

INDIANAPOLIS — Mike Mayock, a fixture at the NFL Scouting Combine for the better part of the last two decades, will serve a drastically different role at this year’s Underwear Olympics.
After 15 years as an NFL Network analyst specializing in draft coverage, the Oakland Raiders hired Mayock as their next general manager in December.
Now, despite having not been employed by an NFL team since his brief playing career ended in 1984, the gray-haired 60-year-old is tasked with revitalizing a Raiders franchise that went 4-12 in the first year of the second Jon Gruden era and hasn’t won a playoff game since 2002.
Ahead of his first combine as a GM, Mayock said he held “draft meetings for 15 straight days, 12 hours a day” with his staff. The Raiders currently own three first-round picks after trading away stars Khalil Mack and Amari Cooper last season.
“You get to know people,” Mayock said of those marathon pre-draft sessions. “You’re in an enclosed room, no windows. It gets kind of interesting after about eight days of that, and you get to know people….