You’ll say goodbye to Mel Kiper and Todd McShay after this NFL draft weekend.
Oh sure, there’ll be the occasional “SportsCenter” hit here and the ESPN Radio spot there, but the blitz of their presence will dissipate between now and next March, when draft hysteria grips our NFL-obsessed nation once again.
And when they are not in the bright lights, first in New York, now Chicago, what are they doing?
“Most of my year is spent in a room that is dark watching tape by myself in silence because there’s no game coverage or anything like that,” said McShay, who recently signed a multi-year extension with ESPN.
“That’s the hard part, the grind — watching the tape, collecting all the information and the background and medical stuff that we can. Now is when we are sharing that information.”
The two have become stars of sorts thanks to the ever-growing popularity of the NFL, and the draft in particular. Both say fans approach them daily — “All good things,” says McShay — to talk football. Fans pore over their mock drafts and now thousands of others leading up to Thursday night’s first round. And they are not alone.
Agent Leigh Steinberg ripped McShay for saying the Jets should not reach for quarterback Paxton Lynch with the No. 20 pick because of the “simplistic” offense he ran at Memphis. Steinberg called the opinion “absurd” and bashed McShay for never playing college football (McShay actually was a backup quarterback at Richmond) and never scouting for an NFL team.
“You can’t get away with anything, not that I ever try to,” McShay said about the challenges of his job even before Steinberg made his comments. “Fans have so much [more] information than ever before. … There’s just so much info in there, if you try and fake it with this, it’s just not going to work.”
Kiper calls McShay, who has been with ESPN since 2006, “the new kid on the block” and that’s because Kiper has been with the network since 1983 and doing draft evaluations since 1978.
“Back in those days if I was doing an evaluation of a player, I’d have to call the school to find how many sacks he had,” Kiper said. “I spent literally three hours a day calling schools to get basic information you can now get in a second. So, anyone coming up now has a lot it easier than those who started in the ’70s and ’80s.”
Kiper is no stranger to controversy, as his 1994 war of words with Colts general manager Bill Tobin over the team drafting linebacker Trev Alberts instead of quarterback Trent Dilfer is still a YouTube favorite.
Both Kiper and McShay admit the mock drafts are closer to a crapshoot because of the malleable nature of the draft. They judge their success based on how many of the picks they had in their top (fill in a number) actually were selected there.
“After the draft is over, I don’t want to read anything, hear anything, Kiper said. “ESPN sends us stuff, my wife, Kim, puts it on my desk and I put it in the trash can. I don’t want to read any of it. I don’t really care what anyone says or thinks. I could care less.”
Next week, it’s onto the 2017 draft, more 300-plus players to evaluate and films to watch in dark rooms.
