Dave Canales and Kay Adams on Up & Adams Photo credit: Up & Adams
By Sam Neumann on

There’s a reason why this time of the year has been playfully dubbed “Lying season.”

No one tells the truth.

That’s why Peter Schrager doesn’t believe a word out of Foxborough. It’s also why mock drafts from February often age better than the ones released hours before the actual picks.

The Jacksonville Jaguars and Cleveland Browns reportedly agreed to the parameters of their blockbuster trade on April 7. But everyone and their mothers were convinced that Jacksonville was taking a playmaker, whether it be Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty or Arizona wide receiver Tetairoa McMillan.

McMillan went No. 8 overall to the Carolina Panthers, instead. No one saw that coming. Kay Adams thought the Panthers would go defense. That’s because Panthers second-year head coach Dave Canales told her they would.

Men lie. Women lie. Coach lies. General managers lie.

But lying to Kay Adams? The audacity.

“It’s really tempting, but at the same time, you know, we have to address the needs on defense first,” Canales said on March 31. “We were 32nd in the NFL on defense, and that’s something where our focus has gone to, to make sure we can play good, balanced, complementary football.”

That might’ve been believable if Carolina hadn’t just spent nearly $160 million in free agency on defensive help like Bobby Brown III, Tre’Von Moehrig, and Treshawn Wharton, among others.

Yet they didn’t go defense when the Panthers were finally on the clock Thursday night. They went bold. They went McMillan.

And Kay Adams was duped. So was everyone else.

If you were appalled that Canales would lie to Kay Adams, listen to Trevor Sikkema and Connor Rogers of Pro Football Focus’s NFL Stock Exchange podcast — they were practically aghast on her behalf.

“Dave Canales lied to Kay Adams,” Sikkema quipped. “You never lie to Kay Adams.”

“He lied to Kay Adams, and you know what? I’d like to know how the Kay Adams Show feels about this. I’d like to know if Dave Canales has anything to say for himself about this,” Rogers added.

“We gotta invite him on the show and absolutely just ambush him,” Sikkema replied. “We think that we’re here to talk about draft prospects, and then we show him the clip of him lying to Kay Adams, be like, ‘How could you do this? How could you do this, Dave?’ I love it, though.”

Everyone loves the pick — maybe not Todd McShay — but lying to Kay Adams to keep it quiet?

That’s cold. Brilliant, maybe. But cold.

About Sam Neumann

Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.

View all posts by Sam Neumann