1- Course it's not irrelevant, it's crucial to the argument. You should expect more improvement from high level draft picks as they clearly have a higher ceiling, that's why they were drafted where they were!
When you are talking about coaching, and not the talent of the player, the round drafted is meaningless. Improvement of a player is improvement of a player.
2- Is there a reason you're listing 3 undrafted backs here, are you trying to use the improvement of an undrafted player v a high draft to show that our DB coaching can improve? Whilst they may have all improved they're all still not good enough and wouldn't be playing if the high draft picks had worked out
You're making an argument about skill, not coaching. "If the high round picks had worked out" is an irrelevant response to the issue of the coaching helping the players I listed.
3- Yet compared to Year 1 still bad. Why, the skills are undoubtedly there, why isn't the delivery.
Teams get tape on players and adjust. McCourty has issues that people have talked about since the beginning (I remember getting slammed for citing a report about him being a bit slow turning his hips). His recovery skills are lacking, and that's why we see him running to catch up so often.
4- No argument here. Did we expect him to be a Bob Sanders type player and just ignore playing coverage. Injury wise it's working out that way.
Remember him being forced into the 3rd safety role as a cover guy in his rookie year? I think the Patriots thought he could improve his coverage. To this point, they've been wrong. Why are we assuming coaching failures when players who spent their lives unable to do things are unable to do things? Sometimes things just can't be fixed. I can't run a 4.1 forty, and all the coaching in the world isn't going to change that.
5- Does it prove it, no. Does it make it a reasonable assumption, for me yes. If we'd scratched one draft pick, say Merryweather, then you could excuse it, write it off. It's happening again with Chung & Devon, it doesn't look like being any different for Dowling (though I hope I'm wrong) and the back ups Ebner and Wilson, a second round pick remember, haven't covered themselves in glory either.
It's not a reasonable assumption at all. It's actually demonstrative of a lack of thought and a desire to scapegoat. If it were a reasonable assumption, people would be able to bring more than "But the secondary sucks and the players haven't gotten better!" to the table. They'd have actual analysis, and weigh that against what's already known to have been the system prior to the arrival of the coaches in question.
What could it be;
Poor drafting?
Poor execution?
Poor scheming?
Poor coaching?
It's a combination of all of them of course, but for me the biggest day to day impact and the quickest one to fix is the coaching, try something new, try somebody new. It's broken, it has been for a while and there are no signs of it improving.
- Not one of these high drafted DBs who's busted in NE has succeeded elsewhere, meaning that either the player didn't have the ability or that the Patriots ruined them. The latter is highly unlikely, particularly in the case of a player like Wheatley, who was injured too much to develop bad game habits, since he wasn't playing in the games.
- It's Belichick's system, not the system of the secondary coaches. The coaches teach what Belichick tells them to teach. The trail technique used by the players, and despised by the fans because it's led to completions over a bunch of players who don't bother to look for the ball? Belichick's choice.
- The players brought in have been lower end type players. Gregory is a guy who couldn't get it done in San Diego. Springs was a guy on his last legs. O'Neal was a guy who'd stunk for most of his career. The list of poor DB signings is pretty lengthy.
- It's ironic that many of the people screaming about the play of the CBs are the same people who complained about Hobbs and Samuel, two players who clearly took to coaching and improved themselves, and about Sanders, a relatively low-talent guy who took to coaching and turned himself into a solid all around guy for a while.
- BB has no problem cutting players loose. Why do people think he'd let his coaches run his team into the ground? Is it possible that he'd keep a disaster on staff? Sure. It is likely? Not so much.
It's also interesting that people weren't calling out the LB coach when the LBs were playing like stiffs, but the secondary coach is getting pilloried because the players there suck. Let's revisit the players:
Butler - Small school kid who didn't have the mentality to make it and who got burned more often than toast in a faulty oven
Chung - coverage problems from day one
McCourty - played way above his draft position in year one, came down to earth since
Wheatley - gamble pick from the start
Dowling - injury issues from the start (how many "he's not injury prone!" posts did we get on this kid?)
The reality is that, other than McCourty, nobody's really seeing regression, and McCourty's regressing from what was a misleading rookie season in the sense that he was able to play mostly zone and be protected. What people are seeing is that players with significant, and impactful, flaws haven't been able to overcome those flaws. That should be no surprise. There's a reason these players haven't been top 10 picks, or the first pick at their positions. Misses happen.
If you want better DB play, get the team to bring in better DBs.
The rest is history....
