Category Archives: Scouts

How Is An NFL Scouting Dept Built? A Look at Five Teams

12 Friday Jun 2020

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49ersColtsEaglesRavensSaintsNFL avg.
Scouting Assts311411.78
Combine Scout110.43
Scouting Coordinator111111
Area Scouts553845.75
Reg/Nat/Exec/Cross/Sr212152.03
Directors/Asst Directors2251.72
VP/DPP/AGM312311.56
Pro Scouting Dept543143.06
Analytics Dept.226332.91
Total211824201920.3

Last week, in the Friday Wrap, we looked at how today’s NFL scouting departments are built. How many scouts usually make up the scouting department? How big is a typical analytics team? Is middle management a big part of most teams’ evaluation department? We presented all our numbers on our website.

That’s a pay link, so rather than snub all those people who aren’t our clients, we’ve presented five teams’ results above. We feel these are five of the better-drafting teams in the league; in fact, three of them (the Saints in ’17, the Colts in ’18 and the 49ers in ’19) won the Best Draft Award as voted on by NFL scouts.

We’ll be talking about commonalities and differences among the these five teams (and the nuances that don’t show up in a grid) Friday on SiriusXM NFL Radio channel 88 with Alex Marvez and Mark Dominik. I hope you can join us.

In the meantime, a few notes:

  • Following modern trends, the 49ers have three at the VP level. The team is also mostly on trend for number of ‘reinforcements,’ i.e., scouting assistants, though the team’s pro personnel analysts are most likely on deck to plug in as area scouts, as well.
  • The Colts have four members of their information systems department; we guessed that they were not in analytics, but more traditional infromation tech people instead. The team is also light on scouting assistants, though the team does have a football operations assistant (which we counted as a scouting assistant). Finally, though the team is light on analytics personnel, it’s believed to have a greater reliance on analytics (and successfully) than most teams.
  • The Eagles are one of the teams that draw a bright line between football operations and scouting, but who include their analytics professionals in football operations (at least per their job titles). They have a significant analytics presence. The team also is light on area scouts, and clearly uses its directors and assistant directors to get out on the road, as well.
  • The Ravens are another team that has two DPPs, plus a player personnel coordinator and a senior player personnel executive. This is why it’s fair to say the Ravens are one of the most committed teams when it comes to buildin through the draft, and they usually get results. We also termed the team’s three player personnnel assistants and one player personnel analyst as scouting assistants.
  • The Saints have a pretty streamlined operation, despite having three national scouts (which is pretty unusual). They achieve this by placing the scouting department in the hands of AGM Jeff Ireland, who also fills the college director role, and assigning much of the work many area scouts would do to their national scouts. Also, though the team has three staffers in analytics, Ireland and Co. tend to rely more on their own eyes than what the math tells them.

To check out our analysis of all 32 teams, click here.

ScoutSpeak: What’s Ahead for My Book on NFL Scouting

25 Monday May 2020

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It took me a lot longer to write my first book than I ever thought it would. Thanks to the quarantine, Book 2 came together a lot more quickly, and I’m ready to get your feedback before I put the finishing touches on it.

It’s going to be called ScoutSpeak, and it’s a compilation of all the content, all the interviews, all the conversations I’ve had with scouts about NFL scouting over the past 18 years. I meet so many young people who want to get into scouting, and they alway ask the same questions. What is the job really like? How do I get a job? How do I keep from getting fired? There’s so much to say. This time, I hope to put it all in one place, and put it in the actual words of dozens of scouts and administrators, active and former.

Here’s a look at the breakdown so far:

