DRAFT DAY DISCUSSION PFnV's Official Pats Draftnik Analysis Thread

[vyrago]

Just great stuff PFnV. I'm still laughing.

 

[PATSNUTme]

Another first for the Patriots? I have not checked back in time, but I believe the Patriots are the only team to draft 2 players with the last name of "Chung" in the first 2 rounds. Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[PatsFanInVa]

Holy crap, Blackglass. Apparently The Big Guy or Karma or whatever can't spot irony either and totally monkey's-pawed me on the O'Connell writeup:

Round 3c: Kevin O'Connell, QB, San Diego State. Look, Tom Brady has never missed a game due to injury. Tom Brady is immortal. Tom Brady can make a woman orgasm by pointing at her and saying "BOOYA!" The best thing the Pats can do is never, ever draft a quarterback, certainly not so high as the third round. All developmental work on a QB is wasted in NE, because Tom Brady will never die, get older, or be injured. Tom Brady is eternal, and the team dies when he does. Since the team did not exist for me until Tom Brady was on it, I see no reason to believe otherwise.

 

[CrazyDave]

OMG! thanks for a good laugh.

"and we let the Broncos get Alphonso Smith via Seattle by reaching for Tommy Chong or whatever TF his name is"

 

[Pat the Pats Fan]

Rd1 Kansas City got the steal of the draft when Scott Pioli went there, then Jedi mind-boned BB into dealing Cassel for a second and rumored fifth that never came true
[To be continued Sunday]

ROTFLMAO
great read, made my morning......

 

[Mack Herron]

Great stuff. Humor is the best response to the draft on day 1.

 

[blackglass3]

Holy crap, Blackglass. Apparently The Big Guy or Karma or whatever can't spot irony either and totally monkey's-pawed me on the O'Connell writeup:

Maybe alot of our users will stop being so shortsighted after re-reading that. Sure, in April taking a QB in the 3rd wasn't a need. But players get hurt and different needs arise as Training Camp and the Season goes on.

Let's say we listened to most of the posters on this board and drafted Johnny Notalent instead of O'Connell. Then we listened to most of the posters on this board in August and cut Cassel and signed one of the chumps that was out there on the market. That would have meant that week 1's QB depth chart would have gone Brady, Gutierrez, and let's say Rattay. So week 2's QB's would be Gutz starting, Rattay (with one week of system knowledge), and then some other goober who was just brought in that past week, and we're looking down the barrel of mediocrity and another injury away from someone who has a few weeks of system knowledge starting at QB.

That was very longwinded, sorry. The point is maybe all these draft masters should just accept the fact that we are sitting behind laptops in sweats watching, while Bill Belichick and company have been doing stuff like this thier whole lives. Anyone can watch a youtube highlight clip...actually working someone out to see how he fits a system, figuring out his football intelligence and character, and deciding to draft him into our organization is highly different.

People on here often say "Bill Belichick is playing chess while the rest of the league is playing checkers". That should be remembered during the start of free agency, the draft, and final cutdowns; instead of posting the "Why didn't we draft/pick up/drop [player]?" thread that always pops up.

 

[Mainefan]

So far, that post is the only thing I've smiled about in this entire draft.

 

[PatsFanInVa]

First, a mea culpa: In a fit of stupidity, I felt compelled to move the later round 2 picks to round 3. I’ll stipulate that they should have been round 3 picks, and that’s being generous, so you really can’t blame me. The “edit” function seems broken, so I can’t fix my little factual inaccuracy, but unlike this draft, at least some time in the future I’ll be able to take it back.

General Day 2 Comments Don’t kid yourself people. I might have seen some of these names in the past, but the blue chips are gone. There are no Akili Smiths left, or Tim Couches, or Ryan Leafs. There are no Kijana Carters in this bunch. No Hart Lee Dykes, no Eugene Chungs, no Chris Cantys (the bad Chris Canty the Pats got, not the decent one from the Cowboys.) There are no Andy Katzenmoyers to be had here. At this point, you’re just looking at flukes, and the Pats have been famous for trying to convince people that their flukes are smart. What else can you do but trade into the future, then completely ignore my favorites a year from now, thereby dooming the team to continued mediocrity, missing the playoffs once every 5 years or so like clockwork.

