Do Injuries Count in Evaluation?

19 Thursday Nov 2015

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A couple years ago, I worked with a few scouts in an attempt to develop an independent ‘pro’ scouting service that would contract with NFL teams to evaluate free agents before the signing period begins. It never got off the ground, but during my research, I found out that there’s a theory in the pro game that injuries are not a strictly ‘bad luck’ proposition. I found there’s a school of thought that bad players are injured more often.

This idea gained traction last spring when I was interviewing ex-scouts ahead of the ’15 draft. One of them said you have to be careful when signing offensive linemen in the undrafted free agent period because if you’re not careful, you bring in players (especially offensive linemen) that aren’t strong enough to play. They get pushed around, might fall into the feet of your veterans, and incur knee and ankle injuries unnecessarily.

It came up again Wednesday when my podcast-mate, agent Justin VanFulpen, talked about the regular injuries that Eagles QB Sam Bradford, a former No. 1 pick, has suffered consistently in his NFL career.

To find out if this is a growing sentiment, I reached out to several friends in scouting. I asked, “Is it fair to say that bad players get hurt more often? When a player consistently misses large parts of the season, is that an indication his skill level is lacking?”

Here’s the response I got:

  • “Not necessarily. Usually, it’s injury-prone or lack of mental and physical toughness to play through pain.”
  • “No. (Texans No. 1 pick Jadeveon) Clowney (was a) great college player, hurt in the pros. (Stuff) happens. Lot of bad players are real healthy. They don’t hit. Or take a lot of hits and are healthy.”
  • “I would not say skill level. Sometimes (it’s) bad luck, but sometimes if it’s always always a knee or shoulder, they are just built differently and it is physics. But sometimes it shows prep work and heart, like (Bills WO) Percy Harvin.”
  • “Each player is independent.”
  • “Never made that connection. Beats me. Are bad soldiers the ones who get wounded? . . . I’m not good at thinking beyond the obvious.”

Looks like the ‘bad players are injured more than most’ school of thought is pretty poorly attended. That’s good news. It didn’t make much sense to me, either.

 

 

 

WSW: The Fight

18 Wednesday Nov 2015

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Today, someone in my Facebook feed posted this article. Before you read it, warning: it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. It’s from a sports writer who’s probably in his 50s and struggling to find work. It got me thinking about working in football, and working, in general. Especially in today’s work culture. I’ve never really told the story of how I got to be a football consultant, and I guess today’s as good as any.

We’ll start today’s story mid-stream. It was March 24, 2009. I had come back to the Houston Chronicle, working a menial administrative job after the Hula Bowl collapsed beneath my feet in mid-January of ’08. For weeks, we’d been hearing that layoffs were coming, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t know I’d be part of that wave. I reported for work at the regular time, did my routine morning duties, and the phone rang, requesting that I go up and talk to Human Resources.

About 15 minutes later, I was riding down the elevator back to the newsroom with about four of my former colleagues who’d gotten the same news.

I’ll never forget that elevator ride. Grown men were crying. Red-rimmed eyes stared blankly into space. Houston is a one-newspaper town, and the people on that elevator knew they’d have to start over, some of them post-50. But because I’m a little weird, I was angry, not sad, and maybe even a little defiant.

(I should mention that I always preferred playing on the road to playing at home, and that boos and catcalls always strengthened me. During my playing days, there’s nothing I enjoyed more than beating a good team in front of its fans. It’s energizing. Yes, I’m a bit of a contrarian. But I digress.)

The point is that I had launched my own consulting service in ’02, and I knew I was getting better at it, finding my niche and identifying a market. Today, five-and-a-half years later, I can hardly believe it took getting laid off for me to permanently cast my lot with Inside the League.

The writer of the piece I linked to earlier is facing some things I didn’t have to face. His kids were a lot older when he got laid off, and so was he. He also had to start a blog from scratch, whereas I had already been figuring things out for seven years when I got the axe. He’s also blogging for free and hoping he can eventually develop ad sales, whereas my audience pays a monthly fee, along with a la carte prices for other features, for my assistance and information.

