As Steve Belichick used to tell his son, “The hay is in the barn.”

With the draft now less than two weeks away, teams are pretty much done with the evaluation process. Draft boards are locked, and preparation for the three-day team-building marathon is just about complete. The only thing left for many teams are a few more pre-draft visits, the final step in the appraisal of a possible prospect.

Each team is allotted 30 pre-draft visitors, and each team uses them differently. Some rip through them as soon as possible, while others use them judiciously. The Patriots have spread them out throughout the post-combine, pre-draft calendar — so far, they have brought a wide variety of collegians to Gillette Stadium, from much-ballyhooed prospects like Florida quarterback Tim Tebow, Michigan outside linebacker/defensive end Brandon Graham, Oklahoma State wide receiver Dez Bryant to lesser known players like University of California defensive lineman Tyson Alualu and University of Washington defensive end/outside linebacker Daniel Te’o-Nesheim.

In Foxboro, pre-draft visits focus primarily on meeting the coaches and the rest of the folks in the building, as well as film study. Players are quizzed about what they would do in certain on-field situations. Prospects also get a tour of the facility, and meet the players who are on the roster who may be in the building.

According to former NFL personnel man Mike Lombardi, the top priority for many of the teams during a pre-draft visit is use the time to build on what they learned about a prospect in their 15-minute interview at the combine. You’re not giving the guy a physical workout, but a mental one.

“You only get 15 minutes at the combine, so it’s very difficult to be engaged in a one-on-one conversation,” said Lombardi, who worked in the Cleveland front office with Bill Belichick. “You don’t have all your tape with you. You don’t have every asset you need to utilize to the best of your ability to determine the intelligence level, the commitment, all the things you want to do.

“You can sit them in a room … you have all day,” Lombardi added. “You want to sit down and make sure you watch tape, go over some things, walk through some situations. It gives you a great chance to spend a lot of quality time — uninterrupted — with the player.”

“Everybody realizes that you can’t make mistakes in the draft,” said former Cowboys executive Gil Brandt. “I think people just want to be sure they don’t make mistakes. By trying them out and bringing them in for visits, that’s a way to rectify that.”

While player evaluation is at the heart of the pre-draft visits, they are often like a high-stakes card game. Even though a team could have zero interest in a player, they could engage in a little bluffing by inviting them to their facility for a pre-draft visit and making sure the media found out about it — which would get the rest of the league speculating about their motives. And if you’re an agent interested in driving up interest in your client, it’s in your best interest to get the information about your clients visits out to the media — it helps feed the pre-draft hype.

Of course, if you’re a team interested in putting all your cards on the table, you can simply cut through the BS and let everyone know the players you bring in for a visit. This year, the Steelers made the curious move of publicly identifying all 28 of the players who made pre-draft visits the team: six offensive linemen, six wide receivers, five linebackers, three cornerbacks, three defensive lineman, three safeties, one running back and one tight end.

In the end, it’s about getting more than surface time with a prospect. But the last few years, some teams have gone overboard. There’s due diligence on a prospect. Then there’s what Brandt calls “overkill.” He presents the case of University of Utah safety Robert Johnson.

“I think he’s a good player — I think he’s one of those fourth- or fifth-round players that [will have] a career in the National Football League,” explained Brandt last week. “I think this week he has a visit to the Bears yesterday, he was in Seattle today. He had a personal workout with Atlanta.

“A lot of these players have been traveling. It’s almost unbelievable the amount of travel that has been put in.”

While the pre-draft visit isn’t a recruiting tool for most players, there’s value in inviting players who might not be considered draftable prospects. In their case, you want to lead them up with as much free gear as possible with an eye toward enticing them as undrafted free agents.

“There are some guys you bring in and you want to recruit them as free agents after the draft,” Lombardi said. “You want to give them a T-shirt and hat and say, ‘Look, we’d love to have you. I don’t know if it’s going to work if we draft you,’ and you try and endear them to your organization.”