Updated April 25

Editor's note: Charley Casserly, a 16-year NFL general manager and 24-year executive for the Washington Redskins and Houston Texans, lends his expertise and analysis to CBS SportsLine's draft coverage. Look for his mock draft Thursday.

Q: Will Adrian Peterson become a major star?

CC: I think he is the most fascinating player in this draft. When I first saw him as a freshman at Oklahoma, I thought he was another Eric Dickerson. But after seeing him more, I realized Dickerson was more elusive downfield.

Adrian Peterson: Some risk, but overshadowed by major upside. (Getty Images)

Even with that difference, I believe if Adrian Peterson had not missed time in college, it would be him, not Calvin Johnson, who we would be talking about as the first pick in the draft. That is why I say this is the most fascinating pick in the draft to me. The injuries Peterson has had are not chronic, so it is very possible once he is over this present shoulder injury he could go on and not have an injury in his NFL career.

However, his running style is perhaps what could lead to some missed time. He runs upright, and backs who run upright tend to take more hits and are more prone to injuries. Peterson can lower his shoulder and be a physical runner though. What makes him such a good back is his tremendous breakaway speed, combined with good vision and cutting ability at the line of scrimmage.

The other point of why he is such a fascinating draft pick is because all of the teams up to Buffalo, at No. 12, have a starting running back in place, but a number of them could be upgraded by adding Peterson to their team. There is risk with this pick but also a big reward. By the way, none of the teams I talked to would eliminate him from draft consideration due to his injury history. This will be a fun pick to watch.

Q: Is either top QB prospect, JaMarcus Russell or Brady Quinn, a surefire prospect?

CC: I do not think so. Both are talented prospects but have some questions. In fact, I would rate both Jay Cutler and Matt Leinart ahead of both Russell and Quinn. On Brady Quinn: I like a number of things about him. What people have told me he is smart, a good leader, and has good work habits. All important things. On the tape I watched of him (six games), he did a lot of things well. He showed enough arm strength to make all the throws. He showed he could be smooth and quick in his operation as well as be a good decision maker. He was also very productive while not being surrounded by a very talented team (in my opinion).

My biggest issue with him is accuracy -- there are times where he will flat-out miss throws. I talked to two QB coaches I trust and neither one could point to an obvious consistent technique flaw. This accuracy issue is why I would rank him below Cutler and Leinart. That being said, in the right spot, I would still take him in the first round and be happy to have him.

Brady Quinn would be ranked behind Matt Leinart and Jay Cutler. (Getty Images)

I asked 16 teams last fall for my segment on the CBS pregame show: If you take Brady Quinn in the draft, do you have your QB problems solved? All 16 said yes, and I agree with them. As for JaMarcus Russell, he has a terrific arm as well as a very quick release. I watched five tapes on him and found some inconsistencies on him.

He does possess very good throwing talent. He has stretches where he is very accurate, but other times, because of poor lower body mechanics, he will miss passes. He can throw an excellent deep ball but other times will just throw it up for grabs. He does have surprising mobility, for a big man. He is more mobile than Byron Leftwich coming out of college, but I think Leftwich was a more complete passer.

Some people have compared Russell to Daunte Culpepper. I think Russell was more mobile than Culpepper in college, but Culpepper was further along as a QB coming out of college. Also I think that Russell was not asked to make as many decisions when throwing the ball as Cutler and Leinart were. I believe Russell can have a terrific career in the NFL, but it won't happen right away. By the way, in comparing both of these players to Vince Young, both are ahead of Vince Young as a passer coming out of college, but are nowhere near the runner Vince Young is.

Q: How does a GM balance team needs versus best player available?

CC:This can be a very tricky thing. You try to fill as many of your needs in free agency so you do not force yourself into making draft decisions based on need, which is where you tend to make most of your mistakes.

Even if you cannot get a starter-quality player to fill a need in free-agency, sometimes you can get a serviceable player to take the pressure off in the draft. What really forces you out of picking for need is the mistakes you have made doing that. You learn by picking players based on need and them not working out for you. You have to look at filling your team's needs as a total offseason project, not just filling them through the draft. This can become tricky when you have a coach in the last year of his contract or a coach who is in a must-win situation in the coming year. In that situation, you still must set your board based on talent not need.

