DETROIT (AP) — Drake Maye planned to wear a custom suit for the NFL draft.
Hugo Boss gave the former North Carolina quarterback an offer he couldn't refuse.
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Texas A&M edge rusher Shemar Stewart tries on a suit from designer Baynes + Baker ahead of the NFL Draft, Wednesday, April 23, 2025, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Matt Ludtke)
Texas A&M edge rusher Shemar Stewart tries on a suit from designer Baynes + Baker ahead of the NFL Draft, Wednesday, April 23, 2025, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Matt Ludtke)
Texas A&M edge rusher Shemar Stewart tries on a suit from designer Baynes + Baker ahead of the NFL Draft, Wednesday, April 23, 2025, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Matt Ludtke)
Texas A&M edge rusher Shemar Stewart tries on a suit from designer Baynes + Baker ahead of the NFL Draft, Wednesday, April 23, 2025, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Matt Ludtke)
Texas A&M edge rusher Shemar Stewart tries on a suit from designer Baynes + Baker ahead of the NFL Draft, Wednesday, April 23, 2025, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Matt Ludtke)
Texas A&M edge rusher Shemar Stewart tries on a suit from designer Baynes + Baker ahead of the NFL Draft, Wednesday, April 23, 2025, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Matt Ludtke)
Texas A&M edge rusher Shemar Stewart tries on a suit from designer Baynes + Baker ahead of the NFL Draft, Wednesday, April 23, 2025, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Matt Ludtke)
FILE - Ohio State's Ezekiel Elliott poses for photos upon arriving for the first round of the NFL football draft April 28, 2016, in Chicago. Elliott stunned on the red carpet when he unbuttoned his suit jacket to reveal his bare, toned abs, raising the bar for draft night fashion surprises. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)
FILE - North Carolina quarterback Drake Maye poses on the red carpet ahead of the first round of the NFL football draft, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File)
FILE - New England Patriots first round draft pick Drake Maye, a quarterback out of North Carolina, walks on the field during an NFL football press conference, Friday, April 26, 2024, in Foxborough, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
The clothing company, based in Germany and famed for its stylish fashion, paid Maye last year to make a late switch and wear one of its gray suits.
Maye accepted the inducement, walking the red carpet in Detroit in a simple Hugo Boss jacket and trousers. He saved his fancy threads for the next day.
When Maye walked off a private plane and was whisked away for his introductory news conference as the New England Patriots' No. 3 pick overall, he was sporting the light khaki suit with Carolina blue embellishments that was designed and crafted for him to show off the previous night.
Pantheon Limited founder Ethan Weisman and Baynes + Baker co-founder Ravi Punn teamed up to put Maye in the suit he ended up wearing in Foxborough, Massachusetts, the day after the draft.
“Sometime players get six figures to wear a suit because the NFL draft is like the Oscars of sports,” Punn said in an interview with The Associated Press. “The suits are seen for a few hours before the draft, during the draft, the next day when outfits are getting graded — and forever online with social media.”
A year later, Weisman simply shrugged his shoulders over Maye’s audible in the Motor City.
“There were no hard feelings because agents are simply doing their job when they’re trying to work deals for their clients," Weisman told the AP. “And, there were a lot of pictures of him in our suit.”
Weisman expects some first-round picks to wear his suits Thursday night in Green Bay, several more while they watch the draft from home and even a few broadcasters, including ESPN’s Mike Greenberg.
He has learned, however, not to celebrate too early.
“Green Bay is a pain to get to and I would love to not go there, but you have to build the relationship and make sure no one else is going to steal them,” Weisman said in a telephone interview earlier this week. "In the back of my mind I know anything can happen, so I won't know for sure what they're wearing until they are on the red carpet.
“I'm also going to bring extra suits just in case I run into a player and show him something that he thinks looks cooler than his own suit.”
Punn said Hugo Boss is “at the top of food chain,” in the competition among clothiers to entice first-round prospects to wear their suits.
“They pay a lot for that and small shops can't and I don't blame the players or the agents for taking advantage of that," said Punn, who has made suits for NFL draft prospects since 2018. “If someone is paying you and your job is to help your client make money, you do that deal.”
Punn, who had some promising leads with prospects that didn't pan out this year, expects Texas A&M edge rusher Shemar Stewart to wear one of his suits that includes a jacket with photos he provided on the lining.
Weisman has not paid NFL draft prospects to wear his suits over the last decade, but does give them one for free to wear on their big night to help build his brand and to potentially cultivate a long-term relationship with clients who may want to buy more for up to $5,000 each.
Country music star Jelly Roll recently rocked one of Weisman's custom-made suits at the “Saturday Night Live” 50th anniversary celebration with nearly 15 million viewers. Ezekiel Elliott took one of Weisman's ideas and ran with it, unforgettably appearing in a crop top that exposed his stomach on the red carpet in 2016 before Dallas drafted the former Ohio State running back.
State and Liberty, a clothing company created for customers with an athletic build, got into the pay-to-play game at the NFL draft for the first time this year to help seal the deal with Penn State tight end Tyler Warren.
“We had a lot of agents reach out to us with really big offers and we passed on a lot of them,” State and Liberty co-founder Lee Moffie told the AP. “We made the decision that it's not worth paying six figures — or even $50,000 — just to get a couple pictures of a guy in a suit.
“It's definitely a quick money grab for them. It didn't used to be like this, but I think NIL has made a big impact because they're all trying to monetize wherever and however they can as fast as they can.”
AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl
Texas A&M edge rusher Shemar Stewart tries on a suit from designer Baynes + Baker ahead of the NFL Draft, Wednesday, April 23, 2025, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Matt Ludtke)
Texas A&M edge rusher Shemar Stewart tries on a suit from designer Baynes + Baker ahead of the NFL Draft, Wednesday, April 23, 2025, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Matt Ludtke)
Texas A&M edge rusher Shemar Stewart tries on a suit from designer Baynes + Baker ahead of the NFL Draft, Wednesday, April 23, 2025, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Matt Ludtke)
Texas A&M edge rusher Shemar Stewart tries on a suit from designer Baynes + Baker ahead of the NFL Draft, Wednesday, April 23, 2025, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Matt Ludtke)
Texas A&M edge rusher Shemar Stewart tries on a suit from designer Baynes + Baker ahead of the NFL Draft, Wednesday, April 23, 2025, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Matt Ludtke)
Texas A&M edge rusher Shemar Stewart tries on a suit from designer Baynes + Baker ahead of the NFL Draft, Wednesday, April 23, 2025, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Matt Ludtke)
Texas A&M edge rusher Shemar Stewart tries on a suit from designer Baynes + Baker ahead of the NFL Draft, Wednesday, April 23, 2025, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Matt Ludtke)
FILE - Ohio State's Ezekiel Elliott poses for photos upon arriving for the first round of the NFL football draft April 28, 2016, in Chicago. Elliott stunned on the red carpet when he unbuttoned his suit jacket to reveal his bare, toned abs, raising the bar for draft night fashion surprises. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)
FILE - North Carolina quarterback Drake Maye poses on the red carpet ahead of the first round of the NFL football draft, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File)
FILE - New England Patriots first round draft pick Drake Maye, a quarterback out of North Carolina, walks on the field during an NFL football press conference, Friday, April 26, 2024, in Foxborough, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
A hotline between military and civilian air traffic controllers in Washington, D.C., that hasn't worked for more than three years may have contributed to another near miss shortly after the U.S. Army resumed flying helicopters in the area for the first time since January's deadly midair collision between a passenger jet and a Black Hawk helicopter, Sen. Ted Cruz said at a hearing Wednesday.
The Federal Aviation Administration official in charge of air traffic controllers, Frank McIntosh, confirmed the agency didn't even know the hotline hadn't been working since March 2022 until after the latest near miss. He said civilian controllers still have other means of communicating with their military counterparts through landlines. Still, the FAA insists the hotline be fixed before helicopter flights resume around Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
The Army didn't immediately comment Wednesday about the near miss earlier this month and the steps it is taking to ensure helicopter flights in the area are safe or about the hotline.
The FAA said in a statement that the dedicated direct access line between air traffic controllers at Reagan and the Pentagon's Army heliport hasn't worked since 2022 because of the construction of a new tower at the Pentagon. But the FAA said “the two facilities continue to communicate via telephone for coordination.”
“The developments at DCA (Reagan airport) in its airspace are extremely concerning,” Cruz said. “This committee remains laser-focused on monitoring a safe return to operations at DCA and making sure all users in the airspace are operating responsibly.”
The Army suspended all helicopter flights around Reagan airport after the latest near miss, but McIntosh said the FAA was close to ordering the Army to stop flying because of the safety concerns before it did so voluntarily.
“We did have discussions if that was an option that we wanted to pursue,” McIntosh told the Senate Commerce Committee at the hearing.
Jeff Guzzetti, a former NTSB and FAA accident investigator, said “the fact that they were unaware that this connection was not working for three years is troublesome.” But he is not entirely clear on the purpose of the hotline when controllers had other ways to communicate.
But Guzzetti thinks the Army needs to be more forthcoming about what it is doing to ensure the airspace around Washington remains safe. Since the crash, the Army has at times refused to provide information that Congress has asked for, and officials didn't answer all the questions at a previous hearing.
“The DCA airspace is under the white hot spotlight. So the Army’s going to have to be more transparent and more assertive in their dealings with this problem,” Guzzetti said.
According to a U.S. official, one course of action under consideration now is to have the Army give 24 hours notice of any flights around National Airport. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because no decisions have been made and discussions are ongoing.
January's crash between an American Airlines jet and an Army helicopter killed 67 people — making it the deadliest plane crash on U.S. soil since 2001. The National Transportation Safety Board has said there were an alarming 85 near misses around Reagan in the three years before the crash that should have prompted action.
Since the crash, the FAA has tried to ensure that military helicopters never share the same airspace as planes, but controllers had to order two planes to abort their landings on May 1 because of an Army helicopter circling near the Pentagon.
“After the deadly crash near Reagan National Airport, FAA closed the helicopter route involved, but a lack of coordination between FAA and the Department of Defense has continued to put the flying public at risk,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth said.
McIntosh said the helicopter should never have entered the airspace around Reagan airport without permission from an air traffic controller.
“That did not occur,” he said. “My question — and I think the larger question is — is why did that not occur? Without compliance to our procedures and our policies, this is where safety drift starts to happen.”
The NTSB is investigating what happened.
In addition to that incident, a commercial flight taking off from Reagan airport had to take evasive action after coming within a few hundred feet of four military jets heading to a flyover at Arlington National Cemetery. McIntosh blamed that incident on a miscommunication between FAA air traffic controllers at a regional facility and the tower at Reagan, which he said had been addressed.
Associated Press writer Lolita Baldor contributed to this report.
FILE - Rescue and salvage crews pull up a part of a Army Black Hawk helicopter that collided midair with an American Airlines jet, at a wreckage site in the Potomac River from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Feb. 6, 2025, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
FILE - Salvage crews work on recovering wreckage near the site in the Potomac River of a mid-air collision between an American Airlines jet and a Black Hawk helicopter at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)