Some have quarterback Paxton Lynch going in the top 10 of the draft. As the draft approaches, some have him not going in round one at all. (Maybe Lynch wasn’t able to whip up a sufficiently impressive soufflé.)
Adam Schefter of ESPN says this: “Someone may be laying in ambush, but unless Dallas trades back into first round, hard to find a landing spot for [Lynch].”
Some have suggested that the Saints could target Lynch. (That’s not happening.) Others have linked Lynch to the Jets. Rich Cimini of ESPN.com says that’s not happening, either.
“Memphis quarterback Paxton Lynch is the player most commonly linked to the Jets in mock drafts (including by me in the televised NFL Nation mock draft on Tuesday night), but I no longer believe that will happen,” Cimini writes. “I received late information on Lynch, and the sense I get is the organization has concerns about his maturity and ability to adjust to a pro-style offense. There’s a lot of smoke leading up to the draft, and sometimes it takes a while to see through it.”
Then again, this may still be part of the smoke. As the process approaches, it become more, not less, important to keep people guessing. And there’s nothing like floating fake information to help a team keep its true intentions concealed.
Besides, who ever goes back and dissects what was and wasn’t true in the days and weeks before the draft? Fans want to look ahead to the next thing; after the draft, the next thing to which to look forward is training camp, where all the rookies get thrown into a blender with all the veterans and we thereafter only pay attention to the rookies who get a chance to play -- and who play well.
For now, the objective of every team is doing anything they can to keep their real plans hidden.