Good morning, Sunshine. Welcome to this week's episode of the Sports Curious Podcast, our Wednesday Wisdom Edition. As you know, we're here every Wednesday with a 20 minute or so podcast talking about taking a deeper dive into something happening in the world of sports that's relevant, that will allow you to make conversation with your colleagues at your dinner table, a networking event on a date, so many options, right? Talking to people next to you in the airplane.
So we're not here, as you know, to make you the next ESPN Sideline reporter. We want to give you these little nuggets. which are great ways to start a conversation, but then lead into something else you really wanna talk about, like travel or food, whatever that might be. And today we're talking about the NFL draft.
Now the NFL has obviously been in the headlines with Travis Kelsey, Taylor Swift, they've had a phenomenal year, but we're gonna see who is the future of the NFL and find out how they get there. That's right, we're going to talk about Detroit, we're going to talk about mystery relevance, the drinking game for the draft, as well as... the sour difference from being a number one to a number 10 pick and the challenges quarterbacks can face when heading into the NFL.
So bringing to the table the brilliant mind behind all the things that happened at last night's game of Sports Curious podcast. Scott Scott, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me once again. It's an honor to be here to talk NFL draft and to get back into our football era after a few months removed from the Superbowl. have spent the last week listening to the Tortured Poets department, Taylor Swift's new album that's out.
So you're clearly in the head space to not only cry because that's very much a large part of that album, but also the alchemy, if you will, the song that she wrote about Travis Kelsey, the alchemy of the sports world and how well and how much people are so excited about football season, but also about the draft. This has been, the draft has... Originally it was really done in New York. It was not a road show. Now it's a road show bringing in millions of dollars into local economies.
And this year it's headed to Detroit. Yeah, prior to 2015, the NFL draft was always in New York. And then what the NFL always does is realizes there's a chance to get, make money and do huge TV ratings. So they kind of made it this traveling roadshow slash circus, going to different cities for each draft. Last year we were in Kansas city that turned out well for Kansas city and economics and also in winning a Superbowl. So now we're going to Detroit this year.
Now Detroit has really revived itself, right? We all can recall probably the Detroit Lions fans with the bags over their heads because the team was so bad. And this last year, they were not. Talk to us about the Lions. The Lions, like you said, have not had a lot of success in the past, but ownership went with Dan Campbell, who's this, I think we've all seen larger than life football guy who just eats, breath, lives football, intense.
And he's just brought this culture to the Lions that they're going to be tough, gritty, they're going to beat you up and they're going to try to win. And they were, you know, a few. Fluke plays away from the Super Bowl this year. Yeah, I mean, I have to say, I was really cheering for them for one angle because I think what's happening in Detroit is so cool.
The fact that you talked a lot about Dan Campbell last season, we talked about how he tried to get an actual lion as a mascot, which was a big fat no, that was not gonna happen. How he drinks like eight shots of espresso in his coffee. Like he's just an intense human who goes out and gets shit done. Minus the lion. And he, well, we have not heard if there won't be a line at the draft yet. That's not been ruled out at this point. So hopefully that we can pull some strings. It could be a target.
So a live line making a draft pick would be tremendous. Now, one of the trends, and this wasn't in our notes, so I don't even know if you know this, but we've had, one of the trends of the draft is they typically bring in special guests. We have had super fans, we have had animals, we have had all kinds of people bringing in draft picks for the team. So as people may know, Roderick Goodell does what, the first two rounds of the draft? He will get booed every time, at least the first round.
He gets booed. every single time he walks to the stage. And so that is something that if you're watching this, don't get cringy and uncomfortable because realistically, he's used to it. The only time he didn't get booed was during COVID when he was doing it from his basement. And I'm sure, I feel like his kids booed him or something at some point. sure they did. And yeah, he's done a very good job embracing the booze at this point. what he does is he's been printing money for the NFL.
So, but typically what they do is they bring in special guests. And so this year we'll look for people like people from the Trevor Project, Special Olympics, American Heart Association, the USA Wheelchair Football League. But it's always been fun to kind of keep an eye out and see these special guests that end up coming in later in the rounds and picking for these teams and announcing the picks. Lots of times you'll probably have Detroit celebrities, maybe Eminem will be there.
Maybe Kid Rock, we could keep an eye out for those two. But what else do we need to know about the draft? Let's talk a little bit about terms from the NFL draft, right? If we're going to be watching this for the first time, because maybe we're Swifty and we're now into football, whatever that might be, maybe we just want to watch some great TV on Thursday nights. What are some of the terms that we all need to know? Talk to me about Mr. Irrelevant first.
