Yep, when they originally brought him in, it was at the peak of the draft prospecting being its own little sub industry. And even as time went on, you could definitely tell there was a difference in how both of them approached their mock drafts. McShay's drafts seemed to be more about what he was seeing, and Kiper's seemed to be more about what he was hearing, mostly from agents, and GMs that were happy to use him as a tool in the pre draft process. Key example was him melting down on air over Will Levis not getting drafted in the first round, and then it coming out after the draft that Levis never really had the juice like that, and teams were never really feeling him like that.
Either way, the way the draft is covered has changed massively, and ESPN, just like they are with their content, has proven to be a little too large to effectively switch up with the times. The reality is that most of the same people that were soaking up every single bit of draft coverage they could get are now getting that from the almost endless number of people that run far more team or school specific podcasts or shows.
The audience has effectively been trained not to watch. You already know that at any time when you turn on ESPN in the middle of the day, you're going to hear some version of the same topics you could've heard about at any point earlier in the day. The irony is that there's almost ALWAYS something live on ESPN+. Will it be a team or sport you've ever heard of? Probably not. But it's probably something someone would fukk around and watch for at least a little bit if it was on, as opposed to seeing that yet another group of people is talking about some shyt like if the Jets are under pressure to win since they traded for Aaron Rodgers, or if Dak Prescott should get a contract extension, or something.
