The story of Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o and the girlfriend hoax is only starting to unfold. NFL evaluators will be in a wait-and-see mode for a while when it comes to Te'o's draft stock.
Raiders general manager Reggie McKenzie said Thursday, via the Oakland Tribune, that he considered Te'o a first-round talent, but he wants to see how the current story surrounding Te'o unfolds before making any judgment about how it will affect his draft stock. That goes along with what NFL.com's Daniel Jeremiah wrote Thursday.
Jeremiah: Who is Manti Te'o?
That's the question NFL teams are asking in a bizarre saga. Daniel Jeremiah weighs the impact on MantiÂ
Te'o's draft stock. **More ...**
The story remains as wild and confusing as the minute Deadspin.com dropped it on the sports world. The more we learn, the less certain anything seems.
SI.com released a fascinating transcript of Te'o's September interview with writer Pete Thamel. We highly recommend checking out the entire transcript, which goes into great incredible detail about Te'o's relationship with Lennay Kekua, who we now know never existed. I couldn't agree more with NFL Network host Rich Eisen's takeaway on Twitter.
"Te'o is either the most off-his-rocker BS artist of all-time or the victim of the most elaborate, mean-spirited hoax of all time. For real."
Follow Gregg Rosenthal on Twitter @greggrosenthal.
