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The odds of Green Bay hosting the 2022 NFL Draft seemed to dwindle on Wednesday afternoon, as the NFL has announced the hosts for the events in 2021 and 2023. Both of those events are headed to smaller-sized NFL markets, as Cleveland will host the 2021 Draft before Kansas City gets the event two years later.
These events come on the heels of a highly successful 2019 NFL Draft, held in a smaller market in Nashville. With the 2018 Draft taking place in Arlington, Texas and Las Vegas slated to host in 2020, this appears to set up an alternating schedule of big markets and small markets.
With that in mind, it appears unlikely that the Green Bay Packers will be hosting the 2022 NFL Draft. NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport suggested the same, saying that the expectation is that the league will indeed look for a bigger market for that year. The Packers and the city of Green Bay could still decide to put in a bid for 2022, however, and the Green Bay Press-Gazette discussed the team and the city’s possible thought processes on Tuesday.
These recently-announced host cities will be the sixth and seventh new markets to host the event since the NFL moved it away from New York City after the 2014 NFL Draft. Chicago hosted two straight drafts in 2015 and 2016 before the Draft went to Philadelphia, Dallas, and Nashville in the last three years.