We’re not going to have verdicts on Jacksonville first-rounder Tyson Alualu or Tennessee fourth-round choice Alterraun Verner.
But each pick helped produce a familiar draft-day phenomenon: the complimentary phone call from the competition.
Never mind that competitive teams don’t flip the off switch in the offseason and spend most of March and April trying to make sure they don’t put out any scent 31 other teams might be able to track.
In the heat of the moment, after losing out on guys they like, other teams picked up the phone to tell the Jaguars and the Titans, “nice pick.”
This from Jaguars director of player personnel Terry McDonough:
"We got calls from Denver and Miami and they were raving about the pick.”
And here’s Titans coach Jeff Fisher on Saturday:
“Just to qualify things, I got a call from a club immediately after we took [Verner] that said congratulations, that was our guy sort of thing. It went well for us.”
Maybe I’m being overly cynical -- but hey, it’s what I do.
I suspect there’s some embellishing going on in cases like this. I suspect it’s part of NFL scouting and coaching draft-day defense mechanism to mention another team being complimentary when you know a pick may be scrutinized a little extra because he's outside the box.
I’d expound on this, but I need to go find the guys that write Shutdown Corner over at Yahoo! and tell them how wonderful I thought their draft work was.