ANTHONY GETTINO
Sports Editor
This past week saw the NFL 2021 Draft come and go.
Each year, there are analysts that say who “won or lost” this. Instead of trying to act like one of these analysts myself, I decided to let some of the students of Fredonia do their best impressions of them instead.
Finding people who actually tuned in to watch was much harder than I initially thought it would be. For every three students I asked about it, only one said that they followed along or watched the coverage of the event.
Most said they either didn’t have cable or just didn’t care about it enough to tune in. Some said that they only knew who their favorite team drafted, with most applauding the Bills.
But there were some who paid more attention to the draft.
One of these students was Kyle Campbell, who watched the first two days of the draft with friends.
“I mainly only paid attention to the first round and when the Giants were picking,” Campbell said.
Being a Giants fan in Western NY, he knows most of the people he’s around are paying attention to a different New York team: “I thought that the Giants finally did something smart by trading back in the first and getting some extra picks, but I don’t know why the picked [Kadarious] Toney from Florida.”
He also wasn’t too impressed with the Oakland Raiders and said that they had the worst draft of any team he saw.
Another student who kept tabs on the NFL Draft was Ryan Dunning. When asked who he thought won the draft, he said that the Cleveland Browns were the clear winners.
As for who lost, Dunning said, “It was the Steelers, clear as day. They have an older quarterback and one of the worst offensive lines in football, so what do they do? Pick a running back in the first round and wait around on lineman. It just didn’t make sense.”
He also thought the Seattle Seahawks could have done a better job, as they only picked three players and used none of the premium picks that they possessed in areas of need.
In most cases, it takes at least a year to know which teams “won” and “lost” the NFL Draft.
Even the people who get paid to analyze this event year after year tend to be wrong more often than not.
Did either of these two get it right? Time will tell.