Perception is greater than reality I guess. SCOTTY is right, Pats are not good at the draft.
If you looked through my post from a few weeks ago you'll notice they have drafted the most players from 2006-2010 and more than half of them are no longer in the NFL, less than 30% of them are still on the team. Pats are good at free agency...not so good at the draft.
http://www.finheaven.com/forums/sho...006-2010)-Conclusions-and-more&highlight=2006
I guess we will have to agree to disagree. Again you are not comparing apples to apples. The pats aren't a team that needs starters at every position like we do.
This year they drafted Jones, Wilson, Hightower, and Dennard,
2011: Solder, Vereen, Ridley, Mallot
2010: McCourty, Gronkowski, Cunningham, Spikes, Hernandez, Mesko, Deaderick
2009: Chung, Brace, Vollmer, Pryor, Eddleman
These are all players that either start of play significant time for the pats, who are worlds better than we are. And I just went back 3 years. Go back a little further and you will see they also got one of the best DTs (Wilfork), very good LB (Mayo) and maybe the best QB in the game, through the draft. And this is just taking into count the players still on their team. There are MANY that are playing for other teams.
You made the comment that "they have drafted the most players from 2006-2010", like that is some how a negative. They were awarded the same amount as everyone else, the difference is they were smart enough to understand how to trade a pick, in either this years draft or the next, to get maximum value out of it. That makes them BETTER at the draft not worse.
If you look at how the Pats have used the draft to create who they now are, and how they have managed to stay the class of the East for as long as they have, I really don't see how you can say "Pats are not good at the draft". There maybe a few teams out there that have had better success but I can't see how you could say they were not top 10, and to me that doesn't equal, "not good at the draft".