I should also mention that the love of a 40-hour week in sports and a nice salary for same is not specific to sportswriters. Virtually every NFL scout who gets laid off spends years coming to grips with the fact he was paid for his opinion, no matter how well-founded, and frankly, it’s not expensive to obtain opinions. We’ll see a revolution in NFL scouting in the next decade, maybe sooner. The era of the scout who gets upwards of $80K to travel the roads in the fall and come back with detailed takes on players is already nearing its end.

Anyway, my point is this, and it’s one I’ve made in this space several times. If you want to work in sports in general, or football in particular, it’s up to you to find a niche, a market, a place where no one else is. And there will be no guarantees. If you only want to be a scout, or only want to be a writer, or only want to be an agent, it’s not going to be easy, because those are all well-traveled roads. If you really want to be part of the football world, you’re going to have to realize that the work never ends; that you have to get good at some things you may not like; and that there are no guarantees. And you might have to have a footprint in several worlds, as I do. I touch on all three of the above professions in the work I do.

I applaud the writer of the above article for starting a blog, and I hope it continues. If he can truly develop an audience that is unlike the others, and he can figure out how to leverage that properly, he will find success. But he’s like anyone else out there, including me. It won’t be easy. It will be incredibly rewarding if he can find traction, but it definitely won’t be easy.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that cracking the football business will be easy, either. You can do it, but it will take everything you have. It has for me, but it’s been a fair trade.

Draftable?

17 Tuesday Nov 2015

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One of the questions I always get from my newer agent clients is, “I’ve been talking to Player X” — sometimes they actually say Player X, because they want to keep the identity confidential — “but he wants training, and I don’t know if he’s worth it or not. Should I sign him? What do the scouts tell you?”

Before I go any further, let me mention that I addressed this question in a somewhat different way in August. The difference is that last time, it was aimed more at players trying to determine if they had NFL promise.

First of all, let’s address the scouts part. Scouts are notoriously cryptic about players that are outside the top 100 projected picks. Actually, in my experience, most scouts give you one of two responses when you ask them about a player (especially before January). If the player is expected to go anywhere in the first three rounds, the response is usually, “He’s a good player. He could be an early pick.” Note that the agent doesn’t make any real predictions, because so much could happen at the combine/pro day. On the other hand, if the player is expected to go anywhere after the 100th pick, it’s usually, “He’s a late-rounder, probably, or a camp guy.” They don’t get a lot more specific than that, and I understand, because there’s so much that could happen between January and May.

For this reason, I’ve devised three very quick, very cursory guidelines on guessing if a player has a legitimate chance to go to camp (and maybe even get drafted in the latter rounds):

  1. Was the player highly productive, accomplished and decorated in college?: Even players from small schools will pique the interest of scouts if they’ve been on numerous all-conference teams and started for several seasons. Often, an agent will ask me about a kid that only started infrequently or was hurt almost his whole career. Those players get drafted late sometimes, but it’s not worth the risk.
  2. Is the player at least 6-feet tall?: Used to, receivers, running backs, linebackers and defensive backs could get away with being 5-8 or 5-9. Really, the only players still in play on draft day that can get away with that today are running backs. What’s more, a player who’s tall and skinny can’t be ruled out automatically, either. Many training facilities can put 10-15 pounds of muscle on a slender player in 6-8 weeks. One note: obviously, offensive linemen and defensive linemen usually need to be well over 6-0.
  3. Does the player have obvious speed?: This one is a lot harder to judge, and very often, even NFL scouts don’t have a reliable 40 time on a player. Great example: Arkansas QB Matt Jones entered his senior season in 2004 seen as a very raw passer with some athleticism, but probably a 4.8-4.9 speed guy. For whatever reason, he didn’t time on ‘junior day’ for the Hogs, and his speed was estimated. Then he goes to the combine and runs a sub-4.4 40 (4.37) at 242 pounds, and suddenly, he’s the toast of the 2005 draft class. He never transitioned smoothly to receiver in the NFL, but the point is, speed excites scouts. If a prospect runs well at his pro day, at the very least, he generates excitement among NFL teams.

Obviously, this is a rather superficial look at determining a prospect’s value on draft day, but it’s a start. More on shaking out the draft process tomorrow.

The Box

16 Monday Nov 2015

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As we wind down the college football season, I’m getting more and more calls from agents and parents on issues regarding the 2016 draft. Some are related to agent selection, and many are related to leaving early. Maybe you have similar questions. This week, I’m going to discuss these topics and the different factors associated with the topic.

