The 2021 Draft- We Need This One


The article lost me when it finished by saying that the Malcolm Mitchel is included in the "abysmal" and "busted" category.

Yellow click bait journalism at its finest.
Let's write an article based on conjecture and innuendo as absolute fact and give it a misleading title then feed it to the BB/Patriots haters.
We know Belichick won't respond to anything we write so we can bash him unmercifully without recourse.
Easy peasy.

Truths we know.
1. The last 4-5 Patriots drafts have been poor.
2. BB is the head honcho and all poor decisions for the team come back on him no matter who made them.
3. Great bosses delegate responsibility to smart people.
4. Caserio was the defacto asst GM (Director of Player Personnel) since 2008.
5. Scouting is a central part of a DPP's job. DPPs are responsible for hiring, training and coordinating the scouts. DPPs are responsible for selecting the players to evaluate. He must pull together all the information on each player, including input from team scouts, coaches, recruiting services and other sources to present to the general manager and head coach. Some DPPs have full decision-making authority regarding recruitment, drafting or hiring of players; others operate in an advisory capacity. Caserio was somewhere in between and his authority was growing under BB's supervision until the time came to part ways.
6. Garbage in, garbage out.
7. Dissension, give and take are all a natural part of player evaluation.


Now let me use conjecture for a moment.
Is it too much of a stretch to imagine BB putting more and more responsibility into Caserio's hands over the last 11 years to see if he could one day take over?
Is it possible that in such a scenario BB stood by Caserio in the face of the scouts' arguments to give Caserio's view points support? Harry is one such example.

I'm not saying Caserio made every poor draft choice and BB made every good choice (Tavon Wilson was BB); I'm saying Caserio was in charge of tutoring the scouts & coordinating their scouting trips for the past 5 years. I'm saying BB put Caserio in charge of the scouting department with less and less input from BB each year. I'm saying Caserio did a poor job with college scouting. I'm saying Caserio was encouraged to find new employment. BB gave Caserio glowing recommendations to expedite his departure. I'm saying I'm happy BB is fully back in charge of college scouting.
 
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I don't know how thins will work in real life but trading up to #5 cost us our first and a 2nd next year and the year after. It will save BB from drafting a 2nd round safety in those years.
 
People say Belichick has a horrible record drafting in the second round.

As I recall, Deion Branch and Rob Gronkowski and Sebastian Vollmer and Matt Light were 2nd round draft picks. Another 2nd round pick was a starting QB in a recent Super Bowl.

Sure, he's had some misses, but let's not forget the guys he's hit on.



People say Belichick can't draft wide receivers.

As I recall, two wide receivers drafted by Belichick turned out to be Super Bowl MVPs: Deion Branch and Julian Edelman.

Sure, he's had some misses, but we need to count the hits, too.
 
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I don't know how thins will work in real life but trading up to #5 cost us our first and a 2nd next year and the year after. It will save BB from drafting a 2nd round safety in those years.

I like Mac Jones but not at that cost in draft capital.
 
There's something about lance...i just like him. i wish gru dog were out of coaching and doing his qb interviews. those were the best things he did.
Boy, you're not kidding. I thought those sessions were the best draft stuff ever. He was SO good at it.

We could've used him this year, that is for sure. You could really tell which guys Gruden liked and didn't. He all but told Blake Bortles he was full of shit. Josh Rosen shot eye-daggers at him after Gruds challenged him. He didn't seem to like Derek Carr very much either, which seems still the case. But, if he liked a guy he would tell everybody exactly why they should feel the same way. It made me feel like I was on the inside of the draft process trying to see what really makes guys tick. I think I watched all of them.

With any luck, he'll get fired pretty soon and go back to his Florida strip mall office.
 
