The New Orleans Saints have put together an elaborate plan to conduct their part in the 2020 NFL Draft, prompting Saints coach Sean Payton to share his take on the process with one of his friends, who also happens to be a Saints superfan: musician Jimmy Buffett. Payton’s conversation with Buffett was shared from the official Saints Twitter account.
“I’m actually kind of looking forward to it,” Payton said. “Because every one of us will be in a setup like this, in front of our cameras making draft picks, and we’ll be on a separate call with our G.M. and with our scouts. And it’ll challenge us a little bit in a unique way.”
Speculation has been rife on what this “virtual draft” might result in. It’s possible that teams will be less eager to agree to trades, moving up and down the draft board, with the added technological hurdles in place. On the other hand, they’ve had so much excess time to chat with each other that executives around the league could have deals ready-made to agree to under the right circumstances. We won’t really know until draft day.
Payton continued: “I was skeptical about the draft process in the meetings that we had two weeks ago. And two weeks later I thought, ‘I kind of liked it.’ Because I didn’t have to deal with Bill, I can just put him on freakin’ mute. I got a lot less annoyed with some of my scouts when I can just put them on mute and they’re in Tennessee or California, or Pennsylvania.
“I think that just comes with getting older,” Payton joked. Having the ability to simply mute an annoyance certainly has some appeal.