Today, I got a call from a recently certified agent who’s been in talks with a redshirt junior at a major BCS school. The young man is a receiver, and my friend asked what he should tell the young man, who’s strongly weighing departing for the draft.

The first thing I asked was, does he have the ‘three legs of the stool,’ i.e., size, speed and production? The agent responded that he has two of them: he’s put up wild numbers this year, and he believes the young man has sub-4.5 speed. The only problem is that he’s well below 6-feet tall. Though that’s not a deal-breaker, it’s become an important box to check. Of the 263 receivers who opened the season on NFL rosters, 193 were 6-0 or taller. What’s more, there are only 44 receivers under 5-11 in the league, and over the last three draft classes, only 32 are under 6-feet; 19 were undrafted free agents.

It all added up to a young man who probably fits as a late-round selection and maybe a camp guy.

On the other hand, he’s got enough credits to graduate. He’s fully healthy; there’s no guarantee the same will be true this time next year (and scouts are not especially forgiving). There’s a great chance one or more of the coaches on staff will be elsewhere next season, as well as his quarterback. In other words, he’s in a box.

My friend really wants to do what’s best for the young man, but he’s in a box, too. He’s already talked to scouting sources who’ve drawn the same conclusion. He can recommend that the young man put his name in with the draft advisory board, but given the new way the board is handling reviews, it’s unlikely there will be any useful information.

If he recommends that the kid go back for his senior year, he comes across as education-oriented and well-meaning, but if there’s an injury, it may dash the young man’s chance to do something special. If he encourages the receiver to leave early, he may look like the stereotypical greedy agent if he goes undrafted.

Unfortunately, many young men are facing a similar dilemma. There’s no clear, cut-and-dried answer. That’s what makes this time of year so difficult.

This week, we’ll discuss the factors one must use to make this decision. We’ll discuss the factors one must consider when seeking feedback from scouts, coaches and family members, and we’ll handle other questions we get via Twitter or in the comments section of this post. If you know someone facing this dilemma, I hope you’ll encourage him to check us out this week.

 

WSW: The Road Less Traveled

11 Wednesday Nov 2015

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Dean Dalton is the Senior Vice President of Football Administration for a new football league, Major League Football, that kicks off this spring. The league is the latest in a number of similar leagues that have tried to sustain interest with rabid fans as an adjunct – not a competitor – to the NFL.

Dean is wise enough to know the odds are long for success, but the league is doing things in a way that should endear it to potential players and the agents that represent them. It all starts with salaries — $2,500 per week, which is about five times what some indoor leagues pay – but also includes the coaches and administrators running the league.

“We had 15 ex-NFL coaches at our tryout in Massillon, Ohio, and I introduced our coaches to the athletes in the tryout, and as I introduced them, I got more and more impressed,” he said. “I said, ‘Hey guys, the Hall of Fame is about six miles away. Raise your hand if you’ve helped coach someone with a bust in the Hall.’

“Of the 15, only two didn’t go up.”

That’s an impressive pedigree, but Dalton is no slouch himself. A veteran NFL coach, he spent eight seasons (1999-2007) on the offensive side of the ball with the Vikings, finishing out his career as the team’s running backs coach before an ownership change meant head coach Mike Tice and his staff were dismissed despite finishing with a 9-7 record in ’05.

During Dalton’s time with the Vikings, he got to spend a lot of time with QB Brad Johnson, who’s more or less the poster boy for players who play major college football but still need a bit more development before they’re ready for the NFL. Johnson began his career at Florida State on the basketball team before ascending to an off-and-on role as a starter for the Seminoles. It wasn’t until he got to the NFL, however, that he really got a chance to mature: it was during the 1995 offseason that he spent with the London Monarchs in the now-defunct World League of American Football (WLAF).

“I have a great relationship with Brad because I was in Minnesota before he left, then went to Washington and Tampa Bay, where he won a Super Bowl,” Dalton said. “Then I was with Tice when we brought him back, and in 2005, (starting quarterback) Daunte (Culpepper) went down and Brad came in and we won 7 out of the last 8, and had a heck of a run. He was great. I got to experience Brad on two ends of his career, I used to tease him that there were kids that still had a No. 14 jersey in their closet even though he’d been gone 7-8 years

“We also teased him about his Florida State career, too. His bride was the sister of the offensive coordinator at Florida State when Brad was the QB, and that is none other than (Georgia head coach) Mark Richt, so we teased him that over in London you didn’t have to marry the offensive coordinator’s sister to get the starting job, and neither did he in Minnesota. But he’s got a beautiful family, they’re a great couple, and he’s a terrific guy.”

