The weeks following the championship settled into a strange, suspended rhythm — the specific in-between space of a season technically over but its consequences still very much unfolding, as Beckett's draft stock climbed steadily through a flurry of predraft interviews, additional workouts, and increasingly detailed mock draft projections that had him, by late March, firmly positioned in the top-ten conversation.
"They want me to fly out to Toronto next week," Beckett said, reading through an email from his newly hired agent, a sharp, efficient woman named Colleen Ferris who'd been recommended by one of the scouts from the combine. "Interview with three teams in person. Then Chicago the week after for two more."
"That's a lot of travel," Rae observed, watching him scroll through the incre
