When is the 2022 NFL Draft?

With the NCAA’s Senior Bowl just around the corner, things are getting down to the wire for the 2022 NFL Draft. After this last opportunity to showcase their skills in a game situation, there is only the combine left which is more about mining raw data for the scouts. Of course, some great players don’t perform well at the combine, Tom Brady was famously average in every category, so it is the intangibles that count for more than data once the draft actually rolls around.

Hollywood films aside, the draft is not actually a day. It is three days. This year’s Draft is scheduled to take place between Thursday the 28th of April until Saturday the 30th of April in Paradise, Nevada. Further giving lie to the myth is the fact that these “days” are actually evening events.

The format of the draft is that each team gets to pick a player from the current crop of college leavers, traditionally graduating seniors but in recent years of redshirts and transfers this can include anyone who is more than four years out of high school and declares their eligibility. The teams pick in reverse order to how they finished the season, so the bottom team picks first and the Super Bowl winner picks last. However, teams can buy, sell, and trade their pick to other teams so it can quickly get very complicated indeed.

The world’s focus will be firmly on the the Thursday evening when Round 1 will take place. Each team will have a strictly-enforced 10 minutes to get their selection in, for a total of 320 minutes or 3 hours 40 minutes per round. Friday will see Rounds 2 and 3 take place and the Saturday will host Rounds 4 through 7.

Team Draft Order

* order not yet decided

While the draft is not the be-all and end-all for NFL success, teams can stake a claim to some of tomorrow’s hottest players and franchises can be turned around with the picks made on these days. You only need to have a look at Cincinnati to see that. Two years ago, they finished dead last and took Joe Burrow as the first overall pick. The club turnaround is well underway and they stand a strong chance of making it to the Super Bowl as a result of that pick.

Dan Marino, Terry Bradshaw and John Elway were all taken in the first round and turned into fantastic franchise players, so there is always a scramble to get in while the getting is good. With heavy needs at teams like the Saints and the Steelers, expect some movement in picks traded and bought right up until the wire.