Today, we get a little more specific about the scouting industry by digging into the services that set the table for each draft the summer beforehand. We asked Angry Scouting Veteran (@AngryScout) his take on National Football Scouting and BLESTO, two services that are an integral (if mostly unknown) part of the business.

BLESTO and National are accepted parts of the scouting landscape. What are the strengths and weaknesses of using a scouting service? Do teams rely on them too much? Does the services’ reliance on mostly young scouts affect the validity of their work?

“BLESTO and National are not only accepted, but to me a VITAL part of the scouting process. To me, if a team isn’t using one, then they’re 1) cheap, 2) don’t understand the process, and/or 3) should be paying their scouts double, because they are doing two jobs. Using a scouting service is worth it, if for nothing else than to get a baseline on character and medical information. If a team relies on their combine info too much, it’s their own fault. If there are people in leadership roles that know what they are doing, then they realize that using a combine provides the baseline/initial look in the process, and that the information is useful, but should only be valued as one ingredient in the recipe. National has a lot more teams, so they are able to provide more in-depth coverage, given that their scouts have much smaller areas than their BLESTO counterparts. BLESTO is more of a family business, National is more corporate, but at the end of the day it’s like Nike or Adidas. They’re doing the same thing. It’s all a matter of what environment you prefer or what you are using the service for the most.

“A combine scout is young and entry-level; that’s fine, again, as long as the people running the teams who are in the services understand the purpose of being in a combine. A combine scout’s jobs, in order, are to surface prospects, provide as much information about those prospects as possible, and to grow as talent evaluators. If you are a GM and you’re concerned about what the combine scout’s grades are — other than those being the starting point for how many exposures you need at each school — then you don’t have a clue what you are doing, and you shouldn’t be a GM.

“Our scouting process really begins in May at a combine spring meeting. That’s where each combine scout presents all of the work that he’s done in the spring while the rest of us are getting ready for the draft. It’s unreasonable to ask area scouts to do this advance work, and it’s also disrespectful to remove them from the draft process to do so. The draft is a scout’s game day, and not allowing us to finish that entire process and be involved in the “big game” is like asking an Olympic athlete to train all year long but then not letting them in the stadium for the opening ceremonies or permitting them to compete. If you want to be stubborn (and cheap) and not use a combine, fine, then pay your scouts for two jobs, because that’s what they are doing.”

Very often, scouts on the road are very different from the men they report to. For our fourth question, we asked Angry Scouting Veteran (@angryscout) if that’s something that rankles the people below the GM. It comes as no surprise that he continued to bring the heat on this and other topics related to the GM role.

Let’s say you could build the perfect GM candidate. What qualifications would he have? Can a legitimate GM candidate come from the cap side?

“I’ll work in reverse here. A successful GM can only come from the cap or business side if 1) he is very self-aware and willing to admit that he is a business guy, not a football guy; and 2) he hires very good football people, lets them do their jobs, and relies on what they say to make his decisions. Hell, 95% of the owners in the NFL don’t know jack squat about football (and that might be a generous estimate), and most of them fail because their giant egos won’t allow them to let their football people do their jobs. People can throw the dumb jock stereotypes out there all they want, but not everybody knows football, and just because you watch it, are around it, or even own a team, it doesn’t qualify you to make FOOTBLL decisions.

“As far as building a perfect GM candidate, my guy has to be a former road scout. If he isn’t, your scouting department and your team basically don’t have much of a chance. You build successful teams through the draft, and if you don’t have a guy who has been in the grass-roots role of this process, I’m sorry, but to me it’s both insulting and hopeless to think that guy can lead a team to victory. Beyond that, how about somebody who actually has LEADERSHIP skills and qualities? It is beyond bizarre to me how many people in the NFL (or in life outside the league for that matter) are in positions of leadership who have ZERO leadership skills and abilities. To be a leader, you have to realize that your primary role is to serve those under your leadership and always do what is right for all of them and the organization’s success as whole. It doesn’t mean that you have to be the smartest guy in the room at all times, and that everyone should kiss your (butt) or bow down to you; that’s not remotely what leadership is, but it’s how a lot of people in the NFL try and personify it. As far as other elements of this candidate: skilled with the media is a benefit for sure, because God knows that dealing with them can be a complete nightmare (and that many owners somehow believe that if it’s in the media, it must be true!). I’d like a guy who has been a coach, too, or at least around coaching enough to understand it. To me, you leave the business savvy up to business guys in the organization. Give me a guy who has worked his way up from a road scout position, has great leadership ability, inspires (and gives) loyalty, and is a legit FOOTBALL GUY who hires good people and lets them do the jobs he hired them to do, and everything else falls into place.

