NFL plays shell game as draft nears

Executives excel at sleight of hand as draft days approach
By Jim Armstrong
The Denver Post
Posted: 04/22/2009 12:30:00 AM MDT
Updated: 04/22/2009 02:46:12 AM MDT




The calendar reads April, but A.J. Smith calls it something else.
"It's liars' month," said Smith, the San Diego Chargers' longtime general manager. "It's comical, just comical. Even if you pick up the phone and talk to somebody you have a long history with, you can't believe what he tells you."
Take new Kansas City GM Scott Pioli. Smith has known him for years, but has no plans to talk to him between now and Saturday's NFL draft. Why? Because they would end up playing verbal dodgeball, or some other game befitting a family reunion.
"It would be a picnic, like ring around the rosy," Smith said. "We'd talk about everything but what we're really going to do on draft day. At least everyone we talk to, they know what we're trying to do and vice versa. So it makes it equal."
What the Chargers and every other NFL team are trying to do is get information. And not just any kind of information. Inside information. But therein lies the rub. The last thing teams want to do in April, with the draft just over the dashboard, is give out information.
Well, accurate information, anyway. They're more than happy to give out erroneous information and play the shell game, trying to disguise their real intentions. There's a virtual dictionary of catchphrases for that kind of thing. Teams posture in April. They bluff. They peddle rhetoric, dispense misinformation, put up smoke screens, float rumors.
OK, they lie.
For 11 months, the NFL scouting community, with the possible exception of the New England Patriots, is a fraternity, a brotherhood. GMs exchange phone calls and scouts swap war stories and player evaluations. And then April rolls around, and the truth suddenly becomes a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a war room.
"The NFL loves this cloak-and-dagger stuff," said Denver-based Cecil Lammey, whose website, scoutguys.com, is one of the most comprehensive on the Internet. "They almost promote this stuff. You really get good information in February and March with the combine and the pro days and the visits. But not in April. Come April, you never really know what to believe."
Sometimes, even those inside an organization don't know what to believe. Every NFL team has its own way of doing business in April, but, for the most part, information is shared by only a handful of inner-circle types. Such was the case in Baltimore when Brian Billick roamed the Ravens' sideline and GM Ozzie Newsome called the personnel shots.
"I love it," Billick said when asked about the annual predraft misinformation blitz. "Ozzie didn't want to tell me half the time who we had on the board, much less tell the media. You want to show your hand in poker? That's no fun. That's part of the intrigue of the game. Between now and the draft, there's going to be amazing misinformation out there. It's kind of fun, people throwing you off the scent. You know they're lying and they know you're lying."
Not that NFL decision-makers aren't reputable, upstanding men of character and integrity. It's just that, in April, it doesn't serve any purpose to tell the truth. The draft is a game to those doing the evaluating, and it's every bit as competitive as what plays out on Sunday afternoons. And so it is that, every April, Smith calls his scouts and coaches together for a reminder: What happens in the draft "war" room stays in the war room.
"It's an extremely competitive business," Smith said. "You've got 32 teams talking about the same pool of draftable players. If there are 18 people in the room, somebody is going to get on the phone and start talking because everyone wants to be a big shot: 'We've got this running back ranked in the sixth round and this other guy in the third.' I call it human nature. People like to talk."
With the draft only three days away, most of the talking has subsided. If a GM is talking to another GM this week, it's probably to ascertain what his counterpart would be looking for in a potential trade. Therein lies the biggest fear of every NFL team during draft week: that another franchise could trade up and snatch away a player the team had targeted.
If anything, that fear has intensified in the salary cap era, when it's easier to identify teams' needs depending on what areas they were or weren't able to address in free agency.
"You don't want to have to trade up to get your guy," former Broncos GM Ted Sundquist said. "Draft choices are so important now, you don't want to give up anything. But if it leaks anywhere, if there's any inkling that you want a guy, there's that potential of somebody leapfrogging you.
"That's why you study teams behind you: 'Oh, they brought in this kid or I read an article that one of their assistant coaches really liked that guy.' It's a game of chicken sometimes. If it doesn't fall your way, you don't want to be kicking yourself."
Which brings us to the Broncos. They have the 12th pick in the first round, which may put them in position to draft Southern Cal quarterback Mark Sanchez, with whom they held a private workout Tuesday. The Broncos' interest level in Sanchez isn't known, but it's widely believed that the Washington Redskins, who have the 13th pick, would love to select him.
Thus, if the Broncos want Sanchez, should they trade up to get him to ensure that Washington or another team doesn't beat them to the punch? But even if they don't have designs on Sanchez, they might let the Redskins think they do.
"You don't want to tip your hand," Lammey said. "If Washington thought the Broncos might take Sanchez, they might give them something to move up one measly spot. That could get them another pick."
Moral to the story: The less other teams know about what players a team wants, the better. But if other teams happen to hear some erroneous information along the way, well, all the better. "Misinformation, disinformation, whatever you want to call it," Sundquist said. "If they give you an opportunity to spread it, you've got to seize it."