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Interesting discussion of that usage here: World Wide Words: I could care less Personally, I could not care less about that usage, but I'm really annoyed by using "beg the question" to mean "raise the question" and by pronouncing "forte" as if it had two syllables.

Do you think that the deserve respect for this? I replied.

For the record, and for the people who liked the post, I count 11 second-round picks since 2006 here Patriots draft database, 2000 - 2010 - Boston.com Since we cannot evaluate last year's picks yet, it is really 9, not 14. I think Rob Gronkowski, Sebastian Vollmer, Brandon Spikes...

Exactly. I have never said anything else and I agree with you completely. From among the players available, you draft the ones with the highest probability, based upon talent evaluation etc., of being successful with your team. The point is that all draft picks are gambles, and the trick is...

Yes. How you feel about the drafts in 06 and 07 is largely going to depend on how you see a draft pick that initially seemed good but then went the other way. The human mind is a mysterious thing. They can be seen as good picks that just did not work out or as bad picks. That is not an...

Yes. Exactly. Thank you. I don't assume that he drafts with the same skill every year. My point is that he would still have bad years and good years even if he did. My reading of that is that Belichick went with what he regarded as the best information, i.e. the coaches who knew the players...

It's all about getting the probabilities right. It's about correctly selecting the players with the highest probability of turning into the player that you want. Belichick is as good as anyone at that. There is really only one high probability of success round, the first, and even that is not...

I would only argue that the analysis in the article is better than endlessly arguing without any objective standards. I suspect that inaccuracies in evaluation even out over the ten-year period. It is an attempt to assess the team's drafting, not individual players. I would be all in favor of...

Just to be clear I am not saying that. I don't know of any way to distinguish between "less skill" and "bad luck" without a very large sample size and a professional statistician. I am saying that just because of the way probability works you will inevitably get bad draft years and good draft...

I am not arguing about what is a hit and what isn't. The point is the article chose their definition and applied it to all the players. It is really hard to come up with an objective evaluation of a large number of football players (much easier with baseball and basketball) and Pro Bowl...

Someone thinks that a normal success rate in the second round is 13%? Belichick gets blasted for around a 50% success rate which I believe is quite high. People who are determined to prove that Belichick is bad at drafting will claim a lower rate, but I believe, objectively, it is around 50%.

Yes, it is just the odds. In flipping a coin, the odds of a head are 50%. If you look at a table of coin flips, you will see that they typically do not alternate a head and then a tail. You get runs of each. The point is that even with well-defined odds, you do not get well-defined or consistent...

It has the advantage of being a long-term and objective evaluation. Whether you agree with their judgment about specific players, all the players are being judged by the same standards. If you just look at the numbers, of course Meriweather is a hit. Two Pro Bowls.

There is documentation that disagrees with you. Decade in the making: the ultimate NFL draft grades | Cold Hard Football Facts

That is just not the way probability works. The skill level in flipping a coin is always the same, zero, but over short runs, you will typically find a considerable variation in the number of heads and tails. (The ratio will approach 1 in large samples, but not necessarily in small samples.)...

In your first response to me you wrote I take that to be your point. How is it not relevant to your post that such periods will inevitably occur when probabilities of success are involved? Even if Belichick drafted with exactly the same level of skill every year, the results would still be...

Players batting averages swing widely over different time frames. They are the same hitter, and because you have a high sample size, the high and low points become less obvious than they do with a small sample size. Slumps are normal. Even the best hitters have them without anything having...

Absolutely. It's a matter of picking the player with a 60% probability of success rather than the one with a 50% probability of success. In this example, you still have a 40% chance of failure, and sometimes, as in any gambling, you will have a string of those failures. I believe that a 50%...

Wow. I didn't know that you understood that. I am quite amazed. Drafting is all a matter of probabilities, and any time you are dealing with probabilities, particularly with a small sample size, there will be runs of good and bad luck. (If you are flipping a coin, you don't just alternate heads...

I remember too. A quite memorable amount of screaming.