The Draft and Reconsidering RR's past two years
I know I am preaching to the choir here, but this has been bugging me for a couple of days.
One of the common memes floated about by the media (and perpetuated by some former players - looking at you, Armani Toomer) in relation to RR's tenure at Michigan is that he somehow "wasted" a ton of talent by drastically altering the team's offensive and defensive philosophies. Two years ago, it was that RR failed to harness a dominant defense, led by the likes of Terrence Taylor and Brandon Graham, and that he scared away great players like Mallet and Boren. Last year, it was that his run-first approach failed to utilize some good WRs and that he somehow couldn't produce a consistent run game against the upper echelon teams in the Big 10.
But over the past two drafts, it is noticeable the drop off in both the quality and the quantity of UM players being taken. Last year, Taylor (4th rd.) and Morgan Trent (6th) were the only Wolverines taken, while this year Graham (1st) and Zoltan (5th) were the only headliners, with the Raiders taking a flyer on Stevie (7th) toward the end.
By comparison, UM had 6 players taken in 2008 and 7 taken in 2007. And I will concede that both Mallet and Boren will probably be drafted rather high in the coming years, but the fact remains that those last few Carr classes clearly did not produce the type of talent that UM fans grew accustomed to. UM was a veritable NFL factory during most of Carr's tenure, but toward the end you could tell the recruiting started to struggle on the field, and now we are starting to see that paucity at the NFL darft.
Now, I know that guys like Donovan Warren and Brandon Minor are good players who probably would have been drafted had they not battled injuries this year and in the offseason, but the fact remains that RR had a total of 5 NFL-draftable players on his roster the last two years. And these guys were recruited for the pro-style offenses and defenses that most pro teams also implement, so they presumably did not have any of the physical or system-based "deficiencies" that RR's teams are accused of having. They simply were not as good as we thought based on their hype coming to UM, and that means maybe we need to reevaluate how RR utilized them during their time with the team.
Maybe Donovan Warren wasn't the next coming of Charles Woodson and Leon Hall, but a decent cover-corner without great recovery speed who could be worked over by the better receivers. For all his speed, maybe Carlos Brown was just a RB with track speed who couldn't run through contact consistently and who may best be suited for return duty and the occassional swing pass. I love Brandon Minor, but he battled injuries his entire tenure, and his upright running style is the type that leads to short careers.
Now, this doesn't mean UM was bereft of talent, and RR deserves some blame for failing to take either of these teams at least to a bowl game. Yes, Zoltan was probbaly going to be drafted irrespective of what RR did, as was Graham and Taylor. But after his first two years I would never have pegged Graham as a top-15 pick, and it was under RR's tenure that Stevie "Damnit!" Brown became Stevie "Hey, nice play" Brown.
So I guess my point is that while the last two years have certainly hurt as a fan, I am strangely comforted by the fact that these were not immensely talented teams that RR screwed up; they were mediocre teams that were in transition and suffering from overrated recruiting classes, significant attrition, and a coaching staff in flux. That doesn't take away the disappointment from the last few years, but it also points out some of the foundational problems this team suffered from.
themselves when it comes to the talent level RR was given to work with. No doubt he could have done a little better with that talent, but no one was going to win 8-9 games with the roster RR had to work with.
Confirmation bias works well for them. However, let's not delude ourselves--RR supporters--such that we believe there isn't worthwhile data out there to suggest against our support of our coach. We, too, pick and choose from the data sets before us so as to conclude our coach deserves to stay/will succeed.
Let's just hope we are less 'confirmation biased' than Rosenberg, Sharp, and their gang of misfits.
Hearing Pete Carroll preach about creating quality competition at every position always reminds me of RR's mantra.
...that I'd rather see UM football win and become dominant again than care about how many UM players get drafted into the NFL. ~3% of all college players get drafted. Of those who get drafted, many end up not panning out. This is the year that RR has to show that his plan is working. Next year the team has to be up and running on all 8 cylinders and kick everyone's butt on the field. No excuses.
The 3% number is across all of college football. If you want to compete at an elite level you have to have/produce players that are NFL caliber. Teams like USC, OU, Texas, Alabama, Florida, OSU, Iowa and Penn State have all produced double digit draft picks the last two years. Assuming they had roughly 40 players whose eligibility expired over those two seasons, the rate is over 25% for teams that compete at the highest levels nationally.
With respect to elite level talent (NFL draft picks), UM has been on par with teams like Indiana and Illinois the last two years while at the same time operating with ten unused scholarships last season and being the youngest team in the conference. Teams don't just overcome that stuff.
