Stumbled across this article and thought it might fit here in this thread. Thought it was a relatively interesting column (though it may be a bit boring to some of our forum draft gurus).
To understand who the Patriots might draft, you have to understand how they evaluate players. Tom E. Curran pulls back the curtain to take a look at how Bill Belichick organizes his draft boards.
www.nbcsports.com
"Once it's all up vertically at every position, then you look across horizontally. You have a 6.0 grade for linebacker X. Then you follow across on the board and find the guys with the other 6.0 grades,” said Belichick.
"This part is hard to do. Here you start talking about a corner on the rise versus a center who's a good player but not a good athlete."
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Belichick explained the information-gathering process as it stood in 2004. It’s changed little since. Consistent evaluations are imperative.
"We want the same eyes to see the same players," Belichick said. "First we scout regionally, then we have our scouts who scout nationally come in and look at those players. [The national scouts] will see all the players on offense, defense, east of the Mississippi, west of the Mississippi. Then by the end of November we break it up and do it positionally.
"By the time the Combine comes [in March], a regional scout, the national scout, a position scout, a position coach and, ultimately, (then VP of Player Personnel) Scott (Pioli) and I will look at them. We get six or seven looks at a guy. When we put the whole board together, that's where Scott and I and the national scouts come in and start stacking horizontally."
"There's no shortcut," Belichick said. "You have to see the players. The hard part is when you have bad information. Like when you're scouting a player, looking at him and the guy's playing on an ankle sprain and toughing it out for two weeks and you don't have that info. If you get a player on the wrong games, things like that that can skew information."