Monthly Archives: October 2019

Ask the Scouts: Why Are We Seeing Overnight Overall No. 1 picks?

25 Friday Oct 2019

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This weekend, LSU hosts No. 9 Auburn. Two weeks later, the No. 2 team in the nation travels to Tuscaloosa to face No. 1 Alabama. It’s possible those two games could determine the No. 1 pick in the 2020 NFL Draft.

Think that’s a stretch? Consider the last two drafts. In 2018, Oklahoma’s Baker Mayfield entered the season as a late-rounder on most boards. After tearing up the college football world, he won not only the Heisman but the honor of being taken No. 1 by the Browns. A season later, Kyler Murray was just a baseball player (taken No. 9 overall in the 2018 MLB Draft by Oakland) who wanted to spend his last season as Oklahoma’s starter. He went on to replace Mayfield not only as the Sooners’ starter, but also as Heisman winner and No. 1 overall to Arizona.

This year’s Mayfield/Murray could be LSU QB Joe Burrow. The Athletic’s Michael Lombardi has been banging that drum for weeks now, and while NFL scouts are still on the fence (“I’m grading him next week, so I can’t give an answer,” said one; “I heard his arm strength is average,” said another), Burrow has passed every test so far.  But that’s not what interests us most. The bigger question is, why are these passers moving ahead of others with more significant bodies of work?

Here’s the questions we asked several of our friends in scouting: For the third straight year, there could be a No. 1 overall (Burrow?) who entered the season on almost no one’s first round board. Why is this? Is it college offenses that more closely mirror NFL offenses, so hot players have less of a learning curve? Is it a “now” culture that favors a hot season over a body of work? Is it the rise of analytics, which make forecasting the most NFL-ready players much harder? Or is it something else?

We’ll survey their responses in today’s Friday Wrap (register for it here). You can weigh in on the question in our Twitter poll here. Here are a few of the responses we got from scouts via text:

  • “A lot of people favor a hot season. Me, I like the body of work. I want a guy who has been good for more than 12 games. I’m not a fan of analytics for anything but helping with strategy.”
  • “Simple answer is that scouting is not an exact science. Every player has some sort of momentum heading into the draft, good or bad, but seldom is there a true “stock up, stock down” scenario. The process includes career trajectory, but the whole picture is much more than that.”
  • “I think the inexperienced GMs and the young scouts they hire around the league get excited about a one-year wonder. I also think today’s scouts look at social media and are afraid to dismiss what internet scouts say, when in reality they should trust their eyes when they evaluate and look at the track record of the player.

Make sure you check out our poll (and vote in it) and read all the scouts’ responses in today’s Friday Wrap (register here).

XFL Scouts, Executives Bullish on League’s First Draft

18 Friday Oct 2019

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With lots of friends in the front offices of the new XFL, I have been pretty excited about the league, but a little nervous about the league’s two-day draft, which took place Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. How do you populate 70-man rosters from scratch? Especially when media coverage is minimal, players are scattered across the country, staffs are tight and budgets are limited?

From the sound of things, without too much trouble. I reached out to several of the league’s scouts and executives after this week’s draft, and without exception, they were very excited about how well the draft went. Here are their responses:

  • “Players were following the draft online. Agents were great to deal with. Players and agents have seen the success the players had from the AAF and getting NFL contracts. The players were great to deal with, even ones that were high NFL draft choices. This league will benefit from what the AAF started. I thought it went very smooth.”   
  • “For the first time anybody ever tried to tun a 70-man draft, with 1,100 in the player pool, there were a lot of things that could have gone wrong, and really it went off without a hitch. The guys in the main office did a great job, and there were no problems communicating with the front office. We got the guys on the phone as we made the pick or right before, so we were able to get hold of all of our guys and I didn’t hear any bitching or moaning from agents or players. From what I heard, they were all excited to get the call.”
  • “For the most part, agents and players were very accessible throughout both days of the draft. Players almost to a man were fired up to get another opportunity to play, and you could feel their emotion over the phone. Really excited to get to work with them in December.”
  • “Thought it went surprisingly smooth. Out of our 70 guys drafted, I think 68 of them were very excited and pumped. We had called about 600 guys prior to the draft. Came across some that said they were not going to play for that little of money, so we took them off our board. But many many more are excited about the opportunity. 

Of course, I wanted to get a fuller view of the draft, and to do that, I also reached out to a handful of agents to get the other side. I cautioned them not to rant; I only wanted specifics (good and bad) about the draft, with an eye toward constructive criticism. Nobody’s perfect, after all. They gave me several interesting and well-thought-out responses, which will be in today’s Friday Wrap that comes out this evening.

I hope you’ll check it out. If you’re already registered, it will be in your inbox at the customary 6:30 p.m. CT. If you aren’t, you can go here and rectify that.

Ask an NFL Agent: How Long Does It Take To Befriend Scouts?

11 Friday Oct 2019

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With the results of this summer’s NFLPA contract advisors exam disseminated, dues paid and liability insurance policies purchased, the Players Association is slowly adding the names of newly minted contract advisors to its website. That means about 100 people being added to the NFL agent ranks are asking, what do I do now?

