A few disclaimers before we address a story with growing NFL draft intrigue:

It’s lying season. Believe little. Trust few. Hug your children. This is one “report,” and that word might be a wee bit strong.

In what amounts to a throwaway line in Peter King’s “Football Morning in America” column, he offers this draft nugget:

“In fact, I keep hearing Dwayne Haskins is sinking, and may be the fourth passer picked in this draft.”

That would register as quite the NFL draft development, if the Ohio State passer must wait that long. Haskins threw for 50 touchdowns last season and for most of the run-up to the draft, he has been widely considered the No. 2 quarterback in the class behind Kyler Murray. Perhaps he will slide much further than anticipated.

How real is this?

Now mind you, this is in King’s pseudo-mock draft, and it’s not really a mock, but more of a “what teams should do” column. The Haskins comment comes in the middle of the writeup for the No. 6 pick owned by the New York Giants. King suggests the Giants should take Missouri QB Drew Lock at that spot.

Not only is that higher than we’ve routinely seen Lock landing in actual mock drafts, but it’s a small indication that Haskins might not be quite the top-10 or top-12 certainty many pegged him to be.

King believes Murray should go first overall. And with Lock sixth, and no other QBs — not Haskins or Duke’s Daniel Jones — mentioned in his first 32 pick descriptions, it sets up an interesting discussion. And a scenario many might not have been expecting.

Then King added this line toward the end of this section: “I hear Dwayne Haskins could plummet, but that could be late-prep lying too.”

Is Ohio State University quarterback Dwayne Haskins sinking? One report suggests so. (AP photo) More

How far could Dwayne Haskins fall?

We paired up Haskins with the Cincinnati Bengals in our most recent mock draft, and we have another one coming out in a few days from now. Haskins has some of the same elements as Jared Goff, and with new Bengals head coach Zac Taylor reportedly doing a lot of work on draft QBs, that makes sense.

Andy Dalton might be the starter in Cincinnati now, but the team notably has not given him an extension, and his deal is about as team-friendly as you can imagine. The Bengals could move on after this season without issue at all.

But let’s say the Giants take another QB at six (or No. 17 overall), and the Broncos also go a different direction ... and then the Bengals aren’t nuts about Haskins. How far could he really fall?

There are a hundred scenarios here, and Josh Rosen possibly getting traded to the Washington Redskins (or the Giants or another team) would change the landscape as well. So it’s hard to say. Trades and surprising picks always throw an element of chaos into the draft mix.

But if this slide starts, it might make perfect sense for one of the teams picking toward the bottom of Round 1 (Los Angeles Chargers, New England Patriots, e.g.) who need to start thinking about a contingency plan for their aged starters to consider pouncing.

King’s non-mock mock isn’t suggesting that Haskins is dropping out of Round 1. I don’t think it is, anyway. And we must consider that smoke-screen possibility. But it’s likely he’s hearing this from multiple teams on Haskins’ slipping, and it’s always possible that he was more of a media creation than an NFL draft war room darling all along. That has happened before, after all.

We’ll find out in a few weeks. That should be ample time to prepare our brains for the idea of Jones going before Haskins, just in case that goes down.

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