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2021 NFL draft expectations

Charles Robinson, Yahoo Sports Reporter joins the Yahoo Finance Live panel with the latest on NFL Draft 2021.

Video transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: We are less than a week away from the NFL draft. And downtown Cleveland playing host to the event this year. It's sure to look a little different from what we saw last year after that big all-virtual draft.

Let's bring in Yahoo Sports reporter Charles Robinson, who's going to be covering the draft for us. And Charles, let's talk about the event first. Because last year was really at the height of the pandemic. Certainly the NFL pulled it off in a big way. But this year it sounds like we're returning to normal, at least what's close to normal.

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CHARLES ROBINSON: Yeah. This is really the NFL's attempt to get this back to being the typical offseason tentpole event, its big, sort of grand offseason parade. In 2019, Nashville on site drew 600,000 fans. Absolutely smashed the records for drawing fans into a city for an NFL draft. As you said, last year was supposed to be Las Vegas. That was canceled and we got an all-virtual event.

But you know, this year's event in Cleveland the NFL is basically looking at about 50,000 fans attending. There are the draft events, the sort of fan live events that people can attend with tickets. Interestingly enough, there's been a shell built and a stage built. Roger Goodell has been vaccinated. He'll have his hugs with players this year. But they have not yet figured out precisely how many fans can sit-in and watch the actual event itself in that stage shell. They're still working with local health officials to figure out exactly what the protocols in place will be. But it's going to be closer to what NFL fans are used to, [CLEARS THROAT] excuse me, historically from the event.

[? ZACK GUZMAN: ?] Yeah. When we look at, you know, the draft itself, interesting to see kind of odds on who's going to go first. We were showing Trevor Lawrence just a second ago there. And you guys were writing about this at Yahoo Sports, that the odds were minus, what, it was 10,000, right. So you would have had to put up $10,000 to win $100 on anything other than seeing Trevor Lawrence go to the Jags.

I mean, other than that, what else are you watching in regards to this year's pack and maybe potential surprises?

CHARLES ROBINSON: Well, the NFL loves the fact that this is a quarterback draft. And what I mean by that is you're going to have at least five quarterbacks go in the first round, maybe even six. And that always brings a lot of intrigue. NFL fans tune in to see where quarterbacks are going. It's always billed as the most important position in the game. The NFL builds much of its sort of licensing rights and advertising around the star quarterbacks in the league. It is very much a quarterback league.

So as you said, Trevor Lawrence easily the number one pick in the draft. Zach Wilson of BYU is expected to go number two to the New York Jets. But the San Francisco 49ers moved up to the third pick in the draft. Everyone believes, across the league, that it's for a quarterback, but no one's quite sure who that quarterback is going to be. So in a lot of ways, when you talk to teams, they say, hey, the draft begins at number three, because no one really knows what San Francisco is going to do in terms of that quarterback. And that's going to affect how the rest of the draft falls.

The guys who are potentially in play there, Mac Jones of Alabama won a national championship with Nick Saban, Ohio State's Justin Fields, and then North Dakota State's Trey Lance. Any one of those three guys could come off the board at number three and cause chaos for the rest of the draft.

AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah. It sounds like a little bit of a surprise in the number three pick. You talk about the sure bets at the top. What are some other things that you're looking for that you think could potentially shake things up?

CHARLES ROBINSON: Well, what's interesting is Kyle Pitts, who's a tight end out of Florida. You don't often hear about tight ends being the hot coveted players in drafts. And when you get beyond Trevor Lawrence, I would say that Kyle Pitts is the next most talked about name in NFL circles. And when you talk about the top 10 picks in the draft, almost every other pick beyond the first three, which are all expected to be quarterbacks, Kyle Pitts could end up going to any of the teams from number four on down.

And the Atlanta Falcons hold the number four pick. People are like, hey, are they going to take a quarterback or could it be Kyle Pitts? There are teams that potentially would want to move up to get Kyle Pitts at number four. So you could see a potential trade at number four in Atlanta. It's just weird to see a tight end, of all positions, not really considered a glamour position in the NFL. But this is supposed to be a transformational type of tight end that's going to be entering the league, maybe one of the best guys to come out in decades at that position.

AKIKO FUJITA: Charles Robinson, Yahoo Sports reporter. We're going to be watching for your coverage next Thursday.