With the second overall selection in next month’s NFL Draft, the Detroit Lions will be selecting a player they envision will have a major impact on their future success.
And while the announcement of every squad’s Round 1 pick is done by Commissioner Roger Goodell, Detroit’s announcement of their Round 2 selection will be made by a pair of celebrities that Detroiters are very familiar with. The selection will be announced by none other than former Lions RB and Hall of Famer Barry Sanders as well as actor/comedian and Detroit native Keegan-Michael Key:
Catch @BarrySanders and @KeeganMKey during the second round of the #NFLDraft on @NFLNetwork! pic.twitter.com/XXETGEY6Gc
— Detroit Lions (@Lions) April 26, 2022
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Best known for his work on Comedy Central’s “Key & Peele”, Key hasn’t been shy about voicing his Lions fandom over the years. Meanwhile, Sanders treated fans to the greatest performance by an NFL running back during his career in the Motor City.
Day 1 of the NFL Draft is this Thursday.
Lombardi: Why the NFL Draft begins at No. 6
When I was working for the Raiders, our draft room was always the same. The room, the methods, the process were frozen in time. Before entering the room, the year might be 2001, but once crossing over the sill of the door, you were back in 1967. Al Davis had great success drafting players, and he wasn’t about to change his method with fancy magnetic cards detailing critical information. The highest security clearance a CIA operative can obtain is called Top Secret, but when they add the letters SCI (standing for “sensitive compartmentalized information”), this allows the operative to examine anything. There were maybe two people at the Raiders with that classification — no one knew what Davis was thinking.
Towards the end of the day’s meeting, Davis would ask Mickey Marvin, his former guard and now area scout with good penmanship (Davis required good penmanship in everything he was given to read) to stand next to the magnetic board and write the positions along the top of the board, starting with quarterback and ending with kicker and punter. On the side of the board, he would tell Marvin to write 1A, 1B and 1C in big letters, then continue further down with 2A, 2B and 3. Once the rounds were written, Davis would start placing players in those categories. In the 1A category, Davis might only have six to eight players he felt were elite. He was not alone in his separation of the first round, as other teams also break down the first round in sections, treating 1A like the Navy treats Seal Team Six, the best of the best. Remember: Not all first rounders are true first rounders, and the separation helps clarify the draft day plan for teams.
