Gene Collier: Does anybody feel a draft?
PITTSBURGH - Hey, have you heard the NFL draft is in Pittsburgh?
I mean more than a few million times. This week.
The official NFL draft countdown clock, which feels like it's been standing dutifully near the confluence about as long as Fort Pitt, has begun to flash single digits. So yeah, it appears this is happening.
Don't be surprised if the Pittsburgh Steelers use their first pick on Penn State guard Olaivavega Ioane. After typically intense analysis, I like him because he's got 10 vowels in his name and I am not worried in the least that, according to NFL.com, he struggles "with twitchy interior defenders who cross his face in the run game and attack his edges in protection." I do, as well.
The draft is nothing short of an evolutionary miracle when you think about it (which is why I've long preferred not to think about it). It's a cultural-palooza of an event that can now focus some 50 million people across America on the evident charms of Pittsburgh for three days, even though it is essentially the same event that used to happen in a hotel ballroom and may or may not have commanded the attention of all the people in the ballroom.
Through its decades of flash evolution, the draft has somehow managed to maintain one of its underappreciated charms, and I'll hope you'll take a moment to feel its enduring value this week: There are no replay challenges.
No, seriously.
The league is expanding replay into just about everything, based on developments at the recent owners meetings, but the draft is one place where no one can ever whip out a red challenge flag when the team choosing right before them snatches an obvious difference-maker from under their noses.
No official ever comes on stage to interrupt NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and says, "Upon further review, every team in the league has now passed on Tom Brady at least four times. By rule, all subsequent drafts should be canceled due to gross league-wide incompetence."
At least not yet.
The Brady part famously happened, maybe you've heard, with 198 players through parts of six rounds getting selected in the 2000 NFL draft before New England called the name of the greatest quarterback in the game's history - which kind of casts some doubt on the skills of the league's top talent evaluators, the very thing that's ostensibly on display for 50 million people beginning Thursday.
The Steelers took eight players before Brady's name was heard, including a quarterback, Tee Martin out of Tennessee.
Did you wish you had a red challenge flag that day?
Sure, that'll never happen, but that doesn't mean they're not working on it.
If you missed it, the NFL owners meetings in Phoenix last month resulted in the league granting expanded authority to staffers at its New York replay command center for the coming season, particularly if replacement officials are necessary due to a looming labor dispute.
After the two-minute warning, for example, or in overtime, the list of penalties that could be called from New York would expand to include unsportsmanlike conduct for punching or kicking an opponent and a violation of the leverage or leaping rules during kicks, according to ESPN.
Atlanta Falcons CEO Rick McKay of the powerful Competition Committee told reporters he sees an ongoing effort to expand replay review and replay assist in the near future but added, "We've stayed true to the idea that we want replay assist, and we want New York to be able to help, and we just don't want to move too fast. We don't want to add too much to it."
Well, that train may have flown, but at least to this point anyway no one seems to have figured out how to bring replay to the draft, although the league is thick with general managers who wish there was some technological mechanism to undo what they'd just done.
In 1989, for a classic example, four of the first five players selected went on to Hall of Fame careers - Troy Aikman, Barry Sanders, Derrick Thomas and Deion Sanders. The one who didn't was the second pick, offensive tackle Tony Mandarich of Michigan State, who never approached expectations and was released after four seasons.
What if some replay staffers in New York could have intervened with some kind of technological red flag?
Staffer One: "Wait, did he just say Tony Mandarich?"
Staffer Two: "No, I think he said, ‘Bring me a sandwich.'"
Staffer One: "Play it back!"
Staffer Two: "OK. You're right. The pick stands as called. Green Bay selects Tony Mandarich. I guess they know what they're doing."
As it happens, the selectors mostly did know what they were doing that time. Not only were four Hall of Famers taken with the first five picks, but another five 1989 first-rounders became Pro Bowlers. In that same first round, the Steelers had two picks, and took Tim Worley and Tom Ricketts, which, you know, oops.
As we've come to understand, looking forward to the NFL Draft can be exhilarating. Looking back's a little more hair-raising.
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This story was originally published April 20, 2026 at 4:47 AM.