Beware Patriots rumors during league’s silly season
I promise this is not to pick on Tony Pauline. No sir. Not at all.
This is to pick on the NFL calendar, where April Fool’s Day lasts longer than 24 hours. Try three to four weeks.
We have now entered the silly season; a time when draft reports and rumors, whispers, rumblings and buzz blend into an inextricable mix. Meaningful signals, the real football reporting, are almost inseparable from the noise. This blender is fed by all parties — media, scouts, executives and coaches — because it pours into the same trough where we all eat until draft day.
Teams feast on misdirecting their competition, while media gorge on filling time and space on television, radio, podcasts and news sites with content.
And let me tell you, Monday’s spread was strong.
Pauline, a longtime
NFL Draft writer and media evaluator now with Sportskeeda, served up a juicy slice of “buzz” in his latest mock draft. He wrote that Patriots de facto general manager Eliot Wolf is “pushing hard” for Michigan quarterback J.J. Mccarthy, and believes Mccarthy “has as much upside as any quarterback.”
Hot damn! How about that?
Never mind Mccarthy is not regarded as a top-10 prospect by most anyone studying this draft class, a group Pauline aligned himself with Tuesday during an NBC Sports Boston interview. Never mind that in the same interview, Pauline revealed it was opposing GMS who fed him the nugget about Wolf, not anyone from the Patriots.
“The feeling is that J.J. Mccarthy — or at least Eliot Wolf is pushing for J.J. Mccarthy, and that seems like it’s going to be the pick. I could understand the love for
J.J. Mccarthy,” Pauline said on the Patriots Talk podcast. “I don’t agree with it, but I understand it because whether it’s
J.J. Mccarthy or any of these Michigan kids, they have acquitted themselves well during the interview process.”
To back Pauline for a moment, one NFL executive told me this week that Mccarthy tied Drake Maye for the most impressive quarterback interview at the combine. He was sharp and assertive, carrying a presence and recall expected of the game’s best quarterbacks. Mccarthy met with the Patriots at the combine. Wolf, Jerod Mayo and others also flew to see him, among others, at Michigan’s Pro Day.
And, according to Mayo, it sounds like Mccarthy will take a pre-draft visit to New England, just like projected top quarterbacks Maye and Jayden Daniels.
Still, I don’t buy it.
For one, Wolf knows how to play the media game and eat by himself this time of year. Officially, he’s been working in NFL front offices for 20 years. Unofficially, as the son of Pro Football Hall of Fame executive and ex-packers GM Ron Wolf, he’s been assisting with NFL Draft prep for 30.
Wolf has also spent most of this offseason keeping his own front office in the dark about his supposed quarterback plan, as Herald reporting detailed at the combine. There have been no internal indications that’s changed.
Furthermore, if you’re drafting on No. 3, you need a difference-maker, not a care-taker. Mccarthy rode shotgun for most of Michigan’s run to the national title last year, throwing four combined touchdowns in wins over Alabama, Washington, Iowa, Penn State and Ohio State. How much winning did he actually drive himself?
Now, Mccarthy is accurate, exceptionally athletic, tough and an impressive leader. He may develop into a solid NFL starter, maybe above-average. Here’s hoping he does.
But as a prospect, Mccarthy does not possess a single trait that projects to scare NFL defensive coordinators, or trumps both Maye and Daniels.