Draft Lab: Evaluating Jevan Snead

Sean Payton once said that one of the most important lessons he learned under Bill Parcells was to forget about the draft status of players when evaluating their value to your team. It didn't matter to Parcells whether someone was a first round pick or a free agent -- if he was the best person for the role Parcells had in mind, he was going to get the job regardless of how he was selected.

That mindset has obviously worked for the Saints and it could work to advantage if a team will use that philosophy when drafting Mississippi quarterback Jevan Snead. The book on Snead at the moment is that he had a poor junior season and should have returned to Ole Miss and turned pro after a much-improved senior year.

The metrics and scouting notes I gathered in an eight-game breakdown from Snead's 2009 campaign (at South Carolina, at Vanderbilt, vs. Alabama, vs. Arkansas, at Auburn, vs. Tennessee, at Mississippi State, vs. Oklahoma State in Cotton Bowl) do mostly concur with the idea that he is superb physical talent coming off of a subpar season.

To see why Jevan Snead may be a diamond in the rough on draft day, you must be an ESPN Insider.

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KC Joyner

NFL Insider

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• NFL and CFB analyst for ESPN Insider
• Known as "The Football Scientist"
• Uses proprietary metrics from game tape study