Reminder For Patriots Fans: Be Wary Of NFL Draft Hype Chatter

The NFL truly is a juggernaut in the sports world, and it's also why New England Patriots fans need to be wary and not take everything in the rumor mill too seriously.

We're two weeks away from the 2024 NFL Draft, but networks haven't wasted a day not talking about the sport. Forget all the months of college football, this analyst grinded tape on a top prospect for a few weeks and knows all the answers. You thought you knew everything about J.J. McCarthy? Well, you actually didn't because apparently, he's in the conversation among the consensus top three quarterbacks: Caleb Williams, Drake Maye and Jayden Daniels.

If you've been lucky enough to avoid the debate shows on TV or the internet, then you probably won't know that McCarthy is one of the most polarizing prospects in the 2024 NFL Draft. Once thought of as a second-round pick, the desperate need for quarterbacks, a position always capturing headlines, has put him in the conversation to go as high as second overall. De facto general manager and director of scouting Eliot Wolf reportedly is "pushing hard" for the Patriots to draft him with the third overall pick.

How real is this? Would New England really pass up Maye or Daniels to draft McCarthy? This is anyone's guess and why there is a contingent of fans who want April 18 to roll by as quickly as possible so we can get this over with. It's why fans need to be vigilant and not take these kinds of rumors or hype stories too seriously and really examine what's going on.

Watching tape on a prospect truly can be a Rorschach test. Everyone can watch the same play and come away with different perspectives. It's why drafting is hard and trying to project how a player will perform in the NFL is a trying task. It's also why fans cling to any small bit of information to get insight into what a team thinks about the top prospects. Those small nuggets can lead to wider conversations among fans and analysts, and they help increase the profile of those players.

NFL Media's Ian Rapoport reported Thursday morning it was "likely" Michael Penix Jr. would be a first-round pick. That came after Bleacher Report's Jordan Schultz revealed Tuesday that Penix's apartment mirrors were covered in play designs. Are teams buying into the hype on the Washington product? It's hard to tell, but his stock will continue to rise.

Whenever this kind of information makes its way to the media, there's always an agenda. For all the positive stories you'll hear about a prospect, there will be stories about concerns and potential red flags a team might have on a player. That's not to say the information is inaccurate, but it's important to understand who the source of the information might be and why that story is being told to the public.

Will Levis should the cautionary tale. The Tennessee Titans quarterback was projected to be a first-round pick in the 2023 NFL Draft, and the Patriots reportedly had "real interest" in the Kentucky product. Nothing obviously came from that, but an innocuous Reddit post boosted his hype to be a top-two pick. Teams didn't see it that way and he fell to the second round.

The NFL draft promises a bright future, and fans are desperate to know who will be the savior of their franchise. But Patriots supporters need to be wary of the hype on players like McCarthy and understand that just because someone like Wolf might reportedly be "pushing hard" on a prospect, doesn't mean that will happen when New England is on the clock.