More on visits...

So the Lions may have given up any pretense of hiding who their bringing in for pre-draft visits. They accidentally sent an email to every team in the league announcing they were bringing in Aldon Smith of Missouri, Mikel Leshoure of Illinois and DeMarco Murray of Oklahoma. On one level, this supports my point before about how much fans should follow this kind of news, but it also reinforces how difficult it is to sort out the difference between general blunder, strategic leak, or meaningless turn of events that will play the part of news. I tend to think this was the mistake of a former athlete, turned intern in the personnel department, or possibly an admin assistant, and ideally the Lions would like to have not announced this week's list of draft visits. That said, for NFL GMs who are obsessed with draft misinformation, the art of war, and all that sort of nonsense, then this would be quite the wily move. Are the Lions drafting these guys? Should these visits mean more? Or are these visits high PR smoke screens obscuring who they'll really draft? We'll know (sort of) on April 28th.

-Q

Image of Jim Schwartz courtesy of Detroit Free Press.