Dalton said Johnson’s time developing his game in a league other than the NFL was a major part of his success, and one reason he went on to win a Super Bowl.

“He elevated his football IQ to the highest level (by playing in the World League),” Dalton said. “He was literally the coordinator on the field, a super-intelligent football player, and as a QB, he provided this sense of calm and focused leadership. During meetings, he’d tell a story, and get everybody tuned into the story, and the story would take us where we’d need our focus that week. What the World League did was give him the ability to polish his football skill set while enhancing his leadership traits.”

A Problem For All Athletes

10 Tuesday Nov 2015

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Last week, I was privileged to be one of the presenters at the 2015 Sports Financial Advisors Association Conference at The McCormick Resort in Scottsdale, Ariz. During the two days at the conference, I sat at a table with Craig S. Wolman, a CPA and business manager at New York City-based Cohn Reznick.

Besides having a wry sense of humor (which sustained the audience well as he discussed some of the drier topics last week), he’s a very credible person who works with athletes in all four of the major sports. He’s been working with the members of the sports and entertainment industry for 15 years as a CPA and advisor.

He’s very strong in one area that I’m very weak: hockey. I asked him if working with hockey players is different from working with football players. To his credit, he doesn’t subscribe to the standard ‘all athletes are the same’ schtick.

“As a group I’ve always enjoyed working with hockey players the most,” he said. “They seem to be the most genuine, and they really rely on the help of their advisors. A hockey player leaves home when he’s 13 or 14, goes and plays juniors in these really developmental minor leagues in Western Canada, to really focus on their game. Baseball and football players, they’re at home, surrounded by where they grew up, their family and friends, all through high school, then to college for a little bit.

“Hockey players tend to really rely more on their help, but it doesn’t make them any more savvy or less susceptible.”

He referred to an incident in the news in the past year that might seem hard to believe.

“A year ago, the Columbus Bluejackets’ Jack Johnson had to file for bankruptcy because his own parents were stealing from him,” he said. “They were taking out mortgages in his name and borrowing against it. A lot of parents feel like they’re owed it.

“Hockey players, in most areas, you have to get up really early for rink times and practices, and there are 5 a.m. sessions, and kids that are 9 and 10 years old don’t drive themselves. So the parents say, ‘hey , I earned this for 10 years. You’re my golden parachute.’ Anybody can fall prey. Nobody is immune.”

It’s certainly not something endemic to hockey. An incident from last week illustrates it on the college level.

“The family, they’re itching for that three-year window to expire so they can benefit,” Craig said. “Look at the article last week about LSU RB Leonard Fournette, where there he invented a catch phrase, BUGA (Being United Generates Attitude) Nation, and the family was capitalizing by setting up a website and making T-shirts, and the NCAA found out about it and they squashed it right away.

“Nothing really happened. It was his mother, that was creating the website. They had investors, and a lot of time, the outside investors are using the family as well. They promise the family money for this until the son declares.”

If you’re seeking to work with athletes one day, there are two things to consider. One, maybe working with their money is your avenue — there’s certainly a need to protect these young, largely naive men. Two, the people you might be protecting them from are their close friends and family members, which is easier than it sounds.

“It’s everywhere,” Craig said. “The parents can’t wait to get their claws in there. And yeah, they let the kids know. (The players) want to take care of everybody. The parents may not come right out and say it, but the players know. They hear, ‘when you make it, I want this,’ etc. They’ve seen what other athletes have done when they had their turn.”

Small School, Long Odds

09 Monday Nov 2015

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Last week, I reached out to a new agent who had expressed interest in our service. It’s a big time to reach new contract advisors, and we do a lot of work walking them through the process this time of year.

At any rate, he expressed reluctance to join ITL. A combine trainer himself, he had gotten his wife certified so he could cut out the middle man and sign, then train, his own prospects. He explained that several of his recent trainees had gotten camp invites despite coming out of DII schools.

