8 comments MMQB Review: Mike Silver's Mystery Head Coach Source Edition

Peter King ranked the airlines he has flown last week in MMQB, as well as criticized a barista for not appropriately using the recyclable cup that Peter purchased specifically to singlehandedly save the environment. Peter also talked about the virus he has picked up which was ruining his worth ethic and it was pointed out in the comments this virus coincides perfectly with a trip to Southern Mississippi Peter took immediately after the Super Bowl. The news gets a little bit slower in the offseason, but the Combine started this week and even though he believes it is over-hyped Peter is perfectly willing to be a part of the group who over-hype the Combine in discussing what we've "learned" from the players' performance there. This week Peter talks about the Combine, introduces us to the standout college players (the same ones we have watched all year) who have entered the NFL Draft, and points out a hotel he will want to avoid in the future. Oh, and Peter calls Meryl Streep "classy" because he has a massive crush on her and will talk about Meryl Streep at any given opportunity.

Who are the five players pictured above and what is the significance of these five together?

Take your time. Study them for a second while I give thanks to SI ace photographer Todd Rosenberg for the fine work he did over the weekend in a studio he invented in the concourse at Lucas Oil Stadium.

Just from looking at the picture it is clear these are college prospects looking to get drafted into the NFL this year. The significance most likely is they are players considered to go pretty early in the first round of the NFL Draft this year. I'm not good at guessing games, but this one is pretty obvious.

To be honest, I'd be surprised if many outside of Prof. Mike Mayock's tape laboratory went 5 for 5 on the IDs. They are (from left to right) outside linebacker Jarvis Jones of Georgia, defensive end Dion Jordan of Oregon, cornerback Dee Milliner of Alabama, defensive tackle Sharrif Floyd of Florida and tackle Luke Joeckel of Texas A&M.

Part of the reason many people outside of Mike Mayock wouldn't recognize these football players is because we have only seen them with a helmet on, which makes it hard to see their faces. So it isn't an overall lack of knowledge that causes people to not recognize these college football stars, but the fact their faces are covered by a helmet when we watch them play on television.

The significance: Fifty-nine days out, those five players are as good a guess as any for the top five picks in the draft -- in some order.

So basically they may have no significance because they are just players Peter is guessing may go in the Top 5 of this year's NFL Draft.

I'll give day-one starting left tackle Joeckel to the Chiefs at one, Jones and his freaky 24.5 tackles for loss in 2012 to Jacksonville at two (provided his spinal stenosis is not a huge issue), Floyd to the tackle-light and rebuilding Raiders at three, Jordan to the Eagles for a reunion with college coach Chip Kelly at four, and the most obvious pick in any draft in recent years, Milliner, to the cornerback-starved Lions at five.

I have very little doubt Peter's top 5 will change in the coming months, especially given the fact #3 seems pretty high for Sharrif Floyd. Al Davis isn't around, so the Raiders just won't take the best available athlete anymore.

Get to know these guys. I just laid eyes on all of them over the weekend, 

What Peter means is that he leered at these players over the weekend and caused them to all not want to be around Peter because of the way he stared at them just over the edge of his triple latte mocha coffee with extra foam in a recyclable Starbucks cup.

Patience. When you hear that players are "sliding down draft boards,'' or "rocketing up draft boards,'' understand that it's a lie. Those draft boards now are mental. Most teams have their first version of player ranking set before coming to the combine. Then they return home and continue the scouting process, then reset the board in the week or sometimes day or two before the draft. If they're sliding or rising now, it's in the minds of GMs, not in any official sense.

Players are never "officially" sliding or rising in the NFL Draft anyway. It isn't like there is a scoreboard where a team can keep track of what players are sliding or rising in the draft. A player may rise based entirely on one team liking him a lot and another player can fall based on how the draft falls and the needs of the teams selecting in the first round. So there is never an official draft board after the Combine, which Peter is right about, but players are always rising or sliding in the  minds of GMs and it is never, ever "official" that a player is sliding or rising until draft day. Even then, a player doesn't "officially" slide until the draft actually starts.

