How Things Work

Every player taken in the NFL is a projection, even #1 pick Myles Garrett. Perhaps he'll be great, perhaps he'll be a transcendent, generational talent who draws comparisons to the Hall of Famers he will one day join in Canton. Or maybe he'll fail to live up to his draft status; maybe he'll be an outright bust. Unlikely? Sure, but not unprecedented.

This was an unusual draft for the New England Patriots and it's hard to take a single data point and discern a pattern but Bill Belichick provided an interesting business case for managing draft picks as assets. He's always moved around the board. He's always like to convert 5th round picks into blue collar veterans as depth pieces. He's always called the draft just one part of the overall team-building process. But I can't remember a draft where so many picks were converted from risky, unproven assets into known commodities.

It's not like anything Bill Belichick did with New England's 2017 draft picks is against the rules; once again, he's just reading between the lines.

Belichick didn't just turn draft capital into proven veterans; he turned it into young veteran talent. Brandin Cooks is 23, Kony Ealy is 25, Dwayne Allen is 27 and Mike Gillislee is 26. Free agent signings Stephon Gilmore and Rex Burkhead are both 26 and Lawrence Guy is 27. The draft picks provide depth behind aging veterans who will have the luxury of a year as understudies.

The Patriots aren't going "all in" for 2017 as much as they're going "all in" for 2017-2020.

I've heard pigskin pundits and bobbleheads rationalize Belichick's methods by saying "Well, Bill can do Bill because he's got 5 rings" but Belichick was doing Belichick before he had 5 rings. I guess everyone has forgotten how Belichick built that first Super Bowl champion. The gridiron cognoscenti thought Belichick was crazy then as he made moves based on a value system specific to Belichick's own definition and stockpiled veterans discarded by other teams. I still don't think they've figured him out.

Sure, it helps having Tom Brady. Having the greatest quarterback of all time on your roster makes all things possible. (I know you read this blog for insights like that; you're welcome.) You have to have a credible quarterback to compete in the NFL. You have to have an elite quarterback - or a very good quarterback having an elite season - to compete for a championship.

It goes a long way to explaining the 1st round trades that resulted in Mitchell Trubisky going to the Bears, Patrick Mahomes II going to the Chiefs and Deshaun Watson landing in Houston. Trubisky is an anti-pattern, having just one year of starting experience as a collegian. Mahomes might be Brett Favre or he might be Jeff George. Watson has all the intangibles but also - unfairly - suffers by comparison to the brief, unhappy pigskin life of Robert Griffin III. Does anyone really know how the careers of these three men will play out? No. Nobody does.

One of the interesting tidbits I came across in the post-draft deconstruction was this: Ex-Pat DE Chandler Jones and Jabaal Sheard are each nearly twice as expensive as the sum of current New England DE position group of Trey Flowers, Rob Ninkovich, Kony Ealy, Derek Rivers and Dietrich Wise, Jr. (Nearly as shocking was the fact Sheard is getting paid $9.9MM.) Rivers and Wise are unproven, of course, but it's still an impressive example of cap management and roster building.

At the end of the day, the stalwart citizens of Patriots Nation are feeling good about keeping Jimmy G and Malcolm Butler, aren't we? I think so. I am, for whatever that's worth. They say the best deals are often the ones you don't make. I'm hoping that's true for both Garoppolo and Butler. Certainly there weren't any names picked between 12 and 32 that had me thinking, "If only…"

The NFL is allegedly designed to prevent this from happening but the New England Patriots are arguably a better team today than they were when they ran out onto the field for SB51. Super Bowl champs are supposed to bleed talent in free agency and miss out on blue chip talent drafting at the bottom of each round. It hurt to lose Logan Ryan in free agency but Belichick managed to minimize the damage by re-signing Dont'a Hightower and Duron Harmon. Belichick then converted weak draft positions - pick #32 was obviously more valuable to the Saints than it was to the Patriots - into an infusion of young, proven talent.

The gridiron cognoscenti may not have figured out Bill Belichick but it sure looks like he knows how this football thing works.