  • 10 thoughts on the industry (6.6 percent): This is basically what I’ve taken away from closely studying the industry for almost two decades. Regardless of the cliches  you always hear about the draft and scouting, these are my takeaways about how players are really evaluated and really chosen.
  • The character question (6.6 percent): We always hear about players who slip due to character. Later, we see how some players conduct themselves and wonder why they didn’t fall in the draft. The way that character really impacts and influences the draft, based on what scouts have told me, is something I just had to include.
  • The UDFA process (9.8 percent): The two hours after the draft has always fascinated me, especially when you think about all the players who were passed over by all 32 teams for seven rounds, then went on to stardom.
  • Makeup of an NFL scouting department (6.6 percent): This is more of a nuts-and-bolts discussion of the difference between pro and college scouts, how the two combines work, etc.
  • Getting the job (21.3 percent): If there’s one question I’ve gotten more than any other, it’s this one. That’s why I devoted a fifth of the book to it.
  • Losing the job (6.6 percent): I figured if I focused on how to get the job, I should include this section, as well.
  • Doing the job (26.2 percent): I’ve always found people see scouts as incredibly intriguing and mysterious, so we devoted plenty of ink to this.
  • Why do players bust? (4.9 percent): This is the eternal question, and everyone has an opinion.
  • War stories (11.5 percent): Everyone loves to hear the stories of how picks are and were made, especially when names are named. I gotta tell you, too — some of them are truly hilarious.

So how am I doing? Am I on track? Are there things I should expand on? Are there things I should omit? I’d love to get your opinion. Hit me up at @InsideTheLeague when you can.

 

Where Do Today’s NFL Scouts Come From?

22 Friday May 2020

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The bulk of the work done evaluating players for the NFL Draft is done by area scouts, the foot soldiers of the profession. At Inside the League, we spend a lot of time telling their stories and trying to make their jobs a little easier with our salary survey, helping out with pro days in March, and anything else.

Normally, May is when scouts get hired and fired. Obviously, this has not been a normal May, so rather than covering who’s coming and going, this week, we decided to take a long look at our Scouting Changes Grids from 2015-2019 to see where scouts are coming from, as well as what’s happening to the people who hold that title.

The perception is that older, more seasoned evaluators are no longer en vogue, and there’s a definite shelf life for old-school college scouts. At the same time, fresh-faced youngsters are more hirable than ever. But what do the numbers say?

We counted 90 NFL personnel professionals who took a job as area scout between 2015 and 2019 (college side only, not pro scout). Some ascended to the position from lower jobs. Some were area scouts who moved laterally to other teams, or who changed areas. Some had previously held more senior jobs and went back on the road simply to get back into the league. Here’s what we found.

  • For 71 of the 90, achieving area scout was a clear promotion.
  • Of the 71, almost half (31) were promoted from scouting assistant, which has become the most common way teams hire college evaluators.
  • Eighteen of the 70 were combine scouts (BLESTO or NFS), probably the second-most common route.
  • Eleven were in pro roles or assisted on both the pro and college side.
  • Four other scouts moved over from the pro side. All four were young scouts who were most likely being promoted, though it’s unclear if they received a bump in pay. Either way, probably good news for young scouts.
  • Three more came from non-NFL scouting services, though it’s important to note that two of the three had extensive pro football backgrounds and weren’t plucked capriciously from #DraftTwitter.
  • Another two hopped directly from other leagues (the CFL and Arena League) into area roles.
  • One was a college scouting coordinator who was sent on the road.
  • One moved over from the coaching side.

Another note: this is a hiring trend that has been sustained over the last five years. At least 10 new area scouts per year have been hired from within every year since 2015 (not counting this year, of course). In 2017, 22 (!) were elevated from scouting assistant and combine scout roles.

Of course, it wasn’t all good news for new area scouts. We identified 17 of the 90 who were taking a step down from national scout or a director-level position, presumably after a period of unemployment. Bottom line, the overwhelming majority of new area scout hires (81 percent) were people with limited experience who were promoted from within.

Two others didn’t fit any specific category and were hard to quantify.

We also counted 148 area scouts over the same time period (2015-2019) who experienced a change in job status. The news for these experienced evaluators was not as positive. We go into detail on how many received a promotion, mostly stayed static, or were pushed out of the business in the last five years in today’s Friday Wrap.

You can register for it here. It comes out this evening (6:30 p.m. CT), and if you’re interested in being an NFL scout, or you are one already, we recommend you give it a look.

 

A Look at Why NFL Scouts Get Hired and Fired

07 Thursday May 2020

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In the last week, two seasoned area scouts have been non-renewed by their NFL teams. When I was new to the game, this used to puzzle me — why would you remove seasoned evaluators? Now that I’ve watched hiring practices for about a decade, it makes a lot more sense.

I’ve spent most of Thursday texting with several scouts and discussing the ‘brain drain’ in NFL scouting. This time of year, especially, I get asked about how you get (and keep) a job as an NFL scout. I’ll take a few of the texts I’ve received today and expand on them in an attempt to illustrate how modern teams hire and fire.

