2017 Patriots Off-season

Have a link to the report saying they only have 75 people on there board this year??


For one I don't buy for one second that from the Grissom pick to the Flowers pick another player they liked didn't come off the board. There's too much talent between the 3rd and 4th rounds. You wait on a Grissom to at least get ok value. At the Minimum if Grissom and Flowers were your top two rated players you take Flowers in 3rd and Grissom​ in 4th. Why? Because the chance that Grissom is there in the 4th is like 98% and only like 25% chance Flower would be. Now we got lucky, but how many players like Flowers did we miss out on drafting Wilson, Harmon, Grissom and Richards way to high?

Again have they hit big on any of the players they drafted way too high in recent years? Harmon is the best of the bunch, a good player. Thing is he's hardly the type of player that you would lose sleep over not drafting. He's also more than likely would have been there in the 6th and 7th rounds. I would say 90% chance and then he would have been a steal and an awesome pick. There are very few players that get way over drafted each year and the Patriots always have a couple of them. Heck if you really wanted to make sure you got Harmon take him in the 5th, I would bet it's a 100% he's there. The guy was seen as a 7th round to undrafted player. Most experts had him going undrafted and we picked him in the 3rd round, that's just not good value.

On the flip side we have hit big on players that have dropped for years. Rag on draft experts all you want, but they aren't morons. They are in no way perfect, but they for sure have a general idea about talent and where players will be drafted.

I have no problem taking guys like Mankins and Vollmer a few rounds early. I do have a problem taking guys 4-5 rounds early. Especially when we have yet to hit big on one and have a bunch of flops.

Also I'm certainly not ragging on draft experts just saying their analysis likely doesn't fit the Patriots they do things completed different.

It is kind of convenient tho that you don't have any issue with them over drafting Mankins or Volmer and they turned out to be All-Pros... I mean Mankins you can make an excuse for saying maybe he wouldn't have been there in the second round, but Volmer was projected anywhere from 4-6 rounds and we took him In the second. Point is if you like a guy, and you have confidence in your system then you take him because it only takes one team.

Say what you want about Harmon, Richards and Wilson. Harmon was very much a success and I don't think a 33% success rate at that stage of the draft is all that bad. And 33% suggests you got nothing from the other two which the book is still somewhat out on Richards.

I think it's obvious that NE evaluates players differently (at least in comparison to the Draft Mags). For one, I think NE puts more emphasis on what players can do on 4th down. Wilson, Harmon and Richards, for example, were all elevated on the NE Board (seemingly) bc they could contribute on ST right away with the upside of playing significant snaps on D (seems to only have played out with Harmon, of those guys).

For example, the "draftniks" would probably put the 2 down RB, the run stuffing defenders (DLs and LBs who might not contribute on passing downs) etc in the 2nd or 3rd round. Pats have the ST contributors just as high or higher.

That's fine (and it seems to work) but I would offer that it ignores the opportunity cost of not understanding (caring?) where these guys would be taken in the draft.

Yea but if you have a list of 75 draft-able players and they include a bunch of guys rated in middle to lower rounds then that opportunity cost is different than what the rest of us think of it as. It seems pretty clear that they have guy's off their board that are graded in the first and second round. If I had to guess intelligence has a lot to do with it.

Not necessarily. The problem with that is that it assumes 'likely draft spot' is the correct valuation.

The problem is, likely draft spots fluctuates depending on other teams' needs -and- evaluations as well, and a lot of later-round evaluations are going to be more prone to fluctuation because at that point, you have very different projections from various teams in play here instead of 'groupthink'.

Bill Belichick, I'm presuming, has a better handle on how other teams evaluate those players -because- he has connections among the college coaches who can presumably tell him how 'interested' other teams are and roughly where they feel they're going. If they feel that there was -one- team that was likely going to target Flowers in the third round, then that team -would- have to be in between where NE picks in the third and where they pick in the fourth.  If that team's not among the THREE teams picking in that area, but a team that -is- likely to pick Grissom is in between... then why take Flowers when you can get him in the fourth?

