Yeah, there were several times in that highlight reel where I said to myself that another back might have gone the distance instead of being tackled from behind. On the other hand, those other backs might not have been in those positions in the first place since he's breaking tackles left and right.
Y'know who has been able to get past KC?
SMU is really good at this, but nobody gets them all right (or else SMU would be making a lot of money with an NFL team right now). I agree - hope he's wrong about Perkins, because I want that guy to be a wrecking machine for the Pats.
I think that rumors of the Pats becoming a power running team are greatly exaggerated.
I'm coming around to the idea that it's not so much "bully ball" as it is almost a form of jiu jitsu. Bully ball to me would be like "this is what we're going to do, and you either stop me or you don't". What BB has done in the past, and I think will try to do here, is to use the opponent's approach against them. If they come in heavy, we'll split out receivers and use a TE or RB for pass protect. If they come in light, we come in heavy and bully them. Flood the zone, isolate man coverage, etc. Obviously all teams do that to some extent, but BB has a track record of setting up rosters and groupings and pace of game such that he can get the D to commit, and then continue to use the inertia of their attack against them.
I take your point, but the exact same argument could have been made regarding the Pats' selection of James White around this same spot in 2014, and that one turned out pretty well. I think the "investing in a RB is pointless" argument has some kernels of truth to it but gets overplayed.
I think you could have gotten White's equivalent later, but also... I've said in other posts, if a RB is also an elite receiver I'm more willing to entertain him in the pre-150 picks, because that's not the same skillset. Stevenson is not an elite mismatch receiver like White was. He isn't going to flare out and run routes. To me a guy like Stevenson what are you hoping for... Blount? Who was UDFA and signed for almost vet min several times?
But an awful lot of UDFA and late round running backs actually really suck. You can sometimes get a blount but you can't count on it.
Stevenson was pick 120 in a terrible draft. We're not talking about Leonard Fournette in the top 5 here.
Yeah it's not terrible, I just think it is a poor use of the pick relative to the players available at other positions.
An awful lot of RBs picked 50-150 sucked too though, and I think total yards for a career isn't a great metric because teams try to justify assets used on picks by playing guys instead of cutting bait, where an UDFA you just cycle to the next one (and pick up a vet FA you know can do the job for cheap to compete). The argument isn't... UDFA and 6th/7th rounders are better. It's that UDFA, late round and very cheap vets abound and plugged into a good running game have success (remember a lot of the teams that have bad results with late picks have bad results with early picks too) at a higher rate than other positions, like WR where draft position more directly correlates to success.
I'm not convinced that draft position is more directly correlated to success at WR than at RB--do you have any evidence of that?
Is the bolded proven?
I'll see if I can find it, but a while back someone pulled all the WRs and the success rate was something like 50% rds 1-2 then dropped each round after.
Overall draft position may directly correlate to WR success more (or it may not - would need to see the numbers), but we know it hasn't for the Pats. Other than Deion Branch, their best WR picks during the BB era have been David Givens (7th round) and Edelman (also 7th round). Literally every other WR draft pick they have made has been a moderate to total failure (unless you count Slater, I guess), despite the fact that they have picked, I believe, the exact same number of RBs in the first four rounds over that span as WR.
I thought I saw an update somewhere, and the RB success rate had gone up in late rounds (probably partially because RBs are not drafted as highly over recent years so guys who went 3rd or 4th when a lot of RBs went early now go 5th or 6th) and WRs had stratified (likely because the opposite has happened and WRs get drafted higher now). Maybe it was on a podcast though, because I can't seem to find an article on it.
Would love to see a Swiss Army knife FB like he could maybe be. Block, run, catch. That’s a very valuable piece. A rook to the TE Castle.
This and if he has decent hands he's going to be very valuable when you consider how BB likes guys with multiple talents.
Going by that there is a drop off of WR after the first 3 rounds but the 5th round hit rate is higher than 4th for WRs. In general, late round WRs had a higher success rate than RBs. Of course as you said this is a little outdated and I think with these rates teams really need to look a their individual player ratings.
That level of excellence on ST puts Bolden's roster spot the one most in jeopardy. If he could potentially fill the roles of Michel as backup lead back (is that an oxymoron) AND Bolden/Burkhead (as an RB who can play ST), then that is HUGE value from a 4th round pick.
If he's LGBT with slightly better receiver skills, that's a hell of a get. If he's LGBT with Byars receiver skills, none of us will be wearing pants on Sundays.
If Stevenson is going to run for 500 yards and catch for 500 yards...sign me up right now.
Just going through this thread. He had burst and top end speed on display in his 91 yard TD run last night. Hope we get to see lots more of that.
Damn right. He used that burst and then lost people. Has some girth to him for sure too. Very encouraging performance.
