Pro Football Weekly: Pats 32nd in league in 2004-08 draft picks still on roster

Though I personally think BB has whiffed too often, especially in the 2nd round...still a bullsh*t effort because:
1) The Commish stole a 1st from the Pats
2) Drafting at the bottom of each round yeay after year
3) Trading picks for Pros not factored

The biggest flaw I see is it doesn't account for UDFA. If BB drafts player A in the 6th round and signs player B as an UDFA and player B does a better job in TC than player A, player B makes the team, on other teams they keep player A so they look good with draft stats.

Lets pretend Woods, Hoyer, Guyton, Green-Ellis, etc are late day draft picks instead of UDFA and rerun the analysis.

Insignificant factoid; almost completely irrelevant. Or, if you work in a circus, your elephant.

TimU said:

Boy, are you drinking the kool-aid!

I can see your argument up to a point, like say if the Pats ranked 18th. But 32nd!? 32nd says you haven't been drafting well, no matter how you look at it.

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It says nothing of the sort.

TimU said:

Boy, are you drinking the kool-aid!

I can see your argument up to a point, like say if the Pats ranked 18th. But 32nd!? 32nd says you haven't been drafting well, no matter how you look at it.

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Hard to believe some of the homers would even try and spin this.

"IT IS WHAT IT IS" Belichick is not the man to be calling the draft.

To much value and not enough quantity.

upstater1 said:

We heard the same exact stuff in 2001.

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Im saying that this team was not built by the draft rather than "other teams trash / our treasure). Vrabel, Harrison, ect... The other point is that the Pats don't seem to keep their good draft picks after their contracts expire such as Graham, Givens, Branch, Woodey, Hobbs, to name a few. I don't care how this team wins, whether it be through the draft, FA, UDFA, walk-ons, or former grocery clerks, just as long as they win.

It says zero in a vaccuum, but quite a lot if you target certain positions. Say you had a position that needed to be filled, but remained weak. If you said "but those picks were better used at other positions" it certainly weakens that argument. In other words, if you're throwing darts, better to throw them at a position of need.

Hypothetical example. You're not going to find a bargain running back in the draft by drafting cornerbacks.

Jackson 2 said:

I believe an even more interesting piece of information would be the answer to this question: How many Patriots' draft choices from 2004-08 are still on NFL rosters and how does that number compare with other teams? Anyone have that data or know how it can be obtained?

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I find that not at all interesting. Our goal is not to stock other teams, actually to the contrary.

Teams that stink not only have spots to fill, they can afford to trade for "value" since it's likely a great player at any position will improve them.

If a team has few holes, I see no point in making great drafts (so your cuts go on to good careers elsewhere) or getting great "value" at positions you're already stocked (so your cuts go on to good careers elsewhere).

Of course that's if you're drafting to improve your team, as opposed to filling draftnicks bingo cards.

If you make a "bad" pick but fill that position with a vet, or great UDFA, you filled the position, which is your goal.

If you made 5 picks that couldn't make your team, went on to successful careers elsewhere, and didn't draft at a a position of need for another year because there was no "value" you drafted 5 NFL players, so your draft was a success, according to some.

Brady to Brown said:

Hard to believe some of the homers would even try and spin this.

"IT IS WHAT IT IS" Belichick is not the man to be calling the draft.

To much value and not enough quantity.

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Hard to believe that even the "haters" would be suckered into thinking the story meant anything meaningful without fleshing it out first.

At the end of the 1990's Sports Illustrated did a similar survey of draft picks with the same criteria: how many were still on the drafting team.

The Detroit Lions were first.

The Pats' roster has been very talented throughout that time. When the Lions draft 4 starters in the first 2 rounds, it says 2 things:
a) they had a pretty good draft
b) it's pretty ******* easy to start for the Lions, because their incumbents suck.

Now, obviously, you can't totally spin this number. The Pats have missed on a couple of picks, and that's hurt them, no question. But you have to dig a little deeper to actually see WHY so few picks stay on the roster:
1) they've pushed a number of picks which would probably be on the roster right now into 2009-2011. We already saw this pay dividends in the previous draft, which netted us at least 4 starters, IMO (Butler, Chung, Vollmer, Ingram)
2) It's very, very hard to stick with the Pats, because they're a very talented team. Guys like LeKevin Smith would still be on most teams, but the Pats had enough depth that they couldn't keep him. Does that reflect poorly on their drafting? Of course not.

So yeah, this is a worrying number. It suggests that the pipeline may be a little thin, if not because the Pats draft poorly then because they haven't necessarily had the luxury of stashing and developing players, because the level of competition has been so high just to make the cut for so long. That said, there's no way that the Pats are in as dire a situation as the 32 ranking suggests.

