The draft, spygate and karma

[PromisedLand]

It was a season which started tumultuously with Spygate blasting its way onto the headlines following the week one victory over the Jets at the Meadowlands. It was a season which ended splendidly with the Patriots becoming the first team ever to go undefeated in a 16 game regular season, by beating the Giants at the same Meadowlands. Ironically, many people think that the fallout from Spygate provided additional motivation for the Pats and may thus have contributed to their quest for unprecedented perfection.

So, here it is the end of the regular season, and we now know that the first round pick the Patriots received in trade with the SF 49ers will be the 7th pick overall. It is likely that when the team made that trade (of the 28th pick in the 2007 draft) that they were banking on the SF pick to be in the first 20, and would have been more than satisfied had the pick turned out to be #15 or so. After all, SF was a popular choice to be a much improved team in 2007.

The Pats and Bill Belichick were fined for Spygate, and the team was forced to forfeit its own first round pick. Now we also know that the draft the Patriots forfeited because of Spygate will be no higher than #30 (if we don't make the Super Bowl), and will be #31 or #32 if we do.

I thought it curious that, while we were docked our own #1 pick, the SF pick turned out to be much better than expected. So I turned to the draft value chart to see how the value of the picks we ended up with compared to what we expected before Spygate...

Before Spygate we expected to have pick #15 to 20 - that's 850 to 1,050 points. Instead, we have pick #7 - 1,500 points - which is 450 to 650 points better than what we probably planned on when we made the trade. And the pick we were docked turned out to be worth 590 to 620 points.

The great irony here is that we actually ended up with almost the same first round draft value as we expected to have going into week 1. Now obviously there is no explicit relationship between SF having a poorer season than we banked on, and Spygate. But if you believe in karma (or even if you don't) and you think the punishment for Spygate was unjust (which I do), you might find it plausible that somehow the great cosmos has balanced out the scales of justice. It's a possibility, isn't it?

 

[psychoPat]

.... It's a possibility, isn't it?

I'm not sure.

I'd like to know what
Nostradamus has to say about this.

 

[BelichickFan]

The great irony here is that we actually ended up with almost the same first round draft value as we expected to have going into week 1.

You are correct in what you're saying. It's still like winning the lottery and having to pay 90% tax on it so you lose a lot of what you won - but we're still coming out of the whole mess in excellent shape.

 

[pheenix11]

I believe this whole heartedly. It all balanced out in the end.

As Seinfeld said, "even steven"