X is hunched over his iPad at his parents’ kitchen table, watching the draft on the small screen with his “NFL Stuff” preadsheet open on the laptop next to him. He’s anxiously chewing his fingernails, and his shoulders are scrunched up close to his ears, taut with tension. He’s on speaker phone, awkwardly trying to hang up with a scout in order to take any one of the four incoming calls bouncing across his screen, a string of unfamiliar numbers all competing for his attention. “Sorry, I uh, have to take another call now,” he says.
X has 11 siblings—most of his family are huddled on the couch in front of the living room TV, just on the other side of the open-concept kitchen where he sits. Two are dressed for their prom, where they will be headed immediately after the draft. The seventh round has just begun, but X is overwhelmed with calls from NFL teams asking about priority free agent deals. He has already accidentally hung up on a head coach—well, at least he’s pretty sure he did—but he’s having a hard time keeping straight who he’s talking to.
So many teams are calling that X has to delegate the work. His dad paces outside on the deck talking to teams, looking so focused that his next-door neighbor texts him to ask if he should stop hammering. X’s older brother is leaning up against the island in the kitchen making phone calls to numbers that X misses while he’s on the line with another team. X’s girlfriend looks up rosters, depth charts and draft classes to figure out how many players each team he talks to has at his position.
“Coach, you guys won’t just pick him?” X’s older brother tells a coach on the line. “You still have a pick in this round.”
His brother is tired of this B.S. Teams aren’t properly appreciating Prospect X and he won’t stand for it. Before the draft began, three scouts from three different teams texted X that they wanted to pick him, and now those same teams claim they still want him but don’t have enough picks.
“Call Christian,” X’s brother says forcefully. “Pull the trigger.”
But that team—the Saints, who the brother has played for the past two seasons—doesn’t pick him.
A little later, outside on the deck, X’s father fields a call from an old friend.
“Hey Rick,” he says, grinning. “How are you?”
Rick Spielman, the Vikings general manager, was a Lions scout when Detroit selected Luther Elliss with the 20th pick in 1995. Twenty-six years later, the two are on the phone discussing Luther's son. The Vikings’ final pick of the draft came at 199, and they won’t be trading back in. Spielman tells Luther they’ll wait patiently, that there’s no rush to make up his mind. But he wants to make clear: The Vikings want Christian Elliss.