Are their definite needs on the roster? Yes. OLB, DE, potentially NT and ILB, WR, G, C and TE could all use addressing, although the latter two can probably remain as they are with only minor commitments for another year. The Pats, meanwhile, have a lot of guys already on the roster who may be able to address these concerns (Pryor, Brace, McKenzie, Crable, Tate). And frankly, I more or less assume that NONE of those guys will pan out, and even then I see the Pats as having the resources to restock just fine. I've been very critical of the team over the past year, so I'm not speaking as a homer here, and IMO if we can land interior OL depth, a bona fide pass rusher, and 1-2 credible WR/TE threats, I think we have a SB-caliber team on our hands. Hell, if we can manage 2 of the 3 I think we're in good shape.

And besides, I'm still more than a little hesitant to draw any conclusions when the methodology states that simply staying on the roster = success. By that measure, Matt Cassel and David Thomas were bad picks, and Tyrone Wheatley and Shawn Crable were good ones.

A better indication of how good we draft is our rank in league in 2004-2008 draft picks still on an NFL 53man roster.
I still don't think we draft great but I don't buy this 32nd in the league statistic.

borg said:

Though I personally think BB has whiffed too often, especially in the 2nd round...still a bullsh*t effort because:
1) The Commish stole a 1st from the Pats
2) Drafting at the bottom of each round yeay after year
3) Trading picks for Pros not factored

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They could have drafted better in some cases (Jackson vs Jennings) but the 3 points stated above are pretty factual IMO.

The loss of the 1st round pick is looming large....

RayClay said:

I find that not at all interesting. Our goal is not to stock other teams, actually to the contrary.

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I didn't ask the question with the intention of assessing your level of interest in it. Plus, when the Patriots cut draft choices and those players are signed by other teams and end up on those teams' rosters, it certainly isn't because it was NE's goal to "stock other teams." Faulty logic, in my opinion, but that's just me.

Jackson 2 said:

I believe an even more interesting piece of information would be the answer to this question: How many Patriots' draft choices from 2004-08 are still on NFL rosters and how does that number compare with other teams? Anyone have that data or know how it can be obtained?

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Drafthistory.com lists draft picks by team.

NFL.Com lists players.

TheGodInAGreyHoodie said:

The biggest flaw I see is it doesn't account for UDFA. If BB drafts player A in the 6th round and signs player B as an UDFA and player B does a better job in TC than player A, player B makes the team, on other teams they keep player A so they look good with draft stats.

Lets pretend Woods, Hoyer, Guyton, Green-Ellis, etc are late day draft picks instead of UDFA and rerun the analysis.

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Other teams always have UDFAs on their roster.

While were on the subject of personnel. Found this tidbit on 2009 PFW

Does this sound familiar to anyone?
----------------------------

Aiken to improve
Written by Andy Hart on May 29, 2008 – 11:42 am -

WR/special teamer Sam Aiken has struggled in the last two days of passing camps. He’s had a hard time catching the ball. A number of different throws have gone right through his hands and bounced off his chest or stomach. He made his money as a special teams guy in Buffalo and it looks like he’ll have to do the same here in New England

upstater1 said:

Indeed, such as, how good is your team? Do you have space for rookies?

Have you traded picks forward into the future? Have you traded picks for veterans?

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Here are three other items that aren't taken into consideration:

Did you trade any of those players?
Did any of them die?
Did any of them go crazy and were removed for off-field incidents?


This "analysis" penalizes the teams for trading players like Matt Cassel and David Thomas.

The analysis also ignores the idea that the average NFL career is something like 3.3 years.. Yet it's covering 5.

I have to agree with others when it was said a better gauge would be to count the number of players still in the league.

Willie55 said:

But if your team is loaded and there is no spot for you draft picks why would you keep them around? If you already have a person on the roster that is better than the draft pick you're not going to keep the draft pick just to say that we kept more draft picks than everybody else while going 10-6 (instead of 16-0 ).

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Because there are some draft picks that can't be traded and because you have to have something that someone else wants.

It's well known that the Pats tried to trade up in the 3rd round of the 2007 draft but to no avail. So, what did they do? They traded the pick into 2008. They also tried trading away the latter picks, to no avail.

One of the things about the 2007 draft is that other teams knew it had mediocre talent and that the Pats were loaded. So, why help the Pats by trading picks into 2008..

BTW - The 49ers had 45 draft picks during that time. The Pats had 41 draft picks during that same period.