As the draft approaches teams are busy lining up their draft boards and putting out bad information about their potential picking strategy. Not exactly lying, but just skirting around the truth. It’s become almost an art form, the head fake by the “brain trust” trying to outsmart the competition. Which is only funny because there are no secrets when it comes to the talent available in the draft. Every player has been poked and prodded, given personality tests and asked every question under the sun by every team out there. Everybody knows everything about everybody else. So the deception and sleight-of-hand tried by head coaches and personnel guys is actually pretty amusing. While you’re not going to get any real information, you can get a sense, or a feeling of what the team might do by just asking questions and seeing the reaction. Not really listening to the answers but seeing how questions are answered. “You like speed,” I asked Del Rio, “so will that be a theme throughout your draft?” “Not necessarily,” Del Rio answered, “We’re looking for football players.” You could say that means nothing, or that could mean “We don’t care that the receivers in this draft aren’t fast, we’re taking one anyway.” See? Once you get used to it, translation is easy.

With the moves they made in the off-season in free-agency, the Jaguars think they have a little more flexibility in the draft. “We’ll be able to add some depth to the team,” is how Del Rio described this weekend. They do, however, expect their first, and possibly their second round picks to be starters, much like Byron Leftwich and Rashean Mathis from 2003.

It would seem a no-brainer for the Jaguars to take Kenechi Udazi with the ninth pick overall in the first round. A defensive end, Udazi is rated high among the defensive ends, first round material. But there are questions. He’s been fat. He’s been taking plays off. He’s not fast enough. His shoulder is bad and will need surgery. Of course, those are rumored questions put out there by who knows and could all be lies. And probably are. “You don’t know if that information is coming from somebody drafting behind you, hoping he’ll fall to them.” The Jaguars will investigate the shoulder situation and make a decision. I did get the feeling that they’re more flexible about moving up or down in the first round., Harris explained, “We kind of knew how it would fall last year, and we wanted Leftwich. This year, it’s not so clear.” I also thought wide receiver could be a possibility. But if they don’t think there’s enough value on the board at that ninth spot, they’re trading down. “We’ve looked at all of the scenarios,” added Harris, “and we’ll know what we’re doing when we’re on the clock Saturday.” Actually, James, only history can be that judge.