Such as? The only thing not right for a Patriots style of play perspective is that he isnt a great tackler on run support. Neither was Samuel coming out but he changed that eventually.
True enough. Here's my best stab at explaining why, despite his talent, Chris Houston isn't on my 1st-round Pats board.
In an earlier thread I gathered excerpts from every available profile on nfldraftscout.com of Pats-drafted DBs:
http://www.patsfans.com/new-england-patriots/messageboard/showpost.php?p=341357&postcount=21
The summary:
"In short, there appears to be a clear profile for a Pats-drafted DB. It's not a physical profile, it's an on-the-field profile. Good hands, strong in run support, excellent field awareness and read-and-react/ball-tracking skills."
Meanwhile the profile of a Pats #1 draft choice is a sure thing, a guy who doesn't have any huge question marks about his size or his position fit or his college productivity or his character or, well, anything. It's not their round-1 MO to swing for the fences on guys with huge athletic upside who would be expected to play very differently than they did in college. (Other teams certainly do take this approach, witness a Matt Jones.)
Here are some things that have been said about Chris Houston here recently:
"fastest time by any DB"
"has amazing recovery speed"
"the guy did 27 reps of 225. Thats more than some linebackers and defensive lineman"
and
"hands can be fixed"
"The other aspect of being out of control is being out of position. This is coachable"
"Plenty of learning to do. As strong as he is, and as aggressive as he appears in the vid, I can't see him not taking to supporting the run."
""Get him working with the nerf ball like Asante and he'll probably turn into a beast"
From clips, from stats and from scout analyses, I think we all agree that Houston is the best athlete at CB in the draft. I think we also agree that he has
hands of stone (one poster noted that Arkansas moved him to gunner rather than have him return kicks or punts for this reason). Some feel this isn't a big deal because it's teachable. He also showed little interest in
run support in college, but this is also felt to be teachable. I and others have questioned his
read-and-react and and
ball tracking skills, but once more, teachable. But that's a clean sweep of all the skills the Patriots have valued most in their DBs!
To me, that makes Houston far too speculative a pick for the first round. His extraordinary athleticism -- and effort and aggressiveness, I'm not slighting him -- made him tremendously successful college, but he has a lot to learn to play in the Patriots backfield. That makes him intriguing, but not a #1 pick.