Adam Schefter details how he broke AJ Brown trade during son's graduation dinner

One notable absence from ESPN’s 2022 NFL Draft coverage was Adam Schefter. He was at his son’s graduation from Michigan, but that didn’t stop him from breaking one of the draft’s biggest stories.

Schefter had the scoop when the Tennessee Titans traded wide receiver AJ Brown to the Philadelphia Eagles for the No. 18 overall pick and a third-rounder. As it turns out, he was at dinner with his family after the ceremony — and he had every intention of coming on the air from the restaurant.

“We’re sitting in the restaurant at dinner after that graduation ceremony that night,” Schefter said during a MegaCast with Joe Buck and Michael Collins during the PGA Championship on Saturday. “That’s like right after the ceremony. Thursday night, I would say about 7:45, 8:00 eastern, we go to dinner. We’re sitting in this restaurant in Ann Arbor having our son’s graduation dinner, and about halfway through the dinner, I get the call that the AJ Brown trade is going down. So I step outside at that point.

“And I had spoken to ESPN, I said, ‘Look. I’m off this weekend. But if there is a trade and I’m fortunate enough to get that story, I want to come on. I want to do that story on air and I want to be part of the draft just for that moment.’ So I followed the AJ Brown trade to Philadelphia story.”

But that’s not the best part of the story. Schefter almost had some special guests with him for his live shot. As he went outside, Michigan head basketball coach Juwan Howard, assistant coaches Phil Martelli and Howard Eisner and some of the players were walking past, and he was getting ready to put them in his shot. However, some connectivity issues prevented that cameo from happening.

“I was ready to do the live shot with the entire Michigan basketball team,” Schefter said. “And I was in a terrible WiFi, so we couldn’t hook up a transmission. So the plans of having that live shot from outside the restaurant in Ann Arbor doing the AJ Brown story with the Michigan basketball team went out the window.”

Tennessee wound up turning that No. 18 pick into former Arkansas wide receiver Treylon Burks. Meanwhile, Brown got a massive extension with the Eagles once the trade went through.