We’ll see if we can help you a bit
There are a lot of us draft junkies who will be glued to this weekend’s NFL Draft from the time it’s announced the Tennessee Titans are on the clock on Thursday night until Mr. Irrelevant is announced on Saturday afternoon. However, if you’re one of the folks who only care about seeing the Minnesota Vikings make their first selection, we’ll see what we can do to help you.
Thursday night’s first round is set to start broadcasting on ABC, ESPN, and the NFL Network at 7:00 PM Central time. In the first round, each team has a maximum of ten minutes to make their selection, and if a team is making a trade the clock does not reset.
If the broadcast starts at 7:00 PM, you can figure in a few minutes for introductions and things of that nature, as well as the Ceremonial Booing of Roger Goodell™. That means Tennessee will likely get on the clock at around 7:10 PM Central time.
The Vikings pick at #24 overall, so if each team takes the maximum of ten minutes to make their picks. . .something that rarely ever happens. . .it would take about four hours to get to Minnesota’s pick, putting them on the clock at around 11:00 PM Central. However, I’d be surprised if it took that long to get to the 24th pick.
Last year, according to USA Today, the 24th pick came up for selection at around 9:55 PM Central time (the times on the USA Today article are in Eastern time). We’ll have to see how this year’s Draft flows before we know anything too definitive.
However, just to be safe, if I were going to tune into the first round of the 2025 NFL Draft just for the Vikings’ selection, I would probably start watching right around 9:00 PM Central, and definitely no later than 9:30 PM Central on Thursday night.
You would think this would be the sort of thing that our friends at FanDuel would allow you to put a wager down on, but it’s probably too easily manipulated for that to be a realistic thing.
However, that’s my best guess at when the Vikings will be picking on Thursday night. For those of you who have to work on Friday morning, hopefully you’ll have enough time to recover.
