The messages teams sent in the 2026 NFL Draft
The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL
The Athletic
4.6 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 28 April 2026
⏱️ 65 minutes
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Summary
Sometimes, a draft class is more than a draft class. Sometimes, a draft class can tell the entire NFL world what you think about your team. Robert Mays and Dave Helman zero in on the messages some teams sent with their respective 2026 draft classes on this episode of The Athletic Football Show.
Host: Robert Mays
Co-Hosts: Dave Helman
Executive Producer: Michael Beller
Senior Producer: Katy Duffy
Social Producer: Scott Krinch
Follow Robert on Bluesky: @robertmays.bsky.social
Follow Dave on Bluesky: @davehelman.bsky.social
Follow Robert on X: @RobertMays
Follow Dave on X: @DaveHelman_
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. |
| 0:01.9 | I'm Robert Mays. |
| 0:02.7 | Our first show, now that the dust has settled from the 2026 NFL draft, |
| 0:07.9 | I've done this podcast, beyond being a podcast, this idea in some form for a very long time. |
| 0:13.9 | I always like doing it as like the first beat after the draft. |
| 0:17.1 | Coming into the draft, the month before the draft, especially the week before the draft, |
| 0:26.7 | it's lying season. Teams are telling you everything they can to get you off their scent. |
| 0:30.2 | And when the draft is over, there's really nowhere to hide. |
| 0:34.7 | Teams have sent you the messages and told you what they think about where they are, |
| 0:41.7 | what they felt about their roster, where they thought they needed to improve. And so we're going to spend today trying to decipher some of those messages that teams sent with their 2026 draft classes, and in a way, their 2026 off seasons to this |
| 0:47.6 | point with me and Dave Helman. So let's get to that conversation with Dave right now. |
| 1:08.6 | Now that we are a couple days removed from the end of the 2026 NFL draft, doing a show that I always liked you. |
| 1:14.2 | I've done this in some version, whether it's being on a podcast or written, for years now. |
| 1:17.7 | Like I remember the first time I think I did this was like the Christian McCaffrey Curtis Samuel draft with the Panthers telling us we want a certain type of playmaker within our offense. |
| 1:22.8 | And I was like doing this show, Dave, because as I said when we were doing the live |
| 1:26.9 | streams this weekend, before the draft happens, teams can lie to you. They often do lie to you. Now that the draft is over, they can't. Everything is out in plain sight, their intentions, what they're valuing, the directions they want to go, how they want to change or kind of tweak the type of teams they are. It's all out in the open. And so we're going to dig into today |
| 1:45.7 | just the messages that teams sent to us |
| 1:48.5 | based on what they did this weekend in the draft. |
| 1:50.8 | I like doing this show because draft weekend |
| 1:54.8 | feels like a fugue state between like, |
| 1:57.7 | between the hours that you're working |
| 1:59.5 | and the things you're trying to juggle like by the |
... |
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