Great players are made, not born.
If there's anything that eight years of draft analysis has taught me, that's it. Great players become great when they reach the NFL. They don't become Pro Bowlers or Hall of Famers in college, at the Combine or at the draft. They enter the NFL as raw material. They become players -- good, great, exceptional, legendary -- later in their lives.
Each draft class contains dozens of "potentially great" players, but each Michelangelo is still hidden in the hunk of marble. There's no secret method to reveal the masterpiece, because the master still hasn't carved it. The differences between the productive player and the bust, the good player and the all-time great, usually don't even exist yet on Draft Day.
Over the years, I've often been asked how so many teams could overlook Tom Brady. The answer is that he wasn't Tom Brady yet. He was just a second-tier Big-10 prospect with a decent arm and a good head on his shoulders. The Patriots coaches made him Tom Brady, and he made himself Tom Brady. To a degree, fate made him Tom Brady. A dozen other guys might have become Tom Brady, but instead became David Greene or Tim Rattay. Brady wasn't so much a draft-day steal but a triumph of postdraft management and development.
How did so many teams overlook James Harrison, an undrafted rookie in 2002? That's easy: Harrison wasn't Harrison. He was a raw, small-school athlete who wasn't even all that athletic. Justin Tuck wasn't Justin Tuck. Jeff Saturday wasn't Jeff Saturday. They were just athletes: very good ones, not exceptional ones. They became great in the NFL.
Archetypes: Every draft class includes a few outliers, followed by dozens of players that fall into one or more archetypes.
At the top of many draft classes are one or two transcendent athletes: Deion Sanders, Randy Moss, Michael Vick, Lawrence Taylor. These players are so gifted that the only force that can stop them is themselves. There is no such player this year.
Beneath them are usually two or three standouts whose gifts are not quite so preternatural: the Julius Peppers, Calvin Johnson, Reggie Bush, Darren McFadden class. Again, these players are capable of falling on their faces, but they are so talented that they look pretty good doing it. Michael Crabtree and Matthew Stafford are in this class. Andre Smith might also fit here. Standing beside these athletes are players with great athleticism and exceptional motivation and drive: the Ray Lewis, Peyton Manning types. Aaron Curry and Eugene Monroe fall into this category. With great work habits and top-notch skills, such players rarely go bust.
After the fifth or sixth pick, all the "can't lose" players are usually gone. What's left?
Two hundred-fifty-pound defensive end/linebackers, guys with a quick first step but raw pass rushing skills. Every draft produces about a dozen of them.
Tall wide receivers with 4.45 speed and great hands who never had to run a route tree. Again, every draft produces plenty.
Jumbo offensive tackles with good athleticism but bad footwork and exercise habits.
Cornerbacks who stand about 5-foot-10 and can outrun most wide receivers, but who know little about zone coverage or tackling and have king-sized egos.
Three-year starting defenders in Big-10 or SEC programs who are big, strong, and field smart but a step slow for the NFL.
Running backs galore, most of them around 215 pounds with good cutback ability and poor blocking skills.
And so on. All of these players can be ranked and graded, analyzed and scrutinized. One player has more experience, another played in a tougher conference. One left tackle has longer arms, another appears to have better balance. I can make a list, Mike Mayock can make his, Mel Kiper his, yours your own. The lists will be meaningless, for one simple reason:
The difference between the third and 13th best player at any position on these lists is infinitesimally small compared to the variables that will shape their growth once they reach the NFL.
When I put together draft lists, I usually follow a 1-2-3-Other rule. I study the first three to five prospects carefully, learning about their backgrounds, studying their game tape, reading about them and talking to experts. Everyone else gets a thumbnail sketch: stats, strengths, weaknesses, tidbits. I may list one prospect sixth and another 16th, but that's only for convenience, not because the sixth player is a significantly better prospect. The greatest experts in the world, be they Mayock, Kiper, or some Ravens scout on Ozzie Newsome's speed dial, may be able to discern a two percent difference between them. More likely, Mayock and Kiper are doing the best they can, and that Ravens scout is more interested in what his coaches need, and what they plan to do with their prospects, than in any two percent gradiation.
