Mayock's mock draft has Randy Gregory to Patriots

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Mike Mayock, the highly-respected NFL Network analyst who’s bailiwick is the NFL Draft, has the Patriots taking Nebraska’s Randy Gregory with the 32nd pick on Thursday night.

Obviously, once the draft gets past the 10th pick, these are less predictions than possible projections. But the notion that Gregory, a defensive end/outside linebacker, would be there through the first round was unfathomable a few weeks ago.

Mayock only does one of these things so -- to me at least -- there's an added level of legitimacy to his projections. And there is definitely a high level of respect for Mayock in the Patriots organization.

The 6-foot-4, 239-pound Gregory is one of the most explosive athletes in the draft at any position with rare flexibility, burst and body control. He’s like an edge matrix. 

But a positive marijuana test at the NFL Combine, perceived concerns about his ability to keep on weight and play on the edge, and a recently launched, very conspicuous whisper campaign that hints Gregory is either a bad guy to have around or -- there’s no other way to put it -- dumb. Or not all there upstairs.

An NFL.com story on Wednesday from Ian Rapoport and Albert Breer said that "according to more than a dozen coaches, scouts, personnel chiefs and GMs, there is concern about Gregory’s ability to handle the mental rigors of professional football. And just how far he drops in this week’s draft will likely hinge on the individual psychological profiles (and the results of related testing) put together by each team, according to multiple veteran evaluators. He has been taken off a several team’s draft boards, according to multiple sources."

The hiring process in the NFL is, in many ways, just like everywhere else. You have to find employees who can do the work, show up on time, understand the company’s philosophies, yada, yada. And if a club doesn’t think a player will stand up to its rigors after the interview process, then they have every right to pass on him.

But the NFL hiring process is wholly unique in one way. The competition for prospects is so great that teams who may have no shot at a prospect wouldn’t think twice about spreading negative evaluations about a player in hopes that maybe that player WILL land at their doorstep.

Steelers general manager Kevin Colbert, one of the executives in the league I’ve gotten to know and have a lot of respect for, actually weighed in on this phenomenon earlier in the week.

"I think it’s horrible," Colbert said during his annual pre-draft press conference. "I think it’s really bad for our profession when people use whatever means they use to get information out to try to influence the draft and they talk about a kid’s test score, a kid’s injury, a kid’s character. I think that’s awful. It’s disrespectful to our profession, it’s disrespectful to the game, it’s disrespectful to the kid."

Whether personnel people have nefarious motives for talking down Gregory or he really is a third-rail prospect, we can’t know. But they are talking. Talking enough so that the Patriots may be in a position to decide whether they’ll pass or pick.

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