Bleacher Report’s NFL Draft show on Facebook Live features (from left to right) Chris Simms, Matt Miller and Adam Lefkoe. (Courtesy of B/R)
Pop quiz, draftnik.
As Bleacher Report’s trio of NFL draft analysts prepare for their extended Facebook Live coverage of the seven-round event, a producer is periodically sent into the room with a scenario:
“The Buccaneers just traded the No. 7 pick to the Bills, who are now on the clock. Go.”
“We spend a lot of time doing the due diligence of what a live broadcast will feel like and the unexpected elements that will occur as opposed to the regular cadence of expected teams and picks,” Bleacher Report senior vice president of content Joe Yanarella said.
Former NFL quarterback and coach Chris Simms called these tests “great preparation” for the on-air talent — which also includes draft guru Matt Miller and host Adam Lefkoe — as well as the crew preparing graphics. The three have pre-recorded a series of segments analyzing a wide range of draft picks but spend most of the time riffing on prospects, teams and the league with some unrelated commentary thrown in for good measure.
“This is not like corporate TV,” Simms said. “Bleacher Report has entrusted guys like myself and Adam Lefkoe and Matt Miller with this because they know we love football and we’re going to keep the conversation on football. We might have some laughs about pop culture and some things that are going on in the world, certainly, but we really have free reign to just talk about whatever we want. And we bring it from a true football perspective.”
On the Friday during last year’s NFL Draft, Bleacher Report set its new daily traffic record with eight million unique visitors, boasting a 41-percent increase in visits on the first two days of the draft above the norm and a 78-percent gain in social engagement. While B/R will continue to disseminate targeted content through the team streams, Yanarella described the commercial-free Facebook Live broadcast as a “100 percent free-flowing” show meant to capture a large mainstream audience.
“It’s really a three-to-four day window that allows for examination in real-time, analysis after the fact and predictive looking forward to the next night,” Yanarella, who was named Adweek’s Digital Editor of the Year in 2015, said. “It’s really 96 hours or so of constant news and information, expectation, realization, analysis and rinse, repeat numerous times.”
Even with a new platform like B/R Live, its first iteration will focus on live sports — as in, games and not information shows like draft coverage — so there is no plan to shift the draft show away from Facebook, where it has lived for three years. On the social media site, as side stage host Stephen Nelson said last year, “We’re going to be talking with you, not at you.” (Within the first two minutes of the show, Nelson and college analyst Michael Felder also touted the hashtag, #LetsGetWeird.)
The analysts react authentically and the abundance of screen time creates conversations that Simms described as “very raw and natural,” yet also meticulous given the time spent preparing.
“I don’t have any agendas, I don’t let any personal friendships sway what I want to say,” Simms said. “I work really hard at this job and I love doing it. I’ve been around football my whole life, and I’m not afraid to be me.”
Lefkoe is the set’s air-traffic controller weaving in one-liners and keeping the show moving. He and Simms have an established rapport as co-hosts of an NFL podcast that will be re-launched as a broader show with more investment supporting it this fall. Miller lives the scouting world year-round. “The draft is going to be over,” Simms said, “and he’s going to release his big board for next year’s draft right away.”
Simms’ knowledge comes from a life in football as the son of a two-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback who had his own decorated college career at Texas, played parts of five seasons in the NFL and then spent a year on the New England Patriots’ coaching staff.
“I’m very confident in my evaluations, so I’m not afraid to go out on a limb or go away from popular opinion,” he said.
His mock draft speaks to that. There are five top quarterback prospects — USC’s Sam Darnold, UCLA’s Josh Rosen, Oklahoma’s Baker Mayfield, Louisville’s Lamar Jackson and Wyoming’s Josh Allen — with great debate as to how they should be ordered. The consensus among pundits is that Darnold is the safest choice and Allen the riskiest, yet Simms doesn’t see it that way at all.
Simms, however, would pick Allen first and Darnold fifth of that group, saying Darnold is not better than those peers in any single skill.
“I like all of these quarterbacks, they’re all top-20 picks, certainly,” Simms said. “There’s no slam dunk, just bonafide franchise superstar in the group either, though. They all have questions that would concern me to a degree.”
Yanarella admitted that Simms’ reactions are often too exuberant — “Sometimes he is so honest in his reactions that we have to remind him it’s not a locker room but a studio,” he said — but the executive trusts the former quarterback’s advice so much that he picks his brain about all sorts of football topics.
“He scouts and films relentlessly and religiously and is pretty fearless in his opinions,” Yanarella said, “which is one of the reasons that we love him.”
