Category Archives: Scouts

A Three-Year Look at the NFL’s Stealth Success Metric

05 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by in Scouts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

On this blog, we’ve tried to highlight an overlooked metric that really correlates with NFL success. That metric is the total number of former draftees still in the league by team, and we’ve totaled up the numbers for three years running now.

This year, we moved our September roster analysis to our Friday Wrap email that chronicles the week in the football business (if you’re interested in receiving it, click here). However, we didn’t take a look at the last three years, so I decided to do that here. I think it gives a good look at which teams are doing things right on draft day, and how they’re being rewarded in the W-L area.

The numbers are below. Here are a few quick observations.

  • Most people expected the Vikings to struggle to win more than a handful of games this season after losing first Teddy Bridgewater, then A.P., by mid-September. However, the Vikes have been climbing the ladder when it comes to draftees in the league the last three years, going from No. 15 in 2014 to No. 8 last year and this year. Staying in the top half of the league all three years and in the top ten the last two has to be one reason the team has enjoyed such success.
  • The Vikings aren’t the only early-season success story that could have been predicted with the grid below. Check out the Eagles — despite some bumpy years under head coach/GM Chip Kelly the last few years, the team has done pretty well on draft day, and new head coach Doug Pederson has been able to take advantage of that. The consistent play of Carson Wentz so far has given the team just the bounce it needs.
  • Of the top ten teams listed below, only one (the Niners) hasn’t made the playoffs at least once in the last three years. Half have been to the playoffs at least twice, and the Packers, Bengals, Seahawks and Patriots have been all three years.
  • What’s more, the AFC East (Patriots), AFC North (Steelers and Ravens) and AFC South (Texans) are led by teams on this list, while in the NFC, the East and West divisions are led (Eagles) or tied (Seahawks) by teams on the list.
  • I know there’s one huge outlier in these numbers that can’t be avoided: the Niners. How can they be so far out in front despite so little on-field success the last three years? My only response is that there’s got to be a two-tiered approach here. The talent level that comes from these numbers must be coupled with consistent QB play. That’s why the Niners have struggled despite the number of winners the scouting department has picked, while the emergence of Kirk Cousins last year got the ‘Skins into the playoffs despite a lousy talent acquisition mark over the last three years. I believe the 49ers would still be at least a playoff contender had the team not been hit so hard by retirements the last few years.
Rank Team 2014 2015 2016 Total
1 San Francisco 49ers 59 59 54 172
2 Green Bay Packers 55 52 51 158
3 Pittsburgh Steelers 56 52 47 155
4 Baltimore Ravens 49 50 55 154
5 Cincinnati Bengals 48 50 53 151
6 Philadelphia Eagles 51 50 44 145
7 Seattle Seahawks 49 49 47 145
8 Dallas Cowboys 48 47 49 144
9 New England Patriots 50 46 46 142
10 Houston Texans 51 47 42 140
11 Minnesota Vikings 44 49 47 140
12 Denver Broncos 46 47 46 139
13 Miami Dolphins 48 45 44 137
14 Tennessee Titans 43 47 47 137
15 Oakland Raiders 44 44 47 135
16 Arizona Cardinals 42 47 44 133
17 Kansas City Chiefs 40 48 45 133
18 Buffalo Bills 41 46 43 130
19 St. Louis Rams 41 44 44 129
20 New York Jets 47 44 37 128
21 Cleveland Browns 36 44 45 125
22 Detroit Lions 41 43 40 124
23 Carolina Panthers 42 44 37 123
24 Jacksonville Jaguars 43 38 38 119
25 San Diego Chargers 42 40 37 119
26 Atlanta Falcons 46 39 31 116
27 Tampa Bay Buccaneers 36 37 35 108
28 New Orleans Saints 31 40 37 108
29 Chicago Bears 33 38 34 105
30 Indianapolis Colts 36 35 31 102
31 Washington Redskins 32 33 34 99
32 New York Giants 39 30 28 97

A Few Thoughts on the New AFCA-NFL Scouting Agreement

27 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by in Scouts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

As you know, there was a major announcement Monday that FBS schools will designate up to five underclassmen that NFL teams can scout essentially a full year before they can become eligible.

