NFL Draft 2023: Colts, with 4th pick, have no idea who is going in the top 3: 'Everybody's lying'
Perhaps the best way for teams to throw off everyone before the NFL Draft is to tell the truth.
They'd be the only team playing that game. Every other team is working overtime to put out half-truths about its intentions, negative stories about prospects it secretly likes and anything else to conceal its true intentions. Nobody really knows anything.
Even the team with the fourth overall draft pick can't figure out who the first three picks will be. Indianapolis Colts general manager Chris Ballard said he has "no clue" who will be picked ahead of the Colts at No. 4.
“I don’t think anybody does. People think they do," Ballard said, via George Bremer of CNHI Sports Indiana.
Then again, Ballard might not be telling the truth about not knowing what will happen.
"Everybody's lying. I might be the most honest, unfortunately," Ballard said, via Andrew Siciliano of NFL Network. "But everyone is lying."
Who will go in the top 3 of the NFL Draft?
For the Colts, it's a high-stakes game of liar's poker.
They can't put out smokescreens about their need at quarterback. Anyone can look at their roster, see Gardner Minshew II as the only viable starting-level quarterback, and understand the Colts desperately need a boost at the position. They have been patching it together with veterans near the end of their careers since Andrew Luck retired, and they're in a position to draft a possible long-term solution.
If Ballard, the self-proclaimed "most honest" among all the GMs this time of year, is being forthright about not knowing what will happen in the first three picks of the draft, it puts the Colts in a tough position.
Indianapolis will make a franchise-changing decision in the first round of the draft, six days from now. And they might have no choice in which quarterback they'll be tethered to as they enter a new era. Or maybe they'll get their choice of three highly regarded quarterbacks when the fourth pick is on the clock.
We probably won't know until about 8:30 or 8:45 p.m. ET Thursday, when the Colts are up. Nobody knows anything, or so they say.
Which QB will the Colts get?
The one thing that seems certain is Alabama's Bryce Young will be gone before the Colts pick. Young is the big favorite to go first overall to the Carolina Panthers.
The Colts had to be wondering for a while. CJ Stroud was the favorite to be the first pick for a few weeks. That flipped, and now Stroud seems like he could be a surprise faller in the draft. Though, maybe some of the negative stories about Stroud lately are a scam by teams that actually covet the Ohio State star and want him to fall.
There are four quarterbacks who could go early in the first round: Young, Stroud, Florida's Anthony Richardson and Kentucky's Will Levis. There have been rumblings that Levis could go as high as second overall. Nobody knows where Richardson, who had perhaps the greatest NFL scouting combine workout ever for a quarterback, will go. Is Stroud actually going to go a lot later than expected? Do the Houston Texans at No. 2 overall really covet Alabama pass rusher Will Anderson Jr., as the betting odds indicate? That's hard to say because oddsmakers don't know what's going on either.
The Colts can't like all four top quarterbacks equally. They might even be much lower on one, and it's conceivable that player is the last one available to them at No. 4. The Colts would still have to take that quarterback. Or maybe not.
It's not like anyone knows what they're thinking, even if their GM is the "honest" one in the league.
