Count Penn State coach James Franklin among the people who think the NFL draft should not go on as scheduled.
The league is going ahead with the draft, which is now less than three weeks away, but Franklin said it’s clear to him, both from talking to people in the NFL and from talking to his own players, that the process is fundamentally flawed with players unable to visit with teams.
“I’ve had a lot of [General Managers] calling me about the draft,” Franklin said, via the Centre Daily Times. “Our guys are not able to have a pro day . . . That’s the thing that I would say has probably been challenging and concerning. I wish the NFL would push the draft back to take pressure off all these players, to take pressure off these universities and agents . . . so [the players] still have the best chance to be evaluated.”
It’s undeniable that players this year don’t have the same opportunities to pitch themselves to NFL teams that players in the past have had, and that NFL teams don’t have the same opportunities to closely scrutinize players that teams have had in the past. But the NFL’s view is that as long as all 32 teams are playing under the same restrictive rules, it’s a level playing field. And so the draft will go on.