He blamed his slow 40 time on the stress of the combine.

Toughen up, cupcake. If the combine is stressing you out, what's going to happen in actual games that matter?

I also heard he didn't want to attend day 2 of the draft because it was humiliating not being drafted. Humiliation? Really?

The guy just has a very weak mental makeup. It's painfully obvious.

I don't dislike him at all tbh. I hate ESPN and all the other outlets that make him a big sensational story. I have tempered expectations based on all the stuff has been brought forth like his lacking athleticism/technique. The combine/draft stuff is the type of stuff people hate in a football player.

At least he's not likely to end up behind bars. But feeling humiliation by not getting drafted D1 or blaming stress for a poor workout is ridiculous. He suffered probably the most extreme humiliation due to the most epic trolling ever and incredible stress from the media frenzy ever, so don't give us that.

So here's my post on Te'o pre-Alabama: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/46.../#post35906526

I'll break down a few of the things I noticed in picture form to make it maybe easier to understand.

First, I want to start with a great play that Te'o makes against Michigan this past year. I use it to help show the value in reading a play instead of guessing. This is one of the very few times that I see Te'o make a read on film. Not coincidentally, he stuffs Denard on this play.



This is right after the snap. This is the most important part of the play. You can see Michigan's guard pulling to the left. Look at Te'o, you can tell that he's looking at the guard instead of the backfield. Looking in the backfield, you can tell that Michigan is running a zone read type play. I'm not sure if this is a straight run or a read by Denard, but regardless, it's the exact type of play that can fool a guy whose eyes are in the backfield.



Michigan is faking the handoff at this point. Te'o has read the play perfectly, he's following the pulling guard to help out on that side of the field because he knows that's where the run is going based on OL movement. If you'll notice in the middle of the screen, Michigan's center (#57) is trying to get to the second level to block Te'o. Because Te'o has read this play correctly, he is able to easily avoid that block. If you remember back to one of the Alabama plays, he guesses on a run play and that allowed Warmack to get to him. He doesn't guess here and the free OL won't be able to block him out of the play.



Michigan's center is still chasing Te'o here. Michigan's OL has done a great job sealing a big hole for Denard between the ND DT and the outside defender. But, because he read the play, Te'o is able to fill that hole.



And he's able to make the play. Now imagine Te'o hesitated because he had his eyes in the backfield. Look at how big that hole would be without Te'o. Denard can sprint to the sideline and he's beating the safety for a touchdown every time. Instead, this play goes for a loss.

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Now, for the bad...



Pre-snap, it's quite obvious that, if it's a run play, Michigan is going to run some sort of zone read to the right. The right side of the OL is overloaded and the running back is to the left of Denard. It's also important to note that Te'o has a lot of outside help here. He has a defender 4 yards to the left of him and a safety behind him about 4 years who is lined up outside of him. His responsibility is going to be to make a play in the middle of the field should the run come there.



Michigan's guard pulls to the right, as expected. Te'o is fine here. He's stayed in the middle of the field and he's taking on a block. Again, note that he still has 2 defenders in the box that have contain priority over him.



Te'o gets off the initial block very well. Now he has to take on the guard. Again, he has outside help still. The safety will have to beat the block coming from a WR and the outside defender is free to make a play on an outside run. Te'o only needs to worry about a cutback from Denard. He should be getting inside position on the guard. If he does, this play is going for minimal gain.



But, instead of holding his inside position, he guesses outside and tries to make the big play. He vacates the middle and no one is there to provide any resistance to Denard. He did plenty of good things on this play, but he ruined all of it when he guessed at the end of the play. Gary Bertier might call this selfish, show off football.



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Here's a similar formation. This is the first play of the game. Michigan runs a sweep to the right with Denard to open pretty much every game. This formation/play certainly should not have been any surprise to ND.



Several members of Michigan's OL are pulling to the right... just what ND should be expecting. Notice, though, that #10 for Michigan is running some misdirection for a possible reverse. Notre Dame has 2 guys covering the backside of the play, so they're fine there. Michigan has 3 blockers going to the right, and they basically have what they want... Denard should be 1 on 1 if those blockers can get out to their man in time.



But Te'o falls for the fake reverse, much the same way that he did against Alabama. Now Michigan has numbers to the right side. Notre Dame still has 2 guys on the backside who are in perfect position to make the play if the reverse happens.



And at this point, Te'o still hasn't realized what has happened. He has zero chance of catching that WR if there is a reverse and he's put his teammates in a really bad position on the other side of the field. Fortunately, this play doesn't go for a big play but Te'o gets big negative marks here.

Here's another play where Te'o screws up and it doesn't result in a big play for the offense. No one is going to note these types of play because they're results oriented, but it really makes you question his thought process.

