Well, if you're applying a player like Light to the group — one the Pats traded down from 39 to 48 to get, but who obviously was the primary guy on the radar, as the Pats needed an LT so bad and leapfrogged from the intermediate 50 pick to 48 to grab him — then why would you be frustrated with the Pats stockpiling of round 2 players the last few years?
I never said that I was. It can be a great strategy, especially in deep drafts, if it's not used to excess. I was just defending the article, because I think a lot of posters misunderstand what Belichick is talking about when he's talking about "value", which is a different application of similar strategy. Most teams will move a few picks up or down while targeting a specific player. What makes Belichick's moves interesting, is that he's doing this with an entire group of players and not necessarily caring which player he ends up with. That makes it easier for him to drop farther, or more often, but it also means that he's not putting the team in position to get players that stand out in his mind.
As the analysis in the ESPN article below summarizes, bad teams draft badly. That more than anything brings down the averages, and/or adds the blind luck factor to stats. A bad team that drafts badly, or a mediocre team that drafts bleh, they are the ones who would find it most advantageous — based only on the qualities examined by these studies, finding really good players — to pick high up, because they just aren't going to find value lower down since they don't have the scouting, coaching and personnel systems to define moneyball-esque qualities or positions other teams are undervaluing.
Absolutely, and a team like the Bengals has been evidence of this for something in the neighborhood of twenty years. Bad luck, like Ki-Jana Carter's knees going out on him right away, can also have a devastating impact when it comes to high draft picks.
The Pats, however, are a great team under Belichick. It is well within their ability to find value lower down the board because they (a) know how to look for value, e.g. 3-cone time vs. 40 yard dash (b) have a stable system they can more easily value prospects in and (c) know how to group both players by value and teams by need and by and large correctly find the spot just before the value is going to get run on.
Well, New England is like the Colts, in that both teams are really looking at players, especially defensive players, that are in different molds from what most teams in the league are trying to find. I think this is actually becoming a huge advantage for the Colts, now, as more teams are going to the 3-4 and bleeding the talent pool for the Patriots.
When you have that kind of expertise, trading down maximizes your chances of finding more "good" in a draft then sticking with the herd, and I think the last two years, when the Pats have dropped out of contention relatively early and have had time to scout and order the draft board, they've gone with this strategy because it gives them the most potential return for the effort.
This is true, but there is a cost that comes along with this, and it's the lowering of the odds that you'll be able to get a truly special player. You can often increase your odds of finding a solid/good starter by increasing your number of opportunities, but it will decrease your odds of finding the next Richard Seymour. IMO, what set this team up so well in the early part of the decade was that the picks were monster talents like Seymour and Wilfork, and the free agents were able to fill the role of the solid/good (and sometimes even great) players. Unfortunately, the expanding cap and superior manipulation of it by opposing teams have combined to really cut down the free agent spigot for the Patriots, forcing the draft to serve both roles much more than it needed to in the past.
Thanks for the link. I did a statistics breakdown similar to that on this board, concentrating solely on QBs.
http://www.patsfans.com/new-england...g-qb-1st-round-bad-idea-page2.html#post690595
Kluck had a 53% bust rate on 1st round QBs, I had 40% Quality, so apparently we were reading roughly the same thing. While I came down in that thread against the "draft 3 low-round QBs every year, see who's good" method of development, that's because the OP was making a general point about the league as a whole, which is also what the links you provided are doing.
For the Pats, it makes more sense to give their scouting department as many choices as possible to flex their muscles in the draft; thus, trading down and picking lower-round players that — especially at QB — the Pats have demonstrated they can find and develop.
You are more than welcome for the link. It's always great discussing football with you.
