Smoke and mirrors abound in Foxboro and in the NFL

[Rhode Raider]

Tricks of the trade

The possibility of a trade provides the most drama.

The first pack of teams the Patriots will hear from are teams that want to trade out of high draft positions for two simple reasons. They want to avoid paying top-10 signing bonuses, and part of the reason they're picking early is that they don't have enough good players, so they may prefer to have two late first-round picks instead of one early one.

Take a team like the Detroit Lions. They're picking sixth overall. They might want to get out of that spot, so they could call the Patriots and say they're anxious to deal. Or they might not even call. They might just try to set the market for any team interested in trading for the sixth pick by leaking a fictional deal. For instance, they could say the Patriots offered two first-round picks and a second rounder to get up to No. 6, but then Detroit could add that they turned it down. Now everyone knows the asking price for the sixth overall pick would be high.

The Lions pulled a similar move last year, when they were running into pre-draft problems with the agents for wide receiver Charles Rogers as they tried to put the parameters for a rookie deal in place. Detroit -- and Rogers' agents, Kevin and Carl Poston -- knew if Rogers wasn't taken with the second pick, he could slide past several teams and lose millions. So the Lions leaked a rumor that said New England (which had two No. 1s last year as well) wanted to trade for Detroit's second-overall pick. It had the desired effect for Detroit, as negotiations went more smoothly after that, and it even had an side benefit for the Patriots, when the New York Jets -- nervous that New England was heading up to No. 2 to take the player they wanted (DeWayne Robertson) -- started trying to strike a deal to move up from No. 4.