Ole Miss MLB Patrick Willis

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by Sheriff Gonna Getcha

I hadn't heard anything bad about his Senior Bowl practice performances.

Plus, I don't care how well they fare in a few practices, 1 game that is all out of wack, or at the combine. Players seem to plummet or ascend based on silly things (e.g., Wonderlic, 40 time) when scouts should be looking at their performances throughout their college careers.

Agreed. Scouts with all their experience do really questionable things sometimes. Of course, on the other side of the coin you have Pete Prisco, who makes one draft-eligible player rankings list in March and refuses to adjust it no matter what new information flys his way.

Obviously, the best way to "solve the mystery of the draft" lies somewhere in the middle. I believe there is something to be learned from all the pre draft analysis scouts do, but ultimately when you have 3 sometimes 4 entire seasons of film and statistics on each player, its tough to completely discredit what a guy has done over that much time in actual football situations.

Although I have to say that theres a good deal of experienced scouts out there who probably don't know as much as their teams think they do. Maybe they just never learned what qualities in a college player transfer well to the pros. More accurately, I think a lot of scouts refuse to learn from their mistakes. But for many teams, the draft is still a 50-50 proposition, and to me that ultimately represents poor player evalulation.

Still, scouts in general are improving. The last time a 1st round QB busted was Kyle Boller in 2003. Granted the jury is still out on the 2005 and 2006 guys, but theres no reason to believe any of those QBs can't be the starter on their own team for the next few seasons at least and do a solid job (Theres the Leftwich situation, but he's not a bad QB as much as Jacksonville just has no idea that Garrard isn't really that good). QB's, in theroy, should be the position that busts the least as scouts have more college tape on them then any other position, and it appears the trend is moving that way.