When you are making your picks -- and this should be worked out before the draft, when you set up your draft board -- if you see there are going to be conflicts on who to take, that is when you and the coach must go to the owner and talk it over. You must let the owner know how you feel about the decision you are going to make, i.e. go on record for taking the best player as opposed to need and let the owner break the tie.

If you have the final say, you should let the owner know what the differences are between you and the coach. Sometimes you just have to make unpopular decisions, but always make sure everything is out in the open and discussed beforehand. You cannot worry about being popular when you are the boss.

Q: Do you think some GMs are guilty of going for the "buzz" pick vs. the correct pick?

CC: No, I do not. I think general managers pick the players who are best for their football team. The one thing you learn early when you are a GM is that you have to ignore public pressure. We can recount many times where the public wanted a team do something (remember when Philly fans booed Donovan McNabb after he was drafted because they thought the Eagles should have taken Ricky Williams), but later changed their opinion on what the team did or should have done. General managers are oblivious to outside pressure when making decisions on players.

Q: What are teams doing during the final few days before the draft? Still watching tape?

CC: By this point in time you should have your draft board set. We would have what I would call "strategy sessions" three times per day for 45 minutes starting on Tuesday going through Friday, where we would take a round or part of a round and review who we would take if a player was available.

Now keep in mind, when we set up our draft board (we have two draft boards -- by round and by position, each with grades) we have already lined up these players, e.g. Levi Brown (OT) or Alan Branch (DL), so this is just another review session. The rest of the time is divided into two areas. The first has to with checking last-minute information on players, such as their draft-day telephone number or the latest rehab update. You also might be going over some tape to finalize a decision or two.

The second area is what I would call the gathering of information. I would have one person studying the mock drafts and giving me summaries on them on a daily basis. They are usually very accurate on who is going in the first round, not necessarily what team they are going to, but that they are in certain parts of the first round. What this helps you with is strategy sessions on the first round, but also on the beginning of the second round as to who to spend the most time discussing in your strategy sessions.

We would have our pro scouts draw up a list of team needs and compare them to a list of team needs that would appear in the various media publications, so during the draft we would keep track of what team needs are being filled. We would have our contract negotiator call agents to see what they have heard about where their players are going.

Finally, what I would be doing is calling some agents, media people and some other GM's to hear what they have heard, all in an effort to be prepared for what would happen during the draft. Then you would try to get everybody out early on Friday so they are well rested for the weekend.

One other thing I would do was meet with our organizational employees to answer their questions about the draft. You could not tell them everything, but you could give them some behind the scenes thinking into your draft strategy.

Q: Is there a lot of contact with players and agents?

CC: Our contract negotiator is talking to agents to gather information from them on what they hear about what teams are telling them about their players. You have to read the agent some because some of them are always trying to sell their players to you and thus some of their information is slanted to favor their player. What you can gain out of this is what position a team is emphasizing in the draft, but you have remember some teams will deliberately not call players they are interested in so you have to remember you are getting only a portion of the picture.

Our contact with players is broken down into the following areas:
1) Checking draft day phone numbers as well last-minute rehab information.
2) We are also doing some recruiting of players we think may not be drafted so we can have a better chance to sign them as free agents.
3) There might also be some last-minute character questions that come up we may want review with player.

Q: Has character become a bigger issue post-Pacman Jones? How will admitted use of marijuana affect Calvin Johnson, Gaines Adams and Amobi Okoye?

CC: I talked to a number of teams this week about these questions.

Admitting to smoking pot won't affect Gaines Adams' draft stock. (Getty Images)

First, all of the teams said that the admitted use of marijuana by the three players would not affect their draft ratings. Having interviewed many players through the years, this is not the first time players have admitted to the use of marijuana in an interview. What is unacceptable is if you find out the player is a habitual user ... then that would affect his draft status. Nobody I talked to believes these players have any drug issues. In fact, the teams I talked to applauded the players for being honest.

