It’s NFL draft week, which means that there’s a collection of draftniks far and wide that are going to watch the 2014 movie Draft Day, with its star-studded cast in Hollywood’s first (and to this point, only) attempt to cover the ever-expanding natural growth of fandom surrounding the NFL Draft. In 2014, when this movie came out, I was excited about my first-ever year covering the event, and given that NFL Network spent a ton of time advertising their on-air talent’s involvement in the film, I wanted to watch it so badly. So I did, and I really didn’t like it. Then fast forward to 2022, and all of my coworkers at Blue Chip Scouting were talking about how it’s become a cult classic. So I watched it again, and I found it even worse this time. Why?

Have you ever had a family member or friend who has a hard time when a TV show or movie delves into their passion or field of work? I’ll give you an example—my mom is a registered nurse. When watching medical shows, you better believe she’s laser-focused on whether what’s happening is realistic and physiologically legit. I’m that way with sports. It’s actually why, despite being a sports fan, I’m not big on shows or movies that focus on sports. I need things to either be removed from reality or as accurate as can be. It’s either gotta be Friday Night Lights (which isn’t perfect to the book but is still close enough) or it’s gotta be Like Mike, an 11-year-old making the NBA because he found a magical pair of Jordans at his orphanage.

Draft Day tries to be the NFL’s version of Moneyball, which came out three years earlier. However, there needed to be something to get football fans to bring their wives or girlfriends to watch with them, which is why 1) the cast is loaded with recognizable actors, and 2) there’s a RomCom- “Chick flick” angle thrown into it for good measure. Did it work? Well, you read the title and subtitle, so you already know my opinion, so let’s take a look at the film in a more in-depth way.

The movie starts with a voiceover from ESPN’s Chris Berman, essentially explaining what the NFL draft is before cutting to Seattle, home of the Seahawks, who, in this universe, own the number 1 pick. What makes this particularly humorous to me is that, in real life, the Seahawks won the Super Bowl a few months before the movie was released. They show GM of the Seahawks, Tom Michaels, played by Patrick St. Espirit most known for playing Commander Hicks on SWAT, and a man who sincerely deserves better than this film, fast asleep at 4:15 in the morning on the day of the draft, being woken up by the team president. The Seahawks have been battling with whether or not to trade the first pick for a king’s ransom or to take the #1 player, Bo Callahan, a QB from Wisconsin. They want something similar to what Washington traded for RG3 in 2012 (a swap of first round picks, two additional firsts and a second round pick), but no one wants to play ball, despite the pundits talking about how Callahan is the “best QB we’ve seen since Andrew Luck”, which, again, was only two years earlier, so it’s not as impressive as it sounds. Ultimately, the decision is made to find the most desperate GM in the NFL.

Cut to Cleveland, Ohio, and GM Sonny Weaver Jr., played by Kevin Costner, who also deserves better than this film. As Sonny is getting dressed, Jon Gruden and Mel Kiper of ESPN are talking about how Weaver has the most pressure on him this year, picking at 7th overall. You see, Weaver’s dad, a legendary Browns coach whom Sonny fired the previous year, just died a week ago. Yes, we’re four minutes into this movie, and we have a death being used as a plot point. It’s a football movie. He’s got NFL Network on and Deion Sanders is projecting that the Browns will take Ray Jennings, a running back out of Florida State, whose dad played for the Browns in his playing days. Deion goes on to say that Jennings “got into a bit of a skirmish, assault and battery, landed a kid in the hospital, but guess what- he was a model citizen up until then.” Weaver then finds out from his girlfriend, Ali, who is also the Browns’ head of finance and the Salary Cap Wizard, played by Jennifer Garner, who, you guessed it, also deserves better than this film, that he’s going to be a dad! Wow, that’s a big shift to take place in about six minutes in what’s supposed to be a light-hearted movie about the NFL Draft. How does Sonny respond? “Shit timing”. Brilliant.

He’s then called by Tom, who offers him the number 1 pick for the Browns’ first this year, the following year and a third-round pick the year after that. In reality, if Bo Callahan is that good, this should be a no-brainer, but Sonny scoffs at the deal and tells Tom to enjoy his pancakes (that matters for later). I get what the movie is going for, three years of commitments through draft picks seems like a lot, and the movie tries to make it look like Tom is exploiting Sonny’s loss of his father, but it’s just not the case. My favourite line is Tom going “Yeah, as you know, Connors did a great job for us last year, but Callahan looks like...well, hell, Sonny, he's gonna be a franchise player for someone.” If Connors was so good, you wouldn’t be picking number 1. Also, if Bo is going to be a franchise QB, and you don’t think Connors is… why would you pass on that?