“That’s another thing the scouting community as a whole needs to have more of a voice and presence in, (and that’s with) the candidates that become GMs. Right now, you have owners who know nothing about scouting or the guys who work in it, who then turn to consultants, ex-personnel guys who usually pimp their former interns, young scouts, or anyone who has kissed their (butt). There are many highly qualified and deserving men who half the football world isn’t even made aware of because they aren’t media darlings, members of the league hype machine’s chosen ones, or kissing someone’s (butt) every day. Right now, there are area scouts who would make 10 times better GMs than quite a few guys with that fancy name plate on their desk. Believe it.”

Maybe you’re frustrated that Angry Scouting Veteran (@AngryScout) is hiding behind Twitter and should come out in the open to deliver such hot takes as the ones he offers up today. But I’ve spoken to more than one scout who feels the same way he does about the Patriots, but of course, were nowhere close to willing to being quoted. Is it sour grapes? Maybe, but the bottom line is that this is what a lot of scouts are thinking. That’s another reason why I’m glad we’ve given Angry Scouting Veteran this platform. I hope you are, too.

Here’s today’s question and answer.

The trend is to hire GMs from established ‘brands’ in the game (Patriots, Packers, Seahawks, etc.). Do you think these teams do a better job at evaluation?

“First and foremost, the Patriots system of scouting and their success at it is one of the most overrated things in the NFL. Any knowledgeable scout that isn’t a (sycophant) will tell you the same thing. The Patriots have some terrible draft picks/drafts as a whole just like everybody else. They got lucky drafting the best QB to ever play the game in the sixth round; there may have been one scout that thought that Tom Brady was as great as he’s turned out to be, and even that is doubtful, but that scout wouldn’t be given the proper credit even if it was true. When you draft a QB in the sixth round, you’re thinking he’s going to compete to be a backup, nothing more, which makes (Patriots owner) Robert Kraft a giant liar too, saying that “he knew” that Brady was destined for greatness when they drafted him and all of that crap. I’m not a fan of (Patriots head coach/GM) Bill Belichick for reasons I won’t go into here, but he’s obviously proven himself to be a very special and successful coach. Take those two guys away, and then show me how elite and superior the Patriot scouting system is. It has failed several places, and the only guys who have shown real signs of life were also educated in other places and aren’t trying to rely exclusively on a system that requires Tom Brady and Bill Belichick to succeed.

“There are teams whom I strongly respect the job that they do at evaluation, and yes, the Packers and Seahawks are two of them. Any time a team wins, it’s 100% natural for other teams to want to emulate what they do. There are certain teams year in and year out that draft consistently better than others, and that CAN lead to wins on the field. I say CAN because there are so many more things that have to fall into place for teams to be successful, but drafting well is a huge start. I’ve been with teams that drafted very good players and the coaching staffs were so bad that those players’ abilities were never maximized on the field. For organizational success, the scouting and coaching sides of things need to be on the same page, which is very difficult to do. It’s not just because of the egos involved, but coaches tend to think short-term and scouts think longer-term. I’ll fully admit that coaches aren’t given enough time to succeed, so that only makes their win-now mentality worse. I tweeted about it before, and I’ll say it again: Hall of Famers Bill Polian and Ron Wolf each won ONE Super Bowl as a GM with a one-of-a-kind, Hall of Fame, franchise QB. Either those GMs are overrated, or that should be a very clear-cut explanation of how hard it is to win championships in this league.  You can also have whatever system you want in place, but if you don’t have the right people to execute it, then it doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, you need good scouts who will stand up for what they believe in, and you need a GM who will LISTEN to those scouts. Otherwise you will not succeed.”

For today’s section of our interview with Angry Scouting Vet (@angryscout), we discuss the state and value of young scouts across the industry. It’s something he’s been pretty vocal about, so I thought I’d get a sense of where he sees more youthful evaluators fitting into the business. What he gave us is, to me, must-read content for anyone aspiring to work for an NFL team.

You’ve spoken extensively about the value of experienced scouts vs. younger scouts. If you could build your own staff, how would you structure it regarding experience? Is there a place for younger scouts in the game?

“I started as a young scout when there weren’t a great number of them in the NFL. I have ZERO problem with having younger scouts on your staff. If I was building a staff, it would be a nice balance between veterans and youth, with the youth understanding that in the beginning of their careers that they DON’T KNOW SQUAT, and that they are expected to learn from the veterans, who in turn should be head over heels willing to teach and educate the youth to do things the right way. My only problem with younger scouts is that some of them don’t know that they don’t know, and use their mouths way more than their ears. That being said, if you subscribe to the philosophy that ‘there is no such thing as a bad student, only a bad teacher’ — I do…for the most part- — a lot of these younger guys haven’t been taught the right way, whether that’s referring to actual philosophies and methods as a part of the daily business of scouting, or just the reality that when you are first starting out in the business that you really don’t know anything. You can’t have all the answers; you haven’t seen enough or been able to make enough comparisons. It’s great (and necessary) to have an opinion, but when you’re still inexperienced, you should keep your mouth shut, your ears open, and only share that opinion when you’re asked for it. Then again, now teams are hiring GMs and personnel directors who aren’t qualified for their positions either, so it’s not just a scout problem.

