(03-06-2019, 06:31 PM)Deacon Wrote: Along the lines of BAP vs. Need, I read the book War Room by Michael Holley. It goes through Bill Belichik's mental image on how a football organization was shaped and how it communicated with itself. This post may get a bit wordy, but I think there are some very good "eye-opening" aspects to the book that really changed how I thought about the draft.

One of the major issues that Belichik tackled while with Cleveland and then in New England was that the Coaching Staff, the Pro Personnel department and the Scouting department all used different terminologies when they rated a player. The details here aren't that important but for example, a position coach would rate his Linebacker as a 'B', the Pro Personnel people would rate a Free Agent as 'Silver' and the Scouts would rate potential draft picks as a 'Third Rounder'. So when you tried to view what you had versus what was available, there was no easy way to rate all of the players. Furthermore, he made certain that all scouts did as much research as they could to determine a player's 'coachability'.

Belichik, through much struggle, finally got everyone onto the same page in terms of language and then pushed the idea of "who is out there that can come in and help us?" Essentially, placing Need at the forefront of the process but making sure that Value, read as Best Available, was in the discussion. Due to this, rating a player in relation to the draft went away. They would actually be surprised when they would hear teams rate players in terms of Draft Round. This simplified both their Free Agency and Draft approach down to a statement of 'this player can come in and help us' or 'this player cannot help us'.

Thoughts?

Makes me feel resolute in my initial response to the OP, and it makes a ton of sense. 

“Pure BAP” as some refer to it is such a rare luxury for any team, it may as well be a gilded unicorn that farts hundred dollar bills. 

The grading system consolidation bit is so practical. I wonder how many teams have streamlined that way? Dave talked about it some last offseason and mentioned they have a grade for every player on their roster plus every free agent and prospect they’ve put time into. He talked about coaches being involved in the year end Jags player evaluations, so one would think they are all using one system and set of terminology.

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