From The Sports Desk: Draft day

NFLFrom The Sports Desk: Draft dayRead our NBC News NFL mock draft, plus our peek inside the war room.Listen to this article with a free account00:0000:00A helmet and football at an event Wednesday ahead of the NFL draft in Pittsburgh.Vera Nieuwenhuis / AP Content Services for the NFLShareAdd NBC News to GoogleApril 23, 2026, 1:16 PM EDTBy Tim Rohan, Ben Kamisar, Rohan Nadkarni and Andrew GreifThe NFL draft has finally arrived! We’re so excited, we’re sending today’s newsletter a bit early so you could pregame with all of our draft coverage.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.Our team takes you inside the draft war rooms, where teams debate players and make trades, with lots of wild stories from people in the know. Also: We had our draft-obsessed political reporter Ben Kamisar put together a mock draft. We think he’ll do better than some of the experts.Tonight, we’ll be live-blogging the first round, so be sure to come hang with us as we provide instant analysis on all the picks and deals. We have more NFL draft coverage, and will have more coming, on the NBC News website. Inside the War RoomLeading up to the NFL draft, teams try to plan for everything. They hold marathon meetings to rank prospects, weigh trade offers and walk through every possible scenario. But there is, almost always, something unforeseen right around the corner. They might be deceived by other teams, undermined by their owner or surprised by the way the draft unfolds.“Shoot, there are stories, man,” former NFL coach Jeff Fisher told NBC News.As the NFL draft begins today, teams will hunker down in their “war rooms,” which sound more exciting than they are. They’re essentially conference rooms. But often, these are the rooms where the planning is done, where the debates are had, decisions are made. They’re also the home of the team’s draft board, the final ranking of the players, the result of all their hard work.In the weeks before...