Adding live animals to a sports broadcast can come with challenges, but it can also bring in some positive viewer comments. In recent years, NFL Network has regularly featured puppies on the third day of its NFL Draft coverage. And they did just that again Saturday, complete with football and college puns:
…and Nesquick from Ruff-Gers. pic.twitter.com/08edIxoGUJ
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) April 26, 2025
Here’s some of the wide-ranging praise that drew, from figures inside and outside of the sports media world:
I love this https://t.co/L9upWHclYJ
— Andi Petrillo (@AndiPetrillo) April 26, 2025
ESPN would never be this cool to do this every year https://t.co/D8AAn3N5Or
— Zach Wargo (@ZachWargo3) April 26, 2025
With all the endless blah blah blah this is the only good part of the #NFLDraft2025
👇 https://t.co/HfkYoCwr1k— Lise 🌉🌁 🤘 (@LiseSFG22) April 26, 2025
Great segment!
— STL Beer Brewer (@STLbeerbrewer) April 26, 2025
Better analysis from the dogs than from Mel Kiper
— Annette Boyer (@HowNetteRolls) April 26, 2025
With this year’s draft and some of its outcomes getting particularly controversial at times, the puppies were perhaps even more of a needed palate-cleanser than usual. And Day 3 of the draft tends to have a lot of on-air digressions, so this wasn’t as wild as it would have been if it was on a more serious moment. And briefly featuring up-for-adoption puppies from the Wisconsin Humane Society (logical, with this year’s draft in Green Bay) seems like as good of a use of Day 3 airtime as anything else might have been.
But animals are also just a regular part of a variety of sports and sports-adjacent broadcasts at this point, so this wasn’t all that odd. We’ll see if this leads to puppies making picks at drafts down the road.