Rd 3, Pick 73, Some Future Washout Great. Just great. Traded into the future, even though I had my Draft Rally Cap on hoping really hard to have something to write about. Now all we have is a second pick in 2010. Just what we need. A replay of this crap draft with three 2s, none of which will be used on a tall corner.

Rd 3, Pick 83, Brandon Tate WR, North Carolina: Let’s be clear: I want to see one guy change out of gay Carolina Blue into butch New England Really Dark Blue, and that’s Julius Peppers. What do we get? A stoner made of glass. Let’s just put him together with Maroney, Chad Jackson, and the next gimp we draft and win the Special Olympics 4x100 relay. Oh that’s right, Maroney’s touring with Alvin Ailey. Let me be honest, people. I hear that New England has drafted a receiver, and I immediately either shout out the name Chad Jackson or the name Bethel Johnson. Since this guy has great return skills I’m shouting out Bethel Johnson. I can’t tell you how much I hate this pick. Last I checked we have three really good receivers, and they’ll all be on the field in 2009. You usually don’t have more than 3 receivers on the field except those sporadic 4 and 5 receiver formations called a “spread attack,” which is more accurately called a “sh**-your-pants desperation formation.” Anybody who knows anything about football knows that if you have success with that you’re just making an art-form out of getting lucky. So again – why even make this pick? Grade: F—

Rd 3, pick 89, Some Future Washout That Causes Me to Root For the Colts Twice Oh, Frak me in a poodle suit. Not only do we push the pick into the future, a year away from the all-important 2009 season, but we get the TITAN’S pick. This means we have a perfectly good reason to wish the Colts well twice a year. And for what? You guessed it. Another short corner.

Rd 3, pick 97, Tyrone McKenzie, OLB, South Florida So we all know the Pats need an outside linebacker, and we all know Bill Belichick hangs out in Florida with Urban Meyer to get ideas for bad picks as often as possible. My theory is that Meyer left Florida, so the pipeline of bad picks out of the Gators program is broken, but that Belichick just likes palm trees and daquiris. Put that together with the OLB need, and you get this curious selection of a guy 97 picks into the draft that isn’t even on the national radar. The only good thing about him is if he takes to being traded like he takes to transferring colleges, it’ll be a no-harm, no-foul situation when we punt on him in 2011 or so to get a pick in the 2012 draft that we’ll spend on another swiss-army-knife guy.Grade: D

 

[blackglass3]

You = Win.

 

[PatsFanInVa]

Rd 4, pick 123, Rich Ohrnberger, OG, Penn State The installation of zone-blocking continues in Foxboro, regardless of its utter failure to date. Oh, and color me shocked: they seem to think all they can get at this spot is a backup. That might be good enough for some teams, but as far as I'm concerned, any Patriot drafted in the 4th should be able to jump in and contribute immediately. Grade: C

Rd 4 Patriots trade Ellis Hobbs to Philly because we want them to have our whole secondary from when we didn't go to super bowls. Maybe we can take those two 5th rounders and get Eugene Wilson back, then trade them to Philly for a 6 in 2010. Naturally I am still waiting for Ty Law to come out of either his latest team or retirement to magically reprise his performance from, say, 2001. Nevertheless, even though Hobbs makes me sick just to look at, we didn't get enough for him. And don't tell me he clears out cap room, has become redundant given our last two drafts' special teams possibilities and our offseason, or is in any way less than stellar. I have been saying he's less than stellar since he was drafted. But why would some other team not not recognize that, and give us say a 1 and a 2 for him? So now we have like 46 picks left in the 09 draft to regret unless we pay them forward to 2010 so we can regret them later.

Oh. That's where we got the Ohrnberger pick from. Never mind. We can regret it now.

 

[marty]

Rd 4 Patriots trade Ellis Hobbs to Philly because we want them to have our whole secondary from when we didn't go to super bowls. Maybe we can take those two 5th rounders and get Eugene Wilson back, then trade them to Philly for a 6 in 2010.
.

