So, he was injured once as a senior and once his rookie year and now hes made of glass? I thought this was a great pick, we'll see this year if it was.
The college injury was exactly why he was available where the Pats picked him, anyways.
6'1, 200 pound, physical cornerbacks with speed and acceleration don't typically fall to the second round. You pretty much get them due to health, character concerns, or rawness. Of the three, I think Belichick's made it pretty clearly that he thinks health concerns are the best risk to take (Wheatley, Gronk, Dowling, Tate, Cannon).
In general, I wish people here would take a more complete view of the philosophies that they're criticizing. I've seen a lot of people rip on the Tate, Wheatley, and Dowling picks, in particular, on the premise that it's foolish to spend high picks on guys with college injury histories. I wonder if these people realize that what they're saying is that the Pats should not have picked Gronkowski. Imagine if he'd suffered another back injury at any point in the past two years? Belichick (and this board) never would have heard the end of it.
Personally, I think I agree with Belichick's view on players come off of one major injury (guys like Gronk, Tate, Wheatley, Dowling). Basically, you have a bunch of GMs out there who are terrified of looking stupid, and probably the easiest way to look dumb is to pick a player who already has the injury that will derail his career. Skittish decisionmakers devalue these players more than they should, especially in the modern era where sports medicine has made it possible to get more players back to 100% than you could in the past. It's high-risk, high-reward, but harping on individual picks makes no sense. You either like the philosophy or you don't, and I do like it. I'm not going to criticize drafting Dowling, because it would be inconsistent of me to do that while loving the Gronk pick.
