Connor Cook gets the anonymous scout/coach treatment

With the NFL Draft kicking off next week, now is when the mud slinging really begins.

For the next 6-8 days, we're going to hear and see more reports of 'anonymous scout/coach saying bad things about Player X,' mainly due to said anonymous scout/scout wanting Player X to fall to said scout/coach's team. It happens every year, whether it's an elite prospect like Marcus Mariota, a future Hall-of-Famer like Aaron Rodgers, or a less-heralded guy like Cardale Jones.

No one is safe, including Connor Cook. USA TODAY Sports columnist Tom Pelissero spoke with several 'anonymous' NFL guys who didn't have flattering reviews of Cook, but didn't exactly say anything damaging either, even though it seemed like they tried.

"There’s something off," said an NFL quarterbacks coach, one of many people in the league who have spoken to Cook and gave their impressions to USA TODAY Sports on condition of anonymity for competitive reasons. "There’s something about him that you just don’t trust him."

"I don’t mind the kid at all," a general manager for a different team said. "I’ll take an (expletive) who wins games over a nice guy who loses games. But there’s something missing with him."

"There’s just something put-offish about him," an offensive coordinator for a third team said. "It appears to me – I could be dead wrong – but he’d be a guy that, when he got in the locker room, they’d try to eat him up and spit him out."

Huh?

You're telling me you're a coach or GM for an NFL team, likely having been in the business for at least a decade, and 'there’s just something put-offish about him' is the best you got?

If it were just a little more definitive, such as Cook has a celebrity-like attitude, I might give a little credence to it. But calling a guy 'put-offish' is just funny. It's also probably a team wanting Cook to fall to them either late in the first round or early in the second round where he's likely to be drafted.

I would call this the kind of negative reporting we see teams put out to hurt Player X's stock so he has a better shot of falling to Team X, but that would be an insult to negative reporting. This is just good comedy I'm sure Cook is laughing at it if he even wastes his time reading it.