The Variables: Who is ranked fourth on your defensive tackle list? I have Evander Hood from Missouri. Who is 14th? Myron Pryor of Kentucky? Clinton McDonald of Memphis? All three of these guys are between 290 and 310 pounds, between 6-0 and 6-2. They all have pluses and minuses: Hood is the best athlete of the three and gets high marks for character, so he may be selected in the second round while Pryor and McDonald wait until the fourth or fifth.
Is Hood five percent more athletic than Pryor or McDonald? Ten percent? How do you calculate "athleticism" by percentage, anyway? Give Hood a half-step of quickness and a few pounds of strength over the others. Give him a few IQ points if you want. Those gifts will give him an edge. But these factors will have a much bigger impact on his future success than that edge:
- <LI itxtvisited="1">The workout and conditioning plan given to him by coaches in minicamp. <LI itxtvisited="1">The role he is expected to play, and his suitability that role. <LI itxtvisited="1">The skills and techniques he is taught in camp, and the reinforcement he receives in those skills. <LI itxtvisited="1">The advice and support he gets from family, agent, and teammates in the first months of his career. <LI itxtvisited="1">The quality and success of the players around him.
- Truly unpredictable factors, like dumb luck or freak injuries.
Most of these conditions are invisible or inscrutable to the mass media. We don't know what coaches teach in minicamps or how well they teach it, the exact minituae of each system and how well a given player fits it except at the most superficial level. So we focus on draft status, heights and weights, Wonderlics and scouting reports. We anoint "good drafts and bad drafts": silly articles the morning after, serious ones dissecting the drafts of four or five years ago.
If Hood plays for a decade and goes to four Pro Bowls, he was a good pick. If he rides the bench for four years, then washes out, he was a bad pick. Most likely, he was just an ordinary pick: a big guy who fills a team's need. Pryor and McDonald, in either order, will just be picks, though they could grow into superstars or private citizens. What we are really seeing isn't really scouting acumen; it's the difference between good coaches and organizations and bad coaches and organizations.
Situation Nowhere: Let's give Hood and the other tackles a rest. Let's talk about pass rushing ends; not elite specimens like Peppers or Dwight Freeney, but the garden-variety early round pick. We're going to take the same player, a 260-pound 21-year-old with 4.6 speed, excellent agility, and 30 sacks at a major conference program. Let's call him Sack Man. We'll put him in two different situations. We'll call the good situation The Steelers Program. The bad situation is called The Lions Program.
In The Lions Program, Sack Man joins a team whose coaching staff is in its third year but has had no winning seasons. They are on the hot seat, and the team has a mediocre defensive line with no other pass rush threat. Sack Man's coaches are below average by NFL standards. At minicamps, the drills aren't sharp and instructions are often confusing or contradictory. The defensive coordinator wants a point-of-attack defender, but the defensive line coach stresses finesse moves. Specific skills aren't reinforced, so Sack Man doesn't get careful instruction and correction to his footwork or pass rush technique.
Because the team is bad, Sack Man is expected to be an every-down starter from Day One. The whole playbook is thrown at him. He's expected to stop the run, blitz, stunt, and drop into coverage during zone blitzes. He learns slowly and is yelled at by the coaches. Priorities shift as coaches juggle the roster or add new plays in a desperate attempt to change their fortunes. Sack Man sometimes plays out of position or is given no-win assignments. The locker room atmosphere is negative during camp and poisonous as losses mount. Other players shrug off coaches' criticism or go through the motions during drills. Sack Man has a good work ethic, but the organizational malaise rubs off on him, and he lacks role models to show him the best way to improve himself at practice. He keeps trying, but some bad habits rub off.
Sack Man's rookie season is pretty good: six sacks, a bunch of highlights. But the team goes 6-10 again, and the coaches are replaced. The new coaches have new terminology, new roles, new procedures. The old squad wanted Sack Man to line up on the tight end's outside shoulder, twist inside, and attack the tackle between the numbers on a Texas stunt. The new coaches want him head-up on the tight end and attack the tackle-guard gap on the same play. Sack Man barely learned the basics under the old coach, and now he's trying to adjust. The new staff isn't markedly more competent than the old, and they are much less experienced. The new coach is eager to put his stamp on the roster, and Sack Man is under pressure to make a big improvement, even though his skills are still raw and he never had time to grow into his role. Suddenly, he's talked about as a disappointment, a holdover from a failed regime.
