What do you mean by “deserve him”?
You’re blaming the 1-15 season, and Rod Rust’s firing on one post-game locker room event? That’s just plain silly. The Patriots didn’t lose those game because a bunch of imbeciles sexually harassed a locker room reporter.
Rust was fired for going 1-15, not for not being conscientious enough to punish the morons on his team. And Parcells didn’t quit because of Christian fucking Peters, it was because he didn’t have enough say in the draft with Terry Glenn.
Any team except Jacksonville and the Cleveland Browns.
It’s probably better to be a highly-regarded free agent, then a late round pick – you can try and find a team that has a need for your specific skills. Plus, you can stay away from the franchises in disarray with rookie coaches and pick a more stable team with a long-tenured coach that has control of his locker room.
It’s already a non-story. You can’t even find the guy’s name on ESPN’s front page. It’s all about Shaun White and Bob Costas’s bloodshot eyes.
Mathis is an Outside Linebacker. Sam is thought of to be the right size for that position but the question is if he has the speed to do it.
Quinn and Wake are slightly less in weight than the optimal DE but they have the height.
As has been said before, they consider Sam a tweener. He is somewhere in between the optimal body types for certain positions. Is it an exact science? Of course not. Atypical players become stars from time to time. But it is a higher risk to pick someone like that.
This is why being in a big school in a big conference is no guarantee for a high draft number. The NFL really doesn’t care about the game stats against college competition. They care about size, strength, speed, and athletic ability.
And I don’t think I’m the only one who takes stated heights and weights in school media guides with a grain of salt.
Most of the questions about his ability will be answered in a couple of weeks at the combine. If he shows that he has the speed to be an OLB more teams with be willing to overlook the distraction factor.
I didn’t ask you.
I found an article and a column, and on SportsIllustrated I found this.
He is in the 3-4 front Indy runs now. When he was drafted, it was as a defensive end, which is what he played until recently. There were questions about how well he would play from OLB, but the transition worked fine.
He was another value pick in the 5th round (short and on the small side out of college) but he worked out pretty well. No guarantees that happens with Sam but his height and weight aren’t automatic disqualifiers.
Wake wasn’t even drafted, for what that’s worth. His size was certainly a knock on him as well, as he weighed less than Sam for his draft, too.
The Patriots were 1-1 when the Lisa Olson harassment issue took place. They weren’t gong to win any titles, that year, but the harassment incident was front page for a while and deep-sixed any chance for a sane season. Women’s groups got involved, and then when the Patriots tanked, Olson started getting threatening letters from Neanderthal Patrs fans. She was taken off the beat and sent to a paper in Sydney, Australia and eventually sued and settled with the Pats. It was a HUGE distraction, incapable of being controlled.
While Terry Glenn was the primary issue, he actually went on to have an excellent rookie season. the Peter issue, however, sparked a much bigger distraction during the season. The Krafts and Parcells sniped at each other in public, with Parcells spouting that the Krafts didn’t seem to understand that “not all NFL players are choir boys,” and the Krafts countering that they didn’t want “hoodlums” on their team. It was played out in the media, created personal (as opposed to professional) animosity between the two parties, and prevented the two from having any chance to iron out the professional differences, which is why Parcells just bolted.
btw, Hamlet, why don’t you learn to discuss and debate the issues, instead of throwing resorting to ad hominem attacks. So far, in the course of 6 hours, you’ve accused me of trying to pass myself as an NFL expert, referred to my distraction case as 'bullshit," and called my argument “silly.”
Just because someone doesn’t agree with you doesn’t mean their arguments don’t have merit if they can back them up with facts. Grow up and learn to be a big boy.
I know they’re not the Patriots, but the Eagles went 11-5 the year after they picked up a just-out-of-prison Michael Vick.
That’s a valid example. Although Vick was “just another NFL criminal,” somehow, extreme cruelty to animals has a social implication to it. Credit to Vick for being/acting very repentant and dedicated, as well to Andy Reid.
Last summer, just about 3 weeks after Hernandez was apprehended, a friend remarked to me how smoothly the Pats were proceeding with camp, in spite of one of their top players being accused of murder. Then he added, “Thank god he didn’t kill the victim’s dog, as well.”
Sick humor, but there’s some sad truth to it. If I lived in Foxboro (both workplace and home of Hernandez), I’d be pissed at the Pats for drafting a player with a violent past, playing it down, and then giving Hernandez a pile of money to “play with.” I’d feel the same way if my alma mater had recruited kids with a violent past to play for my school’s football team. It always amazed me that there’s not more outrage about this.
I understand that what Jerry Sandusky was allowed to do by Paterno and the Penn State AD, was unspeakable, but what Tom Osbourne or Barry Switzer let transpire on their universities was also unspeakable. Why the difference in moral outrage?
I know it’s valid. That’s why I’ve mentioned Vick four different times in this thread. 
If the Eagles could deal with that - and they kept him around even though he didn’t play much at all that year - then there are teams with enough coaching and organizational strength to deal with the media coverage that comes with drafting Michael Sam.
