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The 2014 NFL draft was the 79th annual meeting of
National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the majo ...
(NFL) franchises to select newly eligible football players to the league. The draft, officially the "Player Selection Meeting", was held at Radio City Music Hall in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
on May 8 through May 10, 2014. The draft started on May 8, 2014, at 8 pm EDT. The draft was moved from its traditional time frame in late April due to a scheduling conflict at Radio City Music Hall. There was early discussion and rumors leading up to the draft on the future of staying at the current location in New York City, where it had been held since . Given the increased interest the draft had garnered over the past decade, there was belief that the event may have outgrown Radio City Music Hall, which had been the venue for the past eight drafts. The possibility of extending the draft to four days was also being discussed throughout the months leading up to the draft. The NFL decided in that summer that the 2015 NFL Draft will take place at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago, Illinois. The
Houston Texans The Houston Texans are a professional American football team based in Houston. The Texans compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) South division, and play their home games at NR ...
opened the draft by selecting defensive end Jadeveon Clowney from the University of South Carolina. The last time a defensive player was taken with the first overall selection was in 2006, when the Texans selected Mario Williams. The Texans also closed the draft with the selection of safety Lonnie Ballentine of the
University of Memphis } The University of Memphis (UofM) is a public research university in Memphis, Tennessee. Founded in 1912, the university has an enrollment of more than 22,000 students. The university maintains the Herff College of Engineering, the Center for Ea ...
as
Mr. Irrelevant Mr. Irrelevant is the nickname given to the last pick of the annual National Football League Draft. Although NFL drafts date back to 1936, the first person to be called Mr. Irrelevant was Kelvin Kirk of the 1976 NFL Draft. History "Mr. Irrele ...
, which is the title given to the final player selected. The 2014 NFL draft made history when the St. Louis Rams selected
Michael Sam Michael Alan Sam Jr. (born January 7, 1990) is an American professional football defensive lineman for the Barcelona Dragons in the European League of Football. A defensive end, Sam played college football for the Missouri Tigers and was d ...
in the seventh round. Sam, who became the first openly gay player to ever be drafted in the NFL, was selected 249th out of 256 picks in the 2014 NFL Draft. After this, Sam's jersey was the second best selling rookie jersey on the NFL's website. Sam came out publicly in the months leading up to the draft.


Early entrants

A record 98 underclassmen announced their intention to forgo their remaining NCAA eligibility and declare themselves available to be selected in the draft. When including four players who received degrees but still had eligibility remaining, the number swells to 102. Fourteen underclassmen—plus Teddy Bridgewater who graduated with eligibility remaining—were selected in the draft's first round, including the first four and six of the first ten players selected.


Overview

The following is the breakdown of the 256 players selected by position:


Determination of draft order

The draft order is based generally on each team's record from the previous season, with teams which qualified for the postseason selecting after those which failed to make the playoffs. The
Houston Texans The Houston Texans are a professional American football team based in Houston. The Texans compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) South division, and play their home games at NR ...
with a 2–14 record in
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held the first selection of each round. The
Dallas Cowboys The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team based in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The Cowboys compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East divis ...
and
Baltimore Ravens The Baltimore Ravens are a professional American football team based in Baltimore, Maryland. The Ravens compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) North division. The team plays its ...
finished with identical 8–8 records and strength of schedule ratings, hence a coin flip was used to determine the selection order — the Cowboys won the flip and thus selected ahead of the Ravens.


Player selections


Notable undrafted players


Trades

In the explanations below, (D) denotes trades that took place during the 2014 draft, while (PD) indicates trades completed pre-draft. ;Round one ;Round two ;Round three ;Round four ;Round five ;Round six ;Round seven


Supplemental draft

The supplemental draft was held on July 10, 2014. For each player selected in the supplemental draft, the team forfeits its pick in that round in the draft of the following season. Four players were eligible, but for the second straight year no players were selected.


Summary

The
Southeastern Conference The Southeastern Conference (SEC) is an American college athletic conference whose member institutions are located primarily in the South Central and Southeastern United States. Its fourteen members include the flagship public universities o ...
(SEC) led all college athletic conferences in terms of first round selections with eleven, including the first two picks of the draft. For the first time since the league's second draft in 1937, no player from the
University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...
was selected. For the second year in succession — and only the second time since 1967 — no running back was selected in the first round. The first player taken at the position was
Bishop Sankey Bishop Sankey (born September 15, 1992) is a former American football running back. He was drafted by the Tennessee Titans in the second round of the 2014 NFL Draft. Sankey played college football at Washington. After starting 12 games over t ...
who was selected in the second round with the 54th pick overall. This is the latest point in the history of the draft for the first running back to be selected.


Selections by college athletic conference


Schools with multiple draft selections


Selections by position


U.S. television coverage

The draft was broadcast live by the NFL Network and
ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...
. This marks the 35th year of draft coverage on ESPN while the NFL Network had covered the draft since its inception ten years ago. The two networks' combined first-round coverage drew a record 32 million viewers according to Nielsen ratings which was a 28 percent increase over the previous year. In total 45.7 million viewers watched some part of the three-day event, topping the previous record of 45.4 millions set in 2010.


In popular culture

* The events of the 2014 film '' Draft Day'', take place during the fictionalized 2014 NFL Draft. * The 2014 NFL draft was also featured in ‘’ The League’’.


References

;Notes ;General references ;Trade references


External links


Official Site2014 NFL Draft at ESPN
{{2014 NFL season by team National Football League Draft
NFL Draft The National Football League Draft, also called the NFL Draft or (officially) the Player Selection Meeting, is an annual event which serves as the league's most common source of player recruitment. Each team is given a position in the drafting o ...
Draft
NFL Draft The National Football League Draft, also called the NFL Draft or (officially) the Player Selection Meeting, is an annual event which serves as the league's most common source of player recruitment. Each team is given a position in the drafting o ...
2010s in Manhattan American football in New York City Radio City Music Hall Sports in Manhattan