In this inaugural article, I wanna do something a bit unorthodox and tear apart my favorite team's draft history. Yes, I am a New England Patriots fan but that doesn't mean I'm going to lick their boots. According to champsorchumps.us Since Bill Belichick became head coach in 2000, the Patriots have gone 244-92 and they've made the playoffs 17 times in those 21 seasons. In those 17 playoff appearances, they've appeared in 9 Super Bowls winning 6. So naturally they draft in the bottom half of the first round a lot. Going 7-9 puts them in the Top 15, only three other times have they had that luxury (2008, 2003, and 2001). So I want to take a look at their draft history since Belichick took over and look at their poor drafting and explain why it isn't all that shocking.
The way the Patriots have looked at the first round has always been filling rolls, not needs. Daniel Graham is a good example of this, in 2002 they selected the TE from Colorado 21st overall. From 2002-2006 he recorded 1,393 yards, 17 TDs, with a Catch % of 62.2% (not including drops). Two picks later? Ed Reed was picked. But at the time we didn't need Ed Reed, we needed someone that could block and catch. Daniel Graham was a role player who, thanks in part to Brady, is hard to consider a true draft bust. But that is precisely where all the Patriots drafting issues come back too, when we had Brady we didn't really need to draft well. The Patriots just needed to draft good enough to keep the ship stable, our best Drafts by far were back to back 2009-2010. Those two years not only did we keep the ship stable but we selected corner stones to our future Super Bowl teams in Julian Edelman, Rob Gronkowski, Devin McCourty, Patrick Chung, Sebastian Volmer, and Brandon Spikes. For the most part though, we've whiffed majorly on picks, ESPECIALLY in later rounds. We've drafted more WR's than any other Offensive position, and most of them are off the team in two years. On the other side of the ball we draft DB's, not just the most out of Defensive positions but out of all positions, and most of them don't pan out either. Of our WR's and DB's, 35% of those WR's were successful and 37% of those DB's were successful. Out of the 186 players the Patriots drafted, 118 either didn't play for them or didn't last longer than 2-3 years on the Patriots. That's a 63% turnover rate, to put that in some context, it is more likely that the Patriots will draft a player that won't contribute or last than it is for the New York Jets to win a game (45% win percentage since 2000). So clearly our scout team isn't top notch, at least not nearly as good as Bleacher Report's top 5 teams that dominated the draft (Seattle, Baltimore, Kansas City, Green Bay, and San Diego/LA). So how come we draft so poorly, yet win so much? Simple, aside from the 7 years of spygate and some lucky calls, we had the best Quarterback in the league and have the best coach in the league. Some positions we've lacked? Only two 1,000 yard rushers (Steven Ridley in 2012 and Corey Dillon in 2004), 3 Receiving yard leaders (Randy Moss in 2007 and 2009, Wes Welker in 2009, 2011 and 2012, and Rob Gronkowski in 2011). Of all those years? Only 1 Superbowl in 2004, which means we won 5 Superbowls with Good-Average wide receivers, tight ends, and running backs. All of the Patriots' Superbowls were powered by three things, a top 10 defense (we had in all years they won a Super Bowl), Tom Brady, and Bill Belichick. If there ever was a year to show we can draft well, it's 2021.
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