Talib Showing the Reward Side of "Character" Gambles


It was just a few short months ago that the Aaron Hernandez arrest sent sports writers everywhere into a tizzy, eagerly racing to their soapboxes to declare that Bill Belichick's penchance for taking risks on players with "character" issues had finally and deservedly bit him in the behind.

We're now entering Week Six of the season and the Patriots have survived the absence of Hernandez (and many others) to go 4-1. None of this would be possible without the stellar performance of former pariah Aqib Talib.

Despite having all the physical attributes of a shutdown corner, Talib was available to the Patriots last November for the meager price of a fourth round pick. Belichick jumped on the opportunity to give his secondary a boost and the much improved Patriots defense has helped the team go 11-3 since.

Why was a player with Talib's talent available for such a low price? One merely looks at Talib's history of dubious behavior. Rumors of failed drug tests and a 2 game suspension for disciplinary reasons while at Kansas reportedly hurt his stock in 2008, albeit not enough for him to drop out of the first round. Upon being drafted by the Tampa Bay Bucs, he promptly made his presence felt by fighting teammate Cory Boyd at the rookie symposium, an event intended to help rookies transition into the NFL. The following year, he struck teammate Torrie Cox in the head when Cox attempted to break up a skirmish between Talib and Donald Penn.

2009 saw Talib arrested for simple battery and resisting arrest after he assaulted a cab driver. The incident resulted in an undisclosed financial settlement with the driver and a 1 game suspension from the NFL. 2011 saw Talib and his mother Okolo charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after Talib allegedly fired shots at his sister's boyfriend during an altercation (the charges were later dropped after the prosecution's witness was deemed not credible). A 2012 four game suspension, supposedly for Adderol, was the last straw for Talib in Tampa, as he was traded to New England shortly after.

Needless to say, Talib had earned his reputation as a "character concern" by the time the Patriots got their hands on him. However, the team weighed it's options and made a favorable gamble. With Talib's career at a crossroads and free agency looming at the end of the season, both team and player knew the corner would have to stay out of trouble and perform well in order to earn a long-term deal. Belichick figured the odds were greater of Talib performing well in a contract year than Talib getting in trouble during the final two months of the season. That, coupled with some truly awful pass defense from the Pats early in the season, led Belichick to pull the trigger.

In the NFL, every player and every transaction has potential risks and rewards to be considered. Some players are, regardless of how tough they are, injury prone. Some have physical talent but lack great football instincts. Some are, for lack of a better word, lazy. Finally, some have proven to have a higher risk for getting in trouble. The decision of whether the reward (talent) outweighs the risk of a player is made countless times by every GM in the league.

It's also the highest level of hypocrisy to hold one single team accountable for it's personnel gambles in a league littered with bad guys. Patriots fans need no reminder of this, as they just saw Adam "Pacman" Jones register a game sealing interception of Tom Brady just last Sunday.

Ultimately, it would be foolish for a front office to flat out refuse to consider players with "character issues," as doing so would drastically limit the talent available to fill out a roster. Often, the appeal of such risks is the value the present. The ability to turn a fourth round pick into a player of Talib's caliber is nothing to scoff at, and Belichick's tenure in New England has several examples of such gambles playing enormous dividends (with Randy Moss and Corey Dillon being two obvious examples).

With that said, what happens when the gamble doesn't pay off? Well, in most cases, very little and it's due to the decreased cost to acquire those players. The 2011 Patriots got next-to-nothing out of Albert Haynesworth and Chad Ochocinco, but they only lost fifth and sixth round picks to get them. The Patriots had seen other players run afoul of the law before Hernandez (remember Willie Andrews?) and were able to cut ties with little to no repercussions.

The Hernandez case is different, of course, because a murder conviction is the absolute worst-case scenario of a character gamble gone wrong. Regardless of "how much Belichick knew", there's no way the Patriots would have made Hernandez a key part of their team going forward if they had even the slightest inkling that murder was on the horizon.

Hence, it wasn't the decision to draft Hernandez that came back to hurt the Pats. It was the decision to commit a big money extension to him that ensured the tight end would be a big part of New England's plans going forward. Other then a PR hit, the biggest loss from the Patriots perspective was losing a productive player, something that illustrates a dirty little secret in the NFL: talented "character issue" guys are worth the risk as long as they are on the field and not the prison yard on Sundays.

The Patriots will soon face the same decision with Talib, whose one year deal expires at the end of the season. Talib has done and said all the right things since arriving in New England, but his past is difficult to ignore. It will be up to the Patriots to make a gut decision on whether the super competitive Talib has been genuinely changed by a winning environment or whether the cornerback is staying in line because he knows a big payday is coming.

Point out an NFL fan who claims their team has no bad character guys and I'll point out a liar. Every team has to take chances on players whose talent is just too great to ignore, and I'd wager that every team has at least one player who, like Talib, is rewarding the team's moxie in taking that chance. The next time you marvel at Talib's playmaking ability, remember that he wouldn't be here without Belichick making the same type of gamble he made on Hernandez. Despite all the July moralizing and hand-wringing, the most important lesson from the Hernandez situation clearly isn't to avoid character gambles altogether. It's making sure you place your bets wisely.