Patriots draft news: Past draft failures now more understood

The New England Patriots past draft issues are being revealed as anecdotal evidence of their bizarre strategy and ignoring of scouting staff recommendations is being exposed. Over the past year or so revelations about the strategy have emerged. One very recently.

The first major revelation came from Mike Reiss of ESPN, one of the best and most plugged-in Patriots beat writers. This divulgement questioned whether the Patriots’ draft strategy might just have been too “restrictive”.

More from Chowder and Champions

There doesn’t seem to be any question of that, especially in light of last season’s draft. Dropping two-third-round picks on two tight ends who completely flopped doesn’t exactly shine a very favorable light on anyone involved in that draft process.

Ostensibly the final say would be that of the head of football operations, Bill Belichick. The buck stops there unless something else is afoot, and that would be a total shock. Don’t buy it. It’s Belichick who has the final say, almost without any question whatsoever.

With that as the case, the responsibility for multiple years of truly terrible drafting lands right at the feet of the 6-time Super Bowl winner. One might even conjecture that those teams won the Super Bowl despite Belichick’s awful drafting.

New England Patriots de facto GM Bill Belichick’s drafting cost Super Bowl wins

It’s been exposed in these pages on several occasions that the thought here is that it was the best of the best, Tom Brady who was the single most important and driving force behind those Super Bowl wins.

And that they were too (not two, more than that) few by a handful in this writer’s opinion.

Take a gander at the drafts of the team under Belichick the GM and the top picks are littered with duds. For every unusual great pick, there are many who just couldn’t play. At all. The list of flops is not a pretty sight.

The complete inability of a bunch of them to contribute much of anything absolutely contributed to the Patriots not winning more Super Bowls while Brady was at the helm. Look at the second-rounders alone and it will make the hair on your head stand on end. That bad.

I’d It says here that if they’d used the tomato throw method of drafting popularized by Felger and Mazz of 98.5 The Sports Hub and heaved the red fruit against all those draft boards of logical eligible players, the Patriots would have fared better than New England actually did.

Another recent revelation has cited a very poignant example of a major flop of in this case a first-round draft pick in 2019. That would be N’Keal Harry.

According to Albert Breer, Bill Belichick doesn’t take all the advice of his scouts in the way that most people in charge personnel do around the NFL.

"“It also, as some saw it, led to misses like N’Keal Harry in 2019. Harry killed his 30 visit that spring and had a college coach, Todd Graham, who was close to Belichick. In that end, without more input from scouts who preferred Deebo Samuel and A.J. Brown, the coach wound up leaning on his own experience with Harry, rather than the red flags his scouts planted, and lost a golden opportunity to fill a hole on his roster.”"

Deebo Samuel and A.J. Brown have done very well in their first two seasons. Let’s just say, Harry has not and leave it at that. As much as we all may like the young man and rooted for him, at this point it just doesn’t seem he can play.

Passing on two (and more) really top wide receiver talents to select him while ignoring the advice of your own scouts, well, that’s just not a good idea, at all. So, as suspected, Belichick is the boss and whatever the boss says, goes. But, as is the case for all of us, we’re not always right.

Belichick for years has not been right on a whole slew of draft picks. High picks. Lots of wasted picks on players who just couldn’t play at all.

But after the recent comments by owner Bob Kraft grousing about that fact, hopefully, Belichick will loosen the reins and let guys like his personnel guy, Dave Ziegler call most of the shots.

This makes all the sense in the world. Change the ludicrous “restrictive” draft strategy, if you can call it that. Let the scouts do their job and back them up. And maybe, just maybe, the New England Patriots can for once nail a draft.

Belichick without Brady has been exposed. He ain’t as good without old No. 12. That’s clear. So then, he made his bed, now he should rearrange the comforter and rebuild the club completely.

A good part of the job may have already been accomplished by Ziegler in free agency. Let’s hope so.

Later this month, should Belichick let the scouts determine the draft picks and knock out a banner draft, that may just do the rest.

Next. Patriots: 3 ‘don’t draft’ suggestions for team in 2021. dark

Not much to lose with the team’s dreadful draft record. Add a few key pieces to those already on the scene, and who knows, we all may be back in the title-challenging business by Christmas.

Now wouldn’t that be fine? Go for it, coach. What do you have to lose?

Home/New England Patriots