3. The Ravens and Joe Flacco are making progress. The club negotiator, Pat Moriarty, and agent Joe Linta spent four hours together Friday night, then were spotted at the Capital Grille having dinner. This isn't degenerating into what happened last summer -- yet, and I don't think it will -- when Linta and Flacco walked away with a deal agonizingly close. 

But I thought the Ravens and Joe Flacco were not going to come to an agreement and the Ravens would possibly let Flacco go in free agency or hit him with the franchise tag in order to collect the draft picks when another team signed Flacco? What happened to the Ravens starting over with Matt Flynn or Alex Smith providing competition to Tyrod Taylor in order to save a few bucks and sign Darnell Ellerbe and/or Paul Kruger? That sounded like a foolproof plan to me.

The Ravens know they can find a way to do a cap-friendly deal in years one and two, Flacco knows he doesn't want to leave Baltimore, and the extended conversation is a good sign that the two sides can reach a five- or six-year deal to keep the unsigned Flacco in Baltimore through the middle of his prime years before free agency opens in two weeks.

Remember a few weeks ago when Peter seemed sure the Ravens weren't going to re-sign Flacco because Ozzie Newsome and Steve Bisciotti said there were going to be some positions where the Ravens went with youth over re-signing their own players? Remember when Peter King thought that meant the Ravens weren't going to re-sign Joe Flacco? It feels like a long time ago. I wonder if Peter thinks now he sounded silly when he wrote those words a few short weeks ago?

4. Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o made a very good first impression on the NFL. No way the second- or third-rated inside linebacker gets to the bottom of the round now, in the wake of the fake girlfriend story. I can't see him lasting past Cincinnati at 21. "Unbelievable kid,'' is how one interviewer for a team described him Sunday night. "Everybody in our room fell in love with him."

I've heard Te'o has the ability to make people around him fall in love with him. It seems to be a trend doesn't it? I guess he has that going for him.

"The times just seem to be faster than we expected, by a lot of guys." There were six sub-4.4-second 40-yard dashes by wide receivers -- including 4.27 by Texas' Marquise Goodwin and 4.34 by Texas A&M's Mike Swope, both faster than predicted -- 

Pretty much any time that Mike Swope ran was going to be faster than predicted, especially considering there was no Mike Swope who played for Texas A&M nor was a Mike Swope invited to the Combine. There was a Ryan Swope, but he is a white wide receiver so the Patriots have already called dibs on drafting him. Well, maybe the Patriots don't know they are drafting Swope but I would imagine every mock draft is going to have Swope going to the Patriots. It's groupthink.

Before interviewing Barkley Saturday night at the combine, I asked three scouts about him.

I watched extended highlights of the Stanford and Oregon games from last season on YouTube. I didn't see the too-much-air thing, but I did see him trusting his receivers too much to make tough throws,

In slight defense of Matt Barkley, when your wide receivers are Marquise Lee and Robert Woods then you should probably trust them as much as possible. They are pretty good.

He was a quarterback under siege against Stanford, once getting pummeled almost before the snap arrived on the goal line by an attacking Cardinal front. It's tough to dissect decision-making without knowing the offense or sitting down to watch tape with the guy, but he took too many chances for my taste.

I'm not a Matt Barkley fan or anything of the like, but perhaps the reason he took too many chances is because he was trying too hard to make a play and lead his team back? So when Barkley got good protection and thought he had a chance to complete a pass he went for it because he wasn't sure when the next time he would have time to throw the ball would be. It's not the smartest move, but pressure on the quarterback can make a quarterback do some stupid things. 

"My Pro Day will dispel those myths about my arm,'' he predicted.

Barkley seems very confident and very sure of himself without being cocky. "As I start my NFL career,'' he said, "I really want to set the record straight on a few things. People look at me like I'm some Cali boy, but I'm not that way -- I don't even know how to surf. I'm a football junkie. I'm football, 24/7.''

