Doze Through Draft Night, Then Thank Bill Belichick for a Good Night’s Sleep
One August day sometime in the next decade or so, Bill Belichick will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. To my mind, the inscription under his bust in the Hall could be limited to a single sentence.
“This guy was such a good coach Patriots fans could ignore the NFL draft for more than a decade.’’
Belichick is often caricatured as a sourpuss who strives to take the fun out of football. He surely has removed any fun and excitement from the draft in these parts, and he ought to have every Patriots follower’s profound gratitude for doing so. Getting heavily into the draft is for fans of teams which provide little fun or excitement on autumn Sundays. Not having to care too much about it is a luxury. Paying no attention at all is a perk reserved for fans lucky enough to root for a dynasty.
The draft has become one of the NFL’s biggest events for the same reason fantasy football is a zillion-dollar business. Fans have strong opinions on how good individual players are and love arguing about it. The draft gives them two opportunities to vent. Before the draft, they can argue about which players their team should select. Afterwards, they can argue about which players did get picked. It’s win-win for pointless controversy.
Belichick’s draft methodology deflates the hot take balloon to much lower pressure than 12 pounds per square inch. Arguing about which player the Patriots will pick first is futile. There are too many variables. New England has the 32nd and last pick in the first round this year. Their selection is thus largely dependent on the 31 who go before. Assume there’s a wish list of about five or six players Belichick thinks might be available and desirable at that spot. If that’s as close as the coach can come in forecasting, why should the rest of us bother?
As for arguing about who the Patriots do select, that’s even more pointless. Because New England is a dynastic power, its first pick is always a late one. Jerod Mayo in 2008 was the Patriots only choice in the top 10 from the 2002 through 2014. They have traded their first round pick away on several occasions, meaning fans could stay up late come April 30 for no reason at all.
We know the drill by now. If the Patriots do use the pick, it’ll be on a player whose name will be recognized only those weird souls who make the draft their sports avocation, unless he picks one of Nick Saban’s kids from Alabama. Boston is not exactly a college football hotbed. The average member of the general sports public (including me) would be hard-pressed to name a dozen college players two days after they crown the national champion. Pre and post-draft player arguments are based on hearsay evidence obtained by exposure to the massive NFL draft hype industry.
Oddly enough, one person who relies on hearsay evidence for the draft is Belichick himself. The Patriots’ mastermind places a great deal of value on player recommendations by college coaches whom he trusts. Based on New England’s drafting since 2008, Rutgers and UConn won many more games than they actually did.
There’s hearsay, and then there’s hearsay. Belichick’s sources are better than, say, Todd McShay’s. That means they’re better than yours, too. The odds the player selected by the Patriots will turn out to be a better than decent pro are as good or better as they are for any of the other late first round picks.
Those odds get better still with Belichick’s picks in the draft’s later rounds, when there’s even less chance fans will have heard of the players in question. I don’t think even the most besotted Patriots fan was familiar with Stephen Gostowski’s work when he was selected in the fourth round in 2005. Speaking only for myself, I have never seen a Memphis football game and never will.
Belichick has had bad drafts. Everyone who’s ever been in charge of a draft has had at least one. Bad draft picks and entire bad drafts are inevitable because the draft is hard. The worst picks imaginable, like Ryan Leaf, were the product of countless hours of work by men who know more about football than you or I ever will. The best picks imaginable, like Tom Brady or Joe Montana, were the result of just as much work, plus the luck of the draw in a game where 31 other teams are drawing, too.
No one will ever outwork Belichick at any aspect of football, which is why he looks so much more tired each season. I worried he couldn’t lift the Lombardi Trophy after Super Bowl XLIX. It’s praise, not insult, to note he’s had his share and then some of football’s funny bounces as well. One of the true joys of rooting for a champ is that the percentages work for you and not the house. Why waste energy better spent worrying about Clay Buchholz or the ice damage to the azaleas in the front yard second-guessing Belichick’s work until the picks show up as real live football players this summer?
I’m not saying “In Bill We Trust.’’ I’m arguing “Let Bill Do All the Work.’’ For him, the draft is a vital exercise in team building. He’s built the team so well he’s turned the draft into a very dull parlor game for everyone else in New England. It’s one of his most magnificent and fan-friendly accomplishments.
In the 1970s and early ‘80s, the draft was very exciting for Patriots fans. Too exciting. It was their only chance to dream of better, winning tomorrows. In that time, the franchise had the number one pick four times. The draft had to be fun and exciting, because none was supplied on autumn Sundays.
Consider the franchise for which the 2015 draft is of the most urgent interests to its fans, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. No shortage of debate topics for them, poor devils. Jameis Winston? Marcus Mariota? Trade down? No worries, the wrong answer will only wreck the team for another decade or so. That’s the kind of argument fans can do without, thanks.
The draft should be boring. In the final analysis, it’s men in suits reading names of a list. It’s an important list for NFL teams, and fans should know who’s on theirs, but that doesn’t mean they should do anything more than read it. What’s the internet for if not lists? The NFL draft is an enormous time sink at a time when the world of sports offers more than enough real games to fill up anyone calendar, playoff games included.
Come April 30, Patriots fans can treat themselves to the following pleasant evening. They can tune into the first hour of the draft if they choose to see how the Winston-Mariota issue plays out and to get a good laugh from whatever Washington does. Then their time is their own. They can change the channel to the Red Sox or, hopefully, to the Celtics. They can read a book, or just go to bed early and read about some guard from parts unknown the next day.
I expect to read about another humdrum Patriots draft. Since 2000, they’ve had good drafts and not-so-good, but they’ve never had one that could be called exciting.
Evidence suggests another dull Patriots April could result in another most interesting January.
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