A few years ago, when a college football player was good enough to get drafted, it was a safe bet that he was going to enter the draft to stop playing for free and start getting paid. But times have changed.
College football players can now earn money from endorsements — using their names, images and likenesses to make money under the new NIL rules — and that means that a player who might only be a Day 3 draft pick might think it’s safer to stay in school for another year if he already knows he has guaranteed NIL money in college.
And this year, college football players had another reason to stay in school instead of entering the draft: The NCAA didn’t count the 2020 football season against any player’s eligibility, so players who were freshmen in 2020 and seniors in 2023 had another year of eligibility in 2024. Many of those players chose to stay in school for another year of college football this fall.
Combine those two factors, Ravens General Manager Eric DeCosta says, and there just isn’t as much talent in this year’s draft as NFL teams are accustomed to. DeCosta said that when the Ravens evaluated this year’s class, they found fewer players good enough to get drafted than they do most years.
“Because of COVID partly and NIL, this whole draft landscape has changed,” DeCosta said. “There’s less players in the draft this year. There’s less draftable players, less underclassmen.”
The Ravens have two seventh-round picks, but they’re not sure that any players worth drafting will be available when the seventh round comes along. Because of that, DeCosta indicated that packaging their two seventh-rounders to move up could be an option.
“We’ve talked about the idea of getting to the later rounds of the draft, if there’s nobody there that you covet, potentially trading that pick for a better pick,” DeCosta said.
NIL was a game-changer for college football, but we shouldn’t overlook the impact it makes on the NFL. A college football player who in the past would have jumped at the chance to be a late-round draft pick now has another option.
