Hello and welcome to an NFL draft edition of Inside the Huddle. The 2011 NFL draft will be live on ESPN and BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra this week,

joining me to look ahead to the Radio City Musical Festivities, my BBC radio partner in crime, Greg Brady and Mike Carlson of Channel 4 and the BBC.

Greg, it seems like a lifetime ago we were freezing our backsides off together in Philadelphia.

It's been a busy yet frustrating offseason for NFL fans. Well, yeah, guys, and it's eventful.

No question about it. We've seen a little of what we expected from the labor dispute. We knew

there'd be acrimony. We knew there'd be owners with comments,

players with comments. We're in the Twitter era, which is a little bit different than the labor

disputes of 1987 and obviously 1982, where games were missed. In fact, seven of them were missed

in the 82 season, and they expanded the playoffs. But yeah, the draft is still a special time.

The great issue is, this is so unique, fellas, and I'm sure we'll touch on it with how these teams have to address getting better or maintaining where they're at.

If you're an 11, 12, 13 win club, how do you do it not knowing what's out there in free agency?

This is uncharted territory for a lot of these general managers and head

coaches. And in a weird way, though there's been some apathy towards the draft, I think,

from the fans, it makes it to me more intriguing to see what transpires. And how do you build a

team when you haven't gone through a free agency period yet? Yeah, one general manager described

it as drafting in the dark. Mike, you survived the sea goals that provided the

perfect audio backdrop last week. How was your holiday and good to have you here. Yeah, Cornwall is

great. I mean, in summertime in Cornwall, we're swimming in April and I don't think that happens

very often. But yeah, I think this makes the draft a really interesting one because teams will

build, a lot of teams will continue to

build the way they always have and filling the holes they have with what they've got.

They know who's going to be out there.

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