2004 NFL draft
69th annual meeting of National Football League franchises to select newly eligible players
The 2004 NFL draft was the procedure by which National Football League teams selected amateur college football players. It is officially known as the NFL Annual Player Selection Meeting. The draft was held from April 24–25, 2004, at the Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York City. No teams chose to claim any players in the supplemental draft that year.
The draft was shown on ESPN both days and eventually moved to ESPN2 both days. The draft began with the San Diego Chargers selecting Mississippi quarterback Eli Manning with the first overall selection. Due to his refusal to play for the Chargers, Manning was later traded to the New York Giants for the fourth overall pick Philip Rivers of NC State. There were 32 compensatory selections distributed among 16 teams, with the Eagles, Rams and Jets each receiving four compensatory picks. Seven wide receivers were selected in the first round, a draft record later tied in 2024. Another record set by the draft was the most trades in the first round, with 28 trades.
“2004 NFL draft” enters the record as 69th annual meeting of National Football League franchises to select newly eligible players. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what draft, 69th and annual can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “2004 NFL draft” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.