ESPN might have a succession plan in place for whenever Mel Kiper Jr. decides to retire, but NFL Draft analyst Matt Miller hasn\u2019t thought about it.<\/p>\n
Miller joined this week\u2019s episode of the Awful Announcing Podcast to discuss building a mock draft, working for ESPN, the 2025 NFL Draft, Shedeur Sanders and more. And during the interview, Miller was asked the question, \u201cAre you capable of ESPN\u2019s successor to Mel Kiper Jr?\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cOh my gosh,\u201d Miller said. \u201cI mean, if they ask me to be, I would work my tail off to be that. I\u2019ve never thought of myself as that. I\u2019ve never even assumed that I would be or could be that. But if Mel decided that he wanted to peel back and they asked me to do that, I would be honored.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnyone who works in this business, that is your dream. To be the main guy. I think I can handle it. From a work perspective, I think I know the draft well, I do a lot of work on the players, I do a lot of work on the teams. We\u2019re very different people. I\u2019m not going to be able to go on the breathless rants about players, but I think we both respect each other and how hard we work.<\/p>\n
Miller was also quick to shout out some of his ESPN colleagues who also do great work covering the NFL Draft, specifically naming Field Yates and Jordan Reid.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would never want to assume that if Mel decided to retire that just one person could take his place,\u201d Miller added. \u201cI think it would be something that you would have to share the workload a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kiper recently told Skip Bayless he\u2019s not thinking about retirement. And despite some of the backlash Kiper received for championing Shedeur Sander<\/a>s throughout the quarterback prospect\u2019s slide to the fifth round, the 64-year-old draft analyst appears to have plenty left<\/a> in the tank. But whenever Kiper decides it\u2019s time to slow down, Miller deserves a chance to be the heir apparent.<\/p>\n Listen to the full episode of the Awful Announcing Podcast beginning Friday, May 2 which features Matt Miller talking about his media career, the NFL Draft, working with Mel Kiper Jr. and more. Subscribe to the show on\u00a0Apple Podcasts<\/a>,\u00a0Spotify<\/a>, and wherever you get your podcasts. For more content, subscribe to AA\u2019s\u00a0YouTube page<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ESPN might have a succession plan in place for whenever Mel Kiper Jr. decides to retire, but NFL…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16856,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2026],"tags":[8713,7,7337,1771,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-16855","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-awful-announcing-podcast","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-matt-miller","11":"tag-mel-kiper-jr","12":"tag-nfl-draft"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114436024868461417","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}