Bryan Burwell

Of the many athletic-based rituals of spring, one of the more entertaining of all are the elaborate lengths some pro football folks will go to in order to conceal their true intentions in the days leading up to annual NFL Draft.

Public honesty is not a valued commodity as NFL teams carefully plot, connive and misdirect their way through the first round of pro football’s annual shopping spree. Lying is elevated to an art form and smoke screens are considered business as usual. Even in a talent-rich year when a blind man could pick the top of the first round, the men who are in charge of the selection process make it seem like they’re explaining how to build a nuclear reactor.

The intrigue only escalates on years like this when there is no clear-cut No. 1 pick, and the top four or five players seem to all be on the same talent level.

One day the Miami Dolphins spread the word that they are engaged in intense contract negotiations with University of Michigan offensive tackle Jake Long to be the No. 1 pick. The next, Miami officials hint a defensive player might be chosen.

The smart money play is that it would be wise to wait until commissioner Roger Goodell is uttering his name next Saturday afternoon before believing it.

“It’s a poker game and it’s one I refuse to play because you’re playing with the ultimate poker player in (Miami team president) Bill Parcells,” said St. Louis Rams vice president of player personnel Billy Devaney. “You’re wasting your time trying to predict what he’s going to do because he’s the master at it. What’s he thinking? I don’t know, I wouldn’t pretend to know, and I won’t try to predict.”

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Devaney has some poker player in him, too. As he sat in one of the back offices at the Rams training complex earlier this week, he let one of those sly little grins slip across his face. He is the man in charge of deciding what to do with the No. 2 overall pick, and this 20-minute conversation turns into an entertaining tap dance.

Going through a list of the top players sounds like this:

Player A: “Love him.”

Player B: “Who wouldn’t love him?”

Player C: “Love everything about him.”

Player D: “I think we could find a place to use him.”

This is Devaney’s carefully measured response to the Machiavellian doings in Miami. It’s impossible to know what Parcells true intentions are, so why bother committing to yours?

There’s another factor to the mystery surrounding this year’s draft. Some scouts believe it’s a mediocre draft. Some think it’s a deep draft without no-brainer superstars. As intriguing as Glenn Dorsey, Chris Long, Jake Long, Darren McFadden and Vernon Gholston are, they don’t send the hearts of general managers and head coaches racing like a Peyton Manning, Orlando Pace or Lawrence Taylor might have.

“You’d think it would be academic, wouldn’t you?” said Devaney. “Miami picks so-and-so, and then you take the next guy, right? But it’s not academic. Every draft has its own personality. This one is being defined by the absence of the absolute 1-2-3 blue chip guys at the top. There are guys who aren’t the can’t-miss guys like a Calvin Johnson who was at the top of the draft last year. This year, it’s a clump of guys who we all think will be good for a long time, and every one of them has their plusses and minuses. So even after the first guy is picked, we can all go in any number of directions.”