NFL Draft 2011: Don't Believe Everything You Read, See or Hear
The 2011 NFL Draft is now less than one month away. NFL teams have to complete all of their allotted 30 personal workouts by April 20th. From now right up until day one of the draft on April 28th, NFL general managers will be asked to assess what they plan to do, how they feel about certain players and are expected to give a straight answer to each question they receive. Guess again.
This is the time of year when NFL scouting departments and front office personnel are supposed to be pulling out pages from the "let's create a smokescreen playbook" and send media, fans and other NFL teams on wild goose chases as to what their true intentions are.
Lies, deceptions, phony stories and anything else you can imagine are going to become more commonplace going forward. So, with that being the case, it is time to remind all NFL fans, don't believe anything that you read, see or hear. Take in all new information like a grain of salt, and hopefully you will be able to sort through all of the noise and realize what teams really intend to do.
Exactly How Much of General Managers Speak Is Fact vs Fiction?
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To give you a better illustration of what is going on, here was an excerpt from a story that ran on BuffaloBills.com, by their lead journalist Chris Brown.
Buffalo Bills General Manager was in attendance at a function called "State of the Bills" event last night, where Nix and Head Coach Chan Gailey addressed a crowd of Bills premium-seat season ticket holders. Nix went on to say:
“It’s not a sin to tell a lie pre-draft,” he said with a wry smile. “Everybody does it. It's accepted. So everything you hear or read or see, you need to keep in mind that about 10 percent of it's the truth.”
Now, just because you read that quote, understand that it may or may not be true. But there is no doubt that the intent of the comment is factual. Do not believe everything you hear from now through April 28th.
Maybe that is just a reflection on how cynical people are in general. They are fed all kinds of stories by the media that turn out to be purely fiction, which forces us to treat things with a suspicious mind or eye towards everything. Maybe the end-result is for our own good. To be less gullible, and needing to see more proof before we believe something new to be factual.
But it is good for NFL fans to be more aware of how much cloak and dagger activity is afoot.
Does the 10 Percent Rule Apply When Talking to Season Ticket Holders?
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When the general manager and the head coach are attending an exclusive event for premium-seat season ticket holders, you would have to think that the two people that are most heavily going to influence who the Bills select with the third overall draft choice, would be more direct and up-front with the crowd about their intentions.
Nix did warn the crowd not to read too much into what he was saying, and not to try to connect the dots. One of the attendees was Joe Buscaglia, of WGR Radio in Buffalo. In his blog, Buscaglia came away from the event with the following quotes:
"If there's a guy at quarterback that you believe can be a franchise quarterback long term, you hope to never be picking three again, and it's your one opportunity to maybe make that pick if that's what you believe. If you don't believe they're the franchise quarterback for the future, long-term, we have other needs. It's not like we don't know we have other needs. We know that. We understand that. But you're weighing what's best for the franchise." - Chan Gailey
"But if you wait until you don't have a quarterback to draft one, you're too late. Now, our greatest need is not quarterback. It's definitely not quarterback. If there were to be a franchise guy there, one we deem as a guy that can go eight or ten years, be the face of this organization and take us to the playoffs and win every year, you can't pass him up." - Buddy Nix
If you try to decipher the above quotes, it sure seems like the Bills are drafting a quarterback with the third pick. The Bills are hosting Cam Newton, and according to Chan Gailey, this will be the third or fourth time that they have had some kind of a meeting with him so far. If you can take him at his word, that is.
Examples of Some Intentional Cloak and Dagger Activity
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In doing research on this piece, I came across a story written by NFL.com Sr. Analyst Pat Kirwan. His story details some examples of cloak and dagger activity that both helped the New York Jets and some that hurt the team as well.
Just prior to the start of the 2010 NFL Draft, Jason Lacanfora of NFL Network was convinced that the information he received from his sources was solid, so he felt strongly that the Kansas City Chiefs were going to take tackle Russell Okung with their pick. We all know now that it was safety Eric Berry instead.
If you watch NFL Network shows like Path to the Draft, or NFL Total Access, you will hear their analysts share insider information that on the surface sounds really interesting, but then if you apply the 10 percent rule, you realize that a lot of this is just nothing more than fascinating noise.
Last night, for example, Michael Lombardi stated that Jake Locker is now graded out by some teams as a fourth round grade, and that Ryan Mallett is off some teams' draft boards completely. Is that fact or just the result of somebody having an active imagination on what could be nothing more than rumor mill gossip?
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Loose Lips Sink Ships
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Does anybody think agents like Drew Rosenhaus or Leigh Steinberg ever used their media connections to throw out a false rumor or two that ultimately helped their clients vault up the draft board? They are another factor in the gossip mill, churning out material that is meant to confuse teams, fans and draftniks.
For some NFL teams on draft day, the war room is locked down for the day. That way, nobody has the ability to wander down the hall and inadvertently pick up a ringing phone call, and blurt out some carefully guarded inner-circle decisions before it is time to reveal it. If you need to relieve yourself, you are told to do prior to lockdown, and then after that, you are out of luck.
Why would teams spend the entire year to scout and grade every eligible NFL player, only to lose out on who they really want to draft, because a scout picked up a phone call and leaked some information? For that reason, some NFL teams only allow people that have an actual say in who is picked to enter the war room. Everyone else is locked out. You can't blame teams for being paranoid.
Rumors and Lies Don't Apply to Just the Draft
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When Jim Mora was fired by the Seattle Seahawks, he was busy conducting a press conference at the end of the season, while the Seahawks brass was interviewing Pete Carroll for Mora's job. Mora revealed some of the shenanigans that went on behind the scenes in this story.
Then there is the whole question about issues such as trust between NFL players and the owners. You could point to the currently sour CBA negotiations as an example of the distrust between the players and the owners. The owners refusal to open up their books to the players is one major stumbling block.
It is not hard to imagine that NFL teams hire private detectives to follow up on certain players to see what kind of activities they are involved in off the field. If you invest many millions of dollars in a player, you want to know that he is not involved in activities that will not compromise his performance on the field.
Images of the movie North Dallas Forty sprang to mind as I wrote the paragraph above. If you find yourself looking for something to do between now and the draft, rent the movie, or read the novel by Peter Gent. At least you will be entertained for awhile as the draft is now 30 days away and counting.
And as you read the book, or see the movie, just remember it is for your entertainment, so you would be wise to recall that you shouldn't necessarily believe everything that you read, see and hear.
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