Presumably, this means a number of redshirt freshmen and true sophomores will become eligible for NFL evaluation this spring in anticipation of these players potentially entering the ’18 draft. Perhaps this means players already three years out of high school will be designated as ‘underclassmen.’ It’s also unclear if it will be made public which teams receive these designations.

Setting aside the questions that remain regarding the new policy, here are a few thoughts on how it might change the business of football.

  • My guess is that it will become harder for fringe players to get recognized as legitimate NFL prospects. Why? Increasingly, NFL teams see draft picks after the fourth round as disposable, and this is because they only see the top 100 or so draftees as real difference-makers. These are the guys that win ballgames for you, and in an era where coaches only get two, maybe three years to prove themselves, it’s a win-now world.
  • The players designated as underclassmen to watch will automatically be seen as sexier and more desirable to NFL teams. Obviously, that makes a lot of sense for the players from Florida State, Alabama and the like, but there will be other ‘middle class’ teams that designate their own players, and I expect those athletes to get more acclaim, even by scouts. It’s human nature.
  • As the agent middle class starts to dissolve (given the tighter margins dictated by the NFLPA), you’re going to see a polarization of the draft. The top 30 or so agencies will strictly recruit the underclassmen designates and the very best seniors, while the other 60 percent of the agent world will try to pick up the scraps. That’s not a lot different from how things work today, but I see it hardening and becoming even more cut and dried. The big firms that have overhead and who are willing to make the investment that recruiting players entails will just have no choice.
  • Maybe I’m looking at this as a glass that’s half-full, but this could be an opportunity for those smaller agents and agencies. Younger, less-established contract advisors will have to work harder to find these off-the-grid players, and will have to promote them more aggressively, but there’s a higher ceiling for these players now, I think. So maybe, just maybe, this can be a good thing for players trying to break into the biz.

Re-Thinking Jared Goff

14 Wednesday Sep 2016

Posted by in Scouts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

The national media has been abuzz with the fact that No. 1 overall pick Jared Goff has not cracked backup duties for the Rams and was, in fact, a healthy scratch for Monday night’s 28-0 loss to the 49ers Monday night.

Obviously, there’s a long way to go before anyone can make any judgments on Goff’s NFL future, but the optics are bad. Still, I wondered if scouts felt the same way. Was Goff a guy that teams felt was a near-certain future star? Do his early struggles make sense to people in the business?

Based on their responses, the jury is still way, way out. We got a lot of comments that were on the fence, like these:

  • “Too soon to judge, IMO.”
  • “(We thought he was pretty much NFL-ready but) if you’re not a very good team you don’t want to throw him out there either. Many more showings like (Monday) night and they won’t have a choice.”
  • “I saw him preseason and thought he would play this year after a few games. (Backup QB Sean) Mannion is better than (Monday) night’s (performance).”
  • “He wasn’t my guy so I don’t remember much of the read on him, but I remember him being talented with good traits.”

However, I also had a conversation with one scout that I thought encapsulated things best. He said scouts were all over the place on Goff, with some liking his upside, and others seeing him as comparable to Memphis’ Paxton Lynch and even Mississippi State’s Dak Prescott. These scouts preferred North Dakota State’s Carson Wentz. Despite Wentz’s small-school pedigree, they liked his intangibles and the multiple national titles he was part of at NDSU.

These scouts also had concerns that Goff had gone from nowhere as a sophomore to a possible No. 1 overall as a junior. They just didn’t feel his total body of work justified the investment.

“That’s a concern when you’re taking a guy first overall, with a lot of (varied) grades,” my friend said.

I’d agree. Teams have to make the best decision based on the information they have, and obviously, opinions vary. However, if Goff turns out to be a guy who doesn’t live up to expectations, it could be because the Rams felt they had to have a quarterback, and he looked like their best option. The one resounding message I get back from scouts is that the surest way to miss on a pick is to draft based on need, and not purely on the best player available.

Once again, there’s still plenty of time for Goff to turn into Aaron Rodgers, another player who spent a lot of time on the bench initially. No one knows what the future holds. That’s what makes the draft so intriguing.

What’s a Sleeper?

07 Wednesday Sep 2016

Posted by in Agents, Scouts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

I was having a conversation recently with some friends — some agents, some in the scouting community — and the subject of ‘sleepers’ came up. During the conversation, it became necessary to actually define the term. That’s because agents and scouts usually define the term very differently.