That being said, I think the team will be markedly better this year and blowing people away by 2011.
I remember Colin Cowherd talking about lack of Michigan players being drafted a couple of years before LC retired. Here's an article that goes a little in detail about it.
http://www.toledoblade.com/article/20100422/SPORTS17/4220388
I would agree that wins are far more important than having players be drafted into the NFL. However, the other side of the argument is that all of these college players have dreams of someday going to the NFL, and if it looks like our style of play is one that doesn't produce NFL players it will hurt us in recruiting. And then with less big name recruits you typically get less wins.
I don't necessarily subscribe to this idea, but I'm just putting it out there.
I'm sorry, doesn't Florida run the spread? How many of their players got drafted. Even their spread QB was drafted in the 1st round (which has to be encouraging for Devin).
The math is simple, be a nationally relevant program (meaning relevant to the NC ratings and BCS Bowls), and your players get more interest. Our players suffered in the draft in the down years. (Chad had no business being drafted behind Flacco, and you could argue Matt Ryan, but even though he picked Florida apart, he did loose to App State.) Worse, the more we get beat by OSU, the more their players will get drafted, and ours won't.
The logic is this: UofM just isn't winning: it must be the talent. (The same one we use to explain the horrible seasons we've had.)
So conversely, even with Rich's spread, if we win, and get back into BCS bowl contention, our seniors will get the nod. (Just like Florida's did.)
Also, you cannot use WVU as a proxy here. As this gets going Rich should be able to recruit at a higher level at UofM than he could at WVU.
If we had won 8 games instead of 6, Warren and maybe Minor had much higher odds of being drafted. Of course Warren had higher odds if he had stayed another year ...
3% overall may be true, but here are some draft numbers for the top teams this year:
Oklahoma - 7/10 players drafted
Texas - 6/7 players drafted
Florida - 9/10 players drafted
Alabama - 7/11 players drafted
TCU - 3/5 players drafted
PSU - 6/7 players drafted
USC - 7/11 players drafted
UM - 3/6 players drafted
So not only do the elite teams send a higher percentage of their kids to the pros, but they also send a higher total. UM had the same number of kids drafted as TCU and only one more that Syracuse. That shows me that while UM has been really young the past few years, in part that is due to the degradation in recruiting during Carr's last few years.
Each of those teams had more players than that leave the program. Are those the numbers from the ESPN draft tracker?
edit: According to the 2010 recruiting board, about 15 players left/didn't get a 5th year of eligibility.
But outside of Mallet and Boren, I'm not sure that anyone else who left was going to be a first-4 round draft pick going forward. And my point with noting these discrepancies is that while UM is trying to put together a patchwork secondary and LB core with converted FBs, walk-ons, and 3*, elite teams are just reloaidng with more top-level talent. My greater point, and one that I should have pointed out in the post, is that these past few teams have lacked the type of depth and consistent performers we came to expect from UM. Whether you measure that in wins, depth chart, or draft picks, it is hard to argue that the cupboards were stocked when RR took over.
My point is that you overemphasized your point by radically changing the percentage of drafted players relative to the number of departing players for several teams. Not trying to be mean, but its really inaccurate to say that 9 out of 10 Florida players were drafted. Many more than ten left the program/graduated.
FWIW, I didn't include Mallett or Boren, I only included non-renewed fifth year seniors and graduates.
The negative implications really become clear when you look at the draft performance over time and consider that we only produced two late round picks last year as well. Throw in the fact that there aren't a lot of NFL prospects in this year's senior class (looks like four at the most to me) and it becomes very clear why the 2008 team was so bad. In addition to facing the season-killing decision of freshman or walk-on at QB, the sophomore, junior, and senior classes on that team are going to produce fewer draft picks than USC produced in 2008 alone.
I don't think you can say with any certainty that Rodriguez only had a few draftable players. The truth is, Michigan was an NFL factory under Carr. We had one of the top 3 or 4 most players in the NFL. You don't know how things would have played out if Carr were still here.
- In a pro-style offense, Mathews might have been at least a 6th or 7th round pick.
- If he had been able to keep his head on straight, Carson Butler might have been drafted late.
- Under a different DB coach's tutelage, Warren might have been an NFL draft pick.
- With Michigan's history of producing backs, Minor and/or Brown might have been drafted; I don't know that Carr had a single feature back (starter) who went undrafted, if you go back through the likes of Biakabutuka, Thomas, Perry, Hart, etc.