There's far, far too much at play to say with absolute certainity that you could have gotten better value.

What did they risk? 3 player picks?

No, just citing the possibilities. Sometimes you forego taking the most obvious pick because you're certain he won't go in that short a range knowing who else has been sniffing around your 'preferred pick'.

It's a lot, lot more difficult to project with a much larger range between picks, and -then- you can just go pick who you like.

But with that short a range between picks, it seems like there's a lot more projectibility in deciding who you can pick. A mere three picks in between? You can probably project pretty well.

But otherwise, yeah, I think he's more likely to just go with who's best on the board.

www.nfldraftscout.com/ratings/pyrnotes.php?pyid=33032&draftyear=2009

m.espn.com/nfl/draftcard?playerId=23795&src=desktop&rand=ref~%7B"ref"%3A"http%3A%2F%2Fr.search.yahoo.com%2F_ylt%3DA0LEV1f1MwFZcc8Ah4hx.9w4%3B_ylu%3DX3oDMTE0dWVpZWM2BGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMyBHZ0aWQDVUkyRkJUM18xBHNlYwNzcg--%2FRV%3D2%2FRE%3D1493279862%2FRO%3D10%2FRU%3Dhttp%253a%252f%252finsider.espn.com%252fnfl%252fdraft%252fplayer%252f_%252fid%252f23795%2FRK%3D0%2FRS%3DH10_p7.yxQ4zNzROhcJwStTP4ng-"%7D

www.espn.com/blog/new-england-patriots/post/_/id/4801464/sebastian-vollmer-went-from-09-draft-reach-to-one-of-teams-best-picks

Nothing convenient about it, he was seen as a 3rd to 5th round pick that was taken at end of second round.  Even Bill said he was most likely a 4th/5th round guy but they loved his upside.  Those first two sites had him rated as a top 100 talent and the 9th and 10th rated tackle prospect.  He wasn't a 6-7 round to undrafted guy and that's the whole point.

Now you're conveniently leaving out Grissom.  So it's  25%, that's not good for 2nd and 3rd round prospects.  They don't do well with massive reaches in 2nd and 3rd rounds.  They haven't hit big on any of them.  Harmon is a nice player as a 3rd S, but he doesn't even start.  Good pick, but not a great pick that makes up for 3 really bad ones.

I should have checked, I assumed we had our own pick and I shouldn't have. Not with Patriots. Thing is he still could have been picked as he was a 2-3 round guy. Still makes zero sense to take Grissom over Flowers there.

Actually it's a great example.  Most likely they had Grissom and Flower as there top two players on there board.  Does it not make you wonder who the next player on there board was when they picked Wilson, Richards and Harmon?

It shows you the potential cost of way over drafting a player.  With Harmon there next pick was 11 picks later with Josh Boyce.  So maybe he was next or maybe one or two players came off, we don't know.  It wouldn't be crazy to say we might not have done any better at that point in draft.  The same thing isn't true though with Wilson pick #48 to #90 and Richards pick #64 to #97.  I don't buy for one second we didn't have players that were higher rated in general that got drafted that we had on our board below Wilson and Richards.  What I would give to see those boards.

It's all about getting value.  You can love a player, but you need to get good value on him when drafting him.  If your putting players that everyone has at the bottom of the draft above players people have rated top 100 you're going to miss out on quality players.  It's not like Bill is way over drafting players like Brady, Edleman and Butler.  He's trying to outsmart the league, but seems to be out smarting himself.  The thought​ of maybe missing out on Wilson, Grissom, Richards and Harmon is not that scary is it?

 If you targeted each in the 5th round you most likely would have got all 4 and if not chances are you most likely would have got a better player 75% of the time.

I'm happy with the moves the Pats made by man it makes the draft a whole lot less fun. Wife is away and I could have just chilled peacefully and watched the draft and now I don't even care to.

Yea it shows you can get screwed waiting for a guy's range.