As Sonny drives to work, we get a history of Cleveland sports from the radio host Sonny is listening to in the car- basically ending with “don’t screw this up.” He then receives a call from Ohio State linebacker Vontae Mack, played by Chadwick Boseman- yes, The Black Panther is in this movie, and he definitely deserves better. Anywho, Mack calls to ask Sonny, “who you picking?” Mack implies he’s the right pick for the Browns at seven in a really, really unnatural conversation. By the way, there’s no way that at 8 AM on the day of the draft, Weaver could possibly know who the pick at seven would be, because there’s like… 20 different ways any draft could go. He gets another call from the father of Ray Jennings, Earl, played by Terry Crews, who could have been replaced with literally any other actor, and no one would have noticed. Crews hands the phone to his son, played by NFL running back Arian Foster. Foster is responsible in real life for the annoying “NFL Script” joke that’s plagued the league for years. He deserves this film for that reason alone. After Ray Jennings explains the bar fight in another unnatural conversation, Sonny then meets with the owner of the Browns at a waterpark- you can’t make this shit up.

At the waterpark, owner Anthony Molina tells Sonny that he should “sell the farm because the farm sucks,” and that a player like Bo Callahan or Ray Jennings would be the right bick because it would “make a splash”, as opposed to who Sonny prefers- Vontae Mack. When Sonny says he’s confident in the QB they have, Molina says, “he barely made it half the season before he got hurt.” So? It’s football. Guys get hurt. Anyways, Molina finishes off this meeting by saying, “People pay to get wet.” I can’t tell from Molina’s smug dickishness if he’s supposed to be Jerry Jones, but after that line he might just be Daniel Snyder. Or former Panthers owner Jerry Richardson. So after that disturbing conversation, Sonny calls Tom Michaels back to agree to the trade, except Tom says, “We live in a different world than we did a couple of hours ago,” and the price is now three first-round picks. Sonny agrees to the trade.

In the next scene, we’re introduced to the head coach of the Browns, Vince Penn, played by Dennis Leary. Penn was the coach handpicked by Molina, and he and Sonny don’t like each other. Leary is explaining a play out loud to a room of staffers, later revealed to be the team scouts, about his favourite Ray Jennings play. What irks me is that these scouts seem amazed at the way Penn is waxing poetic about this play, as if they’ve never seen it, which, if they’re the team scouts and he’s in play at 7, they should have watched this game multiple times, so it shouldn’t be a huge surprise. Along the way, Penn drops a racist comment about “Te Hee-ha or Te Ho-ha. One of those huge Samoan kids, right?” Isn’t that special? Sonny tells the room he traded for the number one pick, and now the team has to rush to find everything they can find out about Bo Callahan, because they hadn’t done it before, since they never thought he was an option. What the hell is due diligence in this universe?

Weaver and Penn get into a “heated discussion” as Penn is upset he traded the future for a rookie QB. Penn doesn’t like rookie Quarterbacks. He wants Ray Jennings because that’s the key to unlocking his offense.

Shortly after all of this, and after some meaningless filler, Sonny gets a call from Bo Callahan’s agent, Chris Crawford, played by… Diddy. I don’t even need to explain why he deserves this film. They have a long conversation that doesn’t accomplish much, other than Crawford saying Bo loves cold weather and other empty platitudes. All I can say to Bo Callahan is, Don’t go to your agent’s parties. Then Sonny gets a call from his Mom, who saw the trade details on Twitter from… Vontae Mack, not Adam Schefter or any insiders… the prospect. What? Then another argument between Penn and Weaver, where Penn drops that he won a Super Bowl with the Cowboys twenty years ago. I love that even in this universe, the Cowboys still haven’t had playoff success since the mid-90s. The only thing of note from this is that Sonny calls Vontae and gives him the advice to get off Twitter- advice that’s pretty sound a decade later. Oh, also Penn sets the draft analysis on fire in Sonny’s office for dramatic effect or something.

I’m going to speed run through some shit in the next few scenes. We get to hear how the Browns’ existing QB Brian Drew’s knee injury is improving and he’s in the best shape of his life, and Sonny is told by the strength coach, “Star wideout Andre Bell” says things are going well with Drew. Sonny’s paying Andre Bell; he knows who he is. He doesn’t need to be prefaced as the star wideout. The scouts say that Callahan has “no weaknesses” (something easily disproved later), unless he “has a weakness for banging hot chicks”, as they show Weaver the website of girls Callahan has slept with and debate how many girls he’s gotten. Are these guys 11 years old? Also, right there. The website devoted to sexual partners is a MASSIVE red flag. Has anyone ever heard of character concerns? Maybe it’s too late for my advice to Bo about the parties.