  • “Teams are hiring their buddies and using scout money on director positions. Creating spots but not hiring the workers.” — It’s a great point. If you want to surround yourself with people you trust, but the owner won’t increase your budget, you hire less-seasoned scouts. This has been a rising trend across the business for at least the last 2-3 years. It’s mainly because decision-making has become increasingly centralized while “metrics” for scouts are limited at best. When a scout is fired, you rarely hear from others that he was a bad scout (or even a good one). Very hard to pin accountability on any one scout, so reasons for dismissal are similarly elusive.
  • “Look at some of the staffs. Titans have two directors of player personnel. . . Buffalo has a director and assistant director at every position and a assistant GM.   Seattle has two directors of player personnel.  Miami has an asst GM and two personnel directors.” — I never thought about this before, but it makes a lot of sense. We’re seeing a lot of duplication of position in league front offices right now while we’re simultaneously seeing some pretty nebulous titles, like “executive scout” or “senior advisor.” It makes for a lot of chiefs and a limited number of Indians.
  • “I also think that guys can be slow to change at times and feel they have tenure in certain situations when they don’t and are making top dollar.” — This is another good point, and one that you don’t often hear from scouts. It’s the other side of the “why fire all the experienced scouts?” argument. Scouts often become entitled, especially after they have several years under their belts.
  • “. . . A scout’s presence at a school has to (include being) a good guest, too.” — I think this is as important as it’s ever been. As college head coaches’ salaries increase and the pressure to win grows higher than ever, there’s less transparency and sometimes less of an open-door policy for scouts. I hear often from college personnel directors and recruiting staffers that they’d love to accommodate scouts, but at the end of the day, that doesn’t keep them employed. I get it.

We’ll talk more about NFL scouting and what’s happening in the NFL evaluation community in the Friday Wrap, which comes out at 6:30 p.m. CT tomorrow. If you haven’t registered for it already, I’d love it if you did, and I think you would, too.

 

ITL Zoom Scouting Meetup: Some Words of Wisdom from ex-NFL Scout Bob Morris

15 Wednesday Apr 2020

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Tuesday night, we had our first Zoom meet-up for aspiring NFL scouts. I hosted it with guest Bob Morris, a longtime friend who’s spent time in the Alliance of American Football and XFL as well as 15 years in the league with the Browns and 49ers. You might also have seen him on our Twitter feed, as he led several ITL-assisted pro days over the last three weeks (like this one).

Bob spent an hour with five members of the college personnel community (Austin Schaffer of Cincinnati, Price Burton of Toledo, Drew Hixson of Kansas, Connor Anderson of Texas State and Zach Gold of Temple). Here are a few takeaways.

  • One question we got was, how do you make your case to a coach when the analytics fit but the coach rejects the player, or vice versa? Bob said it’s best to sit with the coach and calmly make your case. If you can point to a previous player that fits your mold and turned out to be a success, that’s the best way. Examples always trump theory, obviously.
  • Bob was also asked how old is too old when it comes to pursuing a scouting career. He didn’t put a number on things, instead referring to family and relationships to make that decision. With that said, teams are hiring younger and younger evaluators; it’s as simple as that. Bob also observed that, more and more, the job vacated by a veteran scout as he moves from Team A to Team B is usually filled from within by a scouting assistant at Team A.
  • Bob also guarded against spending too much time in self-promotion. He said longtime college head coach Bill Mallory (Indiana, Colorado, Miami of Ohio, Northern Illinois), who served as a mentor of sorts for Bob, always told him to let his work be his sales pitch.
  • One way to do that, Bob said, is to be totally prepared when a scout is in the building. Anticipate what he’ll need, what questions he’ll ask, and where he’ll need to go when he’s making his rounds, whether or not you’re the NFL liaison. I know that’s common sense, but it’s still true.
  • He also said that, while in San Francisco, GM Trent Baalke would ask all the scouts if there was someone they’d met on the road who had what it took to work for the 49ers. Bob mentioned Niners area scout Steve Rubio, formerly the director of player personnel at Tennessee, as one scout who made his way up that way.
  • Also common sense: if you’re at a school with more talent, you’ll have a better chance of getting recognized. Personnel directors and NFL liaisons at Alabama, Ohio State and Texas stand a better chance of becoming scouts because they’re just going to get more face time with NFL evaluators.