Where is Sack Man in four years? Maybe he keeps battling, rises above the turmoil, and becomes an All-Pro. More likely, he hangs around for a few years, garners a few more sacks, but starts to fade as his athleticism slips. If his work ethic sustains him, he becomes a high-motor guy with a little speed who becomes a rotation lineman. If he was drafted in the first two rounds, he's a "bust."
In the Steelers situation, Sack Man joins a team whose experienced coaching staff has run the same kind of system for years. The scouting department works hand-in-glove with the coaches, finding players with the exact skill sets needed to thrive in the system. The defensive line coach has a precise regimen he uses for new pass rushers, and Sack Man learns the basics during tightly run camps. Coaches knew they were getting a kid who needed to improve his footwork; they told the scouts that footwork wasn't a major issue for a player with Sack Man's other talents. The coaches are masters of footwork improvement, and that's what Sack Man works on most during practice.
Sack Man doesn't have to start as a rookie because the team's overall talent level is solid. Coaches can emphasize techniques instead of teaching him the entire playbook. Sack Man has time to develop. He learns to tackle by playing special teams. Coaches measure and monitor everything, including his workouts. There's no pressure to throw him into the lineup, because everyone's job is relatively secure.
Sack Man gets into some games as a situational pass rusher and notches a few sacks. In his second year, the coaches change his goals: He becomes a starter, though he still leaves the field in some packages. The new goals are clearly articulated, and practices are adjusted to prepare him for his new role. Sack Man didn't take a rookie pounding; instead, he bulked up and learned. He wasn't forced to change schemes, wasn't asked to play roles he wasn't ready for. In his second year, he records 10 sacks and makes a bunch of plays in the backfield.
Where is Sack Man in four years? A perennial Pro-Bowler, barring injury. If he was selected in the third round, he's a draft day "steal." No one wonders what might have happened to him in the Lions situation.
Variables and Possibilities: In between the Lions and the Steelers are 30 other teams, some with better coaches than others, better training staffs, better locker room cultures. Some coaching staffs can develop one type of player well but not another. Most staffs have mixed resumes, which is understandable since coaches are just a few of the thousand variables affecting player performance. Some teams have scout-to-coach communication issues, others don't. Some do a better job at player guidance and counseling than others. And so on.
No one can account for all of the variables, but we must admit that they are more important than predraft scouting reports for all but the most gifted or unusual players. In the right situation, Josh Freeman could emerge as a superstar, but if the 49ers draft him and throw him in the starting lineup, he'll flop. Michael Oher might get your quarterback killed as a Day One left tackle starter, but he could anchor the right side of your line after a year on the bench. As an in-space, Cover-2, weakside backer, Clay Matthews could play for 12 years. Make him play close to the line of scrimmage and battle tight ends on every snap, and he'll wear down immediately.
Even our FO metrics only take us so far. The Lewin Forecast is best used as a red flag, a sign that scouts grew enamored of a quarterback's size, speed, or arm, ignoring a (usually skimpy) collegiate resume. Speed Scores identify running backs who fit a mold: They can pick out the very good and weed out the very bad, but they only fill in a little detail for dozens of running backs who fall into an acceptable size-speed range.
Perhaps the best lesson learned by deep analysis is that we shouldn't analyze too deeply. Hour ten of film study won't tell us much about a fourth-round pick. The 21st scouting report on a player offers nothing that wasn't covered in the first 20. The time spent determining whether Chip Vaughn is a better safety than Patrick Chung would be better spent watching NFL game film, learning just how each team uses its safeties, determining if safety is a team's major need, and perhaps checking the coaching staff's track record in developing safeties. That kind of research can tell us if either rookie safety, or any other, is in good position to develop.
So as I assemble my scouting reports for the
New York Times draft blog, I separate big from small, slow from fast, experienced from green. I write vignettes about the prospects: pertinent stats, interesting stories, jokes about their famous uncles. I add some color from my notes and tape study. But I don't micro-analyze the players. It's a fool's errand, searching for features that aren't yet there or haven't yet developed. The marble hasn't been carved yet. All we can say for sure is that there are many very promising slabs.
