{"id":783234,"date":"2026-02-28T23:28:21","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T23:28:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/783234\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T23:28:21","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T23:28:21","slug":"chiefs-gm-brett-veach-reveals-how-nil-era-is-impacting-nfl-draft-boards-stresses-need-to-adapt-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/783234\/","title":{"rendered":"Chiefs GM Brett Veach reveals how NIL era is impacting NFL Draft boards, stresses need to \u2018adapt\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than five years into the NIL<\/a> era, it continues to affect the NFL Draft<\/a>. But Kansas City Chiefs general manager Brett Veach showed just how much it impacted his team this cycle.<\/p>\n

Veach told reporters the Chiefs took upward of 25 names off their draft board when the underclassmen list came out in January. For the 2026 NFL Draft, only 63 underclassmen forwent their eligibility<\/a> and declared. It continued a trend of underclassmen opting to stay in school now that they can earn NIL dollars and hopefully improve their stock.<\/p>\n

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To Veach, NFL teams simply have to \u201cadapt\u201d to when it comes to college football\u2019s new landscape. It also means franchises are drafting older players. That means the development plans also need adjusting.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see it when we go through these prospects and we\u2019re looking at the tags and you see their birth dates, and then you look at your roster, and a lot of the guys are just as young as these guys,\u201d Veach said at the NFL Scouting Combine<\/a>. \u201cThen, it kind of trickles down. \u2026 I think when the official decision date for these underclassmen came out, I believe we moved over 25 guys off our board that we had top 75, top 100.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it really impacts, I think, the draft, and then you\u2019re getting older prospects as you go on. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s going to change anytime soon, and that\u2019s something that we have to adapt to. Until there\u2019s some wholesale changes on what they do on the college side, I think this is just going to be the way things work now. And it\u2019s for us to adapt and adjust to it and position yourself to get some of the younger players that have a little more growth.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Brett Veach: Middle rounds hit hardest by NIL era<\/p>\n

NFL Network\u2019s Daniel Jeremiah recently said it will probably take time<\/a> to see just how much of an impact NIL and the transfer portal<\/a> have on the draft. But as more players go back to school and get another year of development, the approach to the second and third round is shifting<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now, Brett Veach said players drafted in those rounds don\u2019t necessarily need as much work. That\u2019s also part of the transformation of the process.<\/p>\n

\u201cTypically, the second and third round would be those guys that maybe they didn\u2019t play a lot, but they were young,\u201d Veach said. \u201cWell, now these guys are just bouncing and getting paid by another school and getting paid and playing. So it\u2019s a little bit that two, three, four rounds where you\u2019ve got these younger, developmental guys that haven\u2019t scratched the surface yet, you\u2019re getting a little bit more already finished product.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s challenging. But I think it\u2019s, again, what we have to adapt to, and that goes into how you position your board and when to be aggressive and when not to be aggressive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than five years into the NIL era, it continues to affect the NFL Draft. But Kansas City…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":783235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[4955,4220,7,110,6,15,126,1967,9609,92897],"class_list":["post-783234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl-draft","tag-2026-nfl-draft","tag-brett-veach","tag-football","tag-kansas-city-chiefs","tag-nfl","tag-nfl-draft","tag-nfl-network","tag-nfl-scouting-combine","tag-nil","tag-underclassmen"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116150855686484306","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783234","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=783234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/783235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=783234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=783234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=783234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}