This is Chris Simms so take with a grain of salt but he makes a good point that maybe the Pats put too much emphasis on character and intelligence, and not enough on athletic ability.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE42FQLYSTY

This is really getting nonsensical now. So now choosing guys like Hightower, Wilfork, Edelman, Slater, McCourty, Andrews, Brady, Gronk etc is not the right way to chose players? A formula that delivered 6 Superbowls, 9 Superbowl appearances, 9 Conference championships and 17 AFC East titles should now be tossed aside and re-looked at?

As said, it's all getting nonsensical. Years of pent up journalist angst at seeing their predictions falter and the Patriots defying logic is all pouring out now. No theory or belief is too outlandish.
 
This is really getting nonsensical now. So now choosing guys like Hightower, Wilfork, Edelman, Slater, McCourty, Andrews, Brady, Gronk etc is not the right way to chose players? A formula that delivered 6 Superbowls, 9 Superbowl appearances, 9 Conference championships and 17 AFC East titles should now be tossed aside and re-looked at?

As said, it's all getting nonsensical. Years of pent up journalist angst at seeing their predictions falter and the Patriots defying logic is all pouring out now. No theory or belief is too outlandish.

Bill Belichick is disliked because he is parsimonious with his words to the media.

Chris Simms is a professional talking head.

From the Tao Te Ching - "Those who know don't talk. Those who talk don't know."

It's left as an exercise for the reader of this post to decide which of those two should be consulted when building an NFL roster.
 
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PFF on Mac Jones and if he should be the 9ers pick at 3.


The prototype quarterback used to be a tall and often immobile pocket passer who would hang in that pocket no matter what. But the cycle has swung around again toward players who bring mobility to the table. Even if you stop short of looking at players like Lamar Jackson, Kyler Murray and Josh Allen as the new prototypes — players whose rushing threat is an inbuilt part of the offense and a key foundation piece to how they win — the elite players at the position are trending toward having at least an element of creative mobility. The likes of Aaron Rodgers and Patrick Mahomes move around outside of the pocket, extending plays and winning outside of structure, and that’s a huge part of what makes them so dangerous.

Tom Brady — another stylistic throwback to the old prototypes — just won yet another Super Bowl, but the prevailing wisdom is that you need to bring all of the things Brady brings to the table to dominate if you play the game in that way in 2021.

Effectively, a quarterback’s physical “tools” have become more important over the years, and the recent history of successful quarterbacks shows a succession of “toolsy” quarterbacks succeeding early. Mac Jones is the antithesis of those players.

Jones isn’t a great athlete, has a marginal NFL arm and is rocking a Tom Brady circa 2000 dad-bod. But does he bring enough to the table beyond that to succeed anyway?

The first thing to note is that Jones’ PFF grade last season was exceptional. He finished with an overall mark of 95.8, the best of any quarterback in this class and the best single-season we have ever graded. His adjusted completion rate of 84.2% was also the highest in the nation last year and again the highest we have ever seen. He had an excellent big-time throw rate of 7.4% and a low turnover-worthy play rate of 2.4%. His statistical profile was exceptional and every bit as good as Joe Burrow the year before.

Burrow however, was the No. 1 player on our Big Board a year ago and considered a better prospect than Jones because he was helped out less by his offense, despite throwing to the likes of Justin Jefferson and Ja’Marr Chase with Joe Brady calling plays for him. Burrow completed 124 passes into tight windows that season compared to just 44 from Jones this year. The Alabama offense was such a cheat code — even after losing Jerry Jeudy and Henry Ruggs III to the NFL draft last season — that Jones was rarely asked to deal with tight spaces or difficult situations.

This is similar to the knock on Zach Wilson — that we simply haven’t seen him have to make throws in some of these situations — but a more harmful unknown for Jones because he has fewer physical tools to mitigate the more difficult situations. The fact that Tua Tagovailoa struggled the most among last season's rookie quarterbacks also doesn’t help. Tua entered the league with the most marginal NFL arm of the trio of starters and came from a similar advantageous environment in Alabama. His adjustment to the NFL has been the slowest thus far, and that simply can’t help Jones’ case.

