American football teams are already preparing for the 2018-2019 season

It has not been more than a month since the Philadelphia Eagles won their first Super Bowl ring, and now it has start the coordination to restart the regular season of the National Football League.

 In February 27 begins the process of scouting and exploration. During this week, the best college football players meet to develop physical and mental examinations for coaches, owners, and scouts of NFL teams. Although many teams already have decided their hiring, months earlier, this week may end up balancing the scales.

How will the Drafts?

Drafts will take place between 26 and 28 April.  Furthermore, the draft is the system used to choose players; the system is not only used by the NFL, but other sports in the United States do it as well. In this period, the worst teams, that finished the season in last place, first choose from the best players of the universities that were seen during the scouting period.

The draft is one of the most publicized events in the United States. This is almost as important as the Super Bowl, and it is here where teams end up putting together their payrolls. Additionally, in this event it is projected how the season will be for each of the franchises. This year, several television networks and the NFL page will transmit live these 3 days.

This year, teams will meet at the AT & T Stadium in Arlington Texas. This is the first draft that takes place inside a stadium and in the state of Texas, home of the Dallas Cowboys, the more expensive NFL franchise, which is worth approximately 4.8 billion dollars.

The draft consists on seven rounds, in which each one of the 32 teams choose, one by one, their new players. Also, teams can exchange their shifts. For example, a team can change the first shift by 2, 3, or 4 shifts of other franchise. Thus, if a certain team needs 1 player of great quality and it is not interested in hiring many, it can change its turn with another team that needs more players and does not worry so much about the quality. In addition, it is possible to exchange these shifts by players from other teams.

The first team to choose this year will be the Cleveland Browns, followed by the New York Giants. While the last to choose will be the Philadelphia Eagles and New England Patriots, which played the last Super Bowl.

Each team has 15 minutes to make its choosing in the first round. For the second, they only have 10 minutes. From 3 to 7 round, teams have 5 minutes. If players are not chosen in the given time, the franchise that has the next turn can choose anyone and steal the player.

On the other hand, the finalists were defined for the headquarters of the Draft for 2019 and 2020. According to the organizers, the event could take place between the following places: Cleveland / Canton, Kansas City, Denver, Tennessee, and Las Vegas. None of these offices can repeat, so among the 5 cities will be decided which one of them will host the event.

According to experts, the most optioned cities are Cleveland / Canton, home of the Browns, which hope to have a better performance as the team has not been relevant. The other possibility is the event to take place in Las Vegas, taking IGNORE INTO account that the Raiders franchise has already announced its transfer to the city of sin although the city does not have a stadium.

Latin American Post | Santiago Gómez Hernández
Translated from "NFL vuelve al ruedo"