One year ago, Oklahoma’s Baker Mayfield couldn’t possibly be the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft. It had to be USC’s Sam Darnold. Or maybe it was Wyoming’s Josh Allen. Until, well, maybe it could be Mayfield.

Welcome to April in the NFL draft, the Kafkaesque month of misinformation and propaganda that would put a communist-run newspaper to shame. A time when professional football becomes a snake of lies that wakes up every morning and eats its own tail. This is why mock drafts and months of debate go out the window in a matter of minutes in late April: most of the arguments are based on fairy tales. If we didn’t learn that last year, maybe we’ll never learn it.

Coming out of last year’s Senior Bowl, the mere suggestion of Mayfield being in play for the No. 1 overall pick was ridiculed. That actually happened. I wrote Mayfield was a legitimate Browns target after the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Alabama. By the time I got to the airport, a league source had called me to say that I should be embarrassed by the column, at which point I made sure to tweet out that not everyone agreed with my assessment.

So, yeah. The NFL draft. Good times.

View photos The Browns had pegged Baker Mayfield as their No. 1 pick long before draft night of 2018. (Getty Images) More

Here’s the postscript to that whole thing, and it speaks to how ridiculously flooded the league is with lies: Not only was Mayfield the Browns’ No. 1 quarterback on their board, the guy who many assumed was actually No. 1 (Darnold) wasn’t even in Cleveland’s top three. That’s right, the same Darnold who was pegged as the No. 1 pick for months – before a late potential audible to Allen – was actually placed behind Mayfield, Allen and UCLA’s Josh Rosen.

That’s how skewed draft information is. The analysts and insiders got it wrong three times before the Browns eventually leaked the truth minutes before the draft.

Couldn’t be Mayfield. Had to be Rosen. Maybe it was Allen.

No, it was Mayfield. For months, actually.

It’s worth keeping that in mind now, seeing that we again find ourselves in a situation where Kyler Murray seems to be the pick for the Arizona Cardinals. This despite Rosen still showing up for offseason work this week. And despite teams suggesting privately that Arizona hasn’t put Rosen on the trade block. That’s all a ruse, right? Just angling to get a better deal. Right?

Maybe. Or maybe it’s a bunch of lies and we’re falling right into it. Again.

With that in mind, here are a few highly graded players in this draft who have some conflicting information or opinions (or a void of important information) floating around about them late in the process. Call it what you want – lies, spin, misdirection, concealment. It all might fall under those definitions by the time draft night gets here.

QB Kyler Murray, Oklahoma

From the start, there has seemingly been a lot of lying going on about Murray. First, the lies about his height being slated to come in at slightly shorter than 5-foot-10, which were weirdly given credence by the Oklahoma football program at one point. Then the (alleged) lies about Murray having terrible interviews and being bad diagramming plays on the whiteboard with teams. And now, the swirl of conflicting information about whether Arizona has settled on him with the No. 1 overall pick. A source close to the evaluation who spoke to Yahoo Sports has said – and reiterated – multiple times since February that Murray is the target at No. 1. This despite Rosen being in the facility during the workout program and a building awkwardness around the entire quarterback situation in Arizona.

One way or another, some lying is happening about Murray and the Cardinals right now. Either by the Cardinals or by other NFL teams who are engaging in a long, drawn-out trade dance. As of late last week, a handful of league sources believed that the Los Angeles Chargers have become the No. 1 team in the Rosen sweepstakes. But a source inside the Chargers said if that’s the case, the plans are being kept between as few as two or three people at the top of the organization. The same source did allow that the Chargers are looking over their quarterback options, so it would make sense that Rosen is on the table.

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