Draft prospects and character
This interesting article on drafting players with existing character concerns is pretty interesting and has a quote from Jerry Reese:
“A lot of us have done things in our past,” says Jerry Reese, who for 11 years worked in the New York Giants’ personnel department before becoming the team’s general manager after last season.“These are young kids. They’re impressionable kids. So you can’t absolutely kill a guy because he went out and had a beer after a party and got into a scuffle or something. A lot of these kids get parking tickets. Some of them get speeding tickets. But we get all that information. If a guy’s got a blotter, if he’s got a long list of character flaws, you have to take that stuff into consideration.”
Personally, since good teams are built through the draft, I think you have to draft as few busts as possible. Salary cap issues make that especially important in the first round. This makes draft picks like Kiwanuka relatively safe (although good guys can also be busts like Tim Carter).
Anyway, in the first round I think you need a high character guy, but how do you define that? Brandon Merriweather interviews well but has that on-field incident and got into a shooting incident. But he was using a licensed handgun and defending a friend who had been shot. That doesn’t sound so bad so is he really a character concern?