There wasn’t a story at camp. He was arrested and released in the off season. If this was brewing and percolating while he was in camp there would be a media frenzy. But he wasn’t there. Nothing for the cameras to tape.
I’d noticed your Vick references, and while it does give credit to the Eagles and Vick, it’s not equatable to “breaking down a barrier*” because Vick had high-end reward (vs a smallish DE) and that if they did decide to cut Vick there weren’t many pro dog-fighting advocates that would raise a stink about it. (Maybe Joy Behar.) So there was always a way for the Eagles to cut their losses if the distraction became intolerable.
*(And again, I really do think it’s overblown, but it will be overblown.)
Not sure I follow… would there been much difference if it had happened in season? One week he plays, next week he’s being investigated (so he’s inactive) and the next week he’s arrested and cut from the team. I guess a little messier, but the sports debate was all about how we replace him, and then there was the legal issue, which was kept separate. Belichick would have given the same little speech, and then said he couldn’t talk about it any more because of legal issues.
Not a whole lot about, “Why did the Patriots import a dangerous individual into our neighborhood.”
And I think we’ve hit the nitpick stage. Is drafting a gay player exactly like signing Michael Vick right out of prison or keeping Ben Roethlisberger while he was going through a couple of sexual assault controversies, among many other examples? No, it’s not exactly the same. If it was exactly the same there it wouldn’t be news and there would be nothing to talk about. But I think it’s easy to show that this is broadly similar to lots of other situations that happen regularly in the NFL: risks teams decided were worth taking and controversies they handled successfully. So Sam is not necessarily going to terrify all 32 teams or cause coaches to scream “distraction!” until they turn blue. And while he’ll come with some media coverage, eventually the coverage of his identity will end and his play will become the story (if he plays enough to be a story).
Probably not a huge difference. From a football stand point it was over quickly. Not really much of a debate. He gets cut, no other choice. Then the team is out of it. Its not like he is in the locker room. If it happened in camp or during the season there would have been more media coverage because they would be there trying to get player reaction but it would be over quick. Because he was not still on the team.
As has already been noted, Mathis played the majority of his career as a 4-3 rush end.
Anyway, my real point in this thread is that any draft slotting is hugely speculative until the Combine. If he runs a 5.1, it won’t matter if he only fucks Victoria’s Secret models in the missionary position; he isn’t getting drafted.
I’ll still maintain that because there will be two sides to the Sam (or whoever) entry into the NFL world, that this one is different. Two strongly opposed sides keep it going. FoxNews vs MSNBC. One side gets to claim victory, and then rub it in. And Lord knows how the media loves a contest.
Ironically, I think the initial reaction within the locker room will be minimal, unless the team is already dysfunctional. But the media will do it’s damndest to pick at the scab.
[QUOTE=ReallyNotAllThatBright; ]
If he runs a 5.1, it won’t matter if he only fucks Victoria’s Secret models in the missionary position; he isn’t getting drafted.
[/QUOTE]
At least not by the Patriots. They already have a player that does that.
But you’re not just claiming it was a distraction, you’re claiming that somehow that distraction resulted in Rust being fired and the team going 1-15. That’s simply silly. There is absolutely no evidence that the distraction caused anything in terms of the play of the Patriots. They fired Rust because he lost 15 games because they scored only 181 points and gave up 446. They fired Rust because he lost 15 games because they scored less than 10 points in 10 different games, because they had a rotation of 3 bad QB’s, because they had a middling running game, and they turned the ball over 36 times. Blaming Rust’s firing on that incident rather than the play on the field ignores the entire game of football. That is just silly.
Yes, Parcells left because he didn’t have enough imput into player selection. But, once again, that’s not what you were trying to prove. You were trying to prove that the fourth round selection of some nogoodnik was a distraction that caused Parcells to leave. That ignores almost all of the very evidence you presented. It was because of the distraction that guy caused, it was because of a fundamental difference of the role Parcells would play. Again, you make these grand assertions without evidence, and, when called on it, you attempt to prove something unrelated.
Those “distractions” didn’t result in firings or 15 loss seasons or coaches leaving. The play on the field and the different opinions of a coach’s role did.
I don’t think you understand what an ad hominem attack is. It’s when I attack you and not your ideas. What I’ve done is attack your ideas and show them to be without basis in fact and unsupported by any evidence. That’s not an ad hominem.
That’s because the distraction case is bullshit and your argument with the example of Rust and Parcells is silly. You’re claiming some kind of causation between a “distraction” and tangible losses or coaches leaving teams, which, once again, is not only without evidentiary support, but also flies in the face of actual playing football.
Let me know when you get around to doing that, because your examples so far are less than inspiring and the counter examples of Vick (or you could add in Manti Te’o, Tebow, Rex Ryan, lockouts, owners dying, or the multitude of other distractions that don’t effect actual games.
Says the guy who wrongfully claims to be the victim of ad hominems.