WSW: Finding a Running Back

14 Wednesday Oct 2015

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All scouting and evaluation is a crap shoot. It’s very inexact, no matter what teams and draft gurus tell you. One area where I think scouts err the most is at running back, and you don’t have to go back far to find them.

There’s former Ravens and Chiefs running back Priest Holmes, who was a dominant force in the late 90s/early 00s, and today, there’s Houston’s Arian Foster, Carolina’s Mike Tolbert, San Diego’s Danny Woodhead, Seattle’s Fred Jackson and many more. Look back even further and two Hall of Famers, Joe Perry and Marion Motley, were also undrafted.

One team that’s had a lot of success with undrafted running backs is the Saints, who won a Super Bowl with Pierre Thomas as a versatile, hard-running back with great pass-catching ability. Today, though the team is struggling, it’s no fault of Khiry Robinson, another hard-running back who went undrafted.

I’ve already told the story of my fumbling of an opportunity to get Thomas (along with Tolbert) discovered. For the story of a friend who was smarter about an off-the-grid running back, I’ll turn to Justin VanFulpen, who despite being an agent today has a long history of running various successful all-star games. Justin invited Robinson to the last edition of the Texas vs. The Nation game in Allen, Texas, just outside Dallas.

“I remember seeing highlights of him and liked his running style, but all the scouts I talked to to get a buy-in called him a JAG (just a guy).

“He was the last running back to be added, and one reason I even added him was because I needed another Texas running back. I only had one small-time agent calling me about him. Can’t even remember the guy’s name.

“He had good stats and looked the part, and he was very humbled when I invited him, and he accepted right away. He thought it was too good to be true, and he thanked me a ton for the opportunity.

“He was able to go in that week of practice and outshine D.J. Harper from Boise State, Matthew Tucker from TCU and Ronnie Wingo from Arkansas, and be the best running back on the Texas side. Only (Raiders RB) Latavius Murray from UCF has had a better career so far in the NFL.

“Scouts liked the fact that he ran hard, but still didn’t sign him as a (priority free agent). He had to go to the Saints as a tryout guy, then ended up getting a chance to sign.

“I was surprised he didn’t sign as a priority free agent, so I checked in with him a day after the draft and he told me he got a tryout.”

Even though Robinson once shared a backfield with Cam Newton (while at Blinn College in Bryan, Texas), he barely registered with NFL teams while bouncing from Mesabi Range Community College to Blinn to West Texas A&M. But his play at the TVN game sparked something, and years later, he’s part of an NFL backfield.

 

 

“The Value Is The Film”

13 Tuesday Oct 2015

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This morning, I got a text from an agent who’s been a client and a friend for a long time. He told me one of the FXFL teams is in complete disarray, and that the players had gone on strike. Meanwhile, the coach had walked out (mid-practice, I was told) and the players hadn’t been paid since the season started two weeks ago. According to my source, their laundry wasn’t getting done and they didn’t even have water at their workouts!

In my efforts to confirm the strike (I’m still working on it), I reached out to another agent who’s been hardened to the roller-coaster world of minor-league football. Though he’s got two clients in the FXFL, he’s all too aware of the pitfalls of playing in these leagues. “It’s crazy,” he texted me. “The value is the film, but (the league) can’t keep screwing the players.”

This morning’s texts came on the heels of another communication I got last night from the father of a player who narrowly missed a camp invite this spring. His son, a very good college player who still has NFL dreams, had just been told that his school would not allow its seniors from ’15 to attend its 2016 pro day, a big change from previous seasons. It left my friend’s son with limited options and no way to jump-start his pro football career. I had to tell him his son’s only remaining options were probably paid tryouts (costs are usually around $100) with Arena and CFL teams. It wasn’t easy to tell him that.

So here’s the takeaway. This week, as I mentioned in Monday’s report, more than a hundred agents from the 2015 class were added to the NFLPA’s rolls. Many of those agents will soon start getting phone calls and/or emails from desperate players from recent draft classes, hoping to get one more chance at film. They’re mostly willing to go to the AFL, or the CFL, or to virtually any league that might get them fresh film, which in turn might get them another look with the NFL.

