Pride of Detroit
The Detroit Lions have admitted the NIL era has changed how they approach the NFL Draft. Here’s how it could impact the 2025 NFL Draft.
The Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) era in college football has been earth-shattering in how the NCAA operates, but it also has a profound impact on how NFL teams approach the draft. With college players no able to profit off their likeness and make millions of dollars before they even enter the NFL, it has a ripple effect across the league.
During a podcast with Detroit Lions reporter Tim Twentyman, Lions director of college scouting Brian Hudspeth gave a really good answer about how NIL has directly impacted his department—and it may give a hint as to what the Lions may do this week during the 2025 NFL Draft.
Hudspeth’s most interesting point was regarding the newly-shrunken group of underclassmen prospects. With much more motivation to stay in college now, fewer and fewer underclassmen are making the quick jump to the NFL. Hudspeth shared some eye-popping statistics.
“There’s a lot less depth in the draft,” Hudspeth said. “Because, generally, at the peak of underclassmen coming out, you had about 120 to 130 players (per draft). Now it’s down to 55 to 70. So you’ve lost, essentially, almost two rounds of players in some regards. Now, that’s making the assumption that they were all going to be in the top rounds—and they generally were—but you’ve kinda lost some depth. So the NIL world has changed us a little bit that way.”
Could this possibly mean the Lions are less likely to use their late-round picks with less perceived depth in the class? We know Lions general manager Brad Holmes has not been afraid to trade up—doing it four times last year.
One positive aspect of the NIL era, according to Hudspeth, is figuring out how money may change a player. For many of these college prospects, the NFL would have been the first opportunity to earn generational wealth. And while the league has many support systems in place to manage that wealth, sometimes poor decisions are made. The Lions were doing their best to figure out how some of their prospects would react to this life-changing money, but now that part of the equation is basically known.
“One of the questions we always used to ask when we went through schools is: how is this kid gonna be when he gets money? Who is gonna be in his support group? Who is gonna be in his circle? Who is he gonna have to take care of? Who is he bringing with him? How do you think he is going to handle no money to now millions of dollars in his pocket? Well, that question now is answered,” Hudspeth said.
Twentyman brought up a good point about how with so many transferring...
