Of course not. There are no guarantees and uncertainty exists.
Welcome to reality.
There are, however, indicators of the likelihood that the level of uncertainty can be reduced to an acceptably manageable amount and that improvement can be measured. How? Try on the field production both individually and the team as a system.
Nope. There have been misses every year. And there will continue to be. No team/GM is immune to it. It has, or will, happened to everybody that ever picked a player.
You mentioned the concept of "immeasurables". Call it heart, desire, whatever terms you wish to use to express the psychological/emotional/mental aspects of an athlete that contribute to performance. Do they exist? Of course they do. Can they be directly measured? No. But can their contribution be observed without the ability to directly identify and measure them? I think so.
Here's an example. Reed Doughty. No measurements of his athleticism, physical skills, attributes, his speed, quickness, maneuverability, size, weight, strength could have been used in any combination to accurately predict how effective he was as a football player. He was an overachiever in terms of how good he played, how effective a tackler he was, how he pursued the opposition. Attribute, if you wish, his performance above and beyond what you might have thought to the "immeasurables" of heart, desire, motor, whatever you want and I'll be happy to say they played a major part in his play even though they couldn't be measured. What I see, however, is that their effect could be both seen and measured. That was most certainly observable.
You can always see it, after the fact. But there are too many players, that EVERY team/GM in the league think are not worth drafting, that go on to have stellar careers. Even HOF careers. Players that didn't measure up to any criteria that made them a target on someone's draft board. And yet, once they hit the pros, something happened. The "light" went on. Or the inner drive to succeed finally kicked in. All things that are impossible to measure consistently, or reliably.
(As an aside, you know what happens if you have an elite combination of measurable athletic skills combined with a top teir high level of the "immeasurables"? You get a once-a-generation superlative player. You get a Sean Taylor.)
Sean Taylor was indeed, special. His physical attributes were such that teams would overlook his "question marks". Which he did have coming out of college. Nobody "knew" he would embrace his career like he did. The flip side of him is, there are always players, every year, who's physical ability, and college gameday film, make teams/GM's look past almost any red flag that exists, in hopes that they will carry their success over to the pros. Only to watch them fail miserably. And more times than not, it's an issue between the ears. Or a lack of heart/desire/want to, that does them in. And nobody saw it coming. So, everybody has been right, at times. And everybody has been wrong, at times. If there was a way to accurately measure the "immeasurables", then injury would pretty much be the only way anyone would "miss" on a player. Let me know if that ever happens.
One more thing.
You mentioned, rightly, that most personnel departments of NFL teams have more misses than hits during the draft.
So what? Where does that matter?
It matters here. In the minds of internet GM's who seem to think it's not so. The expectations on Mr McGloo are through the roof. This fan base, will not tolerate bad draft choices. Most have lost all patience. If he has a couple unfortunate draft classes to start, he'll be run out on a rail.
Think baseball, for example. The best hitters when they are at bat do what? .320-.340 batting average? The Astros' Jose Altuve had a league leading .341 average. You know what that means? That means 66% of the times he was at bat he failed to get a hit. A 66% failure rate at anything sounds pretty lousy if your trying to accomplish something-except for the fact that was better than everybody else. The mean batting average for all MLB teams during the 2014 season was .251-a 75% failure rate. Basically you are measuring ability to do something where the average failure rate is 75% and you measure your success by having fewer failures than the other guy. Altuve had the lowest failure rate among batters in the major leagues and by that measure he was an outstanding success That is analogous to what we are doing here with the upcoming draft.
Apples to oranges. How the game of baseball is played, has nothing to do with how players are evaluated for the NFL draft. But, since we're throwing out useless sports analogies, I'll use basketball. The NBA free throw average is roughly 7 for 10. With some of the best players averaging 9 out of 10. This too, has nothing at all to do with evaluating players for the NFL.
What matters is that we improve our success rate, or if you wish, lower our rate of failure to a point that our ability to select NFL worthy players is better than it has been and hopefully better than the majority of the other NFL teams. Period.
Indications are that Scott M. has a likely deserved reputation for have one of the lower failure rates among personnel guys and for that reason I at this point am giving him the chance to demonstrate said ability.
As has been said before, time will tell.
Totally agree here. Though being better than every other team isn't realistic. But being luckier, is damn well possible. We need Mr McGloo to have an 81 Beathard draft. Probably the best overall draft in team history. But people need to accept that an 82 Beathard draft is just as possible.