Patriots biggest draft blunder in the last 5 years?

[Nehalem]

I'm seeing Dowling and Cunningham name pop up a lot, but what about Maroney and even Merriweather? Missing on a first is worse then a second

Patriots biggest draft blunder in the last 5 years?

 

[mgteich]

Brace was the worst pick, unless he was really expected to be a NT, and therefore served as insurance against Wilfork not re-signing. I would note that this was denied from the beginning. Brace was the slowest player in the entire combine.

Wilson is my second choice. However, I understand the choice. The team was desparate for safety help. There was little available.

 

[Brady6]

Has to be a guy who was a bust for other than injury reasons. One shouldn't really condemn the choice of Glass Dowling without also condemning the choice of Glass Gronkowski. And it also shouldn't be a failure-to-draft; it has to be an actual choice.

By those rules, it's obviously Tavon Wilson.

Wilson is not the worst pick, I am not saying he has been a good selection but last season he had 41 tackles, 4 interceptions, 2 fumble recoveries and 6 pass defends.

• Pat Chung had 7 interceptions and 0 fumble recoveries in his 4 seasons here.
• Ron Brace had 39 total tackles in his 4 seasons here.
• Darius Butler had 3 interceptions in his 2 seasons here.
• Ras-I Dowling had 10 tackles, 0 interceptions and 1 pass defend in his 2 seasons here.
• Taylor Price had 5 receptions for 80 yards in his 2 seasons here.
• Jermaine Cunningham had 43 tackles and 3.5 sacks in his 3 seasons here.
• Terrence Wheatley had 4 tackles and 2 pass defends in 2 seasons here.
• Shawn Crable had 4 tackles and 0.5 sacks in his 1 season here.
• Best for last – Jake Bequette hasn’t registered a stat in his almost 2 seasons here.

Sadly Tavon Wilson looks like a freaking stud compared to these players.

 

[Brady6]

Imagined if we had Drafted Colin Kaepernick we coud just sit that Tom Brady down.:bricks:

I would go that far but we likely could have traded him for a first round draft pick in a future draft.

 

[realtime]

I now know why BB took Tavon Wilson as High as he did he's a Special Teams Beast like Matthew Slater. BB like Bill Parcells love exceptional guys on Special Teams. While oher Coaches are meh about ST's BB places very high Value on that areas of the game.

He took Slater in the 5th round. Are you suggesting that BB used a second round pick on Wilson knowing that he couldn't cut it as a NFL safety because of Wilson's special team skills? It was a terrible pick no matter how you look at it.

 

[coolguy]

Aaron hernandez was a steal in the draft.
Aaron's play on the field was great
Aaron was not injury prone
And aaron was a good team mate in college.

People/fans/media claiming Hernandez was a murderer waiting to happen need to check the rosters on the 31 other teams.


No one could have predicted this mess would happen. It's unfair to think belichick and kraft should have used their minority report at the draft before they picked him.

 

[varjao]

I think that BB fake from Twitter is the real one with all that I'm better than you talking.

BB's scouting process is different, he likes to draft special teamers at 1st and 2nd round, everybody knows the HOF's are in 6th and 7th round.

 

[Claremonster]

Of course there will be draft gaffes...every team has them. But, you make the best of your team and your situation.

 

[JMC00]

The 2009 Draft. That's the draft that set the team back to the point where they are just getting over it.

They ended up with 12 picks in that draft and only 2 guys stuck, Vollmer and Edelman.

After the Pats traded out of the 1st round they had 4 picks in that 2nd round and only hit on Vollmer.

So their hits in that draft were their 4th pick of the 2nd round and a 7th round throwaway pick on a QB moving to WR.

 

[DaBruinz]

It's not even close. Ras I Dowling. An incredibly valuable spot - first pick of day two, so tons of teams calling, all night to decide - and a bunching of prospects that played positions of need (pass rushers, included) and were said to be of similar draft board grades. A horrible, totally unjustifiable blunder by BB, and I say that as a massive Belichick apologist. Ras I Dowling is a huge miss that has affected, and will affect, this team negatively for years.

This is false on so many levels. Belichick came out and said that teams WEREN'T calling for the pick. They only had TWO offers and neither of which was any good in his opinion.

Your claims of it being "unjustifiable" is flat out garbage. You'd be screaming for Belichick's head on a platter if he'd made a trade that was less than desirable.

CB happened to be a position of need that year. But, let's just ignore that fact so it plays into the delusion that you have some substance to your argument.

 

[ctpatsfan77]

The worst pick in the past 5 years was Ras-I Dowling and in my opinion it is not even close. He was the 33rd overall pick (1st pick in the 2nd round) that is a pick that offers tremendous return in trade value or if we had stayed put and selected we could have drafted any number of these players and had some level of value either immediately, or in the future.

2011 NFL Draft Results: Round 2

It really doesn't. Look back at the last few years. No one has gotten good trade value for that pick recently.