• Brian Drew trashes Sonny’s office and doesn’t lose his place on the roster

• Drew has a mini meltdown and demands to be traded; however, unlike in 2019, when Antonio Brown called GM Mike Mayock a cracker, Drew wasn’t firm enough, so Sonny basically tells him to shut up

• The head of security for the Browns is doing the character eval and digging up the dirt on Callahan. He strongly implies none of Callahan’s teammates attended his 21st birthday party. In real time, I thought this was based on the story about Connor Cook in his draft year, but to my surprise, the Cook story happened two years after this movie came out. Sonny calls Bo’s head coach at Wisconsin, played by Sam Elliott of all people, and that story is never continued.

• The Bills call to offer a trade to move up to number one and offer a few future picks and a couple of players, but not a first-round pick in this year’s draft. On the surface, it’s nonsensical, and that’s because it’s revealed to be due to Penn's Treachery, as Coach Penn went behind Sonny’s back to try and facilitate the trade out of spite.
  

We finally get to about two hours before the draft, and as Molina is shown arriving at the draft, where he’ll be staying in the commissioner’s box instead of staying in the war room in Cleveland, the Browns decide to watch Vontae’s game head-to-head with Bo. Vontae had 4 sacks in that game. It’s also shown that every time Vontae got a sack on Bo, the least sacked QB in the nation, the following play, Bo would get the yips. That should be an on-field red flag right there. They fast forward to the game-winning touchdown that Bo throws, and shocker, Vontae isn’t on the field. Why? He was ejected a full quarter before that because he made contact with the official after being flagged for giving the ball to his dying sister in the crowd. Odd line of dialogue here is Sonny going “she died six months later.” Let’s assume this game was in early October. That would mean she’d have died less than a month ago, by the time this is all taking place, so why not just say that? Also, wouldn’t this be known by anyone in the room other than Sonny? How useless are these scouts? Also, Penn makes another obvious villain line to show you he’s a mean dude.

(They call what you see above a “bullrush”, but it’s not. Not even close.)

Back to some more filler!

• The head of security is back, talking about how one team taped a $100 bill to the back of the playbook to see who would read it. It’s a version of the story where Jamarcus Russell was given blank tapes by the Raiders to see if he would watch them. The difference is that the team they used for this example was the team now known as the Washington Commanders- you know what they were called before. Dan Snyder is the CHEAPEST fuck, and that would never be the case. The man let his stadium degrade to the point that the plumbing burst and sewage flowed through the venue. He’s not parting with a hundred bucks for the hell of it.

• Sonny’s mom decides that two hours before the draft is the perfect time to spread Sonny Sr’s ashes at the team facility. Mom… time and a place. The entire team’s staff takes part in this, and, again, the fact that the dead dad is merely a plot device is a little gross. Oh, and we find out that Sonny fired his dad because he refused to retire despite health concerns. He wanted his dad to spend more quality time with his wife. A noble cause. No, seriously. That’s sweet. Also, Sonny’s mom is played by the same woman who plays Elliott Stabler’s mom in Law & Order: Organized Crime. The more you know.

The Draft FINALLY gets here

The draft gets its own section here because we’ve sat through almost an hour of filler to get to these last 25 minutes.

Commissioner Roger Goodell comes out to start the draft, and you know this is a movie because Goodell isn’t getting booed out of the building. The Browns are officially put on the clock, and Sonny isn’t in the war room with the team. He’s clearly off planning his move to Montana to look after a ranch and be the Livestock Commissioner- yes, that is a Yellowstone reference. Ok, so he’s actually back at his desk and phones in the pick to the team representative at Radio City Music Hall. Just a quick aside, I kind of miss the draft being held there. Anywho, he gives the pick to the team rep, who winks at Molina, which should imply that the pick is Bo, as Sonny rejoins the team seconds before the pick is announced. Except, swerve bro, it’s actually Vontae Mack. Sonny went so rogue that he didn’t even call Vontae’s agent to let him know. Everyone in the room loses their shit. Sonny leaves again, after dropping a sticky note on a desk. Coach Penn picks up the sticky that reads “Vontae Mack no matter what.” By the way, in all of this, Molina is on his way back to Cleveland to scream at Sonny, and Bo has already left to throw a tantrum. He handles adversity so well. Side note, why did the team rep wink at Molina? He knew who the pick was. What the hell?

After some wooden dialogue from Ali and Sonny, he returns to the draft room, and now they’re at pick four with Callahan still on the board. Someone says that the other teams before the Cardinals at 4 “panicked” by picking who they were already going to pick. That’s the opposite of panicking. Who wrote this?