In regards to character, the first part of the question, some teams I talked to said they were talking about it more in their meetings than before. But most teams said they were not doing anything different. Most already have a system in place to mark guys that have character issues. They would then make decisions on whether to take some guys off their draft boards and eliminate them totally from consideration or drop them a round or two in their draft ratings.

I asked a number of teams -- would you sign a player with character issues if he is not drafted? Their answers were usually the same -- if we did in the past we will still do it, if we did not do it in the past we won't now.

All of the teams I talked to said there would less tolerance than before if the player gets into trouble when he comes with them. We should not lose sight of the fact that the vast majority of the players in the NFL are terrific individuals and we are only talking about a few that make headlines and some of those headlines get thrown out of court later and as with retractions, get buried in a spot in that paper we usually do not see.

Another point to remember is that character questions have always been there on players. As one prominent GM said to me, we all have many examples of players who made mistakes as young kids but learned from them and went on to have prominent careers. So we have to be careful about making decisions on these players to eliminate them from draft consideration in a reaction to Pacman Jones.

Q: Is Calvin Johnson a sure thing in this draft?

CC: He is what scouts call the safest pick in this draft. By that I mean he has no flaws as a player, which for a receiver means he has size, speed, quickness, route ability, and hands as well as no character flaws, according to the NFL personnel I talked to. We must remember there are not any sure things in a draft, but he is the best player in this draft because of his talent, character and no medical issues. In January after he declared for the draft I polled 16 teams for my segment on the CBS pregame show and all 16 said he was the best player in this draft. I agree with them.

Q: Tell us about the X Files.

CC: We have already talked about teams having a symbol to put on players who have character questions. What we did was have a system of symbols for many different categories e.g. C=football character (this would indicate some problem with a players work habits or coach ability); M=mental (a question about the players learning ability), etc. We had two symbols that were devoted to character; X= a player who had been arrested, or might have been accused of breaking the law; or D= meaning he had a drug problem, alcohol problem or steroid issues.

We used these symbols as alerts to make sure we thoroughly checked out these issues to our satisfaction. Sometimes we would take the symbol off the player if there was no evidence to back up some rumors we heard. Other times, if we felt the player had made a mistake and we would still be interested in drafting or signing him, we would keep the symbol on his card but not let it affect his draft status.

Which now brings us to the X files. All teams have a list in their draft room of players they do not want to draft, whether it is for medical or character reasons. To lighten up our meetings one day, I asked the scouts to put a name on this list of players that we did not want to draft. So thus was born the heading of X Files, after the TV show, which by the way I never saw.

We did have another name for this list in previous years but that is for another story.

Q: What's your best draft story?

CC: It happened in 1982 and is still the best draft story I have ever heard. It involved the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. They were on the clock in the first round and had their representative in New York write down two names: Sean Farrell (OG) from Penn State and Booker Reese (DE) from Bethune Cookman. By mistake the rep turned in the wrong name, which was Sean Farrell. At the same time, the Bucs had Booker Reese's parents on the phone telling them they were going to draft their son. The Bucs then traded their first round pick in the 1983 draft for Chicago's second round pick in the 1982 draft and selected Booker Reese.

The rest of the story ... Sean Farrell went on to play five years for the Bucs and started 59 games; Booker Reese went on to play three years with the Bucs and only started seven games.

Q: Forget the so-called experts, how do GMs/teams rate themselves on the Monday after the draft?

CC: The first thing is when you get to that Monday after the draft, it is like you have this big weight lifted off your shoulders, and you are happy about everything. I do not mean to imply that the draft is not fun -- it is -- but what is a grind is all those meetings up to the draft and those long hours of being cooped up in a room without windows during the day and many days seeing little or no sun. That is why you are so relieved when the draft is over. As for rating your draft, you always feel you had a good draft, and you better feel that way ... after all, you picked them didn't you!

You may be disappointed at times about a player you missed, but you have to get over that fast.