The BIGGEST REACH of the 2013 draft: Harmon vs RANKED SAFETIES taken after him

[PatsFanStnfrd]

Greg Bedard has a writeup on where the Pats draft prospects fit. His comments on Harmon are worth noting -- so we can follow the wisdom or folly of the BIGGEST REACH of the 2013 draft by any team.

"This one still remains a bit of a headscratcher because Harmon does appear a bit limited on film. He’ll be compared to the safeties taken in the fourth round — Duke Williams (105, Bills), Shamarko Thomas (111, Steelers), Phillip Thomas (119, Redskins) — for years to come. Thomas will be the most interesting case because the Steelers traded up to get him and needed a play-making safety.

Breaking down where the picks might fit for the Patriots - Patriots - Boston.com

So there you have it. If strengthening the Safety position in the draft was the objective, BB had a boatload of highly ranked talent available. If he was in love w/ Harmon, he could have waited to select him w/ a 7th round pick. Then if Harmon worked out, we'd be saying what "value".

Finally, I want to comment on BB's claim that the Pats received good VALUE.

-- When a 1st or 2nd round rated prospect falls to you in the 3rd or 4th round, that is VALUE.
-- When u take a propspect no one except his school has heard of in the 3rd or 4th rounds that is a REACH, a "HEADSCRATCHER" and devalues the pick.
-- When you take a prospect approximately close to where they should be drafted, that's "FAIR VALUE".

We will now have a chance to evaluate how the potential he saw in Harmon (or Collins or Boyce, for that matter) translate on to the field.

Now, if BB had picked Da'Rick Rogers with his last pick......................

 

[eagle eye]

I think you need to stop believing what the media say. Just look how many they had as first round talent who didn't get selected until the fourth or fifth round if at all.

 

[manxman2601]

I think you need to stop believing what the media say. Just look how many they had as first round talent who didn't get selected until the fourth or fifth round if at all.

Exactly. Did the Eagles get value because they selected Matt Barkley in the 4th round even though he was "ranked" as a 2nd rounder? If he was "ranked" in the 2nd round by the media but passed over by every team until the 4th, is it more likely that the Eagles got excellent value or that the media rankers got it wrong? Why can't the same apply to Harmon but in reverse?

And one final thought. Have those who are criticising this pick actually watched Harmon play? I've started to and my view is, that he's the best of the Rutgers players we've drafted. Now if you want to talk about a reach, I'd suggest looking towards Logan Ryan who I don't think has the skillset to be a starting corner on the outside, at least yet, and was certainly overdrafted in my eyes. But that can't be right, because he was "ranked" about where we drafted him.

 

[JMC00]

Are you trying to say Collins and Boyce were reaches?

Collins had a 2nd round grade in the majority of the rankings, Pete Prisco even had the Pats taken him with #29. Boyce was projected as high as the 3rd in a few rankings.


Do me a favor and imagine they took Michael Buchanan in the 3rd and Duron Harmon in the 7th.

Just like Wilson and Dennard last year.

 

[State]

Duron Harmon will be a good player for us. That is not to say it wasn't a silly move, since the safety from Syracuse the Steelers got, who excel us in drafting in the mid rounds, will have a much more successful NFL career IMHO as things stand now. Remember Shamarko Thomas, the short, stocky guy who will decapitate receivers and pummel running backs, while Harmon will be a nice STer and back-up.

I think the Logan Ryan/Duron Harmon picks is more than the sum of its parts: having those two who already have an excellent on the field communication is a plus. It's weirdly kind of cool to me.

Last year's arrogant stunt by Belichick, however, in drafting Tavon Wilson in the second round was so unnecessary esp. when talented defensive linemen were available.

Did you notice his interchangeable fellow secondary member Terry Hawthorne was drafted in the fifth round? Wilson is a tiny bit bigger, but Hawthorne ran a 4.4/40 as opposed to Wilson's 4.52.

Watching Illinois games over the years these two were interchangeable in my mind, both in their play and in their production.

