According to ESPN's Adam Schefter, Jimbo Fisher was adamant throughout the pre-draft evaluation process that he didn't believe EJ Manuel had the tools to be an NFL starter and he shouldn't be any better than a third-round pick. Of course Jimbo is now denying it, but was Jimbo giving a fair evaluation of EJ or throwing him under the bus since he was done playing for FSU?
http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/11646532/jimbo-fisher-florida-state-se...
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No.
He was gaining credibility with NFL guys. Can't go all 'all-my-players-are-first-rounders' when they're not. That should have been a closed door comment between the coach and the scouts, and whoever leaked it won't be getting good information from anywhere moving forward. Someone looks bad in all of this, but I refuse to believe it will be Fisher.
Giving assessments is a hard thing for coaches to do especially with all the social media that is available. If you talk to 5 teams, you're going to get your opinion distributed to probably at least 4 and likely 20 ish people in the organization. Waaaaaay too big a distribution to think that is going to be quiet. All of those people are very well connected.
Richard Sherman situation with Stanford a case in point. In retrospect, Sherman developed such a high profile and is the kind of smart guy with tons of media exposure you don't want to mess with. Pretty clear, whether Harbaugh was right on Sherman or not, he took alot of risk talking him down. Once Sherman started to perform and talk, Harbaugh was probably regretting his "honesty".
I am surprised with Jimbo that he didn't take a cue from the Harbaugh situation. I didn't think Manual was going to be a starting QB without more development, but I think he has looked pretty good at times. Him talking third round and then Manuel getting drafted first round says alot about Jimbo's NFL credibility. Wonder what Jimbo said about Ponder?
Game tape, combine, pro day, team workouts... why bother opining on technical abilities? Just talk about the kids character etc? I suspect its because many of these HCs are narcissists who like to hear themselves talk and being listened to by NFL guys.
Unfortunately for us Jimbo is such a good recruiter, this may be used on the recruiting train, but it likely won't much matter. Maybe he loses a 5star QB to another elite team, but worst case he'll get another 5star or maybe a 4star QB to replace him. With a police force in his pocket he might not lose any recruits.
I don't think so. However in this age of knee-jerk reactions we'll know soon enough when Twitter either goes into outrage mode or doesn't care because something more interesting is outraging them.
Watching EJ Manuel barely escaping Blacksburg with a victory against VT, I could have told the NFL GMs that EJ was an average QB surrounded by great talents at WR, RB, TE. If vt had the players that FSU keeps getting, the Hokies would've been in the national championship more than once.