This Behind the Scenes Video is Just the Patriots Porn You Need for Draft Night 2022
I've said a million times that if I could teleport anywhere in the world and just sit there unnoticed, it would be the Patriots War Room during the draft. With Kate Beckinsale's hot tub a close second. But after watching this, I'm going to change that up. Being in the meetings when the team personnel staff is working on scouting is now my No. 2.
One of the great lies ever perpetrated on the American public is the fiction that Bill Belichick is not good at the NFL draft thing. You say it loud enough and often enough, and a naive populace who have neither the time nor the inclination to look deep into the record for themselves just accept it as proven fact.
This is not to say there haven't been bad misses. In 22 drafts just in New England alone, of course there have been lots of them. As there are on every GM's resume. But none of the rest of them have built back-to-back teams of the decade. None of the others have consistently, year in and year out had to select in the late 20s and 30s in Round 1. No one else has only been able to get into the Top 10 via trade because they've had no off years since 2000. And no one has mastered the art of moving up and down the board the way Belichick has.
Acknowledge the bad picks all you want. It's only fair. But I choose to judge the general in charge of the War Room by comparing him to the other 31 people running all the other War Rooms, not some Platonic ideal of perfection. And by that standard, the defending EOTY Champion is in a class all by himself in this business.
But what makes this video nine minutes of pure bliss for a handsome, sexy Draft Nerd is that it is only tangentially about Belichick. It's all about the people he has brought up through the ranks to find the Christian Barmores, the Rhamondre Stevensons, the Kyle Duggers, the Michael Onwenus. And hopefully the next generation of Devin McCourtys, Julian Edelmans and Dont'a Hightowers.
I's a insider look at the process of Personnel Director Matt Groh's staff you're lucky to see once a year. And even these sorts of Inside Baseball type features are typically buried on a team's website or something and rarely seen by anyone but those with an obsessive level of interest. But if you're at all interested in how interesting people go about doing interesting work that makes their careers so interesting, you should be interested.
From how they break down film to how they evaluate talent to the process of meeting with prospects to find the the next great ones, these men (and woman, because the legendary Nancy Meier makes an appearance) labor in obscurity. But every week from July to February we witness the results of that labor. And to me anyway, it's fascinating to get a peek into that life whenever we get the chance.
Excellent work by Kraft Productions on this one. Watch just a couple of minutes of this two-tissue Patriots Porn and you'll feel very, very good about what's to come over the next three nights and days.