Browns Prepare For Virtual Draft

From Andrew Berry’s perspective, the 2020 NFL Draft will not be so different from drafts past. 

COVID-19 might change how the NFL televises the draft. It might change the circumstances under which teams are drafting — hundreds of one-person war rooms will replace the typically well-staffed 32. 

But as Berry said during Friday’s conference call, the protocol inside those war rooms hasn’t changed. Preparation still reigns supreme. 

“It is more a different environment than any team has operated under, but all teams have faced the same challenges,” Berry said. “From my perspective, we are going to be prepared and ready to go regardless of the circumstances. I feel confident that we are going to have a very high-quality draft.

Preparation can mean watching extra tape on prospects or planning multiple E-draft dress rehearsals, the latter of which Berry said the Browns are doing. Or it can mean devising doomsday scenarios where the Browns lose power and are faced to draft without technology.

“We are going to make sure that we are prepared in any decision-making scenario,” Berry said. “(We are going to make sure) that we have what we need if there was to be a kind of a Armageddon scenario with power, internet access or something along those lines.”

Berry pointed out that draft rooms have always been tech-dependent on draft day. They’ve always kept laptops open and overworked wireless routers. He doesn’t expect a significant change in draft-day trades, either. Those have always been negotiated over the phone. 

The challenge now is implementing that technology to communicate with people Berry would usually stand next to on April 23. To that end, the Browns are just like the rest of us. They’re exploring zoom, using FaceTime and calling people more often than they usually would.

“My phone,” Berry said, “If it was not already attached to my hip, it certainly is now.” 

Berry’s laptop is probably not far from his reach, either. As disappointed as the Browns were to lose pro days and further in-person meetings, they still have plenty of information on players from college games, the Senior Bowl and the combine (perhaps none of it the medical reports they gathered at the combine) stored in databases. 

Those databases came in handy during free agency, another roster-building process the Browns conquered without the benefit of in-person meetings.

“Obviously, you miss a little bit of something with not being able to engage with people in person,” Berry said. “But it really has not slowed the free agency or draft process from my perspective. We felt very prepared going into free agency, and we feel very prepared at this point in the draft process. It has had its challenges, but we have navigated them pretty well.”

The draft is something that, historically the Browns have not navigated so well. Berry has never run a draft before, and no one has ever run a draft during a pandemic.

Still, Berry projects confidence that his first draft will be a success. The Browns will control what they can by maximizing preparation. They can’t worry about about outside forces like reliable wifi. 

“The bigger challenge is just setting up effective communication protocols,” Berry said. “You do run into issues sometimes where someone at their home does not have a strong internet signal and maybe they go out for a few minutes or there is a latency issue. From that perspective, it is different, but it is not a challenge that is insurmountable by any means.”