Analysis: Maybe ghost of Vince Lombardi affects 2025 NFL Draft

By Frank Cooney
Special to the Pro Football Hall of Fame

(Editor’s note: Frank Cooney, a member of the Hall of Fame’s Selection Committee for more than 30 years, has been covering the NFL Draft for more than a half-century. For a look at NFL Draft Scout’s Top 750 players, click here.)(Opens in a new window)

Finally, the 2025 Annual Player Selection Meeting — aka the NFL Draft — will begin Thursday in real life at Green Bay’s Lambeau Field, home of the historic Packers, where iconic Hall of Fame coach VINCE LOMBARDI(Opens in a new window) paced the sidelines nine seasons and won five league championships, two of them called Super Bowls. 

Now the winner of the Super Bowl receives the Vince Lombardi Trophy.

Lombardi wouldn’t recognize this draft event, which in his day was almost a secret, held quietly in some hotel in Philadelphia or New York, sometimes as early as late November. These maneuvers, and others, were to get the jump on that rogue American Football League, which technically joined the party in 1967 in the “common draft.” It was renamed the “NFL Draft” in 1970, three years after the merger was finalized. 

It was following the 1967 season that Green Bay defeated Dallas 21-17 for the NFL Championship with a 1-yard quarterback sneak by BART STARR(Opens in a new window) in 13-below-zero temperature at Lambeau Field. Hold that thought. We will get back to that game and that play.

Spin forward to this week’s extravaganza. There is nothing secret about it. After more buildup and ballyhoo than preceding even the almighty Super Bowl, this year’s draft begins Thursday evening with thousands of fans watching live and millions more following on television and whatever devices carry ESPN, ABC, NFL Network or ESPN Deportes.

This is a full-blown red-carpet affair in the image of the Oscars. At 8 p.m. (ET, of course), Commissioner Roger Goodell will step to the podium in the middle of a fancy stage and say something like, “With the first pick in the 2025 NFL Draft the …”  If there are no trades, he will call out the Tennessee Titans, then mention the Cleveland Browns “are on the clock.”

The selected players will come on stage wearing a cap featuring their new team and grab Goodell in a bro-hug, previously known as a bear hug, which is not an appropriate name in Packerland. There will be 32 players selected in the first round Thursday. Rounds 2-3 start at 7 p.m. Friday, and Rounds 4-7 begin at noon ET Saturday. In all, 227 players will be selected in the three-day event. 

In Lombardi’s day, there were 17 to 21 rounds and from 280 to 442 players selected within one or two days and, at the height of the NFL-AFL feud, 305 players were drafted in 17 rounds on Nov. 27, 1966. It was a long day. Results were hard to find, with much of it reduced to agate at the back of a newspaper sports section.

If Lombardi were at Lambeau this week, and who is to say he won’t be, can you hear him saying, “What the hell going on out here?”(Opens in a new window)

Well, coach, these NFL drafts are far from a secret. They are scrutinized and debated for months by millions of fans who, thanks to the internet, have access to almost infinite amounts of information for free — and worth every penny. 

Fans and media create things called “Big Boards,” which are supposed to list players in order of their NFL potential but often devolve into syncing up ratings with the perceived needs of teams. That approach is supposed to be addressed in something called 
“mock drafts,” a concept which is indeed often a mockery when done a year in advance before knowing who will be picking where. 

Both big boards and mock drafts are ubiquitous in the media, including television, radio and the internet. One of many internet sites devoted to this mania is NFLMockraftdatabase,(Opens in a new window) which hosts hundreds of mock drafts(Opens in a new window) – including a consensus — and thousands of big boards, about 1,500 when we last checked, including another consensus(Opens in a new window).

We have combines for workouts — one for FBS invitees and another for HBCU players — pro days for home-orchestrated displays, 30 player visits per team, medical checks in February and rechecks in April, 24/7 Path to the Draft episodes on NFL Network … There are no secrets. 

Truth be told, fans know a lot more about college prospects than any team back in the day. 

We have been inundated with so much information, so many opinions from so many people, that we arrive at draft week with paralysis by analysis. When we began covering the draft in 1967 — and even when we started NFL Draft Scout in 1987 — you had to work to get information on players. Now you can copy and paste.

Regardless, we go into the 2025 draft with the same enthusiasm as always. Last year there were six quarterbacks drafted among the first 12 selections, which defined that as a great draft for most. This year, the word is that the quarterback class is, well, meh. There are reasons, and we drilled into them in another story.(Opens in a new window)

The people’s choice for top quarterback this year is Miami’s Cam Ward, who began as a zero-star high school recruit and, after five years of college, is the No.1 quarterback in this draft.

However, we wonder how his abilities will transfer to the pros, so in NFL Draft Scout ratings, we list him No. 4 overall, behind players I believe have more of a chance to be discussed as Hall of Famers someday: Colorado’s Heisman Trophy-winning defensive back/wide receiver Travis Hunter; Penn State’s slinky outside linebacker Abdul Carter; and Boise State’s unstoppable running back Ashton Jeanty. 

We can hear Lombardi asking why a great running back isn’t taken higher. Jeanty would look good in that famous Green Bay sweep, or almost any other play that gets the ball to him. 

Well, coach, the game has changed. The NFL has done everything possible to encourage the proliferation of passing the ball. Defenders cannot breathe too hard on a quarterback or they will get penalized. The bump-and-run is basically illegal because you cannot legally touch receivers once they get beyond 5 yards. So, offenses spread the field with four or five receivers.
 
In response, defenses deploy faster, smaller men to handle all those receivers on any given play. It’s an evolving strategic situation that is somewhere between a pendulum motion or … deciding which comes next, the chicken or the egg. And eggs are expensive these days.

But with all those defenses so spread out, the running game is making a comeback thanks to Philadelphia’s Saquon Barkley and Baltimore’s Derrick Henry. Therefore, teams might be more accepting of Jeanty, who would have been a No.1 pick in the 1960s. 

There is also North Carolina’s Omarion Hampton, Ohio State’s twosome of Quinshon Judkins and TreVeyon Henderson, Tennessee’s Dylan Sampson, Iowa’s Kaleb Johnson and Oregon’s Jordan James, all of whom could be taken in the first two rounds.  
 
Pretty good stuff, right coach? Ah, no, as I said things have changed(Opens in a new window) since the days you ran that Green Bay sweep and Starr forced his way to a winning touchdown from the 1-yard line. 

In fact, there seems to be no such thing as a definite running down. Even Philadelphia’s quarterback sneak — dubbed the “Tush Push” — is causing a ruckus due to injury concerns. No, there weren’t any injuries. Just concerns. Yes, the game has changed. 

In Super Bowl XLIX, the New England Patriots won because you were not coaching the Seattle Seahawks. The rest of the game was just a preamble. With 26 seconds left, the Seahawks, trailing 28-24, had a second-and-goal on the 1. In the backfield, Seattle had the brutish Marshawn Lynch, who gained 4 yards on the previous play.

What a setup, right? This time the ground wasn’t frozen. The Seahawks were 1 yard away from a sure Super Bowl victory. 

But Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson reared up and tried to throw a slant – the play called for a pick by receiver Jermain Kearse to free up Ricardo Lockette. But New England cornerback Brandon Browner blocked Kearse at the line of scrimmage and free agent rookie cornerback Malcom Butler intercepted. 

Right, coach, a pass play on second-and-goal from the 1 with a bruising running back playing spectator.
 
But who knows, maybe this draft will lead to renewed respect for the running back.