- Joined
- Jan 27, 1999
- Messages
- 11,820
- Reaction score
- 12,278
Offline
The amount of draft information available to the general public today is extraordinary. How many of you were able to correctly guess a team's first-round pick in real time Thursday night and how many true surprises were there in the first 20 picks. Indeed, the problem for the Saints Thursday night is that, based on all the media rankings and mock drafts, nobody dropped.
The best media "analyst" ever was Joel Buchsbaum, who sadly died about 15 years. Bill Belichick once tried to hire him, and Belichick and a number of football personnel people attended his memorial services. But Buchsbaum often said that he was not a scout, but an "information gatherer".
There are those in the media who are qualified to evaluate talent and give opinions largely based on their own film study. Bill Pollan quickly comes to mind. There are those like Daniel Jeremiah and once Mike Mayock who obviously spend much time evaluating players and who seem to provide reliable rankings.
And there are those like Mel Kiper who are providing rankings largely based on what they are told by team sources whom they have cultivated and trust, though they tinker here and there with the rankings to conform to their impressions. But when you read Bob McGinnis position rankings the week before the draft, you are seeing a true consensus of what NFL personnel people think--the conventional wisdom and the diversity of opinion in the industry on the eve of the draft.
Drafting good players is really hard. Every NFL team should have statistical data of the probability of selecting a Pro Bowl player or multiple-year starter based on the draft number and position. And the probabilities of hitting in the draft are lower than people think even at the top of the draft and decrease quickly after the first 75 to 80 picks or so.
When a team makes a "surprise" pick like Peyton Turner, it does not mean the team made a bad pick. And because of Covid, the 2021 draft may prove an outlier because so many players did not play or played little in 2020. But it means, at least to me, that a team's evaluation may have been different from how other teams saw a player and that a particular pick merits extra scrutiny and more questions. Of course, most in the media talking about players could never get a job as a team scout or personnel evaluator, and certainly have not spent the time evaluating players that NFL teams spend. But when the best in the media talk about grades and rankings, they are not providing their personal opinion, but a consensus of the opinion of those who are qualified to evaluate and who are actually evaluating players.
The best media "analyst" ever was Joel Buchsbaum, who sadly died about 15 years. Bill Belichick once tried to hire him, and Belichick and a number of football personnel people attended his memorial services. But Buchsbaum often said that he was not a scout, but an "information gatherer".
There are those in the media who are qualified to evaluate talent and give opinions largely based on their own film study. Bill Pollan quickly comes to mind. There are those like Daniel Jeremiah and once Mike Mayock who obviously spend much time evaluating players and who seem to provide reliable rankings.
And there are those like Mel Kiper who are providing rankings largely based on what they are told by team sources whom they have cultivated and trust, though they tinker here and there with the rankings to conform to their impressions. But when you read Bob McGinnis position rankings the week before the draft, you are seeing a true consensus of what NFL personnel people think--the conventional wisdom and the diversity of opinion in the industry on the eve of the draft.
Drafting good players is really hard. Every NFL team should have statistical data of the probability of selecting a Pro Bowl player or multiple-year starter based on the draft number and position. And the probabilities of hitting in the draft are lower than people think even at the top of the draft and decrease quickly after the first 75 to 80 picks or so.
When a team makes a "surprise" pick like Peyton Turner, it does not mean the team made a bad pick. And because of Covid, the 2021 draft may prove an outlier because so many players did not play or played little in 2020. But it means, at least to me, that a team's evaluation may have been different from how other teams saw a player and that a particular pick merits extra scrutiny and more questions. Of course, most in the media talking about players could never get a job as a team scout or personnel evaluator, and certainly have not spent the time evaluating players that NFL teams spend. But when the best in the media talk about grades and rankings, they are not providing their personal opinion, but a consensus of the opinion of those who are qualified to evaluate and who are actually evaluating players.
Last edited:
