The NFL draft begins

NFL draft talk can't http://www.49ersofficialnflauthentic.com/authentic-marcus-martin-jersey.html be trusted

The NFL draft begins Thursday tonight, none too soon for the league's general managers, who've spent the last several months treating conversations with their peers like the headlines of a supermarket tabloid believed at your peril.

"I refer to this time before the draft as 'National Liars Month' in the NFL," former Dallas Cowboys personnel guru Gil Brandt tells USA TODAY Marcus Martin Womens Jersey Sports. "There are so many things said that are misdirection."

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And there's more smokescreens surrounding this draft than any in a long time, Brandt believes.

"They are 10 times more than what they normally are," he says. The reason: "There's nine really good players up at the top of the draft. And everybody's got a favorite. People are trying to get people off of who they really want."

Much of the extra smoke comes from the availability of Jadeveon Clowney and Johnny Manziel, two of the most polarizing players in recent draft history. Some experts believe South Carolina's Clowney is a generational talent who will go No. 1, though Brandt thinks the Houston Texans might go instead with Buffalo's Khalil Mack, one of the least polarizing because he is one of the least known. Others have had Manziel going as high as No. 1 overall, or as low as the fourth round.

"I had an agent call me the other day who said, 'Have you heard about Clowney's knee?' " Brandt says. "I said, 'I haven't heard about Clowney's knee.' He said, 'I had a general manager tell me that they're really concerned about it.' It's that kind of stuff that goes on."

Last week the St. Louis Rams worked out Manziel and Texas A teammates Jake Matthews and Mike Evans. Did that mean they might take Johnny Football with the second overall selection, or even the 13th selection should he last that long? Or maybe the Rams don't really want him at all, but want other teams to think they do.

"When you have the second pick in the draft, and you have to go work out three guys who are going to be drafted in the first round five days before the draft, I don't know if they're necessarily doing that for workout purposes," says ESPN analyst Bill Polian, who ran drafts for the Buffalo Bills, Carolina Panthers and Indianapolis Colts.

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"Blowing a little smoke is fine," Polian says. "We would sometimes use part of our 30 visits to bring in players that weren't high on our list, just to create the idea that we were interested in them. We weren't above that. We didn't do it a lot because most of the visits you wanted to use for legitimate purposes."

This draft is two weeks later than usual, and Polian figures extra time means extra smoke.

"There are certainly more rumors floating around and, like most draft rumors, have no substance to them," Polian says. "But they sound good and people float them and there are more people like you and me in the media business talking about them than ever before and more time to fill. So there's more craziness out there."

That's why Kansas City Chiefs general manager John Dorsey goes into a self imposed media blackout for roughly five weeks before Brandon Thomas Womens Jersey each draft.

"I don't watch TV, I don't listen to the radio and I don't look at news clips," Dorsey says. "So I tune that out. And I do that for a reason because I don't want to be swayed either way. . (With) today's social media, information flies so quickly and it's a different era than it was five years ago. There's a lot of stuff floating out there."