NFL Draft: Mark Dantonio reportedly to blame for Connor Cook sliding
Two NFL general managers are partly blaming Michigan State Spartans head football coach Mark Dantonio for quarterback Connor Cook‘s slide to the fourth in the 2016 NFL Draft.
Connor Cook was believed to be the fourth best quarterback in the recently completed 2016 NFL Draft behind Jared Goff and Carson Wentz who went with the first two picks and Paxton Lynch who went to the Denver Broncos late in the first round.
There was a chance Cook could sneak his way into the end of the first round if teams were willing to trade back into waning picks of the first, but that didn’t happen and Cook had to wait to hear his name called.
It turned out to be a much longer wait than Cook and his camp would have imagined. The second round came and went and Cook remained on the board. The third round was the same as the first two and Cook had to wait another day to see where he would begin his NFL career.
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Cook ended up going to the Oakland Raiders at the beginning of the fourth round where he’ll backup rising star quarterback Derek Carr with the hopes of earning a starting job elsewhere through a trade.
But why did this prospect who was a fringe first rounder have to wait all the way until the fourth round to get picked?
According to Bleacher Report’s Jason Cole, part of the reason lies with Cook’s college coach Mark Dantonio.
Cole reports, Dantonio’s policy of limiting exposure NFL scouts had to team practices to only a few minutes and they can’t see the team drills and the interaction among teammates. So there was a lot of hearsay about how Cook works with his teammates.
Cole cites Cook not being voted a team captain this year and lacking a firsthand account of seeing Cook interact with his teammates as being a reason why he slid all the way to the fourth round when his talent dictated he should have been picked much earlier than that.
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So maybe these NFL scouts shouldn’t rely on hearsay so much to make their decisions and they could have worked a little harder to see how Cook interacts with his teammates and actually talk to Cook and his teammates to gauge the relationships.
Or you can read the tabloids at the grocery store checkout and think aliens are invading, you can lose 100 pounds in 3 months by eating nothing but bacon and Cook can’t play QB because he wasn’t a team captain. Good grief.