"Seriously guys, I'm not Matt Leinart. Really, I'm not. I don't surf, so that means I am not Matt Leinart. You guys all believe me, right? Say you believe me."

I think a couple of teams wanted me to throw coaches or whoever under the table.

If Matt Barkley threw Lane Kiffin under the bus could you say that you blame him at all? Let's be fair, there's probably a lot of people who want to throw Kiffin under a bus, in the literal sense, much less in the figurative sense.

One team gave me sort of a trick question: 'Would you rather ride the bench and win a Super Bowl, or be a starter and not make the Super Bowl?' That's a trick question, really. I just said, 'I want to be a starter. As much as I want to win a Super Bowl ring, I don't want one handed to me without deserving it.' ''

It's not a trick question. It's a loaded question. "Are you more focused on individual over team achievements," versus "how much does it mean to you to be a starter in the NFL and how motivated are you to be a starter?" There's no right answer to this question...well, other than "I'd rather ride the bench my rookie year, have my team's starter get injured on the first play of the Super Bowl, win the Super Bowl and then be a starter for that same team over the next 15 years."

Television cameras focused on Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o during his media period at the combine: 46. In total, it was the biggest media horde in combine history. "I'd say one-third more media than Tim Tebow got,'' said combine godfather Gil Brandt.

And of course from now until eternity all camera totals will be counted and compared to the cameras that were on Tim Tebow at the Combine. Most quarterback prospects just hope to achieve 33% of the Tebow Camera Equation, but Manti Te'o exceeded the Tebow Camera Equation by 33%. Very impressive.

All I can say if Te'o drops precipitously -- and I do not believe he will; I think he goes no lower than the early 20s of the first round -- this league needs to have its collective head examined.

"I'm sitting here watching all this,'' said Nevada coach Brian Polian, the point man in the Notre Dame recruitment of Te'o, "and it's driving me out of my mind.''

BREAKING NEWS: The coach who recruited Manti Te'o to Notre Dame believes Manti Te'o is a great person and his fictional girlfriend shouldn't affect his draft status. Quick, someone find out if Brian Kelly likes Manti Te'o as well!

"The reason I've been so upset at how Manti has been portrayed is that I know him. He doesn't conspire to trick anyone.

Or Te'o is very good at tricking people and tricked Brian Polian into believing he wouldn't trick anyone. That's a possibility.

Then he goes to a prestigious private school and, I'm not going to lie, he was sheltered. Then he goes to Notre Dame, and there aren't many places that protect and shelter their students like Notre Dame. This whole story happens, and he's guilty of one thing: trusting some sicko, because that's what he does, he trusts people. He's not jaded, he's not worldly, he's naïve. So he trusts someone who doesn't deserve to be trusted, then he's totally embarrassed by it when he finds out it's phony.

This brings up a very good question that concerns NFL talent evaluators. Te'o is a four year college player who is naive and overly trusting. Being naive and overly trusting is a good way to invite problems in the form of bad people surrounding you when you start to make millions of dollars. The fact Te'o was naive and trusted too much, combined with his default reaction to lie and deceive when he found out he was being taken, has to be very concerning for NFL evaluators. Not being worldly and trusting others too much is an excellent way to become an NFL cautionary tale. If Brian Polian doesn't understand these concerns then there is something wrong with him.

"Any NFL team that really looks into this kid is going to find out what a great person he is. I guarantee it. This thing will be a punch line in two months.

The problem is that Te'o is already a punchline.

And I asked, "What did you think of that scene in there?''

Te'o smiled. "That was a great experience,'' he said. "People were nice to me. I enjoyed it." And then he was gone.

Now there's an answer I didn't expect. Maybe, "Holy crap! That was incredible!'' But, "People were nice to me?'' I spoke to Polian after this, and it all seemed to fit -- this bizarre thing may have made him trust fewer people, but he still seems like a truster of people he's just met.

Okay, I have to ask it, but is Manti Te'o slow? Not slow as in "doesn't run fast," but slow as in "not going to beat anyone at Scrabble or never the first to figure out a math problem" type of slow.