This is a generalization, but my experience has been that scouts see most NFL draft prospects as fitting into two categories. Either the prospect is a top-100 guy, an immediate difference-maker and an instant starter, or he’s not. Almost anyone that doesn’t fit into that top 100 could be a sleeper to some or most teams.

Here’s another way scouts define sleepers. If a kid goes to a small school, or a school that’s not Power 5 (the MAC, let’s say, or the Sun Belt, or the Mountain West), he could be a sleeper. It’s a very loose term, obviously, but the players in the latter rounds could almost all be considered sleepers. Just look at how many got cut last weekend. These are players that teams don’t expect to be stars, and if they do, they ‘awoke’ and became game-changers.

This is very different from how agents look at things.

Players that are legitimate fourth- and fifth-round prospects are a long ways from being sleepers. Shoot, guys that everyone agrees will be drafted aren’t sleepers. Not for agents, at least. Why?

Because these days, once a kid gets identified as a legit draft prospect, word gets out quickly. Sooner or later, word gets back to the player himself. Maybe he already saw himself that way, but either way, once he gets that stamp of legitimacy, he expects training. That means an agent can expect to spend $10,000, minimum, getting him ready for his pro day.

Once several agents offer to pay for training, a player’s price and expectation level take off. He might still be a guy that many teams have their doubts about, but agents have to make a significant investment to sign them at that point.

Finding sleepers in the draft is hard for NFL teams, but easier than ever due to the Internet and a number of other factors. But for agents, it’s quite a challenge.

 

Can Scouts Identify and Project Divisive Players?

31 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by in Scouts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

If you’re an NFL fan, you’re well aware of the situation surrounding 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick. And I think even if we can’t all agree on his stand, we can agree that it’s an emotionally charged issue that could potentially divide the locker room and create ramifications that coaches and team officials don’t want to face.

I wondered if there’s any way such a situation could have been avoided in the scouting process. In other words, could scouts find out, with any degree of certainty, if a player — though honest, high in character, and far away from anything criminal — is prone to sparking this kind of situation? I asked several of my friends in scouting and I got these responses.

  • “Yes, you can get this information. I believe most scouts are lazy. There’s a lot of different ways you can (get this information), and (scouts are) in a power position with an NFL shield on their chests and a logo that everyone’s like, ‘wow.’ The more you go (to a school) and talk to people (and you) make it a whole day trip, you learn about how they handle scouts and how you can get info from teams. If you give them good info (about the NFL and how evaluation works), next thing you know, (teams and their coaches are) gonna think you walk on water, and pretty soon, they’re telling you, ‘he’s really a (jerk).’ And you got that extra piece of info that all it took was a couple extra hours to get. Does it take time? 100 percent! From Year 1 to Year 2, as a scout, I figured it out, but it just takes time.”
  • “Definitely you could and would find those guys. There are numerous guys through the years that you would learn of because they were different. I never (scouted) Colin, but it seems to me he had some different things in his character profile.”
  • “Well, I think it’s a different circumstance (with Kaepernick), but with a lot of other players you scout, it comes up from sources at the school(, for example,) that he has “gang affiliations” but there’s been no bad behavior on his part at the school, but you know there’s a small chance something bad could happen down the road. With Kaepernick, I think he’s shifted his personality so drastically the last year or so that it would have been very tough to tell he would do something like this coming out of college. A lot of times, though, scouts may ask, ‘Is this guy a locker room lawyer?,’ or they try to find out if he’s ever been a divisive force in the building.”

Exploring the Patriots’ Draft Philosophy

25 Thursday Aug 2016

Posted by in Scouts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

On the advice of a friend who’s a former scout, I’m reading War Room by Michael Holley. The book details the development of the Patriots’ evaluation methods and how the New England scouting tree produced GMs in Atlanta (Thomas Dimitroff) and Kansas City (Scott Pioli). Though normally I hate football books (and especially football movies), this book has a lot of good info and makes a lot of good points.

The book quotes Bill Belichick as citing knowledge of what other teams are going to do as invaluable in how he selects players.

“It’s such a process, and part of it is knowing what the league thinks,” he says. “We have players on our board and we look up there and say, ‘We’re probably higher on this player than any other team in the league.’ You see mock drafts out there and the player is not mentioned in the first round. In any of them. Scouts talk, and you kind of get a feel that no one else sees the player quite like we do. On the flip side, there are guys that we might take, say, in the third round and we know someone’s going to take him in the first. So, again, it comes back to homework.”

