How NIL has led to a glaring lack of depth in the 2024 NFL Draft

Rob Rang

NFL Draft Analyst

With all due respect to the Senior Bowl and its catchy tagline suggesting the “NFL Draft Starts in Mobile,” for many football fans, the process begins in earnest after the Super Bowl.

The Chiefs hoisted the Lombardi Trophy last night, after a superb finale to the postseason. And with that, we are officially in draft season.

But the depth of talent blooming this spring is much less robust than in years past, a direct result of NIL (name, image and likeness) rules and the transfer portal keeping significantly more players in college football.

The NFL announced that 54 players were granted special eligibility to enter this year’s draft. That is less than half the number the league is accustomed to applying for early admission over the past decade, including a record 135 players in 2014.

The reasoning is as obvious as the numbers.

Every player dreams of NFL stardom. The fame and glory of the biggest stage in sports are tantalizing.

But for most, the biggest allure of the NFL has always been money. And with the Supreme Court’s 2021 ruling that collegiate athletes are entitled to payment for their own name, image and likeness, more players are choosing the relative “easy money” of marketing deals in the present rather than the potential NFL contracts in the future.

The NFL’s player pool is made even shallower by the NCAA’s liberal transfer portal, which now allows prospects the ability to re-open their recruitment and play elsewhere immediately.

A record 1,127 players placed their name in the transfer portal last year, hoping the grass (and cash from NIL opportunities) really would prove greener elsewhere. That number is expected to grow even larger this year with the NCAA having two transfer-portal windows (December 4-January 4 and April 15-30).

A glance at the quarterbacks invited to this year’s Senior Bowl illustrates how much the portal has affected college football. Of the seven quarterbacks…

Source link : https://www.foxsports.com/stories/nfl/how-nil-has-led-to-a-glaring-lack-of-depth-in-the-2024-nfl-draft

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Publish date : 2024-02-12 13:00:07

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