- The two guys you mentioned (Boren and Mallett) might have been drafted.
- Furthermore, guys like Mark Ortmann and David Moosman might be deemed more NFL-ready if they had played in a pro-style offense rather than the spread.
Anyway, I'm not saying you're absolutely wrong. But I think it's erroneous to think that because of the last two drafts, Rodriguez's Michigan teams were simply devoid of talent.
i was writing the exact same thing but this is much more coherent argument than i could have made
I don't know why you speculate about what might have happened if Carr was still coaching the team when he is the one who decided to stop coaching the team.
As far as the guys you mentioned, I don't see how different coaching turns any of them into NFL picks. No coach could have made Donovan Warren able to run fast. No coach could have prevented Minor from being injured constantly the last two years (the only reason, IMO, that he wasn't picked). Carr showed no signs that he could give Carlos Brown the ability to stay on his feet when breathed on. Carson Butler did very little on the field in three years under Carr and he acted like a knucklehead under his tutelage. Boren (probably) and Mallett (certainly) will get drafted but they were both gone before Rodriguez coached a single game (and Mallett was gone before spring practice).
These teams weren't devoid of talent, but they had no more top-end talent than the middle/bottom teams in the Big 10 in addition to being extremely young and missing scholarship players on the roster to add depth.
April 25th, 2010 at 10:07 PM ^
Well, the OP was commenting on Carr's last few recruiting classes being somewhat short on talent. Those players were recruited by Carr to play in a Carr system. It's only natural to think that those players likely would have developed better in that type of system.
It's irrelevant that Carr retired. We're discussing the talent that he brought in prior to leaving.
April 25th, 2010 at 11:11 PM ^
RR inherited a fair amount of "top end talent" when he was named head coach.
Offense
Ryan Mallett Sophomore 5 Star
Justin Boren Junior 5 Star
Steve Schilling RS Sophomore 5 Star
Dave Molk RS Freshman 4 Star
Brandon Minor Junior 4 Star
Carlos Brown Junior 4 Star
Defense
Brandon Graham Junior 5 Star
Jonas Mouton Sophomore 5 Star
Donovan Warren Sophmore 5 Star
Terrence Taylor Senior 4 Star
Tim Jamison Senior 4 Star
Stevie Brown Junior 4 Star
I just named a half dozen players on both sides of the ball that were 4 Star or better coming out of high school. That would probably be considered "top end talent" and they all had at least one year of the program.
I don't have the numbers to back it up but I'm pretty sure that the middle/bottom teams in the Big Ten could not put this much talent on the field. Do NW, Purdue, Indiana, Illinois or Minnesota even have 5 Star players (let alone six of them at once)?
There's no question that Michigan had more recruited talent on the roster than most other Big Ten teams when RR took the reins. Of course several situations arose (Mallett and Boren left the program, no depth at LB and safety...) that have impacted the team.
We've all lived through the 3-9 and 5-7 seasons so it's time to look forward to better times ahead.
You're right about all of that. However, the real issue isn't necessarily the NFL draft picks. Michigan had three players drafted--and I'm still surprised no one took a flier on Warren.
The real issue is the shocking lack of depth the past two years. Both Rodriguez and Carr have shown that they can shape quality teams, but it's clear that several things happened the past two seasons that caused things to go horribly wrong.
If I remember right, Michigan had a starting backfield with Nick Sheridan, Sam McGuffie, and Martavious Odoms against Notre Dame in 2008, which is shocking considering the recruiting class rankings from the previous few seasons. This year, Michigan was down below 70 scholarship players and starting multiple walk-ons on defense.
The high end talent was and is still there, but that talent is one deep at best, and is still extremely young. That's where the failure was in player development was, not on the high end. Even last season, it seemed like the defense was okay (not great) until they got tired--when no one was available to substitute.
April 25th, 2010 at 10:12 PM ^
I agree with most of what you said, except the point about Sheridan, Odoms, and McGuffie. I don't see how that's relevant.
The QB position wasn't lacking when Carr left. He had Mallett (whether he would have transferred or not is a different argument), Threet, and Cone there, with John Wienke incoming.
The RB position included Minor (who was better than McGuffie), Brown, and Grady, with McGuffie and Cox coming in.
And the slot receiver position didn't exist under Carr. It's not the previous regime's fault that there wasn't a player on the roster to play slot receiver.