Here, see for yourself: FIGHTINGILLINI.COM - Tavon Wilson Profile
FIGHTINGILLINI.COM - Terry Hawthorne Bio

Heck, they both had the same hair in college.

It's a piece of evidence I find revealing: Tavon Wilson was a dreadful reach.

 

[Off The Grid]

I think you need to stop believing what the media say.

Just look how many they had as first round talent who didn't get selected until the fourth or fifth round if at all.

Exactly. Did the Eagles get value because they selected Matt Barkley in the 4th round even though he was "ranked" as a 2nd rounder? If he was "ranked" in the 2nd round by the media but passed over by every team until the 4th, is it more likely that the Eagles got excellent value or that the media rankers got it wrong? Why can't the same apply to Harmon but in reverse?

And one final thought. Have those who are criticising this pick actually watched Harmon play? I've started to and my view is, that he's the best of the Rutgers players we've drafted. Now if you want to talk about a reach, I'd suggest looking towards Logan Ryan who I don't think has the skillset to be a starting corner on the outside, at least yet, and was certainly overdrafted in my eyes. But that can't be right, because he was "ranked" about where we drafted him.

Owl schytte.

Just because the Media says it doesn't mean it isn't true.

Again, and with Feeling:

Just because the Media says it doesn't mean it isn't true.

Coach Bill's awesome, All Things Considered.

But that doesn't mean he can't ~ or doesn't ~ screw up ROYALLY.

 

[manxman2601]

Owl schytte.

Just because the Media says it doesn't mean it isn't true.

Again, and with Feeling:

Just because the Media says it doesn't mean it isn't true.

Coach Bill's awesome, All Things Considered.

But that doesn't mean he can't ~ or doesn't ~ screw up ROYALLY.

I can only tell you what I see and that's a good prospect who is excellent against the run and has good range as a centerfielder. Add in his intelligence and leadership at a position that prioritises those characteristics and I say 3rd round is perfectly fine value. In my view he has a good chance of having the better career of the three Rutgers guys we drafted.

I don't whine about a prospect just because I or Kiper haven't heard of him or because ESPN or NFL Network don't have 20 seconds of video highlights. If I don't know anything about the prospect, I reserve judgement until I find out more. I have and I like him.

 

[rdf63]

I have never seen Harmon play so the Pats obviously see something. The first three picks were obviously for need. Collins has a ton of upside and you can't question the talent. He has the speed of some safeties and pretty good size and is not a clone of any current players. He will be a hybrid player for BB. Can't argue with the Dobson either and I am 50/50 on Ryan. My choice for the second 3rd round pick would have been Barrett Jones. His skills versatility was too good to pass on. We don't need Harmon when we already have Wilson.

Boyce in the 4th is a pick I really like. The Pats now have excellent speed and size. It is a good idea to start them together for hopefully a long time with the Pats. Buchanan in the seventh...why not. This is the round that the Pats focus on to get players with solid talent but who made mistakes. Good talent cheap.

 

[Avenger]

FWIW everybody I talked to down at Rutgers this weekend said pretty much the same thing. Good player, underrated, and they were disappointed the Pats got him. "I hate him but Belichick is a good coach who knows what he's doing."

 

[manxman2601]

Heh! Just re-watched Mayock commenting on Harmon: "the safety inside was as good as the corner outside". IE, the corner taken in the 3rd round. So if he's "as good" and you think Ryan was value in the 3rd, how is Harmon not equally good value in the 3rd?

 

[gobesmug]

Can people please stop saying player X taken in round A would have been available in round D. The fact is every team has different draft boards and they do not reveal them to the media. Its possible Harmon could have lasted until till the 7th round but we will never know. Hell Da'Rick Rogers went undrafted and he was supposed to be a mid to late third. If you don't like the Harmon pick because of his skill, other talent available, or a position that was not needed that's cool, but to say he would have been available in the 7th is just stupid.

I don't know enough about Harmon or the other players who were available to give an opinion on the pick, so I'll just stay optimistic.

