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.