I don't disagree, and as I pointed out some of these guys might have turned into draftable players under a different regime. But at the same time, who in the secondary and the LB core outside of Warren really seemed like a lock to play in the NFL? Stevie Brown would probably have never been drafted had he not had a nice senior year with the shift to LB, as he was a mismatch at safety and I'm not sure a team would have considered taking a chance with him at LB in the pros.
And I agree that guys like Brown and Minor might have been drafted under Carr's regime if they had been slotted as the feature back, but with their injuries and inconsistencies, it is just as likely they would have been buried on the depth chart by some younger player.
I know, this is all hypothetical arguments, but the past two years have not been bountiful in terms of UM draft picks, and I do not think the change in coaching staff can be creditted/blamed for all of that. But I agree that looking just at the draft numbers alone for proof of this team's low talent is wrong, but it does help to validate the sentiment that people have pointed out before.
April 25th, 2010 at 10:21 PM ^
I don't know that anyone is a "lock" to be an NFL player when he's a freshman or sophomore in college.
"it does help to validate the sentiment that people have pointed out before."
That's my point - I don't think it does "validate" that sentiment. The number of scholarship players we had last year (70) helps to validate that point, but the "lack of NFL draft picks" does not. Carr's recruiting classes proved over and over again to be full of talent.
These hypothetical situations don't match up to over a decade of high draft picks and NFL stars. I don't know whether it's Rodriguez's or Carr's fault that there have been so few draft picks, but this isn't evidence of anything. It's just one of things that happens sometimes.
Right but it also seriously puts a giant flaw in the "look what team X is doing with those 3 stars" argument, this is Michigan we have 5 stars. Iowa had 5 players drafted in the first 4 rounds. But no one wants to admit Iowa had way better players than Michigan did this past year. Donovan Warren Michigan's 2nd best player (we thought) doesn't get drafted while Amari Spievey is taken in the 3rd round.
I don't care who developed Donovan Warren if you run 4.6- 4.7 40 as a CB you will not get drafted, period.
April 25th, 2010 at 10:26 PM ^
"I don't care who developed Donovan Warren if you run 4.6- 4.7 40 as a CB you will not get drafted, period."
But this isn't as cut-and-dried as you're trying to make it. If a different defensive philosophy were employed, Warren might have picked off 7 passes this past year and returned 3 for touchdowns. NFL general managers would take a chance with a slow corner who picks off 7 passes in the Big Ten. Or he might not have left early and he would be part of the 2011 draft class.
Now, I realize that 7 interceptions is a lot, and I'm not saying that WOULD have happened. But you can't just point to his 40 time and say he wouldn't have been drafted. There are other factors involved.
April 25th, 2010 at 11:15 PM ^
Sadly, the reason that Iowa has better players is because the rivals/scout star rating system you guys quote as god given truth is arbitrary at best. We see it all the time, guys is a 2 star recruit, then signs on to a major team, and boom, all of a sudden he is a 4 star recruit, when the same damn player would have been branded a 2 star at some minor school. Look at TCU, look at Cincinnati, look at Boise State. These are all schools who don't crack the top 50 in recruiting, but regardless of the quality of their conferences, they have been kicking ass. At some point we need to understand that Rivals and Scout are a business, driven by advertising dollars, and they have an incentive to overemphasize the players going to the bigger schools, who have more fans.
There are articles from Brian and linked articles elsewhere on this site that show that your point is common yet uneducated, and I mean no disrespect. Recruiting rankings are just one measure of worth to be sure, and cannot be relied upon solely in evaluating a prospect, but they are important, and in fact proved factually to be important indicators of future talent.
Obviously this all ends up as speculation. The one guy I think really did end up on the wrong end of all of this is Mathews. He showed every sign of becoming a solid possession receiver in his first two seasons and was ready to become a featured part of the attack in his junior and senior season. Again, speculation, but he was on the track to being a mid round pick until he spent two years paired up with QBs that couldn't get him the ball and a system that didn't showcase his talent.
If Mathews possessed high-round talent, he'd have been picked there. You don't have to put up great numbers to be a high draft pick. Yeah, he did okay in 2007, but he also benefitted from being the #3 receiver and never seeing a double-team or even the opponent's top corner.
"You don't have to put up great numbers to be a high draft pick."
Even if this were true (and I'm not sure that it is), good numbers certainly help. Obviously, you're going to get the physical freaks who run sub-4.4 forties and who can jump 40" in the air who are going to get a boost in their draft stock. But there are plenty of mildly athletic receivers who get drafted pretty high for their college production. In Mathews's case, it's not entirely his fault that he didn't get the numbers necessary to be one of those guys.