It’s true that small-school players make it to the league sometimes, especially from FCS schools, but sometimes even at the DII and DIII levels. Still, though small-schoolers get lots of ink and make for excellent stories, they tend to make it in far fewer numbers and have far shorter careers than their FBS counterparts.

To illustrate the scarcity of small-schoolers in the most recent NFL draft class, I took at look at the opening-week rosters. Including practice squad players, I counted 461 rookies in the league. Of that 461, eight had formerly played at Division I-A programs, so if not for grades or off-field matters, they’d still have big-school pedigrees.

Looked at another way, of that 461, only 65 (just 14 percent) did not come from Division I-A programs (i.e., FBS). Of that 65, 43 (two-thirds) came from FCS schools (formerly known as Division I-AA). Just 16 came from Division II schools.

I had lunch with a scout who lives near me about a year ago, and when I asked him how they made sure they didn’t miss any small-school phenoms, he just shrugged his shoulders. He said that the FBS schools do the job of sifting out the truly impact players from everyone else for NFL teams, and most take their chances that they’ll trip across any small-school players that matter in the course of their work.

Bottom line, I hope this young agent can keep his momentum going and find the small-school players that will stick, but it’s not going to be easy if this year’s draft class is any indication. And I think it is.

WST: When Fame and Fortune Take a Wrong Turn

05 Thursday Nov 2015

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This week, I’m part of the 2015 Sports Financial Advisor Association’s Conference at the McCormick Resort in Scottsdale, Ariz. It’s the first event of its kind, and it’s exciting to be in a place filled with energy, ideas and most importantly, the desire to see things done more equitably and ethically. It’s a business where sometimes that’s the exception rather than the rule.

(I should mention that the reason I missed out on War Story Wednesday was my travel getting here. My apologies!)

The event’s run by Jonathan Miller, a CPA in nearby Paradise Valley whose vision it is to educate and prepare athletes to make smart financial decisions and protect them from the leeches that hang around the game.

The event’s moderator/presenter is Nick Lowery, a Hall of Fame placekicker who had a great run with some Kansas City Chiefs teams that weren’t always world-beaters. It was during the Chiefs’ down cycle in the mid-80s when Lowery was having one of his best seasons. At one point during the season, he had hit 22 of 23 kicks. This was something he was quite proud of; he “felt like (he) was doing (his) job,” he said Thursday.

It was during this season that he had to make a quick stop at a convenience store to pick up breakfast food — milk, eggs, etc. It was while the cashier was running up his total when, suddenly, a look of recognition came across her face.

“Hey, I know you!” she said. “You’re that kicker. You’re Nick Lowery.”

He acknowledged that he was who she said he was, expecting the praise that comes from being a pro athlete having an exceptional season.

“You missed that kick,” he got instead. “I remember you. I could have made that kick with my left foot. What’s wrong with you?”

I heard another story today that perfectly illustrates why people inside the game say that “NFL” stands for “Not For Long.”

Among the panelists here is Michael Stone, who had a seven-year NFL career as a defensive back with the Texans, Cardinals, Patriots, Rams and, finally, the Giants, the team he “retired” from in 2007. Of course, no one gave him a gold watch or a plaque.

Michael told the story of his abrupt exit from the league. It was during the preseason in ’07, and he was experiencing pain in his hip. He went to the team doctor, who told him he had a torn labrum. Alarmed, he left to seek out a second opinion from an outside doctor, who confirmed the diagnosis. It was during his drive back from the doctor that his agent called to tell him he’d just been cut.

Stories like this are the reason so many people are here to talk about how athletes can make smart choices and don’t wind up in a 30 for 30 episode.

More stories and my thoughts from Scottsdale later.

A Great Trainer’s Take On Great Players

03 Tuesday Nov 2015

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What separates good players from great players? What gives NFL players the chance to be longtime veterans instead of guys that bust, that never make it?

That’s a question many teams have devoted endless hours to answering. In an attempt to find the answer myself, I asked Tony Villani, who runs XPE Sports, a Boca Raton, Fla.-based combine prep facility that is one of the 3-4 best in the nation.

Not only is Tony an incredible trainer, he’s a great guy, too. So many people in the football business, and especially in the trainer space, have incredibly big egos. However, Tony has almost no ego. He’s always got time for everyone and never blows his own horn. And though he gets frustrated and even angry at times, he’s always upbeat and positive.

