Here’s Jimmy Johnson’s multi-step guide as the Dolphins begin their rebuilding

[Pappy13]

^^^^I think that is overly critical.  Nobody else saw Zach potential either otherwise he wouldn’t have been available in the 5th.  

Technically speaking it wasn't Jimmy though that even saw the talent, it was the special teams coach that recommended Zach to Jimmy. Again, people are giving Jimmy WAY too much credit for selecting a guy in the 5th round. Even Jimmy said he never expected Zach Thomas to compete for a starting spot, he was drafting him as a backup/special teams player. He turned out to be much more then that, but Jimmy didn't forsee it happening. This is out of Jimmy's own mouth. I'm not just making this shit up.

You're not really gonna tell me that you think Bill Belichick drafted Brady in the 5th round even suspecting that he would be a 1st ballot HOF player. Fuck that. He's drafting him in the 1st round if that's the case. Get real people. Now he saw something that most people didn't I'll give you that, be had no idea it would turn out like this. NONE!!!!

[Tenshot13]

It's cool, you're just a hater, lol. 

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

You're not really gonna tell me that you think Bill Belichick drafted Brady in the 5th round drafting.

Of course not.  Brady was selected in the 6th round!!!!  BB wanted to select him in the 3rd (and 4th and 5th and earlier in the 6th).  But he didn’t have final say of the draft in 2000.  And even in  the 6th the only one who really wanted him was BB.  Brady was drafted in the 6th because at this point BB was throwing a fit.  Brady turning out so good and BB being the only one on the Patriots staff or in the league to see Brady’s potential is what led Kraft to give BB full authority.

[Pappy13]

It's cool, you're just a hater, lol.  

I actually LOVE Jimmy Johnson, I just don't happen to think he's a draft guru (I don't think there is such a thing, it's all pretty much a guess albeit an educated guess). He's a FANTASTIC head coach!

[Pappy13]

Of course not.  Brady was selected in the 6th round!!!!  BB wanted to select him in the 3rd (and 4th and 5th and earlier in the 6th).  But he didn’t have final say of the draft in 2000.  And even in  the 6th the only one who really wanted him was BB.  Brady was drafted in the 6th because at this point BB was throwing a fit.  Brady turning out so good and BB being the only one on the Patriots staff or in the league to see Brady’s potential is what led Kraft to give BB full authority.

And if Brady had been selected by Miami in the 5th round, he would have been out of the league in 3 years. That's just my opinion, I could be wrong. The genius in Belichick is his coaching, not his drafting. He's actually a pretty notoriously bad draft analyst that happened to be right about Brady and a few others. He's not had a lot of success with many other draft choices.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

And if Brady had been selected by Miami in the 5th round, he would have been out of the league in 3 years.

That is possible.  Actually many in NE didn’t understand why he didn’t get cut at the end of training camp.  Close to 95% of all fans and experts would have benched Brady in favor of Bledsoe once Bledsoe was healthy mid season of 2001.  Even after the superbowl many thought the smart move was to trade Brady for as much as you could get and have Bledsoe start. 

Belichick saw something in Brady the rest of us didn’t.  And he was right. 

[Pappy13]

Belichick saw something in Brady the rest of us didn’t.  And he was right.  

With Brady he was. With the rest of his draft choices he's been mediocre at best. If you make 100 picks you're going to be right with a couple of them. That doesn't make you a draft guru, nor does it mean that you should be giving advice to others how to ensure a great draft. The best way to try to ensure a good draft is to find a good coach to teach them how to play at a high level. Bill Parcells used to complain about not being able to buy the groceries with the Giants but later when he did the buying he kinda sucked at it. Turns out he was better at just coaching up whatever he got. It works the other way too, there have been a lot of perfectly good draft choices that have been squandered by the wrong coaches that we label as draft busts. Funny how we never really seem to blame the coaches for those disasters UNLESS they go play for another coach and suddenly turn into a star. Then we say the draft gurus were right, but it just took a little longer for them to be right. Whatever.

I get it, it's not a popular opinion, but that's mostly because the human brain is built to see patterns in things where there really isn't one. You've heard of optical illusions right? Draft guru's are an optical illusion in my opinion. The reality is there are great coaches that make the draft gurus look good and there are also terrible coaches that make scouts look bad.

It's more about what the draft pick and coaches make of the opportunity rather than the pick itself. We all like to rate teams draft picks right after the draft and then we go back and rate them a few years later and rarely do they match up much, because it's impossible to predict someone's future, you can only really look at someone's past to see how it turned out. For a few guys the expectation matches up with reality but for the vast majority, not so much.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

I think you would agree BB’s team building (draft, trade, & FA) has been sufficient to win multiple super bowls

BB considers the draft to be some what of a crap shoot.  One reason he trades down is he believes he has a better shot at getting one good player with a second and third round pick, than he does with a single first round pick.

He also was more confident that sending a second round pick to Miami for Wes Welker and a fourth to Oakland for Randy Moss would yield him solid wideouts than using those pick to draft wide receivers. 

Also how you judge a draft has a lot to do with how he is scored.  Coach A drafts a superbowl MVP in round 1 and in round 7 a guy that is a marginal special teamer.  Coach B drafts in round 1 a marginal special teamer and in round 7 a super bowl MVP.  Some folks would give coach A an A and coach B an F.  I give them the same grade.  Two picks, two players of equal strength.  BB has had his busts, but he has also scored a SB MVP in the 7th.

Kinda had to day he is mediocre in drafting a team when he has won 3 of the last 5 superbowls.  All with players he either drafted, traded for, or signed in FA.  First three SB weren’t all his players, but the most recent ones are.

[Pappy13]

I think you would agree BB’s team building (draft, trade, & FA) has been sufficient to win multiple super bowls.

Not exactly. I would say that EVERYTHING that BB does has been sufficient to win multiple super bowls. That would be team building, coaching, game planning, scouting, game tape analysis, roster decisions (which is a LOT more than who to draft and/or trade, it's who to start, who to bring off the bench and when), play calling, game time decisions, etc, etc, etc. There's a TON of things that go into getting a team to the Superbowl. In my opinion what the coach does in ALL of those things plays a LARGE part into the team making the superbowl or not. To simply put it on just building the roster and even more limited to JUST draft day decisions is incredibly unfair to what a coach does outside of that.

Kinda had to day he is mediocre in drafting a team when he has won 3 of the last 5 superbowls.  All with players he either drafted, traded for, or signed in FA.  First three SB weren’t all his players, but the most recent ones are.

Once you start thinking about everything a coach does, you realize that the draft is small potatoes in the big scheme of things. Sure's it's a part, but it's not the largest part, I'm not even sure if it's a large part. You can draft rather poorly and make up for it everywhere else. In my opinion BB has proven that. He's a LOT better at studying a player once they have reached the NFL and are playing in the NFL to determine what his strengths and weaknesses are then doing that in the draft based on college game tape which can be deceiving. In my opinion he does a LOT better on the free agency side of things then in the draft because he's got NFL game tape on that player.

Don't mistake me for saying that BB is not a good evaluator of talent, he is. I'm saying he might not be that great at evaluating how college talent, players will necessarily translate to the NFL level. It's not all about talent, a lot of it is desire, maturity, intelligence etc etc etc which can be hard to judge at the college level because it's not NFL level. It's easier to judge that once you have NFL game tape on a guy. Some guys can get away on talent alone in college, it's tougher to do that in the NFL and you don't always know what that will be like once they are in the NFL.

The draft is a crapshoot, but I never said that FA and trades were a crapshoot. It's mostly what happens before and after the draft which makes the difference. That's just my opinion, I could be wrong.