For some perspective, virtually every #1 wide receiver for Michigan has been drafted since the early '90s. Howard, Alexander, Hayes, Toomer, Streets, Terrell, Edwards, Avant, Manningham (not sure if I missed one or two in there or not). The average draft round for those 9 guys was 2.7.
Judging from history, Mathews would have been (on average) a 3rd round pick. I know that's a hypothetical, but it lends some perspective to how talented Michigan's wide receivers normally have been.
April 26th, 2010 at 10:36 PM ^
In theory, Mathews:Clemons as Arrington:Manningham. Mathews was never in the same category as the super freaky awesome WRs you listed above. He just didn't [doesn't] have the speed those guys did.
I admit he isn't a great athlete, but he has better hands than some of them. And he's probably faster than Avant, who was a 4th rounder.
Honestly i hate watching the NFL draft because as a fan it shows you all the talent your team lost. In the 2008 NFL draft our entire offense was drafted including Hart, Henne, Long, Mannigham, Arrington. These players were all amazing and now in the NFL three of them are shining and Hart actually played in the Super Bowl this year!! The problem is that it also shows you the sad career that these guys had together for 3-4 years. They had many great wins and a great end in the Capital one bowl but this team should have performed at a much higher level. With Rodriguez we havent had that many players drafted but thats not a bad thing. I dont understand why idoits comment on that when they know michigan has started so many freshman and sophomores that they cant get drafted!!! Now its true, maybe in a pro-offense Mathews, minor and others might have excelled a little better but that doesnt mean more wins. I still think the cupboard was bare when Rodriguez took over even with Mallet and in two years Michigan will be back at sending talent to the NFL draft!!!
To my mind, the lack of draftable players the last couple of years, the fact that next year I don't see anyone other than Schilling getting drafted (barring a breakout season from Mouton), and most importantly, Misopogon's excellent work last year showing the lack of depth and simple lack of players, simply proves the point that talent and experience were a major, and perhaps the major, issue with this team. I haven't seen a fact based rebuttal to the point her or elsewhere, except for the fatuous "Michigan always has talent" crowd.
April 25th, 2010 at 10:29 PM ^
How can you have a "fact based rebuttal" to a hypothetical situation?
If Michigan had a different coach, it's possible that different/more/fewer players would have been drafted. You don't know. I don't know, either.
April 26th, 2010 at 12:31 AM ^
Hasn't the argument always been that if you have talent, you will play in the NFL? I would think that if you are talented enough to play in the NFL, you are talented enough whether you play for RichRod or if you play for Lloyd.
which is hypothetical and worth discussing, I was speaking to support the OP. IME the numbers simply prove the point that talent and depth were the issue for us.
Because RR runs a spread option, fewer M players will be drafted. That doesn't mean we will be bad. WVU was great when they had White and Slaton. I don't know how many others were drafted from that team, but I don't think it was a lot. I'd rather win 10-11 games a year and have 1-2 players drafted than go 8-4 and have 5 drafted.
Florida runs a very similar offense and has produced a ton of NFL picks the last few years. Tim Tebow and Pat White were drafted higher than Jimmy Clausen. The offensive system is not what is preventing UM players from being drafted.
I hear this all the time, but the idea that RR's offense is going to severely limit the draft capabilities of players at most positions just seems wrong to me. The reason he didn't have that many players drafted while at WVU has more to do, I think, with the type of players he was recruiting (limited in part by WVU's lack of pull with top-name kids until the last few years) than the offense. RBs still have to be able to run past guys in RR's offense, offensive line guys still have to be able to run block effectively, and WRs still need to be able to make catches and block for RBs, traits that all NFL teams are looking for. One of the interesting questions surrounding RR when he began coaching at UM was what would happen when his offense was finally stocked with top-shelf talent. The sentiment I gathered was that while UM might not maintain its WR factory is had going under Carr and QBs might take a short-term hit, most other positions would be largely unaffected.
Denard Robinson and Devin Gardener certainly could be draft picks under this offense, and hearing the names of Roundtree, Hemingway, Lewan, Roh, and Omameh on draft day (even if later in the draft) wouldn't surprise me.
So because only 5 players were drafted the last 2 years, it shows that RR inherited a team that was "not immensely talented". You're basically saying its the players' faults they weren't good enough to be drafted. To say that with any certainty would mean that RR got every player the past 2 seasons to play up to their full potential.
