In the weeks and months leading up to the NFL Draft, the media is filled with reports about where players are expected to be selected and by which teams. But Bill Belichick doesn’t think that’s good information.
During a recent appearance on the Pat McAfee Show, Bill Belichick claimed that most of the information that leaks before the draft comes from agent, and those aren’t necessarily the most reliable sources.
“The biggest newsmakers here, quietly, are the agents,” Belichick said according to Pro Football Talk. “Nobody wants their player to get picked higher than them, so a lot of the information that comes to the media about who’s going to draft who, how high they’re going to go, is a lot of media driven, so when the agent hears, ‘My player could go anywhere from the second or the third round,’ you add one to that and say, ‘These GMs are talking about taking my guy in the first round.’
“I’ve never told an agent, ‘We’re going to take your guy in this round, we’re going to take your guy with the 27th pick or the 31st pick or whatever pick we have.’ I don’t think there’s too many teams that do that, but I think the agent’s going to say, ‘My guy is going to go at 31 to this team, my guy is going to go 17 to this team,’ and that just generates interest in the player.”
That doesn’t mean that some information doesn’t leak out about a team’s plans, but Belichick said that doesn’t typically happen until about 12 hours before the draft.
“There is information that can leak out of the organizations to give insight about what a team is going to do,” he said. “I think it’s a little early for that, but when you get into the last 12 or less hours before the draft, sometimes that information can be very, very accurate and helpful.”
So maybe think twice before believing a report about where a player is expected to be selected.
