Count Pat McAfee among those who believe the rumors about Ohio State Buckeyes safety Caleb Downs and his "degenerative ACL" are "bulls***." McAfee believes that it's simply draft season, and this is par for the course for "#DraftSZN."
McAfee also revealed that his people spoke with multiple NFL franchises and Downs' family and everyone agreed that Caleb had no issues that were found at the NFL Combine this past weekend in Indianapolis.
“There is some news coming out of the combine. Now, everything right now is smoke and mirrors this time of year. Who knows what's real and what isn’t, but we do know that this (report) kind of made its run on the internet. There wasn’t one NFL team we talked to this morning that said anything was wrong, and we talked to multiple. This feels like it’s all bulls—, but this is kind of the name of the game in this time," McAfee said during his show on Tuesday.
“We reached out to the Downs family, and the Downs family immediately sent us to a ‘Suit.’ Sent a thumbs up, never gonna do that. So then we go to a couple of NFL teams and we tried to do a little follow-up on what we have heard. Multiple NFL teams have told us there is nothing in the medical that would deter us from bringing Caleb Downs in, especially with how great of a football player he is."
NFL teams are lying just as much as everyone else during draft season
Let's not assume that McAfee's word is gospel on Downs' draft stock taking any hit. That seems impossible in this day and age, when fans put front offices on blast for making the wrong selection as often as the sun shines.
Just as there could be misleading chatter about Downs' injury from reporters, there could also be misleading reports from franchises about which players they're interested in drafting. This report makes Downs a risky pick, whether it's true or not. Unfortunately, any injury to Downs' lower extremities will be taken as this being true.
Do NFL front offices want to risk reaching for a safety who might have chronic injury issues? Do they want to risk bad luck with something happening to Downs and having to take responsibility for ignoring it?
That's the question we'll get an answer to sooner rather than later this April.