To me, that’s a real revelation. So many scouts and administrators take pride in how much they don’t talk to scouts from other teams, and how their evaluations are their own and no one else’s (indeed, then-Patriots scout Lionel Vital makes almost that exact point later in the book), but Belichick freely admits that he keeps up on what others think and uses that info. It got me thinking — do other teams feel the same way? Knowing the prospects in the draft is critical, but how important is knowing your own team’s weaknesses, and even more importantly, how key is it to know what others think about the draft?

I reached out to a few friends on the road and got various responses. One scout said it’s 50 percent knowing the prospects, and 50 percent “blind luck.” I thought that was an admirable (and honest) response. He cited the fact that Tom Brady was a sixth-rounder in 2000, but the guy who “stood on the table” to get him drafted, Bobby Grier, was run off by the team shortly after that draft. Grier recently retired from the Texans.

“The key is proper fall evaluation not spring numbers,” my friend added.

Another scout said, though he didn’t break it down by percentages, that he puts far more on the prospects themselves than his own team’s weaknesses or what other teams might be thinking. He added that he feels teams most often miss on players when they draft for need rather than quality. That’s a sentiment I’m starting to hear regularly from area scouts, and very insightful, I think.

A third scout broke it down as 70 percent the talent in the draft, 15 percent his own team’s weaknesses, and 15 percent what others think about the players.

I guess this is just another illustration of how the Patriots do things in non-traditional ways.

 

A Scout’s Words of Wisdom: Scott Aligo

26 Tuesday Jul 2016

Posted by in Scouts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

We wrap up our conversations with scouts today with a conversation with former Browns scout Scott Aligo, who’s pretty wise for a young scout. Scott worked with us during the ’16 draft helping connect agents and their clients with teams, and his work really made a difference. I knew he’d be willing to help out on this project, and I knew he’d have good things to say.

From here, I’ll turn it over to Scott and Mark.

  1. What is the one thing NFL draft fans don’t understand about the evaluation process, and about how NFL teams scout players, that they should know? 

“The biggest misconception is (that creating a scouting profile for a prospect is not) a 2-3 year process, instead of just the hot name. The time that is invested . . . no one really has a concept of (and) how much digging we have to do on that. Fans are usually like, “how did you not know that?” It’s about building relationships at the schools and getting to know the players without doing illegal activity. It’s underlooked.”

  1. We all know the best advice for a young man hoping to play in the NFL is to play his best football this fall. However, as a former scout, what would you tell a young man’s parents? 

“The agent is not the most important deal. The scout and the agent are going to be embedded with each other, no matter what anyone wants to say. There’s a lot of (agents) who say, “we hate scouts,” and there’s a lot of scouts who say, “we hate agents,” but no matter what, they will always be embedded together. And whether they admit it or not, it’s a beneficial relationship. I think the parents need to know that the evaluation on the field is probably the most important thing. All the other fluff, when it comes down to it, is, can he play?”

  1. If a young person asked you how to break into the scouting business, what advice would you have for him? 

“Quick advice is, you better have thick skin and you better look up the word ‘sacrifice,’ because if you are going to be in this business, you are going to have to sacrifice a lot. Be patient. Everybody says they want to be the GM by 30, and you have to be patient and embrace the grind of it. You might make ($17,000) for five years while all of your other buddies are making $70-80,000 going to happy hour three times a week. Well, you might get to go once a month or you only get one month a year to do stuff. The young group needs to embrace the whole ‘grind’ aspect of it and know that they have to be 100 percent patient and that it is not going to be a quick-and-easy process. You are going to sacrifice everything. Family. Friends. Girlfriends. Where you live. Everything.”

A Scout’s Words of Wisdom: Matt Boockmeier

25 Monday Jul 2016

Posted by in Scouts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

If you’ve been keeping up with our current series getting feedback from ex-scouts on some hot topics related to the football business, hopefully you agree that we’ve provided insights you don’t often find. Today, I think we have one of the strongest pieces in our series as we talk to Matt Boockmeier.

Matt not only has been an area scout with two NFL teams (the Packers and Saints), but he’s also been a scout in the CFL (Saskatchewan) and even served at the director level in probably the most successful alternative league in the last 10 years, the UFL (with the Omaha Nighthawks). That gives him perspective that few can offer.

