WHAT better way to survey the current state of play in the NFL than a Sunday morning sit-down with the Monday morning quarterback? Peter King has seen most things in his 33 years covering American football, the last 28 of which have been served with Sports Illustrated, but the gridiron game is at another crossroads as this respected veteran sports writer and author crossed the pond to spread the gospel for the game in Edinburgh last week.

Part of the board of the selectors for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, King was sharing a stage with the former LA Rams and Arizona Cardinals quarter back Kurt Warner and the recently-retired, trash-talking former Carolina Panthers and Baltimore Ravens wide receiver Steve Smith Snr. The former, a starter in three Super Bowls, will take his place in Canton, Ohio, this year, while the latter - seventh on the all-time list for receiving yards - will surely join him as soon as he becomes eligible for selection in 2022.

Anyway, ahead of the latest edition of the NFL draft, which takes place at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from Thursday, King is ruminating on the theme of tradition. In particular, he is outlining why some are worth fighting for and others can be dispensed with. In this regard, he welcomes the increasing imperative to build on the league's successful international series matches at Wembley, and now Twickenham, to establish the league's first non-American based franchise in the UK. In fact, he feels that process is now inevitable and could be less than a decade away.

Yet he rails against the idea of uprooting established franchises from their historical heartlands. The St Louis Rams returning to Los Angeles last season was one thing, but the San Diego Chargers joining them in La La Land this year (they began life as the LA Chargers in 1960, only to spend the intervening half century two hours down the Californian Coast) then the Oakland Raiders moving to Las Vegas, Nevada, by the 2020 season all seem like too much in the way of innovation.

"A UK franchise is going to happen - even though you will have a bunch of people pissed off about it," King told Herald Sport. "Imagine people in Liverpool saying that they and Everton have to go over and play in New Jersey now, because they have brought in a Barclays Premier League franchise in New Jersey. It IS seismic shift. But the way the NFL works is that they are not afraid to take some chances. And not afraid to fail.

"Having said that, some of the things the NFL are doing are stupid," he added. "Moving the Oakland Raiders, stupid. Moving the San Diego Chargers, stupid. Those moves are stupid because they have chosen stadiums over fans.

"I am a big baseball fan too, and the Chicago Cubs play in a place called Wrigley Field which is an old dump and the Boston Red Sox play in Fenway Park which has been refurbished but it is still microscopic compared to the huge stadiums in baseball. If that was the NFL they would have thrown the Red Sox out of Fenway and thrown the Cubs out of Wrigley Field and the two greatest parks in Major League Baseball would be no more. They would say 'you just have to build a new stadium'. That ticks me off. The NFL has no regard for some of the great traditions - how you can have the NFL without the Oakland Raiders in it?

"But I have a different feeling about starting a franchise over here [the UK]. Because if the NFL tomorrow lost the Jacksonville Jaguars, there is not going to be a lot of people crying over it. If the Jacksonville Jaguars played in London, and not Jacksonville, okay the other teams in their division would be pretty ticked off because they would have to fly seven hours to go and play them, but in general I think it would be a good chemistry experiment. I don't care if they move or not, but all I am saying is that someone eventually is going to move to London. It is going to happen. Six, seven, eight years down the road, I am convinced that by the mid 2020s, say 2024 or 2025, there will be a franchise here."

Myles Garrett, a defensive end from Texas A&M, is widely tipped to be the choice when the Cleveland Browns go on the clock to choose the No 1 overall draft pick, but a decade spent in combines and war rooms has provided King with an interesting view of the whole recruitment procedure. He illustrates the point with reference to current champions, the New England Patriots, and their poster boy Tom Brady, their four-time Super Bowl MVP and five-time winning quarterback who was plucked from college in Michigan at the end of the sixth round, the 199th pick of the 2000 draft.

"The draft is just such an inexact science," King says. "The New England Patriots are the best team in the 33 years since I have covered the sport. Look, the [San Francisco] 49ers are close [during the 1980s] but I think the Patriots are better. And on the last drive of the fourth quarter in the Superbowl, when they tied the Atlanta Falcons and took things into overtime, they had 11 players on the field, the five offensive linemen, or the six players who touched the ball on that drive and only one of them was drafted in the top 75 players [Nate Solder].

"The one thing the draft doesn't measure is how much someone really wants to be great," he added. "And Tom Brady, over and over and over, has proven that he is going to figure out a way to beat you because he has this intense desire. He is going to go down in history as one of the league's most unique players mainly because really he has no business doing it. There are so many guys on that team you just shake your head at and say 'what are they doing here?' Julian Edelman, a seventh round pick, was a tiny quarter back in college. Chris Hogan [the wide receiver] played Lacrosse."

For once King is almost lost for words when it comes to comprehending the continuing success story which the Patriots are under the coaching phenomenon which is Bill Belichick, particularly given he NFL, with its draft and salary cap, is held up as a bastion of socialism and meritocracy. "In the last 16 years the Patriots have won their division [the AFC East] 14 times and the two times they lost their division it was by a tie-breaker when they were tied for first. So they have not had a horses**t year since 2000. How does that happen? Especially when everybody is meant to be eight and eight."

When he surveys his career, the 59-year-old feels hugely fortunate to have served his rookie years in close contact with Paul Brown, the only man whose coaching credentials he still feels outrank those of Belichick. Brown, a co-founder of both the Cleveland Browns, coached the Ohio franchise to seven conference championships in 13 years, before setting about performing similar miracles as coach and owner of the Cincinatti Bengals.

"I stood with him in practice at training camp twice a day for five and a half weeks," recalls King. "I would ask him the most elementary questions. But that is why I say to young journalists coming into cover the NFL, that I feel sorry for them, because they won't get the same chances. In 2000 there were approximately 15 members of the media who covered the NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis, we all stood in a line in a hotel and waited for the players to come through after their work-outs. In 2017 there were 1,341 reporters at the scouting combine."

It is a formidable machine, but one further threat to the whole operation is the increasing amount of players - the 49ers Chris Borland and the Ravens' Zachary Orr to name but a few - opting to retire early for fear of the cumulative effect of concussive head injuries. "It is the fear of the unknown," says King. "One hit can ruin your life. So when these guys retire early I say 'good for you', you made a conscious choice, a concious decision. We are going to see more of that and people say that is going to be the end of football, the ruination of the game, but it won't be. If you ever go to Texas, Florida or Georgia and you see what High School football is like out there, it is the single most important thing in the life of these towns."