Addai was drafted by a team with perhaps the best recent history of evaluating draft day talent. People love Maroney because Bellicheck drafted him, but Bellicheck isn't 1/10th the talent scout that Polian and the Colts are. You have to go back more than a decade to find the last 1st round bust picked by the Colts and nearly all of those first round picks found themselves in the pro-bowl at some point.
What's with the Belichick hate? How can you possibly knock the Patriot scouting and drafting staff compared to any team?
How was that Bellicheck hate? My point was that people like to mention how a great scouting department picked Maroney, yet fail to ever mention that an even better one picked Addai. It's certainly no knock against Bellicheck that Polian and the Colts make for one of the best scouting departments in recent history.
It is not a knock on Belichick to say Polian is better. It may not be hate, but it is hyperbole bordering on stupidity to say Belichick is 1/10th the talent evaluator in the draft of Polian. It If Polian was 10X, the evaluator that Belichick (and being a football fan, you could learn to spell his name)is, than maybe his team wouldn't have been crappy on D for so long. Maybe he could have drafted better defensive players. Perhaps, the Colt's could have reached one Superbowl in Polian's tenure. However, they have not.
The 1/10th statement was exaggeration used to prove a point, I think that was pretty clear. Ok, he's not literally 10x better, but as a talent evaluator I would go as far as to say he is quite a bit better.Yes, it took a while to build the defense, but he had to build the offense too. Let's not forget that Indy was pretty poor on both sides of the ball when he came in. Yes, NE has had a great defense, but that has a whole lot more to do with NEs coaching than it does with draft personnel. You look at NE's Super Bowl defenses and who really played a major role from the draft? Richard Seymour and that's pretty much it. The rest of the guys were either already there (McGinest, Law, Bruschi) or high dollar free agents that the Colts could not afford (Harrison, Milloy, Washington).
You move over to the Colts and pretty much every key player on both sides of the ball was a guy they acquired through the draft. They have virtually no big name free agents because they're so good at drafting they don't need them.
Manning, Wayne, Edge, Harrison, Glenn, Freeney, Mathis, Sanders...all acquired through the draft. The only real core pieces of the Patriots team acquired through the draft are Brady and Seymour, and you could maybe stretch it a bit and say Branch as well though I may be forgetting some.
I don't think anyone will deny that the Colts have the talent to win the Super Bowl, but for whatever reason they just haven't put it together. I will say this though, if you put the coaching of Belichick, Weiss, and Crennel together with the talent that Polian has brought into Indy I don't doubt that you'd have at least as many Super Bowls there. Dungy is a good coach, don't get me wrong, but he's not on the same plane as those guys.
Again, it's no knock on Belichick as he's one of the greatest football minds we've seen, but let's not confuse that with him being the absolute best at every aspect of the game either. The Patriots drafts have been pretty good the last decade, whereas the Colts have been phenomenal and have built a top NFL franchise almost strictly from the draft.
Addai = Arrington last year.