From here, I’ll turn it over to our own Mark Skol and Matt.

  1. What is the one thing NFL draft fans don’t understand about the evaluation process, and about how NFL teams scout players, that they should know? 

“One thing they don’t understand – (though) height, weight, and speed are important, I’m not going to lie – you have to have athletic ability and you better have instinctive characteristics as a player. Fans may not understand that nothing beats what the film shows. I say that prefacing a very important point. How many times have you seen a guy who didn’t fit any characteristics you were looking for but he was a football player? And how many times did those people make it? They’re littered throughout the league. I would say that’s the biggest thing that you have to look at. Finally, the hardest thing to do is look at the guy’s mentality toward the games, his temperament. Everybody thinks they can judge it. Everybody can see he has all the will, but that’s not measurable. Your best scouts understand what that guy brings without even saying a word to him based upon what they’ve seen in the past.”

  1. We all know the best advice for a young man hoping to play in the NFL is to play his best football this fall. However, as a former scout, what would you tell a young man’s parents? 

“Slow down. Be engaged in the process, but don’t necessarily control the process for your son. Be there for guidance as a player would for their son in any situation like this. The most important thing I would tell them is to be realistic and to be prepared for a letdown. I can talk about a player. You can talk about a player. There is all this noise. Get rid of the noise. Be there to filter the noise. Be realistic. Be hopeful. Prepare for the worst but expect the best. Finally, you, your son and the agent are not in control.”

3. If a young person asked you how to break into the scouting business, what advice would you have for him?

“No. 1, research. No. 2, persistence. No. 3, don’t be afraid to think outside the box to develop a relationship with the person who makes the hiring decisions. No. 4, get lucky. And all of this applies across the spectrum. If you were going in for an interview with Apple, you would want to know everything about Jim Smith (the boss). . . You (may not) have the best GPA and you (may not) have that big of an interest in technology on your resume. That doesn’t matter. If you get in front of Jim and you have the charisma, the personality, and you know how to interact with people on a mature level and he’s looking to hire somebody, he’s not going to forget that. It’s not about the degree, it’s not about the GPA, it’s how you fit in with the team that matters.”

A Scout’s Words of Wisdom: Marcus Hendrickson

22 Friday Jul 2016

Posted by in Scouts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

Former Dolphins scout Marcus Hendrickson is a more recent acquaintance of mine. I met him through friends only this summer, so I wasn’t sure if he’d even agree to do an interview in this series. But boy, am I glad he did.

He’s done a lot of thinking about the business and he’s very insightful, and though today’s interview is about twice as long as any of the ones we’ve published this week, my guess is you’ll read it more than once.

I’ll turn it over to Marcus and our Mark Skol for today’s three questions.

  1. What is the one thing NFL draft fans don’t understand about the evaluation process, and about how NFL teams scout players, that they should know? 

“A lot of fans think we pick it up at the combine but we’ve actually been watching guys for two years sometimes. It’s a process. We’ve been gathering information on these guys for 18 months, but it’s not just what the guys did at the combine.

“The risers and fallers thing is kind of a farce in a sense. It’s a piece of the puzzle, but it’s not the whole picture. A lot of times, the background that comes out a week before or a day before has been known for months. Size, speed and production are all keys, but also character, being able to fit in the scheme and intelligence. It’s way more complicated than the actual fan realizes. There’s a lot of hours that go into these decisions.

“It’s very rarely a gut feeling. It’s more programmed and thought out. A lot of guys think we picked this guy just because Mel Kiper liked him. And just because Mel Kiper likes a guy and a team doesn’t like the guys, it doesn’t make the team wrong. I have all of the respect in the world for Mel Kiper, but they are not talking to position coaches, they aren’t talking to parents, they are not talking to high school coaches. I’ve talked to their high school teachers before. It’s very in-depth, especially when it’s a guy who could be drafted in the top two or three rounds. You reach out to tons of people to try and get a good picture on who the kid is. You can evaluate the player off of the tape, but at the same time, if you are drafting a guy in the first round, he will be attached to your franchise forever, so there’s a lot of pressure on those picks. There’s so much that goes into it. It’s more than he threw for 4,000 yards and ran a 4.4 at the combine. I don’t think people really appreciate how much work goes into the evaluation process.”