So Mr. Relevant, we heard a lot about that this year and maybe some football fans that are new to football, like some Swifties heard it for the first time. Mr. Relevant is the last pick in the draft and it was labeled Mr. Relevant because most likely this player was never going to make the team nor even get a step foot on the field. And we saw the 49ers Brock Purdy as we've discussed before really broken that stereotype. He was Mr. Irrelevant.
He was the first Mr. Irrelevant to ever throw a touchdown pass in a game. Obviously the first Mr. Irrelevant to start in the Super Bowl. So he's really kind of changed the narrative on that specific pick. Irrelevant, Brock Purdy, we just heard a story released a week or so ago that he saved a woman and her dog from a coyote while shooting a John Deere commercial. Off the field, he's very relevant as well.
Yeah, he saved a, it was a, actually a reporter from a news station who happened to be covering his John Deere commercial from afar. And he screamed that there was a coyote behind her when she was walking her dog. I mean, Brock Purdy saves the day, saves the 49ers, saves the dog, all the things. Now, Mr. Relevance, they actually also have a club, right? It's all the Mr. Relevance get together once a year, they do something charitable.
And I think that is really cool that they've embraced that and said, you know what? Screw it, let's go have a good time. We all have this one thing in common, besides obviously football. And that's a very exclusive club to be in. So I'm glad they embraced it. There's a charity aspect as well. I know that for sure. So glad to embrace it. so it's definitely an exclusive club, you know, right? We've never made it, so. Talk to me about free... It's true. I still have a chance.
I did see there was a woman in the WNBA draft who was 5 '5", so I... Minus the basketball talent, I have the height. Yeah, you could maybe be a placeholder. I don't know something. We could find something for you. something, you know. So talk to me about free agency. What are they, when they're talking about free agency, what does that actually mean when it comes to sports and comes to football?
So especially with NFL free agency, like we said, they do a very good job of remaining relevant and grabbing headlines. So free agencies usually, I believe it was in March, March 15th, I think is the league year. And that's where teams could sign free agents, which means their contract goes up with their current team and they can sign with whoever they want. And free agency plays a big factor in who gets drafted. So whoever, whoever they sign the off season obviously impacts who they'll draft.
course, that makes sense. Now you're gonna hear people talking about guaranteed money. Talk to me about what that means. Mm -hmm. Guaranteed money is a huge sticking point in NFL. It used to be that most contracts were not guaranteed, which, you know, given the physical nature of football is not great. So in the recent years, we've seen a lot of trends where players are able to negotiate getting guaranteed money on their contracts.
Most contracts that you see that are reported four years, 140 million or something, probably. 80 to 90 million of that's actually guaranteed. So most NFL contracts that you see on TV are inflated. They're not necessarily real. when you're at this stage of your career, you're just being drafted. There guaranteed money, maybe a very small portion of it could be there, but realistically, how many people, I guess realistically, that's probably not, I had two questions.
It's probably not a lot of guaranteed money built into a rookie contract. It depends where you get drafted. If you're top 10, if you're first round, yes. But after that, there's no guarantee you'll even make the team, so your contract's not going to be that great. So I guess I'll ask that question. If what's the difference between a first number one pick and number 10 pick money wise. The NFL draft, all the, where you're drafted is slotted for how much money you're going to make.
So there's really not much negotiation going on. There is some, the amount of free, the amount of guaranteed money you'll get at certain points can be negotiated. Like this year, Caleb Williams, who was by and far the projected number one pick, didn't even hire an agent. Cause he's not going to bother wasting his money, giving money to an agent. So. This year, the total value of the first pick is about 38 and a half million total over the course of the contract.
And then it kind of goes down by a million dollars almost per pick. So the Jets, Jets are number 10 at this point, unless there's some trades between now and then the number 10 picks saw it to make about 21 million. still not, we're not talking Caitlin Clark $76 ,000 a season type of thing. Granted, football is much more significant demand on your body. We don't need to go down the road, but essentially their careers are much shorter.
Yeah. Yes. And that's, yeah, that's over the course of their rookie contract. So getting that. long is a rookie contract? Is it typically, how long is it? Okay. get drafted. So first rounders, I believe they have four years with an option for a fifth year for the team to pick up a fifth year. Interesting. And beyond that, it just goes down from there.
And the option to pick up a fifth year is big because it can prevent them from entering free agency and secure them at maybe a lower number than they would have to if they renegotiated a whole new contract. That absolutely makes sense. Now, we talked about guaranteed money on the clock when someone says that, you know, Detroit Lions, you're on the clock. Talk to me about that. On the clock, that means that your team's up. They need to make their draft pick. It's their time.
And the amount of time they have for each draft pick depends on the round. So the first round, which is basically a TV show on Thursday, they get 10 minutes in between picks. So once you're on the clock, you have 10 minutes to make your pick. And then from there, Friday, the second round, second and third rounds drops.
