We all know there's a significant chance that there will be no NFL season, and it's highly unlikely there will be any offseason program or a meaningful training camp. It's much more likely things return to something like normal for 2021.
I started wondering if some teams might opt out of the 2020 draft and flip picks for 2021 and 2022. Then I heard Mike Florio's interview with Moose & Maggie where he raised this idea as well, especially for the later rounds, since there's less opportunity to scout and interview Day 3 prospects.
On the other hand, there's also a very good chance there will be no NCAA Football in 2020, either, so the draft pool will be peculiar next year. Everybody will have a year of eligibility left, a lot of players will opt to return rather than try to go into the draft without having played for a year. The knock-on effect of that could be a very loaded 2022 draft, where it'd be great to have extra picks. Or maybe underclassmen stay in school rather than risk being undrafted or drafted later than their performance would normally dictate.
It's a big bet to make either way. Thoughts?
Another consequence is the lack of pro days -- puts premium on team's scouting for this draft.
Good luck to everyone in the tri state area I feel you are more at risk than me in rural NH. Stay safe
NFL Draft gets pushed back. Then as it becomes clear that covid-19 is going to wipe out football in 2020, the draft is cancelled for this year.
When sports returns in 2021, all the NCAA players that were draft eligible in 2020 go into the 2021 draft, along with all the players eligible that year. In other words... two years of eligible players in one draft in 2021.
NFL Draft gets pushed back. Then as it becomes clear that covid-19 is going to wipe out football in 2020, the draft is cancelled for this year.
When sports returns in 2021, all the NCAA players that were draft eligible in 2020 go into the 2021 draft, along with all the players eligible that year. In other words... two years of eligible players in one draft in 2021.
One more kid: Patrick Surtain jr.
😆
Why would teams want more draft picks for a draft that may not occur OR a draft where they can't evaluate players? At least with the current draft you have a normal evaluation period.
This thing is incredibly, incredibly contagious. Because it's a "novel" virus, there's no natural immunity to it in anyone, as far as any studies have shown. If you let it circulate without countermeasures, you are talking about some crazy % of the population getting it — above 50%. Maybe way above 50%.
The 1918 flu was supposed to have infected 1/3 of everyone on Earth, and though there are still a lot of mysteries about that flu, there's a theory that older people who had been exposed to the "Russian Flu" in the 1890s had some resistance to Spanish Flu, and thats why it was more severe with younger people. Flu wasn't new, so some people had some immunity. Coronavirus/SARS is basically a new disease. Nobody's got antibodies to it unless they get it and recover.
Social distancing may flatten the curve, but the moment social distancing ends, the virus will spread again the way it was before. It's not going to "naturally" die down. If nature takes its course, it spreads like crazy. If we go back to having big gatherings, where a single person might infect dozens of others, you're going to see another big spike, and everything will shut down again.
One serious proposal for how to move forward is to wait until the cases have gotten quite low, then to cycle on and off social distancing, maybe a couple of weeks on, a couple of weeks off, or a month on and a month off. There'd still be a lot of cases but we'd avoid the huge spike and the health system would be able to handle the load.