morning, friends. Hope your team is better now than it was going into the weekend.
We’ll probably never see an NFL draft quite like this one again, but that’s OK: we’ll always have this little gem. More than 55 million people watched at least part of the three-day remote-connected extravaganza, a ridiculous number almost entirely due to the fact that we’re all trapped in our houses.
Even so, what we got was an unexpectedly entertaining weekend, one with drama (who would pick Tua?), humor (did Bill Belichick really let his dog make a pick?), and good old-fashioned football storylines (what the heck happened to Jake Fromm?). Sure, we haven't seen any of these newcomers in action, but let's throw out some snap judgments regardless.
Big winners: Dallas, which didn’t just win the Most Badass Draft Locale award — tough to beat a quarter-billion-dollar yacht — but snagged a whole raft of savvy picks, starting with Oklahoma receiver CeeDee Lamb. Perhaps all those gags about Jerry Jones screwing up Dallas’s drafts all these years weren’t quite on point after all.
San Francisco, just seven minutes from a Super Bowl championship a couple months back — really, we checked — beefed up across the board, via both draft picks and trades, to keep momentum from 2019 alive. The Bucs and Colts picked up pieces to protect their vintage quarterbacks (you did remember that Philip Rivers is now a Colt, right?).
The Broncos stepped up their pursuit of the Chiefs in the AFC West with some offensive help for Drew Lock. The Ravens added speed to an already quick team, and Arizona might just be ready to get out of the NFC West basement at long last.
Man, can the season get here? Please?
On the losing side of the ledger: the Packers, who were one game from the Super Bowl last year and now just ensured two (?) or three (??) years’ worth of quarterback controversies. Picking Jordan Love might — might — ensure the Packers’ Aaron Rodgers succession plan will unfurl seamlessly. But it definitely ensures the team will be among the most closely watched in the league.
On the maybe-genius, maybe-insane front: the Eagles, who used a second-round pick to snare Jalen Hurts while still apparently very satisfied with their current signal-caller, Carson Wentz. Will Philadelphia use Hurts in some kind of Taysom Hill-esque alterna-quarterback formation? Maybe, but is that strategy worth burning such a high pick?
So, aside from three more showings of “The Last Dance,” that’s pretty much all that we’ve got to look forward to, sports-wise, in the foreseeable future. But if we can take some quarantine-related positives out of the draft, it’s this: the NFL attempted something that seemed unlikely at best, foolish at worst, and still stuck the landing.
Granted, this isn’t anything close to real sports, but the league, and its fans, met the challenge with unexpected flexibility and inspiration.
Now, if we can just see how all these rooks perform on the field ...
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter at @jaybusbee or contact him with tips and story ideas at jay.busbee@yahoo.com.
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