"If he was 2 inches taller ..." vs "Planet theory"

Super Nomario

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Like many of you, I follow several draft-focused writers on Twitter. I'm not talking about the Kipers and McShays of the world, but guys like Waldman, Loyko, Rumford Johnny, Matt Miller, etc. who are doing their own scouting and judging guys based on film review. There is a lot of Moneyball-esque sentiment from these guys that teams and the conventional draftniks underrate players based on height / size:
 
Matt Miller ‏@nfldraftscout  22h
Take away Jason Verrett's height (5'9") and shoulder injury...what are his weaknesses? Doesn't have many flaws outside the physical.
 
NFL Philosophy ‏@NFLosophy  15h
Basically, if Teddy Bridgewater were an inch taller and built with more muscle mass, he'd be a once-a-decade prospect.
 
Bridgewater (QB, Louisville), Verrett (CB, TCU), Aaron Donald (DT, Pittsburgh), to some extent Jimmie Ward (S, Northern Illinois) and WR Odell Beckham (LSU) and Paul Richardson (Colorado) are favorites of guys reviewing tape who don't care much about size, Combine results, or whether a guy "looks good in jeans."
 
The other philosophy is Bill Parcells' "planet theory," that there are only a handful of men on the planet with size and the skill / athleticism to play in the NFL. That would point to more conventional prospects like Louis Nix (NT, Notre Dame), Ra'Shede Hageman (DL, Minnesota) and Stephon Tuitt (DL, Notre Dame), Blake Bortles (QB, UCF), Stanley Jean-Baptiste (CB, Nebraska) and Keith McGill (CB, Utah).
 
What do you guys think? Does Moneyball not apply to football because height and weight are real factors? Are teams making too much of who looks good in underwear and not placing enough emphasis on who can play? Do you take the most skilled player, or the best raw material that you can mold?
 

SMU_Sox

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Great premise - I think it's a mixture of both. You have guys who are going to fall because they don't look the part but have the skill to be competitors. Look at Lavonte David. He doesn't look the part of the prototypical MLB. Same for his predecessor (of sorts) Derrick Brooks. Then you have developmental guys like SJB, Keith McGill, who have the intangibles but you aren't 100% sure on skill set. Rarely do you have both at a high level. 
 
Remember Sean Hill? Guy is a phenomenal athlete. He is tall, fast, big hands, and looks the part of a WR1. He didn't work out because those important things... what do you call them again? Skills? Yeah, they never developed enough.
 
If I had to pick a side to error on I'd rather take a guy an inch or two too small. I'll go to the mattresses with Aaron Donald over Hagemon. BB seems to value planet theory imho. More to come later.
 

Morgan's Magic Snowplow

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The big question for me is when and where (and in what scheme) is "prototypical" size important.  I can definitely see why a lot of teams don't want to draft a 5'9" corner these days, especially if they play a lot of press-man coverage as opposed to a lot of zone.  I can also see why you would be wary of drafting a 280 lb DT with a smallish frame like Aaron Donald, unless you were playing a scheme that accommodated a quicker undertackle type whose role was always just to penetrate into a single gap.  But I really struggle to understand why any team would believe that Teddy Bridgewater's size is a significant problem.
 
I do think the "planet" theory is kind of overblown.  Certain combinations of size and speed are pretty rare but the bottom half of NFL rosters (not to mention elsewhere on the planet) are filled with guys who are huge and athletic but can't play all that much due to lack of technique, football IQ, or work ethic.
 

( . ) ( . ) and (_!_)

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I think the player's position matters a lot in this discussion.
 
A CB the size of Verrett strikes me as both an injury risk, as well as, a matchup problem vs. some of the physical specimens in the NFL (despite Verrett's athletic gifts).  At the same time, the size of a player like Chris Borland does not seem as signifcant to me.  Borland is shorter and slower then your proto-typical MLB, but he has shown the ability to play with leverage, diagnosis plays and move well in limited space.  Finally QBs are in a group unto themselves, based on the presumption that an NFL GM or Coaches long term employee is generally tied to the success of failure of the QB they draft.  The conversation becomes skewed with QBs because of the need for self-preservation.
 

MainerInExile

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Draft position matters a lot too.  In the first round, you better have the prototypical size/speed/measurables AND have proven you can play.  As you move down in the draft, you start having to give more on one or the other.
 

Super Nomario

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MainerInExile said:
Draft position matters a lot too.  In the first round, you better have the prototypical size/speed/measurables AND have proven you can play.  As you move down in the draft, you start having to give more on one or the other.
This is a good point. Belichick talks about this in one of the Holley books (War Room, I think) that in the second round you're usually getting guys with great physical attributes who didn't translate that to the field in college - Ben Watson at #32 was one example cited, Vollmer's another, then you have guys like Dowling / Gronkowski / Bethel Johnson who were injury concerns - while in the third round you often get guys who are better football players but lack some of the physical attributes - Spikes (actually a late second) was one example, Harmon and Ridley are others. 
 

ifmanis5

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Mike Mamula. Greatest dimensions/workout/athlete stats any DL had at the combines. Once he got to the league... he had nothing. I'm sure there are arguments and examples for both sides but that one will always stand out for me on this topic.
 
Beware The Underwear Guys. You don't play football in the National Football League in your underwear. #GenericFootballTalkingHeadGuyWisdom
 

Phragle

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I'm not really sure what this is about, but I think SMU touched on it. It's a mix. Much like the need vs BPA argument. Too much in either way is wrong. It's a mix. The combine exists because the objective of the pre-draft process isn't to identify the best players, it's to identify the players that are going to be the best in the NFL. It's a projection. 
 
Jarvis Landry was a better WR than Odell Beckham Jr at LSU but if you put Landry ahead of OBJ on you big board, then you don't get it at all.
 
Also that's an absurd statement about Bridgewater. I feel like Twitter Draft gets these early opinions about a player and tries to stick to them no matter what so that they're never wrong. It's ego and stubbornness. When I watch TBW, I just don't think he's very good now, and I don't think he has next level fire, passion, and intelligence. The thing great NFL QBs have all in common isn't their bodies, it's their minds.
 

Shelterdog

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I'm a planet theory guy.  How many pro bowl caliber players out there are undersized? Every now and then you get a Bob Sanders or Dwight Freeney who's undersized but in general high level NFL players fit the averages on height and weight.
 
On the other hand there are a tons of really good players (I'm thinking of Jared Allen or Michael Bennet or Chris Clemons or Rodney Harrison or even a Joseph Haden or Jerry Rice) who had the size but didn't test well.   My guess is that the combine testing doesn't really capture endurance, flexibility, body control, technique, or functional strength well and those attributes are tremendously important relative to bench/40/vert numbers