We’ve all seen teams calling the NFL draft prospects they intend to select minutes before the card is turned in to the league. The moment often plays out on television or is shared on social media — but the Arizona Cardinals initially couldn’t connect for their call with Jeremiyah Love Thursday night.
It wasn’t a lack of trying; the club dialed the number they had for Love.
But, nope, no connection to the intended No. 3 overall draft pick. So the team’s brain trust calmy stepped back, took a breath, considered options and tried something else.
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And all the while underlings scrambled madly for a correct number.
“If you want me to tell you the honest-to-God truth, we had the wrong phone number,” Cardinals general manager Monti Ossenfort said later.
“The phone number that we were given was the wrong one and so that was a little bit of the delay. But we got that straightened out and we called Jeremiyah and got ahold of him. That is what the delay was, technical difficulties.”
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We have to thank Ossenfort for his transparency. But, on the other hand, yikes!
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What made matters somewhat more uncomfortable is the Cardinals actually were hoping to trade down from their No. 3 pick to add more draft resources later on. But there simply wasn’t the kind of demand for Love they had hoped.
“There was very minimal conversations, some surface-level but nothing that came anywhere close to getting us to move off the pick,” Ossenfort said.
Eventually, the club found the correct number for Love. And picked him.
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Here’s where it helps to understand that the NFL provides players with phones for the draft and then distributes those numbers to teams.
But after Shedeur Sanders last year had his number leaked to various sources — including the son of Falcons defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich who turned it into a prank phone call with his buddies — the league made changes this year.
The league limited access to prospects’ contact information to one person within each franchise.
It’s unclear if the person holding the numbers for the Cardinals relayed the digits incorrectly or got a bad number from the NFL. Whatever the case, it eventually got resolved.
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Maybe the club called Love’s personal number because Ossenfort had it and had used it previously.
“We had a great interaction with him at the combine,” Ossenfort said. “I followed up with him with a call over the weekend and just had a great overall interaction. Like I said, you guys will get the chance to meet him, an impressive kid. Just really excited to add the person to our locker room.”
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