Bob Kraft needs to hire you as BB's PR man, like yesterday!!!!:youtheman:

 

[klinefan]

Rd1 Kansas City got the steal of the draft when Scott Pioli went there, then Jedi mind-boned BB into dealing Cassel for a second and rumored fifth that never came true, presumably of Jack Daniels. Obviously their #3 pick of Tyson Jackson was a reach, since there were two teams that could have taken him and did not. The Pats' decision not to trade up into the top 10 reflects a complete inability to do what a bunch of people said they would do. They got rooked when they traded down from 23 to 26, then got rooked again by trading the 26 to Green Bay, thereby totally missing the opportunity to get a really touching homeless guy story onto the roster, and while there were still a bunch of other guys I wanted them to draft, some of them Samoan. Grade: F

Rd2 Pick 34: Patrick Chung, some species of safety, Oregon. Strong safety, free safety, whatever. Who knows. Pound for pound, stronger than Sarin gas, but that just means he's a workout warrior. Clearly a guy who should have been a mid-to-late second rounder according to Brandt or Kiper or someone else; with all that second-round firepower, the Pats could clearly have had him somewhere else in the second--provided the guys drafting between their picks were Kiper or Brandt or whoever--and thereby picked a Samoan or a USC linebacker or a Samoan linebacker from USC. Mitigating factor: Jamaican. Could hook up K. Faulk if you know what I'm saying. Grade: C

Rd2 Pick 40: Ron Brace, DT, Boston College. Homer's not just the author of the Odyssey, right? Come on people. I went to a web site and it said quite clearly in the little "needs" box, "LB, CB, S, something else I forget." It did not say Defensive Line, and especially not "nose tackle." WTF do you do with two nose tackles? Play 4-3? Pray for an injury? Look, don't ruin my draft day talking about depth, and especially not in the second motherloving round. If I wanted depth, I'd watch The Reader. I'd also watch that for a faster pace. I think I'm getting freaking diaper rash from leaning forward at the TV for three hours, especially those last couple of minutes into Pick 41 where it looked like the Pats were going to just skip 40 out of pure ****iness. Grade: D-

Rd3 Pick 41: Darius Butler, CB, Connecticut. Sure we let the Saints get Malcolm Jenkins by not trading up, we let the Fins get Vontae Davis by trading down, we let the Lions get Delmas by trading down from 26, and we let the Broncos get Alphonso Smith via Seattle by reaching for Tommy Chong or whatever TF his name is. Also Butler's not a tall cornerback which I keep telling everybody on every bulletin board I go to that I know but BB does not know you absolutely positively have to have. Two of those guys were 6', which is a magical inch more than 5'11. At least he's not as short as Alphonso Smith, but as you can tell, since Smith was drafted earlier, he was better in other ways. Now granted, a lot of people have been saying Darius Butler's name a lot of times in a lot of media for a long time, so the jury is still out. But just based on the variety of other guys we did not pick, I can't grade this higher than a C.

Rd 3 Pick 58: Sebastian Vollmer, OL, Houston. Houston, we have your problem. Look you can look at the Pats' O-Line one of two ways: It's either not good enough or it is good enough. Now work with me here. If it's not good enough that means they can't evaluate these guys to save their lives, and rely on the Scarnecchia school of O-Linemen to turn a continuing stream of fat boys and rodeo clowns into NFL linemen, until such time as they do their best turnstile impressions... in the freaking super bowl. If they are good enough, we're back to pick 40: why would you ever draft someone at a position when you're already strong enough, instead of drafting in a desperate plea to the football gods that you can fix something that's going wrong? Throw in that I memorized at least 50 names of guys I've heard of from college ball and this wasn't one of them. Plus I have never met a guy named Sebastian who didn't need his a s s kicked, Janikowski included. Now granted, I'd rather go toe to toe with a kicker than a 6'7 307 pound O-lineman, but I'd say that about Tommy Chong's little brother Eugene too, and look how he turned out. Anyway don't we already have that other failed genetics experiment guy from a couple years ago that looked like Brady with a missing chromosome somewhere? What the hell happened to that project?
Nevertheless I'm intrigued. B+.

