How does a GM know if they are ready for the NFL draft?

NFL personnel departments spend the year putting together a draft board they’ll largely use for only three days in April.

They take hundreds of names, thousands of hours of evaluation, more than a little hearty debate, piles of airplane tickets, interviews, miles traveled to practices and games, and it’s all tossed into a blender of sorts to find the line — the line between doing all of the due diligence that can be done and information overload.

Or as former Pittsburgh Steelers and Buffalo Bills general manager Tom Donahoe once said: “You don’t want to get to a point where you can’t remember why you liked the guy in the first place.”

But hey, it’s the information age. An avalanche of data is available on draft prospects from the top to the bottom of the board.

Their games, their medical information, their background checks, psychological evaluations, face-to-face interviews, pro days, the scouting combine are all boiled down by each team. Then they grade and stack the players, so they’re ready to select the ones they hope for in the draft when their draft picks roll around.

“But it can certainly be paralysis if you let it be,” said Denver Broncos general manager George Paton. “The simple fact remains, if all the things check out you saw in the games, and there are no significant red flags — a 4.8 40 for a receiver, an off-the-field issue, character flag, a medical flag, whatever it is — you go back to the tape and how he fits on the field. But at some point, you have to work through all the data and leave it, because if you don’t, you could hinder your ability to make the call when you have to make a call.”

The tough part is few, if any, personnel executives in the NFL rose to the job without digging for and working through as much information…