The coronavirus pandemic has changed the outlook of the entire world, affecting how we go about our daily lives. In the NFL, it hasn’t just changed how team prepare for the 2020 NFL Draft, but also how they will conduct business with April 23rd and the following days finally come around.
Instead of meeting together in a war room, each NFL team and their staff will be forced to conduct business from home, communicating with each other through a video chat that is patched in with the NFL’s network, allowing them to stay up to date on the current picks and trades taking place. But what exactly will this look like for the Washington Redskins? This excerpt from a piece from the Washington Post paints a nice picture:
Rivera’s personal war room probably will look something like this: Notes out, laptop open to a Zoom videoconference, multiple TV monitors to stay abreast of the action. Rivera will be patched into the NFL’s in-house live stream that reveals picks as soon as they are submitted rather than the public broadcast’s roughly five-minute delay. Their toughest challenge might be coordinating phone calls to undrafted free agents in the post-draft scramble.
Rivera has already noted that he is not the most tech-savvy individual, so his own fears about being prepared for the draft might keep him up at night. But if one thing is for sure, the NFL will make sure that all 32 of their coaches will be properly equipped with the tools that are necessary to conduct a successful draft. After that, it is up to each team to navigate this new and unfamiliar landscape.
