- Joined
- Jul 11, 2005
- Messages
- 15,546
- Reaction score
- 27,609
I thought McCourty was a first class CB prospect right from the start. He has great quickness and above average ball skills. His first year playing mostly zone he had a lot of picks (something like 7 IIRC). His second year clearly disappointed but a lot of that was a switch to more man coverage which he had never played in college, and very little in the pros, and just the bad luck of having several perfect throws go against him when he had great coverage. You don't need many of those to screw up your individual stats.I'm as big a McCourty fan as there is, but what leads to believe this is the case?
By 2011 the Pats secondary was in such bad straights that by the playoffs the Pats were forced to play Devin at S and so began Devin's transition to S, which succeeded beyond anyone's reasonable expectations. But the skills to be a better than average CB in this league are still there, only magnified by 5 years experience of playing at 2 positions.