Road to the draft: Jermaine Gresham

NFLDraftScout.com is following Jermaine Gresham's road to the NFL from the combine to his pro day workout to the draft April 22-24. This is the third in a four-part series

Oklahoma tight end Jermaine Gresham heard that NFL teams will typically keep their true intentions shrouded in secrecy in the weeks leading up to the draft. That doesn't mean he wasn't surprised to discover just how deep they will drift beneath the cloak. "I can't even tell you the teams that have had me come in to visit them," Gresham said, laughing. "Some teams, I guess, just want to keep these things pretty hush-hush."

NFLDraftScout.com has been able to identify the Cincinnati Bengals and Atlanta Falcons as two teams Gresham visited since the combine. One team in which Gresham has often been linked to in mock drafts -- the Baltimore Ravens -- did not bring him in. Of course, teams have drafted players with whom they didn't meet face-to-face prior to the event.

Gresham was willing to say that he'd visited four teams. He characterized each private visit as a "little combine" in which "[the teams] gave you a physical, asked you a bunch of questions so they could get to know you a little better and we watched some film together. Really, every visit was about the same as the others."

Because of the number of times scouts have seen him work out in the past few months, NFL teams haven't felt the need to come to Norman and put Gresham through a full personal private workout.

Gresham did that workout at the Combine and again at Oklahoma's first Pro Day on March 9. He also ran routes and caught passes during Sam Bradford's personal Pro Day on March 29, a workout that was attended by 21 NFL teams. He served as one of Bradford's two targets during the Rams' private workout for the likely No. 1 overall pick April 16. Gresham expects Bradford to be the first overall pick, whether it be St. Louis keeping the selection or any other team trading up to get him.

"Of course, I think [Bradford] should be the pick. I mean, why not? He's got the arm and the size and everything else you look for. Sam's the real deal," Gresham said.

Health questions aside, the focus of Gresham's visits to NFL facilities was less about physical or athletic prowess. Most teams, according to Gresham, were particularly interested in seeing how quickly he could pick up their offense. "They wanted to see how quickly I could learn different things. I liked that, because I know I learn football stuff pretty easily," Gresham said. What Gresham didn't learn was the identity of any of the other players being toured around the facilities while he was there -- though for most of the visitors there were other prospects touring the site at the same time. "For one visit, I was the only one there," he said. "For the others, though, they had a lot of other players walking around. I didn't recognize any of them, though." In some cases the players were led in separate directions -- going over film with the position coach and head coach at one time, while others might be taking a physical or touring the facility. "No, [the NFL teams] weren't introducing us to each other in the hallways. If you knew a guy, that was cool, but if you didn't, they just kept us moving around to the next thing," Gresham said.

According to one veteran front office executive speaking on the condition of anonymity, appropriately enough teams playing the paranoia card is nothing new in the NFL Draft. "You have to appreciate that we've been working on our boards for a full year -- more than a full year, actually," he said. "I've worked for clubs that intentionally brought in players who do those journals and things just to throw other teams off. We knew the players would talk about where they went and that would help us create the distraction from who we were really focusing on."

"We've also told players not to mention that we'd brought them in ... for a variety of reasons."

Keeping rival teams in the dark about their intentions is only the most obvious reason why some clubs don't want players talking about their visits. For all of the players invited to the facility, only a handful -- or perhaps even none at all -- will actually be drafted by the club. Teams might not want to ruffle the feathers of their current players. Some teams believe that in asking the players to remain quiet, they can get a better feel about his professionalism and team-first mentality. In the day of Twitter, Facebook and other social networking outlets, the ability to abide by the stealth nature of pre-draft dealings could be the difference in getting drafted or not.