Another day, another NFL executive saying that he knew enough to steer clear of Aaron Hernandez in the 2010 NFL draft.
Yesterday it was Bengals owner Mike Brown, who said his team was wary of Hernandez’s character before the draft. Today it’s former Colts General Manager Bill Polian, who told the Wall Street Journal his team steered clear of Hernandez.
“There were questions there, which is why a guy of that talent lasted until the fourth round,” Polian said.
Polian added that the Colts were looking at tight ends (and they selected tight end Brody Eldridge in the fifth round), but they “never got that far” in their evaluation of Hernandez.
“We were not in the Hernandez business,” Polian said.
The second-guessing of the Patriots for drafting Hernandez has been ongoing for the last two weeks, as some folks say they knew all along that Hernandez was trouble, while others say that the Patriots should have known. Some of that second-guessing is, frankly, ridiculous: Hernandez was a trouble-maker at Florida, but no one expected him to become the defendant in a first-degree murder case.
Still, the Wall Street Journal‘s report says that a scouting service that prepares psychological profiles of players for NFL teams warned its clients that Hernandez was “living on the edge of acceptable behavior” and cautioned that he could become “a problem” for his team.
That scouting service provides reports for 18 teams. It is not clear whether either the Patriots or the Colts are among those 18. But Polian wants to make it clear that he never would have drafted Hernandez.