Silva caught wind of a rumor last night that TCU lineman Marcus Cannon, widely regarded as a potential second-round pick in the draft, was determined at the Scouting Combine to have testicular cancer -- and that his agent had withheld the information from the player.
Given the serious nature of the situation and the sinister nature of the notion that the agent didn’t tell the kid that he has a life-threatening disease, we decided to leave it alone until we could explore it.
Per a source with knowledge of the situation, a biopsy performed today (which was set up more than a week ago at the request of one team) confirmed that the mass, which has been present for years and is in his stomach/pelvic area, is benign. A letter will be sent by the doctor to all teams within the next 24-to-48 hours explaining the situation.
The biopsy was done because a small handful of teams wanted to be sure that there was no problem. Apparently, those concerns were twisted, unintentionally or otherwise, from concerns that Cannon may have cancer into whispers that he does.
We learned the hard way more than four years ago (see Bradshaw, Terry) that certain types of rumors and reports require further homework before publication, even if the erroneous information is being actually reported by another news organization. In this case, the false report will result in plenty of people incorrectly believing that Cannon has cancer, when in fact he doesn’t.
The good news is that the teams will know the truth well before the time comes to make their picks.
The best news is that Cannon doesn’t have cancer.
UPDATE: Another source with knowledge of the situation tells us that the official biopsy results are expected soon, and that the doctor strongly believed based on preliminary inspection of the biopsy sample that the mass does not appear to be cancerous.