Quote:No. GMs and front offices know when they have to take a QB, and they try and find the best player to take at their draft position. It's obvious now that the Bills were the only team in the first round absolutely committed to drafting a signal-caller no matter what last year, and Manuel was the best on their board. Minnesota in 2011 was in a similar predicament. The four months between the bowl season the draft gives those teams to watch every second of tape out there on a given prospect, something we don't have access to or the time to complete. That's more important than a guy's Wonderlic or how he looked completing a post route against air.

 

This is why I don't buy the narrative that Matt Barkley was a top-five shoe-in as a junior but fell to the 4th round due to a "down" senior year. Scouts knew what his tools and physical limitations were for years, and his stats were pretty similar in both seasons; it was USC's defense that fell apart. Draftniks resorted to the narrative of his team underachieving as to why he plummeted in the draft, but it's much more likely that they were the ones who had been way off the mark in their projections of his draft stock and had therefore misled the public. Kiper and McShay control the minds of millions of casual fans but have zero pull in any professional war room. 

 

Tell me, what exactly happens at combines or pro days that would change your mind about a guy you loved or hated in his last year of college? Especially since they're simply running rehearsed drills at their pro day and the top prospects almost never throw at the combine. If someone likes Derek Carr's arm strength at the Senior Bowl in a few months, there is plenty of evidence already available for us to know that he's got a great arm. They just weren't paying attention.