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- Oct 20, 2007
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I LOVE how the microscope is on the Patriots screwing up...as if THEY are teh only team that does....OR that there is ANY REAL HANDLE on the draft at all....SInce the era of heavy draft analysis the late Buschbaum..Kiper...it's been some 25 years I believe...a LOT of data..analysis...and STILL it's a real hit or miss situation..TOO MANY intangibles here..IF there was someone who HAD all this down to anything close to a science they'd be working for an NFL team...Easy to look back and be critical..HARDER to really get into the mind heart of any of these young players and see what WILL happen..if drafted. I think BB does a solid job employing many strategies..many things..and of course there are misses. EVERY club has them. And it's quite different drafting in the LOWER parts of the first round than the top ten every year like the perennial losing franchises, who have higher picks and do NOT improve.
Amnorix has a reasonable point. The Pats have missed on a pretty large number of first-day picks in the last couple of years: even a Pats apologist like myself has to admit that. More importantly, though, their hits have tended to be singles or doubles rather than home runs. I don't think that Maroney was a bad pick or a bust, for example, but we definitely didn't knock it out of the park with him.
Our best picks since 2005 have been Mayo and Meriweather: two borderline-Pro Bowl talents (for now) who were picked in the first round and have some consistency issues. I'm confident that that will get sorted out, though, and that they will continue to improve. And I have a lot of optimism that last year's draft and this year's will really rejuvenate the team's attitude and talent level.