 

[jsull87]

Greg Bedard has a writeup on where the Pats draft prospects fit. His comments on Harmon are worth noting -- so we can follow the wisdom or folly of the BIGGEST REACH of the 2013 draft by any team.

"This one still remains a bit of a headscratcher because Harmon does appear a bit limited on film. He’ll be compared to the safeties taken in the fourth round — Duke Williams (105, Bills), Shamarko Thomas (111, Steelers), Phillip Thomas (119, Redskins) — for years to come. Thomas will be the most interesting case because the Steelers traded up to get him and needed a play-making safety.

Breaking down where the picks might fit for the Patriots - Patriots - Boston.com

So there you have it. If strengthening the Safety position in the draft was the objective, BB had a boatload of highly ranked talent available. If he was in love w/ Harmon, he could have waited to select him w/ a 7th round pick. Then if Harmon worked out, we'd be saying what "value".

Finally, I want to comment on BB's claim that the Pats received good VALUE.

-- When a 1st or 2nd round rated prospect falls to you in the 3rd or 4th round, that is VALUE.
-- When u take a propspect no one except his school has heard of in the 3rd or 4th rounds that is a REACH, a "HEADSCRATCHER" and devalues the pick.
-- When you take a prospect approximately close to where they should be drafted, that's "FAIR VALUE".

We will now have a chance to evaluate how the potential he saw in Harmon (or Collins or Boyce, for that matter) translate on to the field.

Now, if BB had picked Da'Rick Rogers with his last pick......................

All of what you say i agree to in theory. The one thing you will never get opposing viewpoints to agree on is the "Value" of the pick. E.G Vollmer no one had ever heard of him and he wasn't invited to the scouting combine. he was considered a reach in the second round and the guy was an all pro alternate a few years ago.

Now in your value argument should the pats have waited to try and snag him at his "fair" value after the 1st 300 picks? or should they take the guy they think is the best player at that pick?

I personally believe you set your draft board, you trade for value and then if it's your pick you pick the best guy on your board. I can only assume that's what they did in this circumstance.

We can argue all day about where these prospects would have gone but an example would be Keenan Allen. I had a high second round grade on him and he went in the mid third. Does that make all the guys at WR ahead of him bad picks? or is it a bit more likely that me "not an NFL scout" misjudges his value?

Anyway i for one cant wait for training camp so we can see what these picks have in store for us.

 

[PATSNUTme]

Can people please stop saying player X taken in round A would have been available in round D. The fact is every team has different draft boards and they do not reveal them to the media. Its possible Harmon could have lasted until till the 7th round but we will never know. Hell Da'Rick Rogers went undrafted and he was supposed to be a mid to late third. If you don't like the Harmon pick because of his skill, other talent available, or a position that was not needed that's cool, but to say he would have been available in the 7th is just stupid.

I don't know enough about Harmon or the other players who were available to give an opinion on the pick, so I'll just stay optimistic.

Very good points. One other point is that BB would not have taken him when he did if he thought he could take him later. That means that the Patriots had a very strong reading that another team would take him if they did not take him when they did.

 

[mgteich]

Yes, let's discuss whether Buchanan was worth a low third rounder,

I do agree. It would do us all well to make believe that Harmon was drafted in the 7th.

Are you trying to say Collins and Boyce were reaches?

Collins had a 2nd round grade in the majority of the rankings, Pete Prisco even had the Pats taken him with #29. Boyce was projected as high as the 3rd in a few rankings.


Do me a favor and imagine they took Michael Buchanan in the 3rd and Duron Harmon in the 7th.

Just like Wilson and Dennard last year.

 

[patchick]

Exactly. Did the Eagles get value because they selected Matt Barkley in the 4th round even though he was "ranked" as a 2nd rounder? If he was "ranked" in the 2nd round by the media but passed over by every team until the 4th, is it more likely that the Eagles got excellent value or that the media rankers got it wrong? Why can't the same apply to Harmon but in reverse?

Actually, I think there's a very significant difference between a player being taken much higher than expected vs. much lower than expected.

