There's a strange vibe in Cleveland this week. The vibe is strange because there's seemingly no buzz at all when it comes to the NFL Draft. It's not normal, because as Emmett Golden of ESPN Cleveland put it, the Draft has normally been the Browns' Super Bowl. But since they're one of eight teams that will enter the NFL Draft without a first round pick, the interest is limited this year.
"The funny thing is we're talking about how there's no juice at all with the draft this year," said Golden. "It's very weird for us. We're mostly just addressing the elephant in the room, which always goes to Deshaun Watson and Baker Mayfield."
It's an interesting question to ponder: How does a host approach the NFL Draft when the local team doesn't have a first round pick? The answers differ depending on the city. David Haugh, co-host of Mully and Haugh on 670 The Score in Chicago, is still all-in on draft talk, even though the Bears won't be picking a player until the second round.
"Inside Chicago, it's a given that the draft is a big deal," He said. "We treat the draft the same every year. Last year when they had a mid-first round pick we treated it like a big deal and this year we're treating it like a big deal. They have two second round picks, but we started our draft countdown last Tuesday."
It's very common for stations to host live shows at a local bar or restaurant on NFL Draft night. In fact, those events are sometimes the biggest of the year for a station. There's nothing like doing a live show, the local team picking a player and hearing the fans go absolutely crazy in the background while the hosts are on the air. For my money, it's one of the sweetest sounds in sports radio. But it's difficult to build up the event when the local team doesn't have the excitement of picking a player on the first night.
104.3 The Fan in Denver always hosts a huge event on the first night of the NFL Draft. So does ESPN Cleveland. But how will those two stations approach the biggest night of the offseason with no first round picks to celebrate or criticize?
"We're actually doing a live show anyway," said Darren McKee, co-host of The Drive on 104.3 The Fan in Denver. "These shows get sold way ahead of time. We're committed to it, but it's highly unusual for us. I think it's been 15 years I've been doing NFL Draft coverage for The Fan, something like that. There was a year they dropped out of the first round, but we thought they had a first round pick the whole day and then they dropped out and chose Derek Wolfe. That was disappointing, but this time we know what's going on ahead of time. For us, in all honesty, it's been all about the buildup and not the night of."
"Typically we have the biggest, best event in the world," said Golden "I always say that about our draft night coverage. It's at a concert venue. It's full of people and we're on stage doing our show. There's screams everywhere. We do it how it should be done. This year, we're not doing anything on Thursday. There's just nothing there. I think when the Browns traded their first round pick for Odell Beckham the turnout was still decent, but not like it was in previous years. We're the home of the Browns, so we're going to let the Cleveland Browns Radio Network take care of things. And then on Friday, we're not on-site anywhere, but all of our hosts will be on until late in the evening."
NFL Draft coverage is more than just about the first night. Hosts will start draft previews several days in advance to help listeners get familiar with the options that could happen when Roger Goodell approaches the podium to read the name on the card.
So what does content look like without a first round pick to discuss? Golden has the luxury of talking about Watson and Mayfield, so he doesn't necessarily need draft coverage to help fuel his content, but that's not the case for the other seven cities without a pick on Thursday night.
"The biggest thing we've been doing is bringing up names that we normally wouldn't talk about. We've been digging deep," McKee said. "For example, we have Cecil Lammey, who's our local draft expert. We have a bit with Cecil where we say, tell us why a guy matters. And we have the NFL music and all the excitement. Trust me, these are names nobody is really talking about, but we feel it's important to get those names out there. Tyler Polumbus, who played in the NFL for eight years, he'll give us his top three names we should look for in the second round. So we are playing it up as the second round is just as big as the first round. We recognize the draft still matters."
"We've been doing projections of other picks that have happened at 64, like DK Metcalf and we look at any angle to hype it up," continued McKee. "For example, Trey McBride went to Colorado State and he was, at one point, a first round projection, and we saw a mock where he was taken at 64. So we got him on the phone for an interview."
"Every year on the Mully and Haugh Show, we do a position a day and we'll do a breakdown that position in terms of overall strengths," said Haugh. "We'll do what the Bears need, who our favorite sleeper pick is and we'll talk about how their approach has influenced this year's draft. We do that with every position and go through them day-by-day and take a 20-minute segment. We started that 10 days before the draft to get through every position.
"When Thursday rolls around, even though the Bears don't have a draft pick that night, they could move into the first round and we'll treat it like, frankly, every NFL city should treat the draft, which is one of the biggest days of the year."
Of course, if there's nothing else, you can always look at what the division rivals will do with their first round picks.
"Sports is like politics, it's all local," Haugh said. "We'll talk about the Bears pick in the second round, but as we talked about today, by the time they pick, there will have been six players that have entered the division. You definitely look at who the Lions pick and to see if Aidan Hutchinson drops to Detroit at 2 and then what that means for the Bears tackle position, because they're unsettled at left and right tackle. You're curious if the Packers are going to get their wide receiver that's going to mesh perfectly with Aaron Rodgers. Absolutely, you are preoccupied first with what the Bears are doing, second priority is what the division Is doing. And then you take a picture approach. In that order."
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