NFL Draft 2020: Biggest winners and losers
By Phil Poling
Some teams drastically improved during the 2020 NFL Draft, but there are question marks surrounding others. Who were the draft’s biggest winners and losers?
The 2020 NFL Draft did a plethora of things for an array of folks. The NFL, whether good or bad for the league, learned that virtual drafts can be successful. They set viewership-records during the first and second rounds, averaging 11.6 million viewers — a 37 percent increase from a season ago.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell made out like a bandit, too. He still received boos from the virtual fans staring at the back of his head (they were on a screen behind him), but it just didn’t cut the same as it would’ve in-person. The commish being drowned-out by boos while trying to welcome everybody to the draft? That’s almost the best part of the weekend!
It wasn’t a grand weekend for everybody, though. It almost felt like the ESPN broadcast attempted to make the viewers sad. Why, after nearly every pick, did I have to hear about the saddest moment of a draftee’s childhood? You didn’t even tell us his position yet!
To go along with that, I learned nearly as much about a handful of prospects’ family members as I did about the actual player being drafted. It’s interesting that your father and uncle both played D-I football and one made it to the NFL. But your little brother playing football? Your mom playing tennis? Your cousin playing rugby? I understand human-interest stories, but those shouldn’t have been the first talking point. A huge L.
It seemed like the 2020 NFL Draft wasn’t ever going to get here. And now it’s over already. But just like we discussed what would happen at the draft, now it’s time to go over what actually happened.
Who were the biggest winners and losers? We’ll start with the latter.