[To be continued Sunday]

You wrote all this? This is some seriously brilliant stuff. It's hilarious. You must be very creative.

 

[PatsFanInVa]

Rd 5, Pick #170, George Bussey, OT, Louisville. Another really big meat-tank for the O-Line. They are laying the groundwork for a Visa commercial before our very eyes, if Visa is around in a year. Let me explain something about being a draftnik: you pick one binkie in the O Line department, and you stick to it. You never, ever go into deep research on these guys, because like everybody except O Linemen and actual personnel guys, you consider these O-linemen basically gelatinous biomass with one tentacle that reaches down to the ground at the beginning of every play. Truthfully I have no idea why we consider one of these guys better than the other of them, and they look way too much like football fans for my taste. At any rate, this one was picked in the low fifth round, which further pushes him out of the ranks of athletes and down to the next rung on the evolutionary ladder, which I believe is inhabited by some of the dimmer types of hippopotamus. Grade: D

Rd 6, Pick #198, Jake Ingram, LS, Hawaii Hawaii? A LONG SNAPPER from Hawaii??? Everybody knows the Rainbow Warriors can't long-snap to save their dugout canoes, if you know what I'm saying. Okay I don't even know what I'm saying. Nobody has a long-snapper program. You just have a long-snapper, typically a center who dreams of bigger things, or more precisely, bigger snaps. Or maybe just doesn't like the back of another man's hand exploring the contours of his taint without even the usual courtesy of an announcement such as "we've selected you at random from among the other passengers." If a long-snapper's lucky, his program decides it wants to pump up the size of its scholarship program while he's there, and dedicates a whole roster spot to his little corner of the football universe. Well, having waved goodbye (with the back of our hand) to the familiar taint of Lonnie Paxton, we had to hire some other such specialized perversion of nature, and Jake Ingram seems to have found the golden ticket in his Wonka bar this year. Much more interesting than the pick is the incredible mind-frak of actually bothering to trade up a spot just in case the Ravens also coveted this particular long-snapper. True explanation: Everybody knows lightning doesn't strike twice, and the Pats are therefore superstitious about ever again picking at #199. After all, if they took this guy at 199 they'd have to hope they got the greatest long-snapper in the league AND the greatest QB in the league at precisely the same spot. "Greatest long-snapper in the league." How strange a phrase is that? Seriously: If you can get excited about a long-snapper, you can get excited about baseball (all 9 innings, 162 games a year, not just the last inning of World Series Games 3-7.) Oh. So you're the one. Grade: A bored gentleman's C

Rd 6, Pick 207, Myron Pryor, DT, Kentucky. Don't look at him. Don't nickname him, tempting as it may be. MyPry. Crap I've done it. Don't call him by his name or nickname, and don't look into his eyes. He's camp fodder, dead the moment training camp begins. He's on a fool's errand, hoping against hope to rocket straight to the bottom rung of the middle, fighting to back up the best DT in the league, and the best-regarded DT in the league (two different guys by the way.) So, although his blank and incomprehending stare is world-class, it would seem unlikely that we call ol' MyPry's number any time soon after drafting him. In fact they might not even assign him a number, preferring to stitch the symbol "#" on his jersey. Grade: B. Pickins are slim. It's not like a 6th rounder ever made anything of himself on this team.