One last story: Our combine photographer Rosenberg had a short session with Te'o Sunday. He had quite a few players in his home-made studio in the Lucas Oil Stadium concourse, and he'd ask them all to pose, and then to do some action things. Rosenberg had to tell most of them to really give some effort, because it was strange to run or make sudden actions in such a confined space. When Te'o was in there, and Rosenberg asked him to run, he sprinted past Rosenberg, past the camera position, into the concourse. Sprinting. That's what he was asked to do, and so he did it.

Again, is Manti Te'o slow? When Rosenberg asked him to run, he didn't mean start sprinting into the concourse. This seems a little obvious. Is it possible that Manti Te'o is smart enough to be good at football, but not smart enough to figure out how the world works or what exactly people are asking him to do? Is he the modern day Forrest Gump?

I think Te'o should and will go in the first round, but if someone doesn't understand the reason for questions about Te'o then that person simply isn't paying attention. It would concern me if I were an NFL GM that Te'o seems very childish and not very worldly. You can't babysit him in the NFL and hope someone doesn't ask him to do something he will simply do without a second thought.

Then Peter discusses Matt Birk, who is retiring, and Birk ends the discussion with advice perhaps Peter King should heed more often.

"I'm happy. Fifteen seasons, Man of the Year, two great franchises, Super Bowl my last game, and we win it. If you ever hear me complaining about anything, ever, slap me in the face. Please."

Yeah, but Matt Birk doesn't have to stay in these crappy hotels with their terrible free coffee like Peter does. You deal with bad coffee and then talk to Peter about who has a right to complain. 

"Of all the people here at the combine, the one person you don't want to be is him. Seriously, I'd rather have six positive drug tests, a DUI, a domestic abuse charge and some theft incidents than have to deal with all the questions that guy's going to face. He's going to be probed by most of the teams, and all of you guys, until his head is spinning.''

-- One NFC head coach on the scrutiny that awaits Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o after his phonygirlfriend experience of last fall, according to Michael Silver of Yahoo! Sports.

(Best Jigsaw voice) I want to play a game. Any guesses as to who this NFC coach was?

I'm going to rule out coaches and give my pick as well. I think teams should be concerned about Te'o, but I wouldn't want all of these charges on me as a prospect as opposed to being Manti Te'o. I would take Te'o's situation over having a litany of serious crimes against me. So which head coach said this?

I'm going to immediately rule out Bruce Arians, Marc Trestman, Jason Garrett, Mike McCarthy, Leslie Frazier, Tom Coughlin, Chip Kelly, Jeff Fisher, Sean Payton and Pete Carroll. I either don't know enough about them or don't think it is their temperament to make such a statement.

So for the rest of the coaches:

Mike Shanahan: This seems like a Mike Shanahan-type thing to say, but I think he is such an experienced head coach he would know better than to think facing all of those charges are better than being Te'o. So it seems like he would say it, but I don't think it was him.

Greg Schiano: He does seem to have the ego to say this. I can't decide if his disciplinarian-type personality means he would less or more likely to say this statement. I lean towards saying he wouldn't make this statement because Schiano would probably rather have a player with a good criminal record than a player with a bad criminal record.

Jim Harbaugh: Mike Silver is a West Coast guy and Jim Harbaugh is brash, so I can see how the two would have a conversation that led to this statement. He seems like the kind of guy who values honesty, toughness and intelligence (traits he probably believes Te'o lacks) over a player who may have had some troubles during his college career. Plus, he is a Stanford/Michigan guy and Te'o went to Notre Dame.

Jim Schwartz: He's brash and he isn't afraid to take on players who have a troubled history as the head coach of the Lions. He clearly thinks he can handle troubled players, so he would rather have a troubled player than a guy who he believes isn't fully honest with him. I think he could have said this.

Ron Rivera: He talks tough like this sometimes, but I also don't think he would be dumb enough to make this statement. Plus, Rivera isn't ruling out any players in the draft because he has a job to save.

