Palazzolo on Ja’Lynn Polk: I haven’t seen many receivers struggles as badly as he did
Steve Palazzolo of The 33rd Team joined Felger and Mazz on Radio Row in New Orleans on Friday and discussed the struggles of wide receiver Ja’Lynn Polk in his rookie year with the New England Patriots.
Felger: Where did you have Ja’Lynn Polk coming into the draft? And assess that grade now. What do you blame his disappearance on?
Steve Palazzolo: Alright, I’ve got my own little draft model and projection and everything, and I kind of look at it as like a yes or no. You’re either above a threshold or you’re below. [Polk] was well below my threshold.
Felger: Coming out last year?
Steve Palazzolo: Coming out last year.
Felger: So you didn’t like the pick?
Steve Palazzolo: So if I had my own 0-100 scale, which I do, he’s about a 40.
Felger: So you nailed it.
Steve Palazzolo: Yeah. And Ladd McConkey was over 80. And so the way I’ve looked at it historically in my system, if you draft over 80s, you’re doubling and tripling your hit rates. So I’ve got a condensed group of players that I like to look at every year.
Felger: So when they were on the board there and they traded down and the Chargers took McConkey, you said “mistake” in real time?
Steve Palazzolo: Most of the time. But then that battles against my other analytical self, which is “trade down, get more picks, get more shots at it,” because it’s all going be a little bit of an unknown in there. So theoretically, the idea of moving down and picking up picks was fine. But yeah, the player that they got, certainly didn’t agree with it.
Felger: Why did you only have a 40 on Ja’Lynn Polk?
Steve Palazzolo: It’s all production-based and everything. So I like to look at data and things that have projected well historically across the NFL.
Felger: But specifically without that.
Steve Palazzolo: The catch rate was low [for Polk]. He only had one or two years of pretty good production, not elite production at Washington. He was just OK. I haven’t seen many receivers struggle as badly as he did. There’s a little bit of mental like, I mean, every time he had a chance to catch the ball, he wasn’t catching it.
