Trevor Ruszkowski-USA TODAY Sports
There is a perception, however true or untrue it is, that a defining trait of the Howie Roseman era is that Roseman thinks he’s smarter than everyone. Another defining trait that is less in question is that his drafts have overall been poor. So what if Howie Roseman outsmarted everyone in the draft by doing something that sounds really stupid?
In 2007, Doug Drinen at Pro Football Reference theorized that if a team didn’t do any actual scouting for the draft, they wouldn’t suffer greatly for it.
I’d like to suggest that at this point the amount of freely-available information about the draft is so mountainous that, if you believe there is wisdom in crowds, it’s not completely insane to believe that compiling all this public information in an intelligent way could constitute a reasonable substitute for a scouting department. In other words, the internet and a bunch of draft publications (maybe even Street & Smith’s!) might be your TV.