There’s no convincing me that NFL scouts and GM’s aren’t basically as clueless about the players they draft as we are on the couch. Oh sure, they watch a bunch of tape. They have their fancy “boards” and rating systems.
But they don’t know. Nobody knows.
Even worse, many of these GM’s are power hungry and paranoid on a good day, or downright petty little grudgeholders on a bad day. They have favorite college programs and coaches to deal with, certain ones they hate, agents they are buddies with, and some who they would love to see fall into an open manhole.
Furthermore, these GM’s and personnel people love to gossip like blue-haired old ladies at the salon about players, and strategically leak stuff to so-called NFL “insiders” that lap it up, and crank it out via social media.
Connor Cook is a case in point. This guy was NOT a bad college quarterback. He went 34-5 at Michigan State. Pretty good. Pretty… pretty… good.
But… OHHHHH.. he WASN’T VOTED TEAM CAPTAIN! OMG!!!
And yeah, the Archie Griffin MVP Trophy sideswipe was terrible optics, but hey, not every college kid thinks like Peyton Manning every minute they are in the spotlight.
But this excellent piece by Kyle Koster at The Big Lead is nothing short of amazing. Apparently, Cook writing personal notes to GM’s and coaches prior to the draft, was counted as a NEGATIVE by some! Why? They were certain he was just being a disingenuous kiss-ass.
Incredible.
So teams actually held writing thank-you notes against Cook. With that in mind, is there anything he could have done to push back the tide of negative baggage slowly drowning his draft stock?
People write follow-up notes after job interviews for one reason and it’s not because they genuinely enjoy speaking about the widget industry. It’s because they want the job and understand it’s an ends to a mean. Cook is no different.
The last few months have been trying for Cook. Whether that’s a bed he made for himself or was forced into by a suffocating narrative is unclear.
In the end, the truth doesn’t really matter. Perception is always reality. Once the gossip-flavored toothpaste is out of the tube, it’s impossible to put it back. Depending on who you ask, Cook either tried to clean up the mess or added to it.
Yeah. He wrote personal notes to teams asking for a job. What an asshole.
Now maybe, just maybe, the narrative on Cook is spot on. But these NFL people are the same geniuses that ended up taking a known cocaine user and serial club-hopper who texted a coach “Let’s WRECK this league!”… IN THE FIRST ROUND!
If NFL front office men were really able to see into the true personality type of future draft picks, then how come nobody saw through RGIII’s act? Hell, even I was fooled by Griffin for the first year or so. He sure SOUNDED like such a leader.
But in the end, poor Rob Parker was righter than most, even though it cost him his gig on ESPN: Robert was, and IS, a bit of a “cornball.” And that personality type just never gelled in the Redskins locker room.
Nolan Narwocki’s scathing assessment of Cam Newton and his “fake smile” and inability to lead a team has been proven laughably wrong.
The fact that Cook went behind both Christian Hackenberg and Jacoby Brissett is hard for me to digest. I guess those guys wrote better notes.