We field a lot of those questions. In fact, we’ve been answering them for our subscribers over the past two weeks with Monday emails. Here’s one from Sept. 30, in which we discuss the benefits and challenges of trying to join a big firm. Last Monday, we discussed how to get started on recruiting, and this Monday, we’ll talk about the practice of representing college and NFL coaches.

Today, we’re answering another one. One question we always get from new agents is how they can find out who to recruit. The bigger question is, how do they approach scouts to locate the sleepers that they have a shot at singing? With that in mind, we decided to pose this question to new agents: How long did it take you to develop relationships with scouts? How long was it before you could ask scouts questions about players and expect a reasonably timely, reasonably candid response?

Here are some of the responses we got back:

  • “Completely random scouts? I’d say my first draft cycle. I had (a big-school client) go to the combine, so some scouts reached out, and then I was able to create a friendship with them. It was really a year-by-year process . . . You can go up to random scouts at all-star games and introduce yourself and push your guy, but the chances of them ever picking up your call or answering your texts in a timely fashion after that on a consistent basis is slim. . . I’d be lying if I said I didn’t make new connections with scouts every single year, and I don’t see that really changing, especially with all the turnover in scouting departments today.”
  • “Like 3-4 years. They don’t tell you (anything) until they know you are legit and get quality clients.”
  • “My feel personally is . . . whatever time it takes to sign a couple guys that the scouting community realizes, ‘OK, you’ve got a little feel for what you’re doing, a little credibility, and it’s worth me having a conversation about who you’re looking at, who you might be recruiting, who you’re close to signing’ . . . you can almost always get a brief conversation rolling with a scout at some point.”
  • “I had one or two my first year that were nice enough to talk to me, but the network of scouts I talk to now has taken me years to develop.”

These aren’t the only responses we got. In fact, one of our friends in the agent community used the question to discuss a significant (and costly) way he’s seen new contract advisors be exploited by opportunistic scouts.

You won’t want to miss their comments, and you don’t have to if you register for our weekly Friday Wrap. You probably already have, but just in case you haven’t, now’s your chance to sign up. You’ll be among 5,000 people across the football industry who receive our review of the week in the game as it pertains to the business. If you haven’t already, please join us.

A Midseason Look at Six Mock Drafts for the ’20 NFL Draft

04 Friday Oct 2019

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If you read this blog regularly, or you keep up on our Friday Wrap, you know we like to keep tabs on the major draft prognosticators just to see which ones are more willing to break from the pack, which ones pick up on the hottest prospects earliest, and which ones are most volatile from month to month.

For two-plus years, we’ve surveyed seven services, monitoring them from immediately post-draft all the way through the following draft. It’s always fun to see how the boards change as the season winds toward draft time.

Now that we’re almost halfway through the college season, we thought now would be a good time to take our second look at the seven services (Pro Football Network/Tony Pauline; Pro Football Focus; Sports Illustrated; Bleacher Report/Matt Miller; ESPN/Todd McShay; The Athletic/Dane Brugler; and Walter Football). We previously reviewed their work on July 16 (sorry, pay link).

We have several observations in today’s Friday Wrap, which comes out at 6:30 p.m. CT. In the meantime, here are a few things we found interesting:

Passing thoughts: Utah State’s Jordan Love was seen as a sneaky pick for the first round this summer, though he was only listed on one of the seven boards (Pauline at No. 8); we don’t know how Pauline feels these days, but Love is No. 10 in the eyes of Brugler and No. 29 according to Brugler. Then there’s Washington’s Jacob Eason and LSU’s Joe Burrow. Eason has gone from no boards to three boards in six weeks, with Walter Football listing him at No. 17 over Love, Burrow and Georgia’s Jake Fromm. Meanwhile, Burrow, despite garnering serious Heisman mentions, is mostly persona non grata. Miller likes him at No. 21, while Pro Football Focus slides him in at No. 32. They are the only two services that see him in the first round, but at least he’s not Oklahoma’s Jalen Hurts. Like the last two No. 1 overall picks, Hurts is Oklahoma’s starter, a transfer, and a serious Heisman contender, but that’s still not good enough to rate a spot in the top 32 for any of the six services.

Catch the fever: Based on the draft services, it’s going to be a great year to need a wide receiver. Not only were there more receivers than any other position that garnered first-round grades from all six services, but two others (Alabama’s Henry Ruggs III and Clemson’s Tee Higgins) made five out of six boards; Walter Football snubbed both of them. Also, TCU’s Jalen Reagor was on four of six boards.

That’s a stretch: Among the 13 players who made all six boards, the biggest difference of opinion was on Iowa DE A.J. Epenesa as Miller listed him at No. 3, but  McShay only saw him as No. 25. Also, Walter Football tabbed Herbert as the No. 2 pick, but Miller saw him as only the No. 22 selection. Finally, there’s Georgia OT Andrew Thomas; Walter has him at No. 3, but McShay sees him as only the No. 19 pick.

Want more? Make sure to register for our Friday Wrap, which you can do here. You can also check out the entire draft grid — and a whole lot more — by joining us at ITL.