–Annual Issue Dives Deep into Football’s Most Unpredictable Day–

Ask any athlete in the green room, decision maker in the boardroom or amateur forecaster on the sofa. There is one eternal certainty that rings true for every NFL Draft: nothing is certain.  Everything known—from the combine to scouting reports to the rumor mill—pales in comparison to what’s not known.

ESPN The Magazine’s NFL Draft Preview Issue, which hits newsstands Friday, examines just a few of these unknowns: Has Tyrann “Honey Badger” Mathieu—who is featured on the annual issue’s cover—conquered his demons?  Have the Browns learned from the many errors of their drafting ways?  And is the next Deion Sanders somewhere out there?

In the accompanying cover feature, “Hi, My Name is Tyrann,” Eli Saslow takes a close look at whether the former LSU Heisman finalist Mathieu, who is now clean and singularly devoted to football, can prove to NFL GMs that he’s more than just a nickname.

The NFL Draft Preview Issue also features “The Best-Drafting Team Is…,” where The Mag ranked each of the NFL franchises by their drafting success (or lack thereof), as well as “Playing the Slots,” which takes an analytics-style approach to April 25 by looking at the actual value of every draft pick and comparing it against corresponding salaries to determine the spots that yield surplus value.

Also in this issue, “Kings for a Day,” where Morty Ain continues a Mag tradition to give five guys who didn’t get invited to Radio City the star treatment; and “Two in a Million,” which looks at how NFL teams view prospects—like former first-round lock Marcus Lattimore and predecessor Adrian Peterson—who have suffered severe knee injuries.

Other NFL Draft Preview Issue Features:

Coming Down

As Auburn was barreling toward a title in 2010, a drug was destroying it from within. By Shaun Assael

The Beginning of the End

In 2010 Ezekiel Ansah was a walk-on from Ghana.  Here are the means to an end. By Ryan McGee

They Will Mock You

Todd McShay and Mel Kiper Jr. studied countless hours of tape and talked to dozens of sources before making these educated hunches about how the NFL’s first draft round will shake out on April 25.

Media Contact: Carrie Kreiswirth [email protected] 860-766-6042