Giants Draft Fallacy: We Can Coach Him Up

After teams make selections, the GM, the Coach and the Head of Scouting usually take turns extolling the brilliance of their latest move.   They can say a lot of things, like "He's versatile," or "He can really get after the quarterback," or "He won't be caught from behind," or stuff like that.   What you don't want to hear them says is "We can coach him up,"  or "We can clean that up."  When they say that, you should worry that they've just wasted a pick.

Here's why:  when they say they can coach a guy up, it means they are sort of desperate and reaching.      This usually indicates they've reached for an athlete and not a player.   I talked about this a bit yesterday,  but it's better to just take players.   And if you are going to take a guy who is more athlete than player -- there still has to be production.  Because if a guy doesn't really know how to play, but is still making plays, you have a chance.   But if he's just a good combine guy who "flashes" on tape because he can run down the field.  Watch out.

Then there are guys who are both athletic and instinctive but raw, and sometimes coaching them up can backfire.   Remember Gibril Wilson?  He played really well when forced into action as a rookie who'd gotten few reps in camp -- and then never really played well again after they "coached him up."

It's weird.  What makes it even moreso, is that football has become far more complicated (notice I'm not using complex) from a down to down x and o's standpoint.  There's a lot more substitution with 3, 4 and 5 WR sets on O and various zone schemes, nickels, dimes, big nickels, NASCAR fronts, etc on D.   So getting the guys who don't need coaching up organized is challenging enough, without finding time for the remedials.

This is true of position switches as well, especially under the new CBA which severely limits practice time in the offseason and from week to week in the regular season.   A team has to be a moving vehicle and there's no long or enough reps to teach a guy a new positions.  Especially one that requires him to cover or go backwards when all he's ever done has go forwards.    This has been a big problem with the Giants linebacker selections as we talked about earlier.  So if one of your buddies is pitching the Giants draft an impressive athlete that they can convert to another position, feel free to smack some sense into him.

So in a few weeks,  when the picks start happening, and Jerry, TC and Marc Ross start talking about them,  dread those coaching words, there's no time for coaching like that anymore and it has always implied a reach.    Btw, "'just scratching the surface," isn't too bad, because there's usually a bunch of production with that.