“Now, to get here you’ve probably sought out a beginners guide to the NFL Draft so I probably don’t need to convince you of the joy that can come from a closer following of it but I’m going to anyway because most people watch the Kevin Costner movie Draft Day before getting excited about the Draft and that sets some pretty unrealistic expectations as you’ll hopefully learn later.”
“The Draft has seven rounds of selection, where each team has an opportunity to select a player from the talent pool once in each round, barring any trades, which I will explain later. The NFL Draft has gone through various iterations but the current format sees the 7 rounds split across 3 days”
“Tis the season for evaluating NFL prospects. NFL scouts work year-round attending colleges in the summer to get a better handle on prospects for the next year with the college season starting in September when much scouting can be done but the evaluation portion of the NFL calendar begins in earnest not long after Christmas.”
“The Commissioner opens the draft and the first team is put on the clock (order explained earlier in this guide). In the first round teams have ten minutes to make a selection, in the second round this reduces to 7 minutes and then reduces again to 5 minutes for the rest of the draft. If a team doesn’t make a selection in this time they pass over their pick to the next team and the next team can submit their selection as soon as the ten minutes for the previous team has fully elapsed.”