IntheBullseye.com - Good Column for Draft Week

As draft fever reaches a crescendo, I positively love the most recent Walkthrough column by Mike Tanier over at Football Outsiders. The opening draft parody is decent, entertaining in spurts but a bit overlong. What I really loved, was the section of his column entitled "The Developmental Secret."

With all the instant analysis of who got the steals and busts of draft day (which I naturally indulge in myself), Tanier brings up a point that is almost sacrilege in this holy week, that the best picks often become so because of how well they're developed after the draft by coaching and other variables. A few excerpts:

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The Developmental Secret

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.

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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.

And, for me, the highlight of the article, the tale of Sack Man:

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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.

Hard as it is to believe, these were only some of my favorite points in this column. I strongly urge anyone with a draft day fever to pop over and read the rest. Interesting concepts to ponder come draft day. Would also go a little ways towards explaining why Charley Casserly's final draft in Houston produced more successful players than all of his others combined.