Report: The Patriots Have Changed Their Entire Approach to the Draft and It Might Be N'Keal Harry's Fault

Steven Senne. Shutterstock Images.

Last week Mr. Kraft spoke to the media a couple of times. And in each instance, he mentioned a "different approach" to his team's draft preparation. Which has been seen as either an acknowledgement that his organization needs to be better at this fundamentally important aspect of achieving sustainable, long term excellence, or a nasty, personal swipe at Bill Belichick. How you look at it largely depending how desperately you want to fill up those open phone lines with calls you'll be taking after right after the Sports Flash at 617-blah-blah-blah. …

Now according to a report in MMQB, we've got some insight into what that "different approach" entails. And maybe what prompted it. 

Well, in the past, Bill Belichick’s had a very closed-off process and, in his defense, for the most part it’s worked. But it’s also led to personnel people feeling like they were actively cut out where other teams’ people weren’t. In essence, the Patriots’ scouts would do their jobs through the season and then hand off the process to Belichick and the coaches in February, with only a couple guys on the personnel side really consistently involved from that point forward. Where most teams had draft meetings with their scouts in February and April, the Patriots would have theirs with scouts in December and February. And at that early point, it’s tough to set the board, with two and a half months of information still to come. So from there on, the scouts would just be gatherers, which frustrated plenty of them, and played into the exodus in the scouting department the last few years. It also, as some saw it, led to misses like N’Keal Harry in 2019. Harry killed his 30 visit that spring and had a college coach, Todd Graham, who was close to Belichick. In that end, without more input from scouts who preferred Deebo Samuel and A.J. Brown, the coach wound up leaning on his own experience with Harry, rather than the red flags his scouts planted, and lost a golden opportunity to fill a hole on his roster. And that brings us back to what Kraft said: The Patriots have employed a “different approach” this year. My sense right now is that has translated inside the building in a more collaborative Belichick, who’s listening not just to his top guys, Dave Ziegler and Eliot Wolf, but also those rising through the organization, like national scout Matt Groh. Now, I don’t know if it’ll change the Patriots’ luck on draft day. Or if Belichick will pull back on it when we get there. But for now, it feels like a good positive step for them.

As JFK put it when he had to explain to the world why there were hundreds of dead Cubans on the beach at the Bay of Pigs, "Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan." Nobody on Belichick's college scouting staff were trying to wipe their fingerprints off of picks like Rob Gronkowski, Devin McCourty, Dont'a Hightower or Julian Edelman (7th round). But let one pick go nipples up and suddenly everyone in the department was sold on some other wideout and raising more red flags about Harry than you used to see at the Kremlin during the May Day parade. 

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I won't pretend for one hot second I know what it's like to work in any NFL scouting department, much less the Patriots. What I do know is that Belichick keeps his draft day war room tight, with only a fraction of the people other teams allow in theirs. The Cowboys war room typically looks like a cross between a Jones family reunion and the dressing room at the Miss Texas Pageant. So yes, maybe some of his scouts have felt left out of the process.

What I also know is that, while usually having the worst draft positions, Belichick's methods have gotten incredible results. Not perfect. But I don't hold his decisions to some impossible standard of a Platonic Ideal. I compare them to the rest of the league. And by that standard, he's done incredibly well. According to Football Outsiders, from 2010-2029, the Pats have had the 24th lowest draft capital among the 32 teams. But in terms of draft efficiency - meaning the haul of actual talent they've gotten - they've rank seventh. With a Return vs. Capital rating of 112%. So he's doing something right. 

Just to set the record straight on Harry though, yes, the pick has been a cataclysm of wrong so far. But let's ease off the gas on the revisionist history. He wasn't some off-the-wall, gut feeling, hunch pick. Nor was he a reach at No. 32, not by any stretch of the imagination. Yes, he was the second wide receiver to come off the board. But I defy you to find a credible draft site that didn't have him ranked among the top five at his position. Pro Football Focus had him there, while not ranking DK Metcalf - who flat out broke the Combine - in their Top 10. CBS Sports had him as their fourth best WR and their 24th best player overall. So all the Captain Hindsights can knock off the bullshit of claiming they knew all along he'd be a terrible pick. Especially the ones who spent 19 years complaining GM Bill was doing a disservice to Tom Brady by not getting him "weapons." So far he's missed on the player. Badly. But not because of some egregious systemic flaw in his organization's process. 

So while other people might be jumping out of their chairs giving a standing-O to the new, "more collaborative" system the Patriots are trying this year, you'll have to forgive me if I'm going to sit on my hands until I see the results. I'd rather have GM Bill calling the shots the way he has throughout the Dynasty, mistakes and all. That said, if this new methodology is an improvement and they hit a bunch of grand slams with their picks, it might be the one good thing Harry has done for the franchise. If not, then his selection two years ago will truly be with worst bust ever.