 

[DaBruinz]

The 2009 Draft. That's the draft that set the team back to the point where they are just getting over it.

They ended up with 12 picks in that draft and only 2 guys stuck, Vollmer and Edelman.

After the Pats traded out of the 1st round they had 4 picks in that 2nd round and only hit on Vollmer.

So their hits in that draft were their 4th pick of the 2nd round and a 7th round throwaway pick on a QB moving to WR.

HUH? Yeah. Patrick Chung was sure a bust. Only was a starter for the better part of 3 of the 4 years.

People seriously are whacked on what constitutes a good draft and what doesn't. Was 2009 great? No. But it sure as hell wasn't their worst.

Saying the 2009 draft was the worst is the same as saying that the 2001 draft was bad because they only got Light and Seymour from it.

People over-look the over-all contributions. Butler has since developed into a steady CB, btw. Pryor was pretty good until injuries (which he didn't have in college) curtailed his career. Jake Ingram was a solid long snapper for a year until he lost his mojo. Which is something that happens to long snappers on occasion.

Claiming that a particular draft set the team back when, 2 years after that draft, the team found itself in the SB doesn't make any sense at all.

 

[DaBruinz]

Ras-I Dowling. At least with poor performers like Hightower, Brace, Chung, Wilson, etc, they made a play here or there that you can remember. Ras-I was basically a first round pick and contributed zero.

So, now Hightower is considered a poor performer in the likes of Brace, Chung, and Wilson???

 

[BrickPat]

Tom Brady.

Ever since that pick the subsequent success has turned the fanbase into a bunch of whiny elitests who accept nothing but utter perfection

Edit: Damn, totally didn't read the "last 5 years part". I stand by my joke

Meh, EVERY NFL team has made draft related blunders. Let's not use satire to disguise being butt hurt because someone wants to discuss the Pats mistakes on a Pats message board.

 

[JMarr]

At the end of the day the good news is no matter what happens with Hightower he will never be the worst 25th overall selection in the draft: Broncos pick QB Tim Tebow at No. 25 in NFL draft - The Denver Post

This is hilarious and tragic at the same time. I would probably call Tebow the worst draft pick of all time--just inexcusable and dreamed up by the guy who now runs our offense.

As for the Pats, Brace is up there as one of the top WTF picks ever. Doesn't seem like Belichick's style to spend a 2nd on a guy for NT insurance purposes, but who knows?

Have to throw Kevin O'Connell in there as well. There were so many needs at other positions that year, and if memory serves correctly, we already had Cassel. Talk about a "getting cute" kind of pick (which sometimes works out, see Edelman) but O'Connell in the 3rd was an utter disaster, all things considered.

 

[BradyFTW!]

At the time that Cunningham was picked, the Patriots were still running a 3-4 base, and he projected as an OLB. Dunlap, OTOH, is strictly a 4-3 DE. I'd say the much bigger miss was in not taking Sean Lee, who went one pick after Dunlap.

 

[Kontradiction]

HUH? Yeah. Patrick Chung was sure a bust. Only was a starter for the better part of 3 of the 4 years.

People seriously are whacked on what constitutes a good draft and what doesn't. Was 2009 great? No. But it sure as hell wasn't their worst.

Saying the 2009 draft was the worst is the same as saying that the 2001 draft was bad because they only got Light and Seymour from it.

People over-look the over-all contributions. Butler has since developed into a steady CB, btw. Pryor was pretty good until injuries (which he didn't have in college) curtailed his career. Jake Ingram was a solid long snapper for a year until he lost his mojo. Which is something that happens to long snappers on occasion.

Claiming that a particular draft set the team back when, 2 years after that draft, the team found itself in the SB doesn't make any sense at all.

The team didn't find itself in the Super Bowl two years later due to the 2009 draft. That Chung played as a starter for the first few years of his career on some pretty bad pass defenses doesn't excuse the pick. It was a blunder in an overall weak draft.

 

[neuronet]

Glassy Dowling.

WTH was that...

 

[ctpatsfan77]

I would go that far but we likely could have traded him for a first round draft pick in a future draft.

How? He'd be just as big a question mark as Mallett right now.

 

[DaBruinz]

Trading down and then selecting Patrick Chung was a pretty bad one and set the safety group back a few years. Thankfully, it looks like that may finally be fixed. Not sure why some are getting so defensive about this. Every team has draft blunders. This team is no exception.

Gotta love hindsight. More than a few people on this board were GUSHING over the Chung pick. They had him pegged as the next Rodney Harrison.

Who else could they have taken for SAFETY at that point in the 2009 draft? Delmas had just gone off the board to the Lions. Yes, they could have take Jarius Byrd, but many had looked at him as a CB and not a safety.

Has anyone bothered to actually LOOK at the 2nd round from 2009 and seen how bad it actually was. For the entire league?

The best two players in the 2nd round of that draft were Vollmer and McCoy. Followed by Connor Barwin and Jarius Byrd. The drop off in talent from there is HUGE with many of the players already gone from the team that drafted them.