Seconds seven minutes when you're on the clock third rounds five minutes and then from there it just goes down and down runs four through six you get five minutes and then the last one last time you'll get four so As it goes on it gets they just want to get it over with at some point It's not the big money. They're not likely to make the team. I do want to ask a question later. So, remind me to come back to Kailin Williams and the agent question. But I want to finish up our terminology.
So, we're going to talk about, someone says something that there's a franchise quarterback or franchise whatever. What does that mean? Frances quarterback is basically what every team's looking for someone that they're going to draft that's going to spend their entire career with the team. When with that team, you know, hopefully lead them to super bowls or talking to someone like your Patrick Mahomes, your Joe burrow, guys like that. Interesting.
Okay. And my last one is, you know, they're obviously going to talk a lot about trades, right? Their teams are going to trade. Talk to me about what, I mean, I know there's a million different ways to trade. What is something we might see when we watch the draft on Thursday? I have a feeling there's going to be a ton of trades early on with teams jumping up to try to get that franchise quarterback. There's going to be a lot of people at reach. Typically they're going to trade future draft picks.
Maybe it depends on where they trade up. It could be a number one next year. You'll see a lot of later round picks around four or five, six people just throw those around like crazy. That's kind of what the assets you're looking at if you're trading up. or five, because they're desperately trying to complete their roster with people that they thought would have been available and are no longer. Makes sense. Yes, if you're at the top of the draft, you're not very good.
So you need as many assets as you can get. That's why you would say back. Yes. really quickly, and we've talked about it before on the podcast, Caleb Williams doesn't have an agent. There are some challenges with that, right? Because he's pretty much the perceived number one pick, there may be not as many challenges as we think. But say he wasn't, and he was gonna go top five, and he's one of five quarterbacks.
And... that agent not only negotiates a contract with a team, but those agents are out there, what do they call it? Not smoke show, something like that about their... Well, smoke shows. Some of them could be smoke shows. We don't, we're not here to judge. Smoke screen. Smoke screen. And we mentioned on our NFL combine podcasts, the period between the combine and the draft is known as smoke screen season. You're going to see rumors about guys come out.
Whether good or bad, and you don't know who's putting those rumors out. It could be a team that wants a quarterback to drop. They could leak information that something happens, you know, or given bad evaluations and leak that and hoping teams above them will pass on them. And an agent will go in and. They'll try to negate those negative stories and put fires out before they ever make it to the public. So that's a big thing that agents will do besides negotiate contracts.
I never really thought about until we really started talking about Caleb Williams. Now, you informed me as we were chatting before we started recording that there is an NFL draft drinking game, which I think is fantastic. There are, yeah, over the years, people have started to establish drinking games based on draft night cliches that you're going to hear, which year to year, they're pretty much always the same.
So if you're over 21 and you'd like to tune into the draft, there is a drinking game that you can play that may not end up very well for you. post this on our social media, Twitter, lastnight's game underscore, lastnight's underscore game, and then lastnight's game on Instagram. But some of these look like if a punter gets drafted. Tell me why punters don't get drafted.
Punters are athletes too, but they don't tend to get drafted high or at all just because there's so many punters out there coming from the college ranks or... use a draft pick for. Okay, we have other ones include if anyone mentions Tom Brady coming out of retirement. If any announcer says a player is a freak athlete, a project, a workhorse, has a high motor, it's a student of the game or does well in the classroom. If you see a Dan Campbell, the Lions head coach impersonator.
And of course, if anyone almost or does knock down Roger Goodell. I better play this with a non -alcoholic drink. Okay, well we will share it for sure on social. Now, the top players in the draft this year especially are our quarterbacks.
Now talk to me about, maybe we leave it all together, I don't know, but talk to me about first of all, when we talked a while back about NFL play calling on one of our podcasts, which is still I think my favorite podcast that we've done because it is so interesting about how the game runs. Can you refresh your screen, I guess? Oh no. I can hear you now. it? Now I can't hear. So let's screw it all up. figure it out.
Okay. So what we talked about on this NFL play calling podcast about how quarterbacks from college can really face a challenge moving into the NFL. And it's really challenging for college quarterbacks to go right in and start in the NFL. Share with our crew a little bit about why that is such a thing. Because it should be they're playing quarterback, right? It is the same position, but it's honestly not the same position going into the pros in college.
They're not necessarily calling plays as much. A lot of the plays are given in from the sidelines with hand signals, or you see these ridiculous signs with SpongeBob and Chuck Norris, which is a play call, you know, they don't really necessarily have to call these long plays. And as we discussed on the Play Calling Podcast, they have an earpiece to their coach.
and their coach signals in the plays and they're usually long, ridiculous words and phrases that they have to get in within, what is it, 15 seconds before it shuts off on the play clock. So a lot of them are just not used to the verbiage and, you know, telling everyone where to go within this verbiage. So that's definitely a challenge that you'll have to look forward to see how they, uh, how they tackle it. And a lot of them.