Sonny decides he’s not done throwing a monkey wrench into the draft and calls the Jaguars’ rookie GM, who looks to be about 19 years old. This GM is freaking out because he picks 6th and the only two players he had thought of taking are going to be gone. Clearly, no one in this universe has foresight, yet, at the beginning of the movie, it was expected that Sonny could tell Vontae who he was going to pick at 7. Sonny convinces the Jags’ GM to trade the 6th pick for 4 years’ worth of second-round picks. He says it would allow the Jags to “reset for next year” and that everyone would wonder what’s cooking in Jacksonville. Not only does that trade somehow look awful for both teams, but it’s also not possible. You can’t trade draft picks that far down the road. You can only trade the current season + two additional years. Not three. By the way, this whole paragraph stretches out 5 minutes of this movie.

So now Sonny has the Browns on the clock again at six, only one spot ahead of where he started the day, but with way, way, way fewer assets for the future. Except, he doesn’t want to pick at 6. He wants to trade… with Seattle again. Sonny calls Tom Michaels and tells him he’s now on the clock, and he’s going to take Bo Callahan unless Michaels trades up. What does Sonny want? All of his picks back. Seriously? Are we in middle school? Don’t you understand no takebacks? Also, 3 firsts to move from 7 up to 6 would immediately get Michaels fired. It simply doesn’t work like that. He uses the same line that Michaels used on him to start the movie. “Save football in Seattle.” He puts Michaels on hold to ask what else the team needs, to which Ali responds “special teams”, and the rest of the room asks for David Putney, a faceless punt returner randomly thrown into this deal for shits and/or gigs. I’d like to think that this is a call back to Tim Dwight being in the trade that landed Michael Vick in Atlanta, but I think that’s giving the movie too much credit.

Sonny tells Michaels that “we live in a different world than we did thirty seconds ago… I want my picks back, and I want David goddamn Putney because I feel like it.” He’s trying to convince Tom that it’s worth it, because “You. Get. Bo.” Tom, because, as we’ve seen, everyone in this movie acts as though they’ve never interacted with another human, doesn’t just hang up on Sonny, but pauses to think. Sonny responds “say it with me, you pancake eating motherfucker,” and that’s what seals the deal. Holy shit, we’re 90 minutes into the movie and we finally have an interesting line of dialogue, though that might be because I had a friend in high school who used to call people something similar, but with spaghetti. The trade goes through, and the Browns take Jennings, the guy Penn wanted the whole time. So now, Penn’s happy and doesn’t want to quit anymore because he’s got his guy. Sonny’s happy because he has his guy, and Molina now doesn’t want to fire Sonny after all. Everyone goes home happy. Chris Berman and Rich Eisen from ESPN and NFL Network, respectively, tell us about how great this is for Cleveland because Sonny trusted his gut and this and that, just total rambling.

They cut to the introductory press conference where the new players are getting introduced, and then show Sonny telling his mom that Ali is pregnant. Oh, I forgot to mention, Sonny’s mom previously didn’t like Ali, it contributed nothing to the film, but now that she knows she’s going to be a grandma, she knows Ali’s name. Such a wholesome moment.

Then we see the first game of the regular season and Jim Brown and Bernie Kosar, actual Browns legends, are talking about how good the draft was (five months ago), and Molina goes “I can’t take full credit… but I will.” It shows Drew and Vontae leading the team in the tunnel as the movie fades to the credits.

Verdict

Draft Day doesn’t know what the hell it wants to be. It can’t be for existing fans, with the constant clips of the old footage from real life comes across as patronizing. It paints the sport in a weird way to try to attract new fans. The love angle between Ali and Sonny doesn’t do much. It’s only notable because they work together, but there’s not enough care put into it to make it matter in any way. Safe to say, the NFL draft does not work like that. The scouting process doesn’t either, but if you go into it the way I did and cast all that aside, knowing that it doesn’t and that, as my late grandfather would say, “that’s Hollywood,” Draft Day doesn’t do anything beyond take up almost two hours and accomplish nothing. It’s often compared to Moneyball, which was its spiritual successor, and while Moneyball does have some issues in terms of how the real story played out, it sticks to the theme of finding wins along the margins when operating a small-market team. I’m not sure what the theme of this movie is. Even Jerry Maguire did a better job of incorporating a love story around football.

I see why draftniks love it in the same way that a film buff might ironically watch The Room, but I also can see why this movie barely broke even at the box office. It wastes the talents of names like Costner, Boseman, Leary, Sam Elliott, and more. Hell, Anthony Molina is played by Frank Langella, who played Nixon in Frost/Nixon only a few years earlier! Terry Crews is there, but he’s not either beating the crap out of someone, y’know, because he’s massive, or being funny. You made Terry Crews speak in a monotone voice. What the hell?

If you’re a big fan of bad movies like Gigli, this movie is for you. If you’re not, do what I wish I had done 11 years ago and avoid watching this.