Kinger

Okay, I know I’ve been down this road before but there’s just something about Peter King, isn’t there?

 

Bill Belichick somehow manages to win football games despite his inability to identify and draft quality college football players. The latest example was posted by King on his Monday Morning QB mega-blog. Belichick, despite his reputation as a “defensive genius,” cannot draft defensive backs. King conveniently limits his data set to the first two rounds from 2007 – 2012, discounts Brandon Meriweather’s four years as a starter, marks down the Devin McCourty pick because of his move from corner to safety and presumes Tavon Wilson will join that admittedly ugly list of broken promises listed (yes, it makes Patriots’ fans twitch when they hear names like Darius Butler and Terrence Wheatley and yes Tavon Wilson is skewing toward bust status). Alfonzo Dennard (a solid second CB if he avoids jail time) is not listed because he was a 7^th round pick, Logan Ryan and Duron Harmon were 3^rd round picks and okay, finding Asante Samuel in the fourth round of the 2003 draft was a while ago. King is cherry-picking but he does wind up picking a number of cherries.

King acknowledges Belichick’s successes over the last five years (Gronk, Stevan Ridley, Sebastian Vollmer and Brandon Spikes) but placing the emphasis on “defensive genius,” wonders why defensive back is a “blind spot” for Belichick.

As Belichick often notes, the draft is just one piece of the roster puzzle. Trades and free agency are also components of the team building process. Mike Reiss recently posted a piece on ESPN Boston’s Patriots blog that outlined how the 2013 roster had been put together. I realize that Kyle Arrington and Marquise Cole – acquired in free agency – would likely not offset the wasted draft picks on Butler, Wheatley, Patrick Chung and Ras-I Dowling in most people’s minds. Nor would the acquisition of Aqib Talib via trade.

In any case, I’m not here to defend Bill Belichick’s draft record.

I’m here to ask why Peter King implies on Page 3 that Belichick doesn’t get the science of drafting defensive backs, but then on Page 4 describes drafting quarterbacks as a “crapshoot.”

What’s going on here?

Is the projection of defensive backs to NFL success that much easier than projecting QBs? I’m not sure that makes a lot of sense; given the lack of elite passing games in college, I would assume that the bust rate for DBs, WRs and QBs is quite high given the lack of reps in the college game. Actually, I’d guess the success/bust rates for most positions is about the same; I’d guess because I don’t have the data though I would think someone like Peter King has interns with iPads who would handle analytics for him even if there’s no direct evidence for this.

It turns out I’d be wrong in my “crapshoot” assumption.

Sadly, it appears that Peter King has a point. Based on the Bill Barnwell data (via the link above), we can assume anything less than an 80% (78%?) success rate when drafting defensive backs in the first two rounds deserves criticism.

I would note that Belichick’s regular season success does work against him on draft day. Of the seven defensive backs drafted in King’s decidedly small data sample, only two were first rounders and both were taken in the bottom of the round (24, 27). But nitpicking King’s small data sample into an even smaller data set can’t offset the simple mathematics here; Belichick and the Patriots still fall well short of that 80% success metric for 1^st and 2^nd round picks from 2007 through 2012.

As noted above, despite this “blind spot” Bill Belichick somehow continues to win football games.

I’ll take it.