“I love working with young scouts, as long as they show that they are willing to be realistic about their knowledge base and have a desire to learn from someone who has been there; are hard-working and willing to do things the right way; and have good character. I feel that this is a responsibility that veteran scouts have to the profession, to keep the scouting ‘circle of life” going in the right direction and teaching our up-and-coming scouts to do things the right way and then, hopefully, carry out the education process themselves someday when they are the veteran and there is a new batch of younger scouts. The problem with this whole process is that there aren’t as many veteran scouts that share my mindset on this issue, but it’s not entirely their fault. In order to properly educate young scouts, three things need to be present: the veteran scout must himself have a good and proper knowledge base (believe me, there are vets who barely know a stopwatch from a t-square if they weren’t taught or taught badly); the veteran scout must be capable of teaching (not everybody has that talent or is that patient); and most importantly, that veteran scout must be WILLING to teach. The problem with the last (and most important) element, being WILLING to teach, is for one, there are far too many insecure people in the NFL who don’t want to pass on knowledge to anyone else because they feel that they will somehow lessen themselves by helping others, or that the people they’re teaching will eventually replace them. Secondly, and this is the real issue I have with loading up on younger scouts on a staff, there are GMs who will get rid of veteran scouts simply because “they make too much money” and replace them with a 20-something that knows nothing so that they can pay them an obscenely low amount of money. This is insanely disrespectful to the profession; 1) there is no scouting salary cap, so that move, strictly for a financial basis, is totally unnecessary, and 2) it degrades those who have earned their stripes and mastered the art that is scouting.”

Two recently created Twitter accounts, Angry Scouting Veteran and Angry Scout 2, have gotten a lot of attention in the scouting community and, to a lesser extent, in the media. I’ve become a fan of both accounts because of their straight talk and bracing opinions expressed. While some have questioned whether or not the accounts are actually manned by real NFL scouts, I believe they are. I think the authenticity and the views expressed are unmistakably legitimate.

Last week, I reached out to Angry Scouting Vet to ask if he’d answer a few questions. He agreed, so I sent him a few questions that I felt would really give him a chance to express his opinions in longer firm. He didn’t disappoint. All of his answers were insightful and some quite detailed. Rather than edit them down, I decided to run them in their entirety. I’ll be spooling them out in this space all week. What follows are the first two questions and answers.

Why did you decide to start a Twitter account? What do you hope to accomplish?

“Initially, to be honest, I just needed a forum to vent (laughs). Then, after that initial vice was satisfied, I thought to myself that this would be a very good way to both educate people both in and outside of the scouting business, as well as voice legitimate concerns to anyone who might be reading. I had a personal Twitter account a few years ago, and I didn’t generate near the amount of interest that Angry Scout has. My number of followers isn’t anything monumental at this point, but it grew instantly and keeps adding followers daily. I love the scouting profession, but there are a lot of things that should be fixed and/or improved about it. If this Twitter account informs and/or influences ANYONE in that regard, then to me it’s already a success. Obviously, I would like many of the wrongs I identify to actually be righted for real, not just by likes and support on a social media page, but Rome wasn’t built in a day and baby steps are better than none at all.”

You take some pretty strong stands and say things without a filter. Do you think the things you say are the things most scouting veterans would like to say?

“ABSOLUTELY! The NFL is a small league, and it’s filled with (sycophants), bad people attracted to it because of money and/or prestige, and people that can’t handle the truth. I’m a very blunt, direct, and exclusively honest person to begin with, so it’s really easy for me to say the things that I do. I firmly believe them and am passionate about our business. Some guys might rip me for being anonymous, but I am not independently wealthy enough to be blackballed from my chosen profession because a bunch of rich elitist (jerks) or delusionally uninformed people can’t handle the truth of what I’m saying, so that’s why I have to remain anonymous. However; if I were to round up every scout with 10-plus years of experience and beyond that’s not a sell-out or a (sycophant), I’d bet at minimum a few month’s pay that they would agree with and support no fewer than 98% of what I’m saying. There really should be a scout union, and because the owners would be terrified of such a thing and never let it happen, at the very least there should be some kind of scout council at league meetings. We have zero voice in this entire process, and that is beyond ridiculous and unacceptable.”

More tomorrow.