I give the Patriots an A-minus for their draft

in contrast to Mel Kiper, who gave them a B-plus:

They had Donald Brown and Clay Matthews right there for them. That surprised me. I thought a running back was something they would target. And I certainly thought a young outside linebacker like Matthews with the bloodlines and all that was somebody they would target, they didn’t. That’s just my opinion. Obviously, they thought otherwise.

I think, given the rookie pay scale against the salary cap, it just might be worth paying 60% in the second or third round for someone who is 95% as good as a first rounder.

But hey, I've never had to go and try to win a Super Bowl. (Unlike Mel Kiper?)

Here is the team's first pick, 34th overall, 212-lb safety Patrick Chung, #15 and wearing white, who you can see knocking down a 313-lb lineman and then a 296-lb lineman within 3 seconds of each other. He enters the frame on the upper left side, about 9 seconds in.



UPDATE: Here is Ron Borges' take:

NFL Players Association figures indicate in 2008 a first-round pick’s average guaranteed money was $11,924,000, including base salary, signing, roster and option bonuses. A second-round pick averaged $1,932,000 in guarantees. Those numbers are skewed some because of the presence of a quarterback like Matt Ryan near the top of the draft but they still are a reasonable measuring stick for analysis and what they say is that for roughly $4 million less than what the average first-round pick got a year ago, the Patriots got four second-round players.