Rd 7, Pick 232, Julian Edelman, WTF, Kent State Ohhhhhhh strategic blunder! They obviously thought Sammie Stroughter would still be there at 234! Curse you, Baltimore! Curse you! Yanking your chain of course, I have no idea who he is either. Edelman, however, is another swiss army knife to pitch into the drawer of swiss army knives that are the hallmark of Pats' drafts. It's like the Klingon or the Vulcan on a Star Trek show. You have to have one "special character" in each draft that has sixteen different skill sets, none of them particularly well developed. Wait, I know, he can steal away the QB position from Brady! No, he can steal away a WR spot from Joey Galloway, Randy Moss, or Wes Welker! No I know, he can be our version of the Wildcat offense dude morphed for passing instead of running, until fifteen minutes from now when all defenses figure out how to Wildcat-proof themselves. But I have to confess to pulling for this guy on ethnic grounds. The kid could be the next Sage Rosenfels or Jay Fiedler. Except I could shep nacches for those guys from a distance. Eh well. Chances are the same will be true of Edelman by August (Julian calendar, of course). If Miami still knows what's good for their gate, BB gets a 3 out of them in 2010 for this guy by the time training camp's over. Julian, we hardly knew ya. Grade: Gimel

Rd 7, Pick 234, Darryl Richard, DT, Georgia Tech: Okay koolaid break. Consider, as ESPN tells us, there were once 17 rounds to this thing, before they had to televise it. Sure. And baseball's ancester cricket lasts a week with scores in the hundreds, and timeouts so guys can change sweaters when the weather changed. But sure, in the olden days, this would be a mid-round pick. More koolaid: if you think about it, there are only 233 better players in the whole freaking country to pick from. Could you say that at your first post-college interview? "Yeah I'm number 234 out of the whole country, a s s clown, but you're a freaking Home Depot looking for an assistant manager, so I'm pretty sure we're even." Had you had that little gem on your resume, you probably would have got that job. Okay it's great to have contingency plans along the D-line, but urgent Western Union for Mr. Belichick: Seymour and Warren are not frightened. Grade: B Would have been an A if we'd landed Sammie Stroughter.

And that concludes PFnV's Official Pats Draftnik Analysis Thread for this year. Rookie Minicamp, real live minicamp, training camp, and labyrynthine trades of all variety await. And then, that great shining grail we all seek, that pot of gold at the end of the off-season rainbow, that true definition of "penultimate," yes, the pre-season.

God there's a lot of time between football seasons.

PFnV

 

[livinginthe past]

Awesome, inspired stuff.

Thanks for the laugh - you should do a monthly column of this stuff.

Pure gold.

 

[Patjew]

Rd 7, Pick 232, Julian Edelman, WTF, Kent State Ohhhhhhh strategic blunder! They obviously thought Sammie Stroughter would still be there at 234! Curse you, Baltimore! Curse you! Yanking your chain of course, I have no idea who he is either. Edelman, however, is another swiss army knife to pitch into the drawer of swiss army knives that are the hallmark of Pats' drafts. It's like the Klingon or the Vulcan on a Star Trek show. You have to have one "special character" in each draft that has sixteen different skill sets, none of them particularly well developed. Wait, I know, he can steal away the QB position from Brady! No, he can steal away a WR spot from Joey Galloway, Randy Moss, or Wes Welker! No I know, he can be our version of the Wildcat offense dude morphed for passing instead of running, until fifteen minutes from now when all defenses figure out how to Wildcat-proof themselves. But I have to confess to pulling for this guy on ethnic grounds. The kid could be the next Sage Rosenfels or Jay Fiedler. Except I could shep nacches for those guys from a distance. Eh well. Chances are the same will be true of Edelman by August (Julian calendar, of course). If Miami still knows what's good for their gate, BB gets a 3 out of them in 2010 for this guy by the time training camp's over. Julian, we hardly knew ya. Grade: Gimel

My favorite part.

Very well done overall!

 

[PatsFanInVa]

Just a huge thanks to all you guys that stopped in and got a kick out of it.

 

[ctpatsfan77]

Ian really needs to get the rep system fixed so I can rep you for this.

 

[shmessy]

You wrote all this? This is some seriously brilliant stuff. It's hilarious. You must be very creative.

Spacecrime didn't like it

 

[ctpatsfan77]

Chances are the same will be true of Edelman by August (Julian calendar, of course). If Miami still knows what's good for their gate, BB gets a 3 out of them in 2010 for this guy by the time training camp's over. Julian, we hardly knew ya. Grade: Gimel

Is that better than Samekh?