STEFEN WISNIEWSKI (FA Center from Oakland)
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Kind of an extreme example, but Jim Irsay specifically praising Bryce Young last year could qualify. In general though, if a team is trying to throw off the scent by floating positive information about other players, that seems harmless. It's different if a team is trashing a player to try to get him to drop into their range, and I don't think that's something that actually happens. If it did, I think that would be highly inappropriate, and I think a good reporter would look back and recognize that their source was using them, and think twice about trusting that source again. So I think this is way more common than what McGinn did. And I don't think people ignore it, unless it's something they don't want to hear. Most sports reports include some version of 'I've been told...' without naming or directly quoting a source. A lot of those are just fact-based, black/white reports, but that often happens with more opinion-based or viewpoint-based reporting as well. I don't know if anyone necessarily likes those reports, but I do think we consume them, and are generally influenced by them. Yeah, the substantiated/analytical stuff is way more valuable than a report discussion a potential character issue, but if it has a legitimate foundation -- AD Mitchell does have diabetes, it can be difficult for someone with that condition to control their mood and energy levels -- then I think it should be considered. Ultimately, I know the quality of information I have access to is nowhere near what the teams are getting, so I don't worry too much about it. Yeah, I fully agree. Ballard faced the media when the Okereke story came out, and it was obvious the team had done their homework. He was firm when asked about Ogletree coming back. The Colts are thorough. Doesn't mean nothing can go wrong once they draft the guy, but I'm confident they've checked all their boxes. And definitely, I think Ballard 100% meant everything he said, and I have no problem with him saying it. But, I think there's a difference between McGinn's report, and the narrative that came later. I think the report was based on anonymous insights, and the narrative was based on sensational headlines. And I'd say Ballard's comments apply more to the narrative than to the report. -
Yes. Just like you might want to try to make a player drop to you, you might want to bump up the stock of another player so he gets taken ahead of you and this drops another player you actually like to your team. This to me looks even worse. This provides even further layers of anonymity and even more questions about the veracity of the report. With what McGinn is doing at least we know where(generally) this is coming from and what the potential pitfalls might be(conflict of interest). If he generalizes it to "People are saying"... this could be anyone... it could be a scout... it could be an exec... it could be an actual coach of the player(this might actually be valuable)... or it could be a water boy the player didn't give an autograph to... In a certain way it makes it easier to ignore, but it feels worse to me because of lack of specificity about the reliability of the source. There is a lot of appetite for more and more information about the players. I'm not so sure there is a ton of appetite for anonymous reports about character failings specifically. In fact, I think those are some of my least favorite pieces of content around the draft. I think there is TONS of good(and some bad) substantiated, analytical, narrative content for fans to consume without going into the gutter of dirt that a lot of those anonymous reports are dealing with. Unless it is factually substantiated(example, player X is being charged with Y crime, i.e. there's actual case... it's all fair game to explore that...) Someone pointed out that it was Ballard that went to Marcus Peters' house and spent a couple of days with him and his family to give the OK to the Chiefs to draft him. Ballard is not a stranger to having to clear a prospect's character for his team so they'd be able to draft him. IMO he seems very confident in his read on Mitchell. I don't think he'd go to that length to defend his player the day he drafts him if he didn't really think the things he said. And I really think he feels strongly about this. I guess we will see in due time if he was right. -
Does the same dynamic and conflict exist when it's a positive report, based on unnamed sources? What if a reporter just generalizes this information, without offering quotes? 'People I've talked to have concerns about this player's maturity...' Is the standard the same in that case? I think if media didn't share these anonymous insights, the stuff we love to consume during draft season would dry up, and we'd be in the dark. There's a voracious appetite for this kind of information. That doesn't mean the media has no responsibility and shouldn't be held to some kind of standard, but I think your standard is more strict than it needs to be. JMO. To the bolded, I think that's the job of the scouts, and it's one of the reasons there's a HUGE difference between watching video, and actually scouting. That's why teams who have access to film and independent scouting reports still pay their own scouts to go into the schools, talk to the coaches, talk to family and friends, etc., and write up in-depth reports on players that they'll likely never draft. I'm confident the Colts got sufficient answers to those questions, which is why I'm not concerned about it. If the Colts didn't have a reputation for being so thorough with stuff like this, I might feel differently.
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Not sure. To me a lot of those (not just about AD) read very gross and icky, especially coming from people who have things to gain from perpetuating a narrative. IMO unless it's factually supported, you probably shouldn't print it(this is specifically about character/attitude things... things that we cannot see with our own eyes on the field - about those... go wild... print whatever you want, unless you are concerned with looking foolish). Or at the very least you should make everything possible to corroborate it with people who are close to the situation - for example, your anonymous scout tells you AD Mitchell is uncoachable. You do NOT print this unless a coach who has worked with him confirms it. Your anonymous scout tells you that when AD Mitchell is not taking care of his blood sugar levels, he's hard to work with. OK, this seems reasonable enough. But does it give an accurate picture of what it is like to work with Mitchell? In other words - how often does that actually happen? Because Mitchell's interview with Destin seems to suggest that he's been taking the necessary measures to control his blood sugar levels. Did it happen like once or twice in the span of 3 years in college? Or is it happening every second practice? Because when you write it like McGinn wrote it and then suggest that he's uncoachable, what's the picture that comes to your head? And the fact that your scout also told you "but when his blood sugar is ok, he's great", doesn't really do anything to balance the story here.
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Got it. But what do you think should be done about this?
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