This won’t be our last meet-up, and I look forward to connecting other former members of the NFL scouting world with aspiring scouts from the college evaluation community. Interested in joining us? Hit us up on Twitter or contact us here.

How Will the Coronavirus Impact NFL Scouting and Agent Practices? Three Possibilities

03 Friday Apr 2020

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What will life look like on the other side of the coronavirus — presuming we ever get there? I don’t know. But I’m willing to make a few predictions on how football will change, especially as it relates to how agents, scouts and trainers work. Here are a few.

Video visits will become capped: Now that we’re all more comfortable with Zoom, it’s become a lot easier to work remotely. Before this year, the only way teams could bring a player “in-house” was with their allotted 30 visits in March and April. Teams are getting around this now, however, with Zoom visits; New Orleans Football chronicled a detailed visit the Saints had with Utah St. QB Jordan Love this week. The NFL’s Competition Committee is pretty rigid about eliminating any advantages one team might have over another. I could see the league either lumping these in with the 30 visits, or creating a new rule for total number of virtual visits.

Trainers will put in a coronavirus clause: Combine prep trainers are the IRS of the agent industry. Many complain about them and feel like they are way too much trouble  and demand too much money. I wonder if contract advisors still feel this way after several trainers have risked state sanctions to open their venues for workouts, or have reached out to me to find ex-scouts to run pro days. Most trainers are excellent at what they do, but they don’t have big staffs who can set up pro days. It’s the kind of mission creep trainers hate, but that agents expect. Trainers often struggle just to get payment for their services; I could see most of them strictly defining their services going forward, and restricting all provision of services beyond training until they’ve received full compensation.

Traditional scouting becomes newly valued: About two-thirds of pro days were cancelled this year, which means there’s a drastic cutback on the triangle numbers of hundreds of prospects. This means there will be a lot more evaluation done the old-fashioned way. My hope is that teams use this time to reinforce old-style film breakdown with the new wave of young scouts who’ve been hired the last 4-5 years. I also hope that teams draw on their scouting reports rather than falling in love with a prospect’s well-rehearsed in-person interview. Finally, I hope it also means some veterans get extended, or at least not axed. You gotta keep some of the gray-haired guys around sometimes. They have something to offer.

We’ll take a further look at how people in the game are dealing with the crisis today in the Friday Wrap, which comes out this evening. If you haven’t already, register for it here.

2020 NFL Draft Process, Coronavirus Edition: How Scouts, Agents, Players Are Adjusting

27 Friday Mar 2020

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Obviously we’re in an unprecedented time. Here are a few observations on how the football world is shifting to accommodate the coronavirus situation, and how we’re trying to be a small part of the solution.

  • It looked bad for open venues this week, so we moved several up in an attempt to stay ahead of the closings. As a result, we were able to get two in on Tuesday in Dallas and one in Tampa, thanks to former NFL evaluators Bob Morris (Browns, 49ers) and Richard Shelton (Titans). Bob handled things in Dallas and Richard in Tampa. Unfortunately, our instincts were correct. We had a workout in New Orleans slated for today, but the venue was shuttered on Thursday. We’re hoping two pro days we have scheduled for today in Atlanta go off without a hitch (ex-Raiders scout Von Hutchins and Mike Hagen, last with the Chiefs, are calling the shots there).
  • Because we’ve brought in former NFL personnel to run these pro days — sort of serving as a ‘proctor’ for the big exams — we’ve gotten good feedback from NFL teams. Contacts with two teams have asked for all the numbers from our scouts’ pro days, and we’ve been happy to oblige. Meanwhile, our RT of a Twitter post on another player drew an immediate response from a director-level scout with another team. If you’re a player or agent, don’t think for a minute that teams aren’t working overtime to make the best of these strange circumstances.
  • We’re pretty excited about the response we’ve gotten on our Google Form that will supplement the work the APT Coalition (the consortium of NFL scouts that shares pro day information during a normal March) normally does. We’ve gotten more than 300 players’ information so far with about 48 hours to go before we pull the plug and ship it out to all 32 teams. “Through your help, I’m down to 27 players that I need draft info for,” said one scout that we’ve been trying to help with player, agent and college contacts. We’re hoping that after this weekend, those remaining 27 players’ contacts (and their agents, of course) are in his notebook.
  • One note about that Google form: a handful of agents included their contact info but not their players’ contacts. While we understand that they represent the players, scouts are not going to want to have to go through a third party to collect simple information about draft prospects over the next month before the draft. We’ve removed all entries that omitted players’ info, but not to worry: we’ll send out the form one last time this evening.
  • Of course, if you’d like to update things immediately, we also sent out the link to all NFLPA-licensed contract advisors last Friday at 6:30 p.m., Monday at 6 a.m. and Wednesday at 6 a.m. (all times central). The link is somewhere in your inbox if you’re a licensed agent, so check your trash.
  • We’re hoping to be part of a national solution to the lack of pro days in mid-April. We’re working on a project that, hopefully, can bring a neutral, professionally run local workout to hundreds of players. Fingers crossed, of course, that we’ll have open venues and some return to normalcy by Easter.

