The draft was very unusual this year as it was all done remotely due to COVID-19, but it did allow for the television audience to see the homes of coaches and executives as well as their families.
When it came to the Patriots, Bill Belichick's dog Nike stole the show. On Friday night, the dog was shown sitting in front of Belichick's computer and instantly became a hit.
Appearing on The Adam Schefter podcast this week, Belichick's girlfriend Linda Holliday discussed how it all came about.
“Well, the funny thing was, you know, all of us our are doing the draft from home. And Nantucket has very strict rules about who is coming to the island,” Holliday said. “So, I worked with Patriots IT people and I said, ‘Teach me, I’ll do lighting, I’ll do IT, I’ll do it all.
"So, I’m doing lighting and next thing I know Bill (Belichick) had a couple of treats that were left over near his laptop and he stepped away from the table. And all of a sudden he (Belichick) looks and he goes, ‘Look, look at the table’ and there Nike was just sitting there waiting patiently and he knew his treats were there, so that’s what prompted him getting up to the table and he was just waiting patiently for the word to take his treats.”
Holliday had already made an Instagram account for Nike and during the draft it went from having around 1,000 followers to close to 10,000.
“I really had no clue until my phone started blowing up and @TheSwooshDog started gaining followers like popcorn, just one after another,” she said. “Well, the phone was blowing up because see I got a public setting on his Instagram and he probably had 1,000 followers and maybe had posted four different pictures of him, so it really didn’t have a lot of activity on the account. But, within 30 minutes, Nike went from 1,000 followers to about 10,000 followers and my phone was just blowing up.”
Nike wasn't always a star, though. The dog is two years old now, but he wasn't exactly well behaved the first year.
"He won the battle the first year," Holliday said. "He was uncontrollable, unmanageable. Wouldn’t behave. He would nip people. He did things the way Nike wanted to do things. I had a lot of comments on how well behaved Nike was during his segment of the draft."
With how great all the family elements of the draft went this year, we'll see what Nike has up his sleeve next year.
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