I have a very hard time agreeing that RR got everything out of those players,
But no coach can ever expect that type of 100% efficiency, but at the same time do you honestly believe that RR personally limited the draft status of guys like Carlos Brown and Brandon Minor? He only tried to make both of them feature backs in the offense, and both suffered through injuries and inconsistencies for the past two years. Now maybe Warren would have been drafted if the defensive coordinators did not switch over every year, but I doubt that any coach could have made him faster or given him better instincts. I think we presume that everyone who plays at UM should be drafted because UM has been a great football program for decades, but it is undeniable that toward the end of the Carr era recruiting was not where it needed to be to sustain the type of excellence we have come to expect from this program.
Can you provide an example of a player who wasn't drafted because the coaching staff failed to get everything out of them? I really can't. Every potential draftee that Magnus mentioned had serious physical limitations that caused them not to get picked. On the flip side, a player like Brandon Graham appears to have reached his full potential becoming a dominant player and a high first round draft pick. Stevie Brown would not have sniffed the NFL draft if it hadn't been for a senior season position switch orchestrated by Rodriguez's staff.
And just to be like that, he did get enough out of those players to beat a much more talented/experienced Notre Dame team this year.
Off the top of my head it has to be Carson Butler, doghouse or no doghouse with Carr he averaged 20 receptions a year, in 06 and 07 for over 400 yards. In 2008 he had 2 for 17 yards and then leaves early for the draft, obviously unhappy with his situation. There is no way his potential was met, he continues his production and very likely would have been drafted in 2009 somewhere and if he had stuck around for the 2009 season I am almost positive he would have been drafted in 2010 looking at production alone.
I wouldn't really use a Raider's draft pick as proof of much more than the players speed. They're borderline senile with draft picks 9 times out of 10.
While Butler certainly had talent and is I think still on an NFL roster, he definitely didn't set the world on fire under Carr. Less than two catches a game for less than twenty yards a game isn't terribly impressive. He also had serious disciplinary issues (e.g. violently assaulting fellow students). While he obviously has the talent to play in the NFL, his numbers under the prior staff weren't going to attract NFL scouts while his behavior problems and the inability of Threet/Sheridan to get the ball to any receiver don't fall on Rodriguez's shoulders in my view.
That being said, if the end result is failing to get Carson Butler drafted in one year of coaching while turning Graham into a first rounder and turning Stevie Brown from whipping-boy to NFL player, I don't see many coaches who would have done better.
EDIT/UPDATE: It also isn't like Butler has impressed anybody in the pros, jumping around to 5 different teams in one year.
I don't disagree, that off the field stuff would definitely turn NFL scouts and coaches off and obviously has with the update you added. At 20 receptions and 200 yards a game he would have been UM's #3 WR in 2008.
I do agree its not as cut and dry as I thought originally, based on these responses but I can't go as far as the OP's opinion.
because ya know we didn't have a quarterback.. or a line... Just sayin... (and it's not like Carson could block..)
April 25th, 2010 at 10:07 PM ^
all I have to say to that is "Thank God!"
April 25th, 2010 at 10:34 PM ^
"Every potential draftee that Magnus mentioned had serious physical limitations that caused them not to get picked."
You don't know that. Was Jason Avant really THAT much better of an athlete than Greg Mathews? Probably not. Avant was still drafted. Ortmann and Moosman don't necessarily have physical limitations; perhaps they're just not athletic enough to block in a zone read option scheme. Butler was a pretty damn good athlete.
"Stevie Brown would not have sniffed the NFL draft if it hadn't been for a senior season position switch orchestrated by Rodriguez's staff."
You don't know that. This is pure conjecture that you're passing off as fact. Maybe the light would have turned on at safety in 2008 or 2009, anyway. Maybe Carr would have switched him to a linebacker position later in his career, too.
April 26th, 2010 at 12:40 AM ^
Now you are just arguing to argue. You just said that we shouldn't just speculate who would have been drafted because we have no idea what would have happened under Lloyd....then you go on to say that maybe Lloyd would have changed Brown to a LB to help him get drafted. When you don't follow your own advice, your point loses a little credibility.
I said that the previous poster was passing off "Steve Brown wouldn't have sniffed the NFL without switching to LB" as fact when it's purely conjecture. Then I said that *maybe* Carr would have switched him to linebacker, too.
I'm admitting that it's conjecture and pointing out the fact that the previous poster doesn't know what would have happened with a different coach there. Rodriguez got 80 tackles out of him. Maybe another coach gets 100 tackles and 8 sacks. Maybe another coach gets 20 tackles. We just don't know.