If you really understood what qualities enable one prospect to excel and others to fail, when jumping to the NFL’s level of play, you would be running football operations for a franchise. That’s the most important question for every pick, and to date no one has ever consistently gotten it right. Great athletes bust, star college players bust, great leaders bust, great workers bust,coaches on the field bust, and really smart players bust. At the same time players with those qualities also succeed, and some excel. Why a can’t miss player can bust, and a never going to make it player can end up in the HOF. Is still a mystery. Imo Belichick has always leaned into work ethic and leadership qualities, and that has produced both good and bad results. He’s coached the GOAT, whose leadership and work ethic overcame his athletic limitations, and one of, if not the greatest defensive player of all time in Lawrence Taylor, whose freakish athletic abilities led him to dominate, while his character failings kept him from having an even greater career than he had. He’s also coached Randy Moss and Mathew Slster, who are great examples of polar opposite qualities leading to incredible careers. So ultimately there is no one quality that ensures greatness, but usually a mix of them that lead to success or failure, but no one has figured out yet what exactly that mix is. If they did they would never lose.
