Pmedic,
I disagree that an 'appeal to authority' works here.
A few teams have shown they can get away with this and it works for them. The Patriots are one of those teams. We are not. And the Patriots do get good players from bad teams that are not smart enough to realize they are good. BUT THEY DON'T GET PLAYERS FROM GOOD TEAMS THAT ARE JUST TRYING TO GET RID OF DEAD WOOD. That rarely works at all.
To me, this is simply the FO being lazy.
Clearly, they have evaluation models and based on their draft history, they put a lot of weighting on physical attributes and potential, even more than production. That makes sense because the college and NFL development environments are different and college environments can vary radically. Alabama clearly has a better strength and development program than UTEP.
However, in the NFL,
Production matters. NFL resources vary but not as radically. What a LB, CB, or Kicker has access to in Minnesota is probably close to what he would have access to in Seattle. Sure there are some context issues but the good teams generally know how to use their guys.
In this instance, it looks like we are grading guys on potential and not production, then making moves to get them, and finding we are surprised when they repeat their typical production/issues. We need to stop grading guys on potential, grade them on production and fit - they are not draft picks. They are known quantities.
This behavior screams we are grading them like we grade the draft picks. (Which is another issue)
Again, the data is out there. While there are cases that people find a new environment and blossom, for the most part, people do not change. They have been playing the game for 10+ years, counting college + HS. This is who they are and how they produce. Bringing in failures from elsewhere almost always results in failures in the new location. Not always, but enough you don't want to bet against it and you CERTAINLY do not want to fill your roster in key positions ignoring this reality.
Carroll is an optimist. He believes in the power of people changing. He believes that new opportunities create new results. But the data says otherwise, people tend to produce how they historically have. When their production is augmented or limited by the system or people surrounding them this can change, but the bulk of those production issues are going to follow the player to the new location because they are a function of the player themselves.