If you ever wondered why the often tight-lipped NFL teams seem to suddenly have media leaks at the same time right around the NFL draft every year, Cam Heyward has a PSA for you.
“Don’t listen to these people in the last two weeks [before the draft]. It is a shell game for all these teams. They are talking to the media, they’re putting out a million things just to see if something sticks so either they can trade up, trade back,” Heyward said this morning via Not Just Football with Cam Heyward. “I know for a fact half of this stuff is fake. I’m not gonna tell you what’s fake, but I know for a fact half of this stuff is fake. And I’m not just referring to the Pittsburgh Steelers.”
Having gone through the process and experiencing it firsthand from the player’s perspective, Heyward revealed that even players are fed bad information this close to the draft. He was told, for example, that the Baltimore Ravens and New York Jets were going to take him if he fell in the 2011 draft. They ended up passing on him.
There are multiple forces at play. The media need storylines and can make mountains out of molehills of information. Agents want to make their clients look good and try to drum up as much fear of missing out on them as possible. And finally the teams are laying smokescreens to throw others off their scent or influence possible trades that might benefit them.
If he had to put a number to it, Heyward said believe about 30 percent of what is said this time of year.
“You have to remember there’s a job being done. You have to appease the team. You’re trying to appease the agents, and you’re trying to find a sweet spot where you can live and people wanna keep coming back to you,” Heyward said of the media’s role. “You don’t want to upset anybody. You’re not really saying what you really feel about a certain player. It’s a lot of talk about nothing.”
It’s not all on the media. There are definitely some lies being told along the way. Here is an apt joke with a lot of truth to it from NFL.com’s Eric Edholm about his colleague Daniel Jeremiah this time of year.
“In case you’re wondering DJ’s morning routine: Drink coffee, field 3 calls, try to decipher the 9 lies he was just told,” Edholm wrote.
Heyward said he isn’t just talking about the Steelers, but he obviously has the most information about their situation. So what are some of the late-breaking weighty storylines that have been central to Steelers draft talk over the last week or two.
– First-round grades on Jaxson Dart and Shedeur Sanders
– Mike Tomlin “really likes” Sanders
– Visit with Sanders didn’t go well
– Steelers would pass on QB if a DL is available
– Derrick Harmon medical concerns could make him fall
– Steelers want to trade back in first round
– Steelers aren’t planning to trade into the second round
There are probably several others that aren’t on the list, but you can see that even some of those directly contradict each other. Which 30 percent is to be believed? Your guess is as good as mine. We will all know in a couple short days with the draft starting Thursday night.
Believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see this time of year.
