It’s been 22 years this weekend since I launched Inside the League. I didn’t really know for sure where ITL would end up, or if I’d ever make a penny, but I really had only one goal: I wanted to know why teams picked (and didn’t pick) the players they chose. The NFL Draft just had so much intrigue then.

More than two decades later, I still know nothing. However, I’ve gotten at least some insights on it over the past four years as I’ve written my next book, which (I hope) comes out around Draft Day 2025. It’s tentatively called “Crazy Eight,” and though that’s a working title, I think it’s fitting. It’s about eight players selected in the 2016 draft — Jared Goff, Carson Wentz, Dak Prescott, Laremy Tunsil, Jakeem Grant, Michael Thomas, Derrick Henry and Tyreek Hill — and their draft stories, but told from the perspective of the scouts and executives who drafted them. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Bob McGinn, a beat writer for the Packers for four decades, but he’s very good at telling the back stories on the draft. That’s what I do in Crazy Eight.

I chose these eight because, No. 1, they’ve all been successful players. Every single one of them has been to at least one Pro Bowl and most have even been All-Pro. But I also chose them because, except in the cases of Goff and Wentz, they were all drafted later than they should have, given what they’ve accomplished in the league. It’s a testament to all of them that they are all (except Thomas, for now), still part of the league almost a decade after being drafted. That’s a real achievement, I don’t care where you were drafted or what kind of impact you had as a player.

How is this book different from my last book? Well, Scout Speak was more-or-less a love letter to the professional player evaluator. If you read it, I hope you learned a little more about how NFL scouts do their jobs and how an NFL scouting department works. For my next book, I hope you’ll learn more about what matters when it comes to evaluating players, how teams differ in their priorities, and maybe even the blind spots for NFL teams and even the limits on what they can even know. There’s a temptation to think that NFL teams know all and see all, but scouts are people, too, and they have to clear multiple obstacles to get the real truth about players. Sometimes, even when they get that information, it’s hard to know what to do about it. Again, scouts are human.

Anyway, the way the book is set up is, the first seven chapters are about the players themselves (Goff and Wentz, who went 1-2 that year, share a chapter). I try to go pretty deep on their backstories and the things that scouts knew, but maybe the general public didn’t know. If you know me, you know I don’t rip people or criticize them for doing their jobs in good faith, and this book is the same way. Hopefully you don’t find that boring. My goal, as always, is to tell stories and inform without embracing the crass trashing of people, even when they come up short, for entertainment purposes.

The last part of the book is dedicated to scouts’ stories about the way a handful of teams approached the draft. This is basically the “war stories” part of the book, and probably what I enjoy most about talking to scouts. There are so many facets to why a team takes the players it takes, and that’s what we dig into. So far, Tom Ciskowski (Cowboys), Don Gregory (Panthers), Matt Lindsey (Eagles), Tom McConnaughey (Chargers), Trey Scott (Raiders), Josh Washburn (Redskins), Steven Price (Vikings) and Chris Prescott (Bears) have shared their draft-day experiences from 2016 with me. I’ve also reached out to other friends to give their recollections, and in some cases, they differ from what I’d heard previously. At any rate, I’m still crafting their responses into narratives. Some of the stories I’ve heard so far have been fascinating, and I look forward to sharing them with you. These are all my friends, and they’ve told me a lot with the understanding that their recollections will be shared in the most positive light. Obviously, I will honor that. They’ve still got some fascinating stories to tell.

Anyway, I hope to have the manuscript done by the end of September, and then I’ll get to work on the audio file, the cover, having it proofread, and all the other vagaries of publishing a book. I look forward to sharing it with people who love scouting and the draft as much as I do.