That’s all we have so far. Hopefully, we’re still moving in the right direction. For more on how “the new normal” is affecting the data-gathering process and how teams are adapting, check out today’s Friday Wrap. You can register for it here.

 

Ask the Scouts: How Does the Coronavirus Shutdown Affect the NFL Draft?

13 Friday Mar 2020

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The coronavirus is here. Some famous people have contracted it. Some people (the elderly, the infirm, the very young) are especially vulnerable to it. Social distancing, hand-washing and other measures are important. If you’re already sick, you need to stay home, and take every precaution to not make others ill. All of this we know.

Still, sometimes, there’s a thin line between caution and panic, and we don’t live in a vacuum. We won’t know for weeks, maybe years, if the various league shutdowns, postponements and delays were warranted, but we know, categorically, that the response to the medical emergency will have an unintended impact on many people. Among them are the thousands of players competing to land on 90-man rosters in 41 days.

Without trivializing those for whom coronavirus may prove harmful or fatal, we reached out to several NFL scouts to see how the cancellation of pro days and T-30 visits would affect the draft. Did they see it having a substantial impact?

  • “Hard to say. Like the spread of the virus itself, lots of unknowns. (T-30) visits are a great opportunity for many to endear themselves to decision-makers above and beyond the tape. Pro days can have the same effects on area scouts, where a positive impression can motivate a scout to push all-in on a recommendation.”
  • “Really will affect the guys who would’ve tested well who were under the radar who warrant another look, as well as the small-school guys who pop out of nowhere. Film will matter more than ever for sure.”
  • “Uncharted territory. We would probably be more accurate if we drafted now before the fog of confusion sets in. They haven’t played a game since January. Biggest concern would be medical scores for non-combine guys.”
  • “It’s going to have an effect across the board. Teams won’t be able to relieve character or mental concerns on players who they have questions on. Late-round and undrafted guys who can usually separate themselves by testing well won’t have that opportunity. Who knows how combine medical rechecks will be effected?”
  • “Huge repercussions. Affects every level of the draft. The film will take precedence. Combine performances will be bigger influences now, more than pro days. Teams always want more info, (and) they’ll feel restricted.”

We’ll look at the impact the of the virus and the way various schools, conferences and leagues have responded to it in today’s Friday Wrap. It comes out this evening at 6:30 p.m., and if you’re in the business (or aspire to be), we encourage you to check it out. You can register for it here.

 

Want To Be An NFL Scout? Start with the XFL

14 Friday Feb 2020

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The XFL’s opening weekend was a smashing success, both from a broadcast standpoint as well as attendance, and it has the full attention of those in the football business community. Still, there’s a facet to the excitement that I think many are missing.

What do Bears Assistant Director of Player Personnel Champ Kelly (indoor football GM), Browns area scout Gerald McCully (CFL scout), Tampa Bay scouting coordinator Cesar Rivera (AFL scout), Chiefs national scout Cassidy Kaminski (scouted for an Australian team), Colts NFS scout Mike Lacy (AFL scout) and many other NFL evaluators have in common? They all got their start in alternative leagues. The XFL has a long way to go before it shows the staying power of the CFL (or even the now-defunct Arena Football League), but the early returns are promising.

