Natethegreat":ai8b1aea said:
JS has said in interviews before that they do not draft on a pure best player available philosophy. They grade on a scale of who is already on their team(who are also graded) compared to who's on their board. In other words team needs are highly factored in when drafting. The Ravens on the other hand draft purely BPA and they have said as much. They refuse to fight their board so to speak.
Pete and John have a different philosophy and thats great and they have won with it. However it does lead to targeting of players and reaching at times. They don't care what others think I get that but when a guy like Bennet is available in the fifth freaking round it can be disappointing to see them pick a guy who may turn out great but most had pegged as undrafted. Not priority free agent but undrafted.
I'm sure Pete and John felt they had a big need at corner and this guy will succeed there so who cares what others think but there is a cost in that philosophy.
I think what a guy is projected at is often stupid. Nick Marshall was projected 5th and 6th by lots of pundits, didn't get drafted at all. Smith supposed to be undrafted, but we took him. I saw Nick Marshall trying to play DB in the senior bowl, he sucked. Smith's tape is impressive. I chalk the projections up to a small school bias.
My personal feeling is that past the 5th round, there are no reaches. You look at your pool of players left, do a combination calculation of who is likely to get taken, which UDFAs you want that might not sign with you first, and players you might want an extra year of team control with, and then use the 6th and 7th to get the guys that shake out at the top of that composite list.
I remind myself that Pete is still a college coach in one way, he isn't afraid to get an athlete and coach him to play, even another position. Ruskell had a strong bias towards 4 year college players, he wanted his players mostly finished, and he certainly wasn't drafting athletes and figuring out where to put them. Case in point, John Carlson. That guy was a finished product out of college. He never got better, he was maxed out already.
Over the last few years I have become convinced that John is not awesome at finding great players, he is awesome at finding players Pete can coach. Pete and his staff may have to compete with more teams copying his sparq model, but if they aren't actually copying his training methods those teams will get worse, not better. The gap between the Hawks and other teams is not talent, it is player development.
It's disappointing to see Bennett slide if you believe pundits. I don't. I see him slide and wonder what teams know. On the few occasions they have taken those sliders, like YOLO Williams, it has been a flop. Those guy fall for a reason. Even Tate, who fell to pick 60, took 3 years to not be stupid on the field. Guys fall for a reason. Pundits call those selections steals because it is less bruising to egos than admitting they sized up the prospect all wrong. ( personally, I think Bennett must have gotten a bad endorsement from his HC for some reason. The OSU tight end went much higher, he had a glowing endorsement from Meyer.)
The first couple of years, I was mystified as to what Pete was doing, it bothered me too. Now, I just wonder who he will dig up. I watched almost no footage of first rounders this year, even before the trade, I am trying to find these athletes like Smith and Sokoli that Pete is going to grab late. I was onto Sokoli less than 24 hours after his pro day, when they took him it was pretty cool to know I understood their model better than years past.
I'm not the only one. Kiper himself has learned Pete is about athletes, don't question it, just assume he will coach them up.
I should have known this all along. Pete was developing player the exact same way at USC, I was just too busy hating USC to pay attention.