Mike Smith: I think this is the wild card coach to make these statements. Smith doesn't seem to be very brash and opinionated in public, but it could very well be a really quiet head coach who said this. It's always the sneaky ones you have to watch. Since I'm not 95% he didn't say this, I'll include him on my list as the really quiet wild card coach.

So I'm down to Jim Harbaugh, Mike Smith or Jim Schwartz who made this statement. I'll rule the quiet guy out first. Mike Smith probably didn't make this statement. Given Schwartz's experience with working with players who have personal red flags (Titus Young, Suh, Fairley, etc) I think he would be the one who would make this statement. Of course, Jim Harbaugh doesn't have a need for a linebacker so he could say something like this fully knowing the 49ers aren't going to draft Te'o. So my guess is that I am 60% sure it was Jim Schwartz who said this and 40% sure it was Jim Harbaugh who said it.

Uneasy Lies The Head That Wears The Crown Dept.: Of the 11 members of the league's General Managers Advisory Committee last season, six have been fired: Scott Pioli (Chiefs), Rod Graves (Cardinals), Gene Smith (Jaguars), Mike Tannenbaum (Jets), Marty Hurney (Panthers) and Tom Heckert (Browns).

A seventh, Mickey Loomis (Saints), was suspended for half of the 2012 season due to the Saints' bounty scandal.

Watch your backs, Martin Mayhew (Lions), Jerry Reese (Giants), Kevin Colbert (Steelers) and Thomas Dimitroff (Falcons).

I think Reese, Colbert and Dimitroff are probably safe for the next season. Just a hunch.

Mr. Starwood Preferred Member Travel Note of the Week

I have two.

Not three or maybe even ten? I'm sure in the past week Peter has visited Starbucks at least 40 times and there has to be at least 3-4 annoying stories that came out of these Starbucks visits.

1. Why, oh why, have I missed the breakfast gem in downtown Indianapolis (with other locations in the area) called Patachou? 

Perhaps because you were too focused on not getting good free hotel coffee and complaining about how long the line at Starbucks was? Perhaps no one told you about it because they don't like your company.

2. Remind me to skip the Hotel Cecil on my next trip to L.A. Per CNN: "The decomposing body of Elisa Lam floated inside a water tank on the roof of the Cecil Hotel while guests brushed their teeth, bathed and drank with water from it for as long as 19 days ... 

"But for a week, they never complained. 'We never thought anything of it,' she said. 'We thought it was just the way it was here.' New guests continued to check into the Cecil in the hours after firefighters removed Lam's body from the water tank. But each guest was asked to sign a waiver releasing the hotel from liability if they became ill. 'You do so at your own risk and peril,' the hotel's release said.''

Now THIS is an excellent reason to complain about a hotel's service and the conditions they present for their guests. One would hope Peter King could see that there are more things that can go wrong with a hotel than for their to be no good free coffee or the lack of a buffet in the morning. There was a dead body at this hotel which affected the drinking water and every other drop of water at the hotel. Rather than close, the hotel had the guests sign a waiver. This is much like those big trucks you see on the highway carrying huge rocks or gravel have signs on the back that say "Not responsible for damage done to cars" who are trying to just get out of liability for the damage they cause to other cars' windshields. Obviously you can't just say you aren't liable for something and then magically not be liable if you were truly at fault for any damage done. I'm thinking of getting a sign on the back of my car and claiming I have no liability for any damage that throwing bowling balls out of the driver's side window may do.

So my point is that Peter should realize there are worse things that can happen at a hotel as opposed to just being a little bit inconvenienced.

"I could listen to Adele sing the phone book. In fact, I'd order multiple copies."

-- @nprscottsimon, the National Public Radio host, watching Adele sing at The Oscars Sunday night. 

It's nice to see Adele is the new Celine Dion. She is the crooner who isn't offensive to anyone and has a great voice. I wonder when Adele will start a two year run of shows in Las Vegas. I'm guessing it will be another ten years, but that's just a guess.

Who knows? He still might, but if the Chiefs get Smith, they should just let Brandon Albert walk (he's not worth $10 million a year), take Texas A&M tackle Luke Joeckel No. 1 overall, and if Barkley's there at the top of the second round, consider taking the USC passer there. But he wouldn't be essential then.

If the Chiefs trade a second or third round pick for Alex Smith then one of the last things they need to do is spend a second round pick on Matt Barkley. I'm no NFL coach and you can't have too many quarterbacks, but it doesn't make sense to me for the Chiefs to trade for Alex Smith and then draft a quarterback in the second round. Of course Peter probably also thinks the 49ers aren't getting a good deal if they end up with anything less than a first round pick for Smith since they spent a first round pick on him already. It's folly to trade Smith and not get more than a first round pick in return!

I think among the troubled players at the combine, Tyrann Mathieu, whose mountain of off-field and drug problems got him kicked off the LSU team, talked the best game. How much that helps remains to be seen, but it's a start, anyway. He said he has a sponsor for his addiction issues, is undergoing counseling and talks to several NFL defensive backs, including Darrelle Revis and Patrick Peterson, to help him stay on the straight and narrow.

If I am an NFL head coach I'm excited Tryann Mathieu is talking to Darrelle Revis and also scared Mathieu is talking to Darrelle Revis. I would be a little bit afraid Revis would be schooling Mathieu on "Holding Out 101."

He'd better be. Can't imagine him getting drafted with a single misstep over the next two months.

It sounds like there is one NFC head coach who sounds like he would draft Mathieu even if he gets arrested for various crimes a few times over the next coming months.

5. I think, speaking of over-unders, this is mine for where rehabbing running back Marcus Lattimore will be drafted: 93rd overall. By San Francisco. One day we might be calling Lattimore the successor to Frank Gore.

I don't think Marcus Lattimore will last to #93. I would probably draft him before that if I am an NFL team who needs a running back.

8. I think Sunday's hero at the combine may well have been Oklahoma tackle Lane Johnson. "Great workout,'' said one scout watching. "I could see three tackles going in the top 10. Wouldn't shock me.'' Luke Joeckel, Central Michigan's Eric Fisher and Johnson, who, believe it or not, was a high school quarterback.

I love how last week in his "Adieu Haiku" Peter referred to the Combine as being over-hyped and this week he is writing mostly about the Combine and stating a player's Combine performance could have pushed that player into the Top 10 of the draft. So doesn't that mean the Combine isn't over-hyped? I know the offseason is a dry time for NFL news, but don't call the Combine over-hyped and then write mostly about the Combine, while also stating players are moving around teams' draft boards because of their performance at the Combine. If a player can work his way into the Top 10 at the Combine then maybe it is hyped-up, but not overly-hyped up.

10. I think these are my non-football thoughts of the week:

c. Who's classier than Meryl Streep?

No one, Peter. No one is classier than Meryl Streep. Why do I have a feeling Peter has a Meryl Streep wallpaper on his computer?

d. I know basketball as well as I know horticulture, but after a long weekend and lots of SportsCenter, just wondering how anyone can stop LeBron James.

This is Peter's typical "I don't know anything about the sport, but here is my comment that I want to have influence on your opinion of the topic discussed" comment. Thanks for contributing Peter. LeBron James is hard to stop.We'll consider ourselves informed.

k. Good luck at the Iowa State Daily and in your career beyond Ames, Dean Berhow-Goll. Good talking with you at the ombine.

Yes Dean Berhow-Goll, Peter feels it was good talking to you at the ombine, which is something that doesn't exist as a person, place or thing. The imaginary conversation was really pretend-life changing. Peter hopes to see you again next month at the FL daft.

The Adieu Haiku

Draft's two months away.
I know but one thing for sure:
Mike Mayock knows things.

Sounds like Peter mailed in the haiku this week. YOU'RE NO MERYL STREEP, PETER! MERYL STREEP WOULD NEVER MAIL IN A PERFORMANCE!