When you turn on the tape, you can see exactly why a team might fall in love with Jones, despite the limitations. He is deadly accurate, particularly underneath and at the intermediate level, and very rarely misreads or misdiagnoses a coverage. The situation is to his advantage, but his tape is a clinic of just finding the right pass and delivering the ball accurately to his intended target. Jones was a distributor and facilitator for the playmakers at Alabama, but he also gave them opportunities to make plays within that.

There were times when he eschewed open shorter passes to give one of his receivers a chance to make a bigger play despite good coverage or a defender with solid leverage on the play. Jones was accurate enough to put the ball away from the defender and allow his receivers to reward that risk with bigger plays than the ones he turned down.

This is a delicate balance, as too much of that YOLO attitude can lead to Ryan Fitzpatrick or Jameis Winston levels of carelessness with the football, but the right degree of aggression is critical for a quarterback who will lose some plays because of a lack of devastating arm strength.

The speed with which Jones can work through his progression on a play and deliver the ball even before being pressured is notable. He can fly through the structure of a play efficiently and accurately on a consistent basis, and that’s a trait that NFL play-callers can’t help but be attracted to. Jones had an average time to throw of just 2.51 seconds in 2020 — 0.3 seconds faster than Zach Wilson and 0.6 seconds faster than Justin Fields. Effectively, within the structure of an offense, Jones is as good as it gets, and when your offensive structure is as good as Shanahan’s, you can see why that would be appealing.

As much as his tools are maligned, Jones actually isn’t a horrendous athlete. He ran a 40 time that was around 4.7 and had a 3-cone of just over seven seconds. Those are numbers that rank at least in the 66th percentile of quarterbacks, or the top third of athletes at the position. Now, it’s still fair to say that he’s likely the worst athlete of the five potential first-rounders, but he isn’t as inept in that area as some make it seem. Again, on tape, you can see him move around and navigate traffic at times. He is also aware of his own limitations in this area and often pulls up on the run to dink a pass over or around a defender bearing down on him.

Ultimately, I think you can construct a case that Mac Jones is an excellent quarterback prospect and one worthy of drafting ahead of Trey Lance or Justin Fields, all things being equal. But, at least for the 49ers, all things are not equal because they're spending three first-round picks on that basis if they make Jones their selection. I think you can argue that what Jones is good at offsets the fact that his arm isn’t special and that his work outside of structure is passable at best. But it’s tough to argue that he is so good in those areas that you have that degree of confidence in him.

The concerns people have about Jones are very fair — in particular how much the Alabama offense helped him in college and set him up for success — and the question of whether he can enjoy similar success at the NFL level when put into more disadvantageous situations is genuine.

I believe that Mac Jones can succeed and even thrive in spite of his overall tools, but I wouldn’t be willing to bet three first-round picks on it.
 
This is really getting nonsensical now. So now choosing guys like Hightower, Wilfork, Edelman, Slater, McCourty, Andrews, Brady, Gronk etc is not the right way to chose players? A formula that delivered 6 Superbowls, 9 Superbowl appearances, 9 Conference championships and 17 AFC East titles should now be tossed aside and re-looked at?

As said, it's all getting nonsensical. Years of pent up journalist angst at seeing their predictions falter and the Patriots defying logic is all pouring out now. No theory or belief is too outlandish.
This topic is not new. We have always discussed the Pats approach of wanting "football only, high character guys" above the talented guys who may be divas or football is secondary. I think it makes sense to revisit now because for 20 years we had a coach in BB who could coach up a defensive player from a C to a B or a B to a B+ and then you had Brady who could do the same thing on the offense. With Brady gone, I do think it is worth looking at that approach as it pertains specifically to the offensive skill players. We need to be looking at B+ and A skill players now as we don't have a QB that can elevate them like Brady could.
 
If Fields really does fall and we are able to get him at 10 or 11 that would be unbelievable. I will start my superstitions now. LOL
 
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