Also, a lot of them don't go under center, which would be where the center snaps directly to them. You know, like a Peyton Manning or Tom Brady would be under center a lot of them are in shotgun in college. So that's also a huge, huge change for them. who's never played football, what's, because there's more chance of fumbling the ball in her center, is that why or? It's just a different look.
A lot of the college offenses are spread out more with focused on receivers and spreading defenses out where NFL is usually more smash mouth football. things that I didn't know. So talk to me about and let's wrap us up with the top players that we should be keeping an eye out for in the 2024 draft. You're going to hear a lot of quarterbacks. Like you mentioned earlier, the franchise quarterbacks, the huge thing.
And last season we had 66 quarterbacks start a game, which is a kind of a ridiculous number. It's the injuries when there's only 32 teams. That's, that's mind blowing. So this year, everyone's going to try to reach for a quarterback over under quarterbacks. Taking the first round was currently set at four and a half. So it's projected. means you either bet that there's less than four and a half, although I don't know how there's a half, so maybe you can explain that, or over four and a half.
How is there a half of a quarterback? It would have to be under, it would have to be four for you to win that bet. And over would have to be five. You can't take half a quarterback. Yeah. Half a quarterback is not an option. So yeah, you're going to hear a lot of quarterbacks. Not yet. Not yet. We'll see, I don't know if the guaranteed money would be on half quarterback. we have Kayla Williams who's presumed the number one pick from USC. Then who else do we have our eyes on?
Yeah, Caleb Williams is by far in a way the number one overall pick. He's been that way for probably two years. He just had to make it through college long enough to get there. Jaden Daniels is probably going to be the number two pick. He is at LSU. He won the Heisman this year. Drake May out of North Carolina. J .J. McCarthy out of Michigan, which when we're talking quarterbacks in a pro style, he might be the most ready to succeed. He played under Jim Harbaugh at Michigan.
won a national championship so he'd come around a pro style offense. coach, Jim Harbaugh, they won a national championship. Harbaugh now is coaching in the NFL again, and he's also been living out of an RV. Harbaugh's back in the NFL and he's being as quirky and weird as everyone expected. He's currently living in an RV outside the Chargers facility as they get ready for the draft and the upcoming season. do. Okay, so we have JJ McCarthy from Michigan. Then we have Bo Nix from Oregon.
Yes, he is from Oregon. I believe he started more college football games than anyone ever in history. He stuck around forever. Michael Penich Jr., which we saw, led Washington to national championship against Washington. So, I mean, there's, yeah, against Michigan, sorry. So they're all, they're all going to go in the first round, I assume, most likely four to five in the top 10. So it's going to be very quarterback heavy. it makes sense, right?
If you're really having to carry at least three quarterbacks on your roster because there was a game last year where all three of their quarterbacks got hurt, didn't it? Well, on some team, wasn't it? I don't know if it was last year, it was possibly the year before. That was the 49ers in the NFC Championship game two years ago against the Eagles, where they had Christian McCaffrey trying to throw. Yes. Now is there. Yes. So the quarterback are, everyone's desperate. says we're in.
So the draft itself starts on Thursday, April 25th and runs all the way through Sunday, the 28th. Is there anything that you would like to leave us with before we sign off? If you don't, we've covered a lot of ground, so... I think I was just going to go outside of football, the economic impact that the draft has had on cities that they've gone to. I mean, last year, I think Kansas City, it brought in like $165 million to the city, which is ridiculous. A couple hundred thousand people.
So the city of Detroit is going to thrive with having the draft in their city. They're expecting 300 ,000 people and a couple hundred million dollars in revenue. Cleveland and Chicago, both big football cities, clearly will bring people in. You know, one of the best sushi rolls I've ever had was in Detroit. Have a fun time. How does that work? I don't know, it was really good. It was a restaurant we went to that had burgers and fries and sushi.
And it was, I remember noting like, I don't remember the name of the restaurant. I could find it on a map. It was like, this is one of the best sushi rolls I've ever had. So there you have it. So there you go, Chicago Bear's Trans traveling to see Caleb Williams get picked to go have sushi in Detroit. burger, fries and sushi. What else could you want? Well, thank you for joining me today to talk about the draft. Make sure you tune in.
And if you want to, I'll put the links in the show notes, but to our NFL play calling podcast that we talked about, as well as our NFL combine, which is the tryout essentially for the players going into the draft. I'll put that link in the show notes as well. And of course, NFL drinking game, NFL draft drinking game. Have a great week.