The NFL draft process is changing, and it’s all about the money. No one really wants to talk about this, but at the NFL combine this week, Chiefs GM Brett Veach went there and made some comments about how NIL money is changing the team’s draft board, especially on Day 2.
“Typically, the second and third round would be those guys that maybe they didn’t play a lot, but they were young,” he said in a piece written by Michael David Smith of Pro Football Talk. “Well, now these guys are just bouncing and getting paid by another school and getting paid and playing.”
That means that some of the college “prospects” on the draft boards of teams like the Chiefs are actually in a different age range and state of development. They’re grown men ranging from 23-26 years old in many cases, and Montana has a “college” player who’s actually on the verge of a ten-year career with the school.
“So Round 2, 3, 4, the younger developmental guys who haven’t scratched the surface yet, you’re getting more finished product so that’s challenging,” Veach added. “But that’s what we have to adapt to and how we position our board.”
This situation is especially interesting for the Chiefs, and Veach also said the Chiefs have taken about 25 players off their board as a result. They have defensive players like cornerback Jaylon Watson, safety Brian Cook and linebacker Leo Chenal who are hitting free agency at 27, 26 and 25, respectively, and the Chiefs have a chance to replace them with college players who are either the same age or close.
That changes the development model completely, especially financially. Watson and Cook are top-rated players who are going to get paid, but the players in their mid-twenties who could theoretically replace them will still be rookies adjusting to the pace of the NFL game.
That means 2-3 years of developmental time for some of them, but instead of being in their prime, they could be approaching 30 and closing in on the end of their positional production window.
No one knows where any of this is going, least of all some of the experts, but it does feel like some kind of major change is out there on the horizon waiting to happen. The Chiefs aren’t the only team trying to come to terms with these kinds of changes, and NIL opportunities are probably going to grow, not shrink, as more money flows into the sport at both the college and NFL level.