  1. We all know the best advice for a young man hoping to play in the NFL is to play his best football this fall. However, as a former scout, what would you tell a young man’s parents? 

“The hardest part for parents and for the kids is (that) when they don’t go to a program that produces talent, they sometimes don’t understand the process as well. They don’t understand the league as well. I always tell their parents to make sure they are on track to graduate. Don’t get me wrong: you make a lot of money playing in the NFL but there’s not guarantees in the NFL. The average career for a player is like three years. Get your degree and make sure you are smart with your money, because everyone thinks they are going to play forever and get that second contract, but a lot of guys don’t. You have to be smart with the people you put around yourself both personal and financially. Be smart. You might be a blown Achilles or a concussion away from your career being over.

“(Also,) if there’s a scout around, don’t be afraid to introduce yourself. Guys love talking to you and getting able to pick your brain to know you. At the end of the day, if you are a fringe guy or if I see you the same as another guy, but I’ve gotten to know you a little bit, those things change the balance when you are on the fence with two guys. Putting yourself out there or introducing yourself at a tryout helps put the bar in your favor when being compared with someone with similar characteristics.”

  1. If a young person asked you how to break into the scouting business, what advice would you have for him? 

“It’s a very cutthroat business. It’s a small business and it’s hard to get in because a lot of people want to do it and there are not a lot of jobs. It’s a very limited field. But one thing that is important is to immerse yourself in football in any way that you can. If you’re a kid in college and you’ve never played before, work the equipment or video for your team. A lot of guys make their first steps in the game that way. Show that you are working. It’s not just putting your foot in the door it’s someone being able to say that you work hard. If you work in video or you are a coach’s assistant of some kind, from that, just absorb everything around you. Maybe a scout comes into your school and you are helping with the video, introduce yourself. He may pick your brain. Find a way to make a connection with someone in the game but also show that you can bring that work ethic or that awareness. If you are around athletes, pick up on, how does that guy treat other people or what is he like personally away from the cameras, away from the spotlight. Also, watch as much film as you can. If you have the ability to get your hands on a coach’s tape, write reports. Evaluate positions you don’t necessarily understand; show progress and show growth that way. I played linebacker in college and I played offensive line in high school, so those things came more naturally to me (more) than wide receiver and DB. So I had to force myself to watch DB tape and pick up on nuances. Put yourself out there. Volunteer if you have to. Do those little things to show you are committed. Also, watch as much football as you possibly can. You aren’t out of your realm because you have basic knowledge on what to pick up on.”

A Scout’s Words of Wisdom: Harrison Ritcher

21 Thursday Jul 2016

Posted by in Scouts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

By now, you know the questions and you know the direction of this week’s series. Today, we present the thoughts of Harrison Ritcher, who was let go in the Browns’ pre-draft purge this year. Harrison has also worked in the personnel department at Florida State and played fullback at N.C. State

  1. What is the one thing NFL draft fans don’t understand about the evaluation process, and about how NFL teams scout players, that they should know? 

“How extensive the process is. There’s a lot more that goes into it other than, ‘is he a good player?’ What might be a great player for the Miami Dolphins might not be the best player for the Pittsburgh Steelers. It’s about understanding the fit. It’s not just about how good a player is, it’s how does he fit in the culture? Does he fit in our scheme? Questions like that, you have to answer.

  1. We all know the best advice for a young man hoping to play in the NFL is to play his best football this fall. However, as a former scout, what would you tell a young man’s parents? 

“Be supportive. The process is long and drawn out. Your son is going to be poked and prodded a thousand different ways. Just be as supportive as you can. Worry about the things under his control. Don’t overthink it. Take it one day at a time. Just worry about your kid playing ball and focusing on school.”

  1. If a young person asked you how to break into the scouting business, what advice would you have for him? 

“Make sure you have some background in football. Maybe you were a player or worked with some of the colleges. Scouting is evolving. With analytics, you don’t necessarily have to take the traditional route of starting in football. With analytics, some guys have made their way up through the charting process into a building. It is evolving that way, but the rule of thumb is you have a background in football. Your network is pivotal when you are trying to break in. Knowing someone who can get your resume from someone else to (speak) on your behalf. All of these teams get thousands of emails every year and I don’t know if they look at them all, but most of the time it’s knowing someone who can put your name in front of someone who can look at your resume and give you an interview.”