NFL Draft can run just as efficiently with less time

My first draft in the NFL was in 1978. There were 28 teams and the first round took all of 2 hours, 10 minutes. That is a little less than five minutes per team, if my math is correct. Last year the first round, with 32 teams, took a record 6 hours, 8 minutes. That is 11 minutes, 30 seconds on average per team.

About 10 years ago, perhaps longer, I made a recommendation at an NFL meeting in front of owners, coaches and GMs that we should shorten the draft to 10 minutes per pick in the first round and five to seven minutes in the second round.

Teams already have a good idea what they are going to do before the clock even starts ticking. (Getty Images)

The obvious reason I made the suggestion was we didn't need 10 minutes to pick a player. I said in jest that we'd have less time to listen to the TV commentators, which got a big and favorable roar from the group, but not one vote! Of course, I am now one of those TV commentators.

Now the league has reduced the time limit between first-round picks from 15 minutes to 10 -- and from 10 to seven for the second round -- and I obviously believe the process will be just as efficient. In reality, teams will have met for a good part of April to determine their final grades on players.

Most teams have two draft boards. One is aligned by position, and the other has the players listed from best to worst in any one of several ways. One can be a simple listing from No. 1 to wherever you want to stop, or it can be done by round. If done that way, it's common to put a value on the player by round and have 32 players for each round.

No matter where we were picking in the first round or at the top of the second, as long as we had over 20 players with first-round grades we would be OK. Teams will usually have a certain group of players in the first round, but there will always be some differences on late first-round grades. The draft scatters when it gets to the second round.

The point is that teams already have their draft order made up. But there are a couple of good reasons for teams to not turn in their choices until the last minute. One is waiting to see if somebody calls to make a trade. There's nothing to be gained in turning in the draft pick early because, as former Giants GM George Young once told me, the best deals you make are the ones where somebody calls you.

The other reason to delay is to get the player you're drafting on the phone, which you try to do in every round just to make sure he's OK and not recently arrested. How do you know the player is telling you the truth when you ask him and his agent those questions? Well, you're just hoping, but you have to ask. I know of an instance of a team drafting a player in the first round while he was in the hospital having back surgery, and they selected him not knowing it.

You should wait to make that call until you're on the clock, because if you call before your pick and something happens -- you trade at the last minute and move down a few spots, for example -- you have shown your interest in that player and thus tipped your hand to teams now ahead of you if they call him. They know you'll take that player in your new draft position.

The question is: Can you make trades in the new 10-minute window of the first round and the seven-minute second? I think it can be done. We have already established that teams have their draft order set. As you approach your pick, you review that next couple of names on your board one last time. I always found it to be a calm and disciplined setting whether I was running the draft or my former boss Bobby Beathard was. You usually stick with your original plan of who to take if you stay at that pick.

The real question is whether to trade up to get a player or trade back and obtain more picks. The ground work on those trades is done before you get on the clock. I would have a group of scouts calling teams in front of us to see what it would cost to move and at the same time I would have a group of scouts, maybe the same ones, calling teams behind us to see what a team would give us to move back.

As you can see, when you get close to being on the clock, you should have a good idea of what you want to do. If you are going to make a deal, both teams get on the phone with the legendary Joel Bussert of the NFL office and complete the trade in less than a minute.

In my opinion, this time change will not affect the first round. And since teams have been dealing with five minutes in Rounds 3-7, they are already used to that time frame to make a trade.

I would not say it's as big a change cutting to two rounds on Day 1. The thing to watch is what effect this will have on the quality of the beginning of the fourth round. In the past, teams had a night to reorganize their thoughts before the fourth round and usually you saw teams do a good job when it began. We should watch if teams fall off in this round because of the changes.