I asked him about the best players he trains and what makes them great. There were a couple takeaways:

They train every chance they get, even while everyone else is relaxing, or spending their by week in Las Vegas, or even the weekend after a Thursday night game: “(Saints OH Mark) Ingram came down after a Thursday night game this year. Ingram bucks the system. When he first came into the league, he tried to do it his own way. It wasn’t until he got humbled that he decided to do it right. I went to Flint(, Mich., Ingram’s hometown) to meet him personally before the combine, and he chose somewhere else (Sonic Boom in New Orleans). He performed awful. (Wisconsin OG) John Moffitt had a better broad jump and shuttle run! Ingram ran a 4.6 (40), his vertical was bad, it was awful.

“He still didn’t come here after his first year, but then after his second year in the NFL, that’s when he came and he started listening, and became a believer, and bought a Shredmill (a treadmill-like device that Tony patented), and then he bought a house down here, and I think it’s shown. That’s how (49ers WO) Anquan Boldin and (Bucs OB) Lavonte David and the Pounceys (Dolphins OC Mike and Steelers OC Maurkice) and (Redskins WO) Pierre Garcon all do it. They build their offseason around their offseason training. Not where their girl is, not anything else. They can party, do what they want, but they gotta build it around their offseason.”

They turn their weaknesses into strengths, or at least make their weaknesses adequate. Tony sees it in veterans training in the offseason, especially those who exercise the ’75 percent rule:’ “We call it our 75 percent rule. Everybody works out together in the morning for about two hours. The extra 25 percent is what everyone figures out they’re gonna do on their own. For the Pounceys, it might be more lifting. For Eric Berry, it might be more speed. For Byron Maxwell, it might be more flexibility in his hips. Maybe for linemen, it’s more boxing. We call them the 75 percenters, and they give you 75 percent in the morning, and the ‘lifers’ figure out what they’re weak on.

“Everyone thought (former Eagles and Vikings WO) Cris Carter caught a lot of balls in the offseason. They all say, he must catch a thousand, 500 balls a day. Well, I never saw him practice catching balls. He was really slow, and he worked on his weakness. Everybody wants to work on what they’re great at. (Their weakness) is what we try to focus on. They work out together in the morning, then in the afternoon they work on their weaknesses.”

Reminders On A Good QB’s Value

02 Monday Nov 2015

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As a Houston resident, I’ve gotten a pretty close-up look at the value of a quarterback. After going 9-7 last season with a serviceable passer that seemingly no one here liked, Ryan Fitzpatrick, the team settled for a couple of castoffs from other teams. The results have been dismal.

Quarterbacks get more blame in bad times and more glory in good times than they deserve, but they’re still very important. Now that we’re at the halfway mark of the season, here are a few observations, facts and figures that illustrate this point.

  • Saints fans (like me) were up in arms when the Saints traded their only real red-zone threat, TE Jimmy Graham, in the offseason. At the halfway mark of the season, Graham has 38 catches for 450 yards and two TDs. Through eight games, Ben Watson, the player who replaced him, has 38 catches for 472 yards and 3 TDs.
  • By the way, not only is Watson surpassing Graham, but he’s already totaled more catches and yards than he did in eight of his 12 seasons. Obviously, Saints head coach Sean Payton recognized that as long as he had Drew Brees, he could score touchdowns and move the football.
  • Packers receiver James Jones bolted for Oakland last year after seven seasons in Green Bay and looked pretty much spent, averaging only 9.1 yards per catch (ypc). After returning to the Pack, he’s connected with Aaron Rodgers for a 19.1 ypc average, his best average ever, in his 10th season.
  • Tom Brady has won multiple Super Bowls with players that were either mostly overlooked in the draft (Julian Edelman, Troy Brown, Wes Welker) or cast off by other teams (Randy Moss, Brandon LaFell).
  • The Cowboys, obviously, were expecting a lot different results this season from the ones they’ve gotten since Tony Romo went on IR Sept. 22. With five straight losses, there won’t be much for Romo to come back to this year.

I could go on and on, obviously, but you get the point. That’s why it’s so important to watch the Paxton Lynches and the Jared Goffs as we wind down the season. NFL teams certainly will be.