FMIA: A Night in the Raiders’ Draft Room and 12 Minutes With C.J. Stroud

HENDERSON, Nev.—Just before noon on Thursday, hours before the start of the NFL Draft, Raiders coach Josh McDaniels popped into GM Dave Ziegler’s office for one last bit of strategy talk. The team’s draft board had been set with finality Wednesday, after three months of debate. The Raiders, after conversations with teams above them about trading up from number seven in the first round, decided to stay in their slot, barring a surprise.

“What we need is for three quarterbacks to go before we pick,” McDaniels said.

It seemed logical, with Carolina going Bryce Young at number one and then Houston at two and Indianapolis at four and Seattle at five all in the QB market. But nothing in this draft after Carolina was a sure thing. All McDaniels and Ziegler knew was that these four non-QBs sat at the top of their board a short spiral away, graded closely:

JOHNSON, Paris OT

ANDERSON, Will OLB

WITHERSPOON, Devon CB

WILSON, Tyree OLB

But as Ziegler and McDaniels hashed it out, and McDaniels talked about the latest intel he’d heard about the top six (“I hope I’ll have something coming in on Houston at two, but Nick’s tight,” he said, referring to Texans GM/CIA agent Nick Caserio), they realized they were just like the rest of America: They doubted Houston would pick a quarterback at two, they didn’t know which GM was fixing to pay a ransom to trade up with Arizona at three, they didn’t know which quarterback Indianapolis would choose at four, and they didn’t know if Seattle would go QB or best defensive weapon at five.

No surprise, all this mystery. This is the modern draft, where lips are no longer loose, where mock drafts are a mockery of reality. It sounds counterintuitive, but in the hours before the NFL Draft, the people