Originally posted by NYniner85:
Originally posted by 49ers808:
I love Solaks content and his pre draft evaluations. But man he looks like someone who's football background consists of handing water bottles to players while in civilian clothes on the sideline 🤣
Hahaha 100%
Also what happened to The Draft Network? I was a big fan of all those guys…they all left and now that site is a shell of itself
Draft Network started by bringing the top draftniks together onto one platform right as interest in the NFL draft really started to explode. Because the evaluators were already well known, and the masses were ready to move on from the Matt Miller's of the world, it took off really quickly. Add in the first actually functional mock draft simulator, and it was a hit.
Fast forward a few months tho, and it all collapsed really quickly.
Loss of talent. Jon Ledyard got exposed for saying some racist stuff online when he was younger, and he stepped away (or was secretly fired, possibly) to "work on himself" and distance himself from what was at the time a quickly growing platform. Shortly after, Solak joined the team. But by the time he became a household name, Trevor Sikemma was poached by PFF. Then Solak was poached by the Ringer I think before ultimately ending up with ESPN I believe. Before you know it, all the draftniks and podcasters who brought attention to the site were gone, replaced by people who the audience didn't know, and scouting reports the audience couldn't trust. The original team were talented, as evidenced by them all being poached by larger more prestigious companies, but more importantly, they were personalities as evidenced by their continued success in formats other than written articles. Who still listens to the Locked On NFL Draft podcast?! Ledyard and Sikemma were the best. TDN never got those likeable personalities back. They did get a few good evaluators tho....Who were then poached by ESPN and BR lol
Increase of competition. Other evaluators, podcasts and sites started popping up. Right as TDN was losing talent, places like The Ringer, Bleacher Report etc were going from unknowns at best and complete jokes at worst (looking at you Bleacher Report under Matt Miller) to a more reliable source of scouting reports than ever before. With the rise in NFL draft interest, companies like PFF started focusing big money on content creation. Gone are the days of Walter Football being the only option if you were willing to risk your hard drive. And then the nail in the coffin was the rise of competent competing mock draft simulators.
Business problems. Don't remember the whole story, but apparently TDN was started by a nepo baby. Eventually there was funding/CEO/business direction drama. IIRC the entire website was down for like 6 months because of money and/or hosting issues...argument over who owned the code to the mock simulator etc. Bad timing. People moved on and never had a reason to look back.
I cant remember the last time i went to TDN.
I also have no idea why i took the time to type all that.
[ Edited by adrianlesnar on Mar 25, 2026 at 11:26 PM ]
Career 20% win rate, 17% pressure rate