When a Jesse Williams or Da'Rick Rogers slides and slides, it tells us that ALL 32 TEAMS AGREED he wasn't worth taking higher. Most often, that means that there's extra information the league has that fans and media don't. (Injury in Williams' case, character details in Rogers'.)

When a guy like Harmon is drafted much higher than expected, all we know for sure is that ONE TEAM felt he was worth it. Perhaps there were more teams coveting him soon after, or perhaps that one team is an outlier and could have gotten the same player 2 or 3 rounds later.

Personally, I think it's totally fair to call Harmon the biggest reach of the draft. But now that he's aboard, I look forward to him proving himself a steal.

 

[manxman2601]

Actually, I think there's a very significant difference between a player being taken much higher than expected vs. much lower than expected.

When a Jesse Williams or Da'Rick Rogers slides and slides, it tells us that ALL 32 TEAMS AGREED he wasn't worth taking higher. Most often, that means that there's extra information the league has that fans and media don't. (Injury in Williams' case, character details in Rogers'.)

When a guy like Harmon is drafted much higher than expected, all we know for sure is that ONE TEAM felt he was worth it. Perhaps there were more teams coveting him soon after, or perhaps that one team is an outlier and could have gotten the same player 2 or 3 rounds later.

Personally, I think it's totally fair to call Harmon the biggest reach of the draft. But now that he's aboard, I look forward to him proving himself a steal.

You see I don't. "Reach" is a relative term and for the starting point, all we have are the media outlets to determine a consensus point on someones value. And the fact that those media outlets are so wrong so much of the times tells me that they are entirely unreliable as a source for a reliable judgement as to someone's value.

The reason people think Harmon was a reach is because they haven't heard of him - it's as simple as that. That's a failure on their part, not on the part of the Patriots. If Mayock, Cosell and Kevin Weidl are all saying that he's a good player why are we disagreeing just because he wasn't listed in our draft mag or on the website we use to determine "value".

I challenge anyone who thinks he's a reach to actually watch him play for Rutgers because without that, any criticism is meaningless and is based purely on trust in a third party that probably isn't warranted.

 

[patchick]

You see I don't. "Reach" is a relative term and for the starting point, all we have are the media outlets to determine a consensus point on someones value. And the fact that those media outlets are so wrong so much of the times tells me that they are entirely unreliable as a source for a reliable judgement as to someone's value.

OK, so are you arguing that there is no such thing as a "draft-day reach"? I could see an argument that the draft is essentially an efficient market, but a portion of the information is invisible to fans and media. So draft position is our best indicator of market value, and a selection that looks like a huge reach should instead be perceived as a point of information gap.

You definitely see this private/public information gap a lot with non-Combine prospects, especially if they're from smaller programs where media don't attend pro days. For instance, Sebastian Vollmer was perceived as a reach on draft day. But once the video of his incredible pro day workout surfaced, it was immediately clear that he was no reach at all. If he had performed like that in front of the media, he would have been a draftnik darling.

An argument against the "no such thing as a reach" theory is that there are major inter-team differences based on need, or on divergent talent evaluations.

A pressing need at a position can force teams to make inefficient use of their draft capital, especially if the position is thin in the draft and/or they don't have a lot of picks coming up. I think Tavon Wilson was an example of that. The Patriots had to go safety at 48, even if players they rated significantly higher were available.

The talent evaluation issue applies mostly to the handful of teams like NE that opt out of the groupthink scouting companies. That approach should lead to both steals and reaches, because part of draft strategy has to be correctly estimating when other teams will target a player.

 

[manxman2601]

OK, so are you arguing that there is no such thing as a "draft-day reach"? I could see an argument that the draft is essentially an efficient market, but a portion of the information is invisible to fans and media. So draft position is our best indicator of market value, and a selection that looks like a huge reach should instead be perceived as a point of information gap.

You definitely see this private/public information gap a lot with non-Combine prospects, especially if they're from smaller programs where media don't attend pro days. For instance, Sebastian Vollmer was perceived as a reach on draft day. But once the video of his incredible pro day workout surfaced, it was immediately clear that he was no reach at all. If he had performed like that in front of the media, he would have been a draftnik darling.

