2011 NFL Draft: Why the New England Patriots Don't Buy the Combine Hype

Every year around the time the NFL scouting combine results start pouring out, everyone suddenly becomes a genius about how the NFL draft should unfold.

40 times, broad jumps, three-cone drills, etc. are all the final memories each team has of a player before draft day.

What we forget is that there's a whole aspect of the combine that we don't see, which is the interview and test portion.

The knowledge we gain from watching these exercises is merely superficial. It's the old dichotomy between measurables vs. intangibles, best illustrated by Peyton Manning and Ryan Leaf. Both had the physical makeup for an NFL quarterback and could make the throws, but it was the work ethic and personality that drew an enormous gap between the careers of the first and second overall selections.

It all comes down to football IQ, or, as Pat Kirwan calls it, "FBI".

In Kirwan's book, "Take Your Eye Off The Ball", he describes why so much import is given to FBI.

"[Bill Belichick] knows as well as anyone that ideas alone don't equal victories. It's not what Bill or any other coach knows—it's what the players know. That is why Belichick places such a high priority on finding players who are smart enough to execute the scheme he's running."

In order to test for FBI, Belichick runs the players through tests. He talks to them about some specific things that the Patriots do, diagrams it all on a whiteboard and then later asks them to repeat everything they just talked about.

Kirwan even outlines specific moves made by the Patriots in the draft in conjunction with what they saw in a player in terms of their football intelligence.

"When he went out on his college tour before the 2008 NFL Draft, Belichick ran Jerod Mayo through that classroom drill. Mayo went to the board and repeated everything he'd been told right back to Belichick...Sold: Belichick drafted Mayo with the 10th pick of the first round."

There weren't a whole lot of mock drafts projecting Mayo to go in the first round, and those that were had him going later on, but it's safe to say he proved those "experts" wrong with a dominating performance and the 2008 Defensive Rookie of the Year award.

Belichick wants players on his team who eat, sleep, live and die for football year-round. He wants football nerds: guys who have not only the physical capacity but also the mental capacity necessary to succeed in his system.

Football may be an athletic sport, but it's also a mind game.

Check out Erik Frenz's football curator page at myspace.com/football. Follow Erik on Twitter at  @e_frenz