Bill Belichick: Media reports on players’ draft stock come from their agents, not teams

Bill Belichick shall be working within the media, reasonably than for a group, throughout subsequent week’s NFL draft. But he doesn’t suppose the media might be trusted to precisely report on gamers’ draft stock.

That’s as a result of Belichick says it’s brokers, not teams, who’re speaking to reporters about the place gamers may go within the draft. And brokers aren’t precisely unbiased.

“The biggest newsmakers here, quietly, are the agents,” Belichick mentioned on the Pat McAfee Show. “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.”

Belichick acknowledged that teams do typically leak data, however he says that often occurs after the ultimate draft preparations have been made, very late within the course of.

“There is information that can leak out of the organizations to give insight about what a team is going to do,” he mentioned. “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.”

Belichick will co-host a draft present with McAfee subsequent week, Belichick’s first time speaking concerning the draft reasonably than collaborating in it.