The 2025 NFL draft: How to watch the action unfold

Will Shadeur Sanders slide? Is Cam Ward a lock at number 1? The 2025 NFL draft has plenty of intrigue

By Joe Allen Published April 21, 2025

NFL

The 2025 NFL draft is almost upon us, and as usual, there’s been plenty of speculation about who’s going to wind up where. There seems to be consensus that the Tennessee Titans are going to use their first overall pick to draft quarterback Cam Ward, but after that, things get pretty confusing. Will Shadeur Sanders slide out of the top 3? Will Travis Hunter be drafted by a team that lets him play both offense and defense? Will the Eagles be able to improve their roster?

If you want to tune in live to watch the draft unfold and see who your favorite team winds up drafting, there are a number of ways you can do that. Here’s what we know about how you can watch the draft unfold.

Recommended Videos

How to watch the NFL draft

The easiest way to watch the draft is likely to use your cable package. The draft will air on the NFL Network, as well as on ABC and ESPN. If you’re one of many Americans who has cut their cable package out of their budget, though, you can stream the draft live through the apps for ABC, ESPN, ESPN Deportes, NFL+ and the NFL Network.

NFL+ is the best subscription option if you’re looking to watch the draft without cable. It will give you a full stream, although you might be missing of the analysis that you might get if you were watching the draft on cable instead.

When is the 2025 NFL draft?

The draft is set to take place from 8 p.m. ET on Thursday, April 24 through whatever time it concludes on Saturday, April 26. The most interesting part of the draft, at least for most, is the first round, which is when many of the highest profile players are taken.

Topics

Streaming

Contributor

Joe Allen is a freelance culture writer based in upstate New York. His work has been published in The Washington Post, The…

Culture

How will The Last of Us adapt the structure of the video game?

The second video game requires the show's creators to make some bold choices.

Pedro Pascal in The Last of Us season 2

There's a very thorny problem at the center of The Last of Us season 2. We've now seen the first two episodes of the season, and so far, they have been pretty faithful to the source material. The raid on Jackson Hole was invented to add some stakes to the show, but Joel's death plays out in a remarkably similar fashion to the video game, albeit with some switches around who he's with.

The show's first season was also remarkably faithful to the video game it was based on, but one huge question lingers around the rest of season 2. Namely, will we see Abby again for the rest of the season? Let's break down how the last five episodes of the season could play out:
The Last of Us: Part II is split almost exactly in half

Culture

The 8 best prison TV series of all time

Enter the slammer with these TV hits

The cast of Orange is the New Black

TV transports us to places we wouldn't be able to visit otherwise. Other times, it allows us to live vicariously through people who see the world very differently than we do. I can't think of a genre that gives us a peek into a life we should strive never to replicate more than the prison drama. Spending time in the slammer isn't as abnormal as you would think (about 5% of all Americans have gone to jail at least once in their lifetime). Still, the other 95% of us are always a little curious about what happens behind bars, even if we know it's unpleasant.

Many shows have put their characters in prison for a single episode or a small stretch of the plot (it feels like every sitcom from the 1990s had a prison episode), but we're not going to focus on those series. This list is solely to appreciate the niche genre that places its characters in jail as the main setting and catalyst for the plots. These are the best prison TV series of all time.

Culture

8 shows like Better Call Saul that will keep you hooked

These crime shows resemble the best parts of famous spinoff

Giancarlo Esposito in Better Call Saul

Better Call Saul started out as Breaking Bad's little brother, the prequel series that was supposed to be a nice companion piece to the best crime drama of the 21st century. After six seasons and a vivid vision executed by showrunner Peter Gould, the spinoff starring Bob Odenkirk became an equal to its predecessor and even surpassed it in some aspects of storytelling, acting, and direction.

The series follows the life of Jimmy McGill, a sleazy lawyer who slowly loses his morality as he evolves into the broken shell of a man we see in Breaking Bad. The complexity of the other characters and the way the show creates a grander universe that ties both shows together is something to behold. Somehow, Better Call Saul never won a single Emmy for its greatness despite being nominated 54 times throughout the 2010s. It often lost to shinier competitors like Succession and Game of Thrones.