The 2019 NFL Draft was the 84th annual meeting of
National Football League (NFL) franchises to select newly eligible players for the
2019 NFL season. The draft was held on April 25–27 in
Nashville, Tennessee. The first round was held on April 25, followed by the second and third rounds on April 26, and concluded with rounds 4–7 on April 27. The draft featured a record-high 40 trades, surpassing the 37 that were made in
2017
File:2017 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The War Against ISIS at the Battle of Mosul (2016-2017); aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing; The Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 ("Great American Eclipse"); North Korea tests a se ...
.
Early entrants
A record-high 111 eligible applicants announced their intention to enter the 2019 NFL Draft as underclassmen, which primarily included juniors and redshirt sophomores who forwent future years of college eligibility. In order to be eligible to enter the draft, players must be at least three years removed from high school. The deadline for underclassmen to declare for the draft was January 14, 2019.
Host city bid process
The host city for the 2019 (as well as the
2020
2020 was heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to global social and economic disruption, mass cancellations and postponements of events, worldwide lockdowns and the largest economic recession since the Great Depression in ...
) draft was chosen from among finalists
Denver,
Kansas City,
Las Vegas,
Nashville and
Cleveland/
Canton
Canton may refer to:
Administrative division terminology
* Canton (administrative division), territorial/administrative division in some countries, notably Switzerland
* Township (Canada), known as ''canton'' in Canadian French
Arts and ente ...
in May 2018 at the NFL Spring League Meeting. On May 23, 2018, the league announced Nashville as the host city of the 2019 NFL Draft.
Player selections
The following is the breakdown of the 254 players selected by
position:
* 32
Cornerback
A cornerback (CB) is a member of the defensive backfield or secondary in gridiron football. Cornerbacks cover receivers most of the time, but also blitz and defend against such offensive running plays as sweeps and reverses. They create turno ...
s
* 31
Linebackers
* 28
Wide receivers
* 26
Defensive ends
* 25
Running backs
* 23
Offensive tackles
* 21
Defensive tackles
* 19
Safeties
Safety is the condition of being protected against harmful conditions or events, or the control of hazards to reduce risk.
Safety may also refer to:
Places
* Safety Island, Antarctica
Government
* The Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the ...
* 16
Tight ends
* 12
Offensive guards
* 11
Quarterbacks
* 5
Centers
Center or centre may refer to:
Mathematics
*Center (geometry), the middle of an object
* Center (algebra), used in various contexts
** Center (group theory)
** Center (ring theory)
* Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentricity ...
* 2
Placekicker
Placekicker, or simply kicker (PK or K), is the player in gridiron football who is responsible for the kicking duties of field goals and extra points. In many cases, the placekicker also serves as the team's kickoff specialist or punter.
Sp ...
s
* 2
Punters
* 1
Long snapper
In American football, the long snapper (or deep snapper) is a center on special teams whose duty is to snap the football over a longer distance, typically around 15 yards during punts, and 7–8 yards during field goals and extra point attem ...
Notable undrafted players
Supplemental draft
A
supplemental 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 ...
was held on July 10, 2019. For each player selected in the supplemental draft, the team forfeits its pick in that round in the draft of the following season.
Trades
In the explanations below, (PD) indicates trades completed prior to the start of the draft (i.e. Pre-Draft), while (D) denotes trades that took place during the 2019 draft.
Round one
Round two
Round three
Round four
Round five
Round six
Round seven
Forfeited picks
Media coverage
In November 2018, after having aired the final rounds of the draft on the network,
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 co ...
announced that it would air coverage of all three days of the 2019 draft on
ABC
ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet.
ABC or abc may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting
* American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster
** Disney–ABC Television ...
, using an entertainment-oriented format and hosted by the panel of ''
College GameDay'' (which hosted an alternate
ESPN2 broadcast of the previous draft), including
Lee Corso
Lee Richard Corso (born August 7, 1935) is an American sports broadcaster and football analyst for ESPN and a former coach. He has been a featured analyst on ESPN's '' College GameDay'' program since its inception in 1987. Corso served as the he ...
,
Rece Davis
Rece Davis (born }) is an American sports television journalist for ESPN/ ABC. Davis works as an anchor on ''SportsCenter'' and serves as host of various other programs on the network, including '' College GameDay'' football road show and bask ...
,
Kirk Herbstreit
Kirk Edward Herbstreit (; born August 19, 1969) is an American sportscaster and former college football player. He serves as an analyst for ESPN's '' College GameDay'', a television program covering college football, and he also provides color c ...
and
Desmond Howard
Desmond Kevin Howard (born May 15, 1970) is an American former football wide receiver who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 11 seasons. He played college football at Michigan, where he won the Heisman Trophy as a senior. Howard w ...
. It marked the first time that broadcast television coverage of all three days of the NFL Draft had been carried by a single network; in 2018, the first two nights aired on
Fox in association and simulcast with
NFL Network. ESPN and NFL Network continued to broadcast more traditionally-formatted coverage. In addition, NFL Network's morning show ''
Good Morning Football
''Good Morning Football'' is a live NFL morning television program on NFL Network. The program premiered on Monday, August 1, 2016. It airs from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. ET.
The program is hosted by Kyle Brandt, Jamie Erdahl, Jason McCourty and Pe ...
'' was simulcast on
ESPN2 on both April 25 and 26, while ESPN and NFL Network personalities made appearances across the networks' studio programs.
The NFL reported an average viewership of 6.1 million across all ESPN and NFL outlets carrying coverage, up from the composite average of 5.5 million in 2018, and estimated that at least 47.5 million viewers watched coverage at some point during the draft. The NFL also reported that at least 600,000 people attended events associated with the draft, overtaking
2017
File:2017 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The War Against ISIS at the Battle of Mosul (2016-2017); aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing; The Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 ("Great American Eclipse"); North Korea tests a se ...
as the most-attended NFL Draft.
Summary
Selections by NCAA conference
A then-record 64 players were drafted from one conference, the second-most in NFL history, breaking the previous high of 63 selections in
2013
File:2013 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: Edward Snowden becomes internationally famous for leaking classified NSA wiretapping information; Typhoon Haiyan kills over 6,000 in the Philippines and Southeast Asia; The Dhaka garment fa ...
. Both numbers were set by the Southeastern Conference. The record was broken in
2021
File:2021 collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021; Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar following the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, coup d'état; A civil demonstration against the October–November 2021 ...
, when 65 players were selected also from the SEC.
Schools with multiple draft selections
Of note,
Allen High School boasted three selections in the 2019 NFL draft, by drafting
Kyler Murray
Kyler Cole Murray (born August 7, 1997) is an American football quarterback for the Arizona Cardinals of the National Football League (NFL). Following a stint at Texas A&M, Murray played college football at Oklahoma, where he won the Heisman Trop ...
,
Greg Little, and
Bobby Evans.
Selections by position
Notes
References
Trade references
General references
{{2019 NFL season by team
National Football League Draft
Draft
Draft, The Draft, or Draught may refer to:
Watercraft dimensions
* Draft (hull), the distance from waterline to keel of a vessel
* Draft (sail), degree of curvature in a sail
* Air draft, distance from waterline to the highest point on a vesse ...
NFL Draft
21st century in Nashville, Tennessee
American football in Tennessee
NFL Draft