An argument against the "no such thing as a reach" theory is that there are major inter-team differences based on need, or on divergent talent evaluations.

A pressing need at a position can force teams to make inefficient use of their draft capital, especially if the position is thin in the draft and/or they don't have a lot of picks coming up. I think Tavon Wilson was an example of that. The Patriots had to go safety at 48, even if players they rated significantly higher were available.

The talent evaluation issue applies mostly to the handful of teams like NE that opt out of the groupthink scouting companies. That approach should lead to both steals and reaches, because part of draft strategy has to be correctly estimating when other teams will target a player.

If you are going to push me, then yes I will say that there is no such thing as a draft day reach. It's merely something invented to try and quantify a draft for fans and the media. There are hundreds of different boards out there but there is only one that matters and that's a teams own board. "reach" is also completely meaningless without access to every teams board.

The Patriots may well have valued Harmon higher than other teams, we can not know this, but that doesn't mean it was a reach, it just means that the Patriots valued Harmon higher than other teams. If Duron Harmon becomes a perennial pro bowl player and future hall of famer, everyone will call him one of the greatest draft "steals" which only serves to prove how nonsensical those terms are.

 

[patchick]

The Patriots may well have valued Harmon higher than other teams, we can not know this, but that doesn't mean it was a reach, it just means that the Patriots valued Harmon higher than other teams. If Duron Harmon becomes a perennial pro bowl player and future hall of famer, everyone will call him one of the greatest draft "steals" which only serves to prove how nonsensical those terms are.

To me, the issue is opportunity costs. A "reach" is a problem insofar as it costs the team other opportunities to add talent.

For instance, let's say just for the sake of argument that Harmon would still have been available all the way down at #235, where they took Steve Beauharnais. In that case, in place of Beauharnais at LB they could have picked from among LBs like Nico Johnson, Jelani Jenkins and Khaseem Greene. Or they could have picked up an OL like Brian Schwenke or Barrett Jones, a DT like Brandon Williams, etc. Even if Harmon turns out to be good, Harmon + Barrett Jones would have been better than Harmon + Beauharnais, IMO.

 

[manxman2601]

To me, the issue is opportunity costs. A "reach" is a problem insofar as it costs the team other opportunities to add talent.

For instance, let's say just for the sake of argument that Harmon would still have been available all the way down at #235, where they took Steve Beauharnais. In that case, in place of Beauharnais at LB they could have picked from among LBs like Nico Johnson, Jelani Jenkins and Khaseem Greene. Or they could have picked up an OL like Brian Schwenke or Barrett Jones, a DT like Brandon Williams, etc. Even if Harmon turns out to be good, Harmon + Barrett Jones would have been better than Harmon + Beauharnais, IMO.

I'd say that no team can rely on someone being there in the late 7th round, it's far too much a risk. Harmon, more than other safeties drafted later fits what the Patriots look for in a safety - he has the skill set to back up McCourty for example in that he's able to come down in support against the run but has decent to good range in centerfield. The Patriots play one high safety which is exactly the role Harmon played for Rutgers (I know this because I've spent the last couple of days watching him).

The Patriots don't draft BPA, they draft to fill roster spots. It was mentioned in War Room or the subsequent book, that to get a prospect on the Patriots board, a scout or exec has to justify that prospect in terms of the roster spot he'll take so to use your examples, maybe Schwenke and Jones weren't considered better than Wendell and a determination was made that players like Stankiewitch can be found in UDFA. Maybe the team didn't consider Brandon Williams to be an upgrade over Kyle Love.

So they were left with two draft picks before the 7th round at #91, 102. Presumably they'd targeted Safety and WR for those picks and there was better depth at the WR position on their board than there was at Safety (Bailey, Boyce, Patton, Stills, Swope) were all similar receivers. Also bear in mind that they tried to trade out of #91 to no avail. In that case then, if you want to come out with a safety and WR, it makes more sense to take the Safety you like because the other options at the position are limited and wait until #102 for the WR because there's a better chance someone will be available that's on your board.