I was skimming through some Colts-related articles, and saw a headline "Indy can pick'em." I had a feeling it was about the upcoming draft, and how Polian makes all other GM's look like us throwing about mock draft after mock draft. I clicked on the link, and it took me to the Boston Herald. I found that quite odd, seeing as I've never seen one word of praise coming from any where in New England relating to the Colts. Sure enough, here is an article, penned by John Tomase (and he is of no relation to that guy we all know whose name is very close to that). John clearly lays out why the Colts are the best, by far, in the NFL when it comes to the NFL Draft, especially in the first round. Yes, I'm floored as well.
His first piece of evidence is pretty spectacular (emphasis mine):
By that measure, it's hard to imagine anyone has drafted better than the Indianapolis Colts over the past 12 years. In that time, the 12 players Indy has selected with its first pick have made 31 Pro Bowls. The Patriots - no draft slouches themselves - have just nine berths to show over the same period, with five coming from Richard Seymour alone.
"We want our corners to be great tacklers that play a lot of zone," he said. "We only rush four and don't blitz a lot, so our corners need to be outstanding physical players, but running a 4.4 is not essential."
Many teams will discount slower corners. The Colts consider that an inefficiency to be exploited. Another example is the bias rivals have against short players.
I finished the article, and sat their amazed that a paper in Boston could write such a glowing article about the Colts. It had to have been pretty easy to write, though, since everything in there is fact and not much opinion. Nobody can really argue that the Colts have had the best record of drafting in the first round of anyone else. Except Patriot Fans.
I had a feeling the Comments from the article would supply me some great nuggets to share, and they did not disappoint. A little background on Tomase: He was the writer who broke the Matt Walsh story the night before the Super Bowl.