I do see what you're saying, I think. Let me try it like this:
If you had to pick a single factor to be the best indicator of a prospect's leaguewide draft value, it would have to be when he was drafted.
Yes, it's always possible for one team to rate (or need) a player wildly differently from the rest of the league. E.g., Alex Smith was the #1 overall pick in 2005, but if he hadn't gone #1 he likely would have entered freefall. And you could count on Al Davis for the occasional stunner, like kicker Sebastian Janikowski at #17 overall.
But by and large, the real-life commitment of draft capital by a real-life GM is the best indicator of how the league views a prospect. So it's a fair bet that out of 31 other teams, somebody else also saw Tavon Wilson as a 2nd-round value.
Yep. Unfortunately too many people who follow the draft confuse the mock draft projections of the draftniks as reality when in truth they are just projections, it is the draft itself that reveals what the real grades on the players are, so the people claiming he isn't a 2nd round caliber player when the Patriots staff scouted him extensively and gave him that grade are making a baseless argument. And as surprising as the pick was I don't believe the Patriots were the only team grading him that way, and we have seen similar instances of this in recent history, e.g.. Mankins and Vollmer.
Like pretty much everyone else here I wanted a number of other players at that pick, and i was bummed when they passed on Lavonte David, but I understand what they were thinking and hope they were right. What makes this argument really bizarre is that the people trashing the pick are claiming that those supporting it are just homers who would praise Belichick for "wiping his ass," when in fact not one person here has praised the pick as a great pick or heaped praise on Wilson, all we have done is withhold judgement on him, and apparently that isn't good enough for them because if you aren't trashing Wilson then you are a suck-up, and that's despite the fact that none of these people scouted Wilson and are basing their opinions solely on blurbs from Kiper and Rang and others.