MIKE BURKE
Allegany Communications Sports
The NFL hosts one of its most important and most-watched television productions tonight in Green Bay with the first round of the 2025 NFL Draft; or, as it is officially called, the Player Selection Meeting.
As we established earlier this week, it’s a very good watch, whether you watch it tonight on ABC or on ESPN, NFL Network or NFL+ all through the weekend.
In this house a tradition of the NFL Draft has become to also watch “Draft Day,” the 2014 movie starring Kevin Costner and a very entertaining supporting cast.
For those of you who have not seen it, I suggest you watch the actual draft tonight, then watch “Draft Day” sometime. You’ll enjoy the movie more that way, but not for the reasons you might think if you haven’t already seen it.
Those of us who have seen it (many times) understand, because this is such a bloody bad movie that it ends up being so jolly good, which has always been my kind of television. I’d have been ticked had I paid to see this in the theater, but I watch it every time I see it’s on television.
For beginners, the movie had the full endorsement and cooperation of the NFL as there is an NFL team logo prominently shown in just about every scene, and none other than Commissioner Roger Goodell has several speaking scenes in it as well.
The movie is so unrealistic and camp that Goodell is cheered by the New York crowd when he takes the stage to open the draft. In this case, life doesn’t imitate art as we will see tonight in Green Bay when he takes the stage.
To summarize, on the morning of the Player Selection Meeting, Cleveland Browns general manager Sonny Weaver Jr., played by Costner, is determined to use the seventh overall pick the way he wants to use it. He even writes the name of the player on a piece of scrap paper in the kitchen before he goes to work.
But, of course, he has other things on his mind, and what NFL general manager doesn’t on the morning of the NFL Draft?
Sonny’s semi-secret girlfriend Ali Parker, the team’s salary cap expert, decides that first thing Draft Day morning is the perfect time to spring it on Sonny Jr. that Sonny III may be on the clock because she’s pregnant. This comes on the heels of the recent death of Sonny Sr., the former beloved head coach of the Browns, who was fired by the team following the previous season.
Being the general manager, Sonny Jr., of course, is the one who fired Sonny Sr., which he later admits he did because his mother asked him to because his father refused to retire even with his failing health.
Well, this just in – he died anyway; and he died with a broken heart because his own kid fired him.
Now are you beginning to understand?
To make a long story short, the Seattle Seahawks hold the first overall pick and after the Browns owner, played by Frank Langella, tells Sonny he needs to make a splash in this draft, Sonny foolishly mortgages the team’s future by trading his next three first-round picks for the Seahawks’ No. 1 pick to draft highly-regarded Wisconsin quarterback Bo Callahan, who we come to learn is a bit of a loser.
The unexpected opportunity to draft Callahan excites Browns fans, but splits the team’s front office (which is essentially a small group of guys with laptops) and players, particularly Sonny, his girlfriend, the new head coach, who spends much of the movie waving the Super Bowl ring he won in Dallas under everyone’s nose, and the Browns’ current injury-prone quarterback, who trashes Sonny’s office upon news of the trade.
From here, we watch as Sonny tries to dig his way out of this awful trade, deal with his pregnant girlfriend during their clandestine meetings in a storage closet between picks of the NFL Draft, and his mother, who wants Sonny to spread his father’s ashes on the Browns’ practice field while he’s trying to conduct the NFL Draft.
The entire movie is cliché And stupid: Sonny, the general manager of the Browns, between visits to the storage closet to pitch woo with his pregnant girlfriend/salary cap expert, carries around a football all day, no doubt, just as all NFL general managers do when they’re trying to conduct a draft.
When the decision is made to draft Callahan, Sonny wants to see film of the Badgers QB. Just a couple of hours before he makes the No. 1 pick he’s going to take a look at film of the top prospect in the draft?
As Sonny discovers Bo is not liked by anyone other than his college coach and his agent, a potential trade with Buffalo is put on the table. Sonny says he’ll consider it but needs to “see the numbers” on one of the running backs that would come to the Browns.
Numbers? Get me the numbers? As though anybody other than fantasy football players look at numbers? That’s only a small part of this corny movie that was made to be taken seriously and is what, of course, makes it even funnier. Still, a very entertaining and talented cast:
Jennifer Garner plays Ali Parker, the team’s salary cap person in the storage closet; Denis Leary plays Browns head coach Vince Penn, who Sonny hired to replace Dad; Langella is Anthony Molina, the Browns owner; Sam Elliott is Coach Moore of Wisconsin; and Ellen Burstyn is Barb, Sonny’s dingbat mom.
The late Chadwick Boseman plays Ohio State linebacker Vontae Mack, Rosanna Arquette is Angie, Sonny’s ex-wife (hey, they all stop by the facility to see Sonny on Draft day), while Goodell, Jon Gruden, the late Jim Brown, Bernie Kosar, Chris Berman, Rich Eisen, Ray Lewis and Alex Marvez all play themselves, which further adds to the camp of the entire experience.
Not to play spoiler, but the movie ends as the Browns and the city of Cleveland rejoice in what turns out to be a promising draft with a draft party. After the party, Sonny reconciles with his mother over his excellent draft performance and her soon-to-be first grandchild (after a day of fighting with her, he decides to tell her on his way out the door).
Then he leaves for the night with his salary cap expert (the storage closet must have been booked) and leaves his mother in the Browns’ facility all by herself holding the empty urn that had held the remains of her beloved husband, whom she forced her son to fire from the only job the poor man ever wanted.
Seriously. What can be more entertaining than that?
Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on X @MikeBurkeMDT