The Oakland Raiders have an interesting consideration as part of their pre-draft process: they have to ask prospects about potentially playing in Las Vegas, given they will be calling the city home next year.
There are definitely some questions regarding whether players, especially young ones, will find the nightlife and other pitfalls of Las Vegas distracting, and it came up in Oakland’s pre-draft interviews. Every prospect said the right things about it not being an issue, but in the eyes of general manager Mike Mayock, there was some stretching of the truth going on.
Raiders GM Mike Mayock: "For the record, we asked 112 kids if they'd be OK on a Las Vegas Strip, or is it going to be a problem. All 112 of them said, 'No, Coach. It's going to be fine.' We didn't find one guy that admitted Las Vegas would be an issue. So they all lied to us."
— Michael Gehlken (@GehlkenNFL) April 26, 2019
This is presumably tongue-in-cheek. Players are going to say they can handle it, and all of them probably think they can. If the NFL feels okay about staging the NFL Draft there next year, Mayock should probably relax.