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You have a super standard formation from both teams. This is a 2 LB set, so Teo's responsibilities are going to be the left/middle.



Both linebackers correctly read run. But you can see that Te'o is invading the other linebacker's area of responsibility very early in the play. The other LB will fill that gap and then Notre Dame has a defender holding contain. This play is going nowhere fast.



The other linebacker takes on 2 blockers. At this point, Te'o has completely crossed behind that linebacker. He's completely out of position. Bell has nowhere to go towards the left side of the play because the middle is clogged up and the outside defender has contain with no one blocking him. This play is going nowhere, but look at this screenshot and then the next one.



You can see the massive hole to the right. That's the space that Te'o should be moving into. Bell misses the cutback read and so the play goes nowhere. But if he would have seen the cutback lane, he would have had a big gain and it would have been directly on Te'o.

By the way everyone itt still thinks he made the whole Lenay thing up and got away with trolling the entire world.

Big thumbs up to the recent posts here

I'd like to know what you mean by this - it is my belief that the NFL Draft is largely an efficient market dominated by randomness at this point and smart researchers have started to confirm this, therefore calling draft experts bad at their jobs may not be correct imo

is there research on kiper? teams as a whole probably have a good idea what they're doing but that's not the same thing.

It would be interesting to do some sort of consensus draft guru rankings and compare the results of those to the actual draft order. Someone should do that imo

5 minutes searching revealed theses links:

http://www.thehuddlereport.com/scoring/mockdrafts.shtml

http://www.bloggingtheboys.com/2013/...ock-mcshay-etc

Cliffs: Kiper is pretty good (relatively speaking)

Yeah, but those just grade how accurately they predicted the draft. I'm interested in seeing how well the players performed once they made it to the NFL. You'd have to use something like PFR's Approximate Value to judge across all positions, but when Mel Kiper's 15th rated prospect is still on the board in the middle of the second round, how well has that guy historically panned out versus his 45th ranked prospect who got drafted in the middle of the first round?

So basically you're asking is Kiper better than NFL teams at assessing value and ranking on it? Have to think the answer is no there, for obvious reasons.

In the recent history we've seen a kicker go in the first round and a punter go in the second third, you never know!

Seabass is pretty elite though.

It's hard to hate on that pick.

It appears that my chosen metric assigns zero to all kickers and punters, Seabass confirmed WOAT draft pick

Took 81 minutes to drive the last 8 miles to where I was going to park for the night, I finally back into the last space in the lot, it is sloping a little so that I would roll backwards, and the guy to my right pulls out right as I give the brake a bit of pressure. I was looking right at him and ****ing panicked, squeezed those air brakes so hard thinking Jesus, I'm just speeding up backwards here! Then I'm sure I woke up half the lot when I eventually let my foot off the brake, what with that nasty sound air brakes make when you release them after having it all the way down

My problem is you can't say "well MKJ and Todd Mcshay both say manti is top level talent, so he is..." when theyve said that about Aaron Curry and vernon gholston and well you get the point. MKJ thought Jimmy Clausen was the second coming.

??

Busts happen. You think that if only we'd had a million idiots watch Gholston's worst game we would have been able to see it coming?

Of course not. I'm saying I didnt sight that busts happen, therefore Te'o will be bad so people can't say well of Todd and Mel say he's a first round talent than he is good at football and will be successful in the NFL

Only UM homers grasp the ineptitude of ND prospects. Woulda bet some prime Detroit real estate on Quinn sucking.

you don't think that's a terrible way of looking at it?

wouldn't it just be easier to go by the grade mel gave a prospect, and then see how close to the grade the prospect performed?

suppose you'd have find to a metric by which to do the grading, but common sense should be enough. maybe even pfr as you mention. but there's so many variables involved you'd probably have to wait several seasons per draft before you could begin to get an accurate outcome.

ND was down to about 7 competent OLinemen leading up to the NCG and the coach decided not to hit in practice much at all. Bama presumably had their allotment of 138 scholarships so that wasn't a problem.

The Teo-Lennae situation aggravated the problem because of his role. He wasn't just out there to tackle, it was like having an extra coach on the field, equal to all the consultants Bama hires that don't techincally count as coaching staff.

mmmmm i see you're still mad.

ND fans should direct their anger towards KState for choking and losing by 28 to a 4-5 Baylor team or at Ohio St for stupidly not taking sanctions for the 2011 season so they might have been eligible to be in the BCS title game. Their screw ups allowed the one loss Bama team to make the title game.

Though let's be real; as flawed and fraudulent as KState and Ohio St were they were still better than Notre Dame.

Ah now, a ~$100 wager would hardly have been the strongest statement of such an opinion.