This is great news for aspiring NFL scouts. While the best routes into scouting remain working in college personnel or, even better, having a father who’s in the NFL, there’s an opportunity here. However, you have to know how to take advantage. Here’s what I recommend.

  • Reach out: Daryl Johnston and Bob Morris (Dallas), Blake Beddingfield and Randy Mueller (Houston), Trip MacCracken (New York), Jeff Bauer (St. Louis) and Tony Softli (Seattle) are all XFL (and former NFL) scouts and evaluators on Twitter. Most of them are also my friends, and I can attest to them being good people. If you reach out to them with the right attitude, you’ve got a great shot at making contact. God knows they have plenty on their plate and could probably use some help. But first . . . .
  • Make it clear you’ll do anything: Every XFL team has a bare-bones evaluation staff, and that’s by design; the league has made an affirmative decision to reduce costs by centralizing evaluation. Still, these teams are playing to win and they need help sorting out the good players from the bad. But first, you have to prove that you are hard-working and reliable. That means you might have to run errands, load and unload, make copies, bring coffee, whatever. Make it clear you are elated to do this.
  • Don’t send scouting reports: Believe me, I get it. You want to show your passion for football. You want to show that you are fluent in the game. All those things are important. Still, the first thing most aspiring scouts want to send is a resume and scouting reports, and the last thing most scouts I know want is same. You need to impress upon them your willingness to do anything before you assert your eye for talent.
  • Be there: This is the one thing that is most often overlooked. If you already live in an XFL city, you have a huge advantage over everyone else. The same is true if you’re trying to volunteer with virtually any team in any league. Maybe it was Woody Allen who said, “showing up is 80 percent of success. Maybe it wasn’t. It’s still true.

Do all these things and maybe you’re the next Will McClay, Vice President of Player Personnel for the Cowboys. Back in 2001, he was Director of Player Personnel of the XFL’s Orlando Rage.

Want more ideas on how to break into the NFL? It starts with knowing what’s going on behind the scenes. You can get a really good handle on that by reading our Friday Wrap, which comes out this afternoon. You can register for it here.

Ask the Scouts: How Could NFL Liaisons Be More Helpful?

08 Friday Nov 2019

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We try to use this blog to educate people. These days, we’re digging into the NCAA recruiting and personnel communities, trying to learn as much as we can about what people in this community do and what they need. That’s why launched a new weekly series, the ITL CFB Recruiting and Personnel Newsletter. Here’s this week’s edition.

At the same time, we hope to help them learn more about their own industry, as well. To do that, this week, we asked a handful of our friends in scouting this question: If there was one thing you’d like to tell NFL liaisons, that would make your job easier, what would it be? 

Here are their responses.

  • “It would be nice if across the board they were all open and honest. Remove restrictions and make sure we all got everything we need on their guys. I always say, often times, scouts and schools hurt each other and the players because of ego. We are a guest and should act as a guest at these schools. Coaches should look at us as a chance to help further careers of their players and make friendly connections in the NFL. By being open and treating the other side with kindness and being wide open just helps everyone. They don’t need to withhold info or be cynical. We (also) need to be honest and open with them. So not really one thing, because everything is needed. Honest info, details, open policy, make sure we have film access, etc. Give medical details and all that.”
  • “I think the No. 1 thing is honesty. We want to know the person that we are buying.  If you lie about the guys, you really are hurting the guys that do work hard.” 
  • “I would say the handful of schools that restrict practice access (and which days they can visit), Michigan and Michigan State being the worst. It’s a really bad look and it truly hurts their players. Imagine Cass Tech (High School) in Detroit telling those two (teams), “you can’t come watch practice, but you can swing by and watch them work out one day a week”?! That’s what Michigan does in-season. Michigan State lets you stay for like 5-10 minutes.”
  • “They do a good job. . . taking the direction and cue from the head coach. So they have (much) to consider in their jobs. My experiences have been good over the years. I feel I would be knit picking (if I was critical).” 

We’re asking questions like this every week in our newsletter series. If you work in college football recruiting and personnel — or even if you don’t, or would like to — and you’d like to be added to the list for this series, just let us know at nstratton at insidetheleague dot com. Another way to learn more: register for our Friday Wrap, which comes out this evening. You can do that here.