In November, these new agents will hear from dozens of players slated for the ’16 draft class that aren’t getting recruited by agents, but still want to play in the NFL. If (when?) the ’16 draft comes and goes with no calls from the league, they’ll be looking for fresh film, too.

If you’re among those in the new agent class, understand that only a select few players are NFL-worthy, but thousands believe they are. Be very careful about believing a player’s story when he tells you he’d be a top prospect if not for a bit of bad luck. The road to finding new film is a long and winding one, and it usually leads only to a dead end.

Welcome to the Grind

12 Monday Oct 2015

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There’s a member of a recent agent class that loves to tweet 20-30 times per day, sometimes more. He does this despite the fact he’s got fewer than 500 followers. In fact, my former intern and I coined a term for having more followers than tweets — it’s a ratio named after this agent.

The funniest part is that probably half of his tweets are about how he’s ‘grinding.’ He usually throws in a hashtag to really drive that point home. In fact, whenever my associate and I see him at an all-star game or the combine, it’s a contest to see which one of us can say “grinding.” first.

I dropped by the NFLPA website today and found, to my surprise, that the members of the 2015 contract advisor class have already been added, maybe a week or so earlier than normal. To those new agents, I wanted to say, “Welcome to the grind.”

I’ve spoken to dozens of agents who passed the exam, and they are all brimming with excitement. The intrigue and the excitement of the business are before them, and they want to dig in, but often, they don’t quite know where to start. In these cases, I’m only too happy to help get them on the road to success with a few simple steps.

On the other hand, I also contrast the excitement of a new start in the game with the response I often get from those same agents a year later, when they’ve gotten a taste of the business. They’re a lot more realistic about their expectations, and they are a lot more aware of the costs (financial and otherwise) associated with the business. They also better understand the competition before them and the forces pushing back, from the NFLPA (often) to the schools that presume they have bad intentions.

But now’s not a time for that. Instead, I’m excited that there are more than a hundred new faces in the game, eager to make their mark and help guide young men along the road to realizing a dream. I might add that I’m here to help everyone who’s newly certified. At Inside the League, we’ve been fortunate to be a helping hand to those who are themselves looking to live a dream, and we’re happy to walk with you.

This is a day for celebration. Congratulations on your arrival! Now it’s time to get down to business.

Cap Questions & Answers from J.I.

08 Thursday Oct 2015

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One intriguing person I’ve worked with over the years is J.I. Halsell. He’s intriguing for a number of reasons.

No. 1, he turned his job in college stats into a job with the Washington Redskins, mostly on his own hustle (here’s that story). No. 2, he walked away from a successful job as an NFL agent with a big firm, primarily because he wanted to work closer to his West Coast roots. No. 3, he’s very entrepreneurial, and has actually turned his knowledge of the salary cap into something entertaining and profitable with his website, NFL Contract Metrics. If you haven’t checked out his site, which I’ve discussed in this space before, you’re missing out on a valuable resource for evaluating the NFL.

The salary cap is something I don’t pretend to fully understand, but that’s OK, because I have J.I for that. Occasionally, I wonder about certain things related to salaries and the running of a team, and I reach out to him for answers. Here are a few recent questions I had for him, with his responses.

In the offseason, the Seahawks signed QB Russell Wilson to a megadeal and acquired TE Jimmy Graham, who’s also making big bucks. How does this kind of ‘overnight bonanza’ impact a team’s roster? Where does this put pressure?

J.I.: “When one analyzes the Seahawks’ cap allocations, it’s not just Wilson and Graham who make their cap management a challenge.  Pre-existing high-end deals for Richard Sherman, Earl Thomas and the recent extension of Bobby Wagner have created a cap allocation composition that has proverbially ‘pinched’ the offensive line, and it has shown on the field through four weeks of the season.  As the Seahawks entered Week 1, they had allocated just 8.9% (13.26M) of their 148.26M 2015 salary cap to the offensive line.  Only the Lions (8.2%) have allocated less to their offensive line; not surprisingly, both clubs have struggled along the offensive line this season.”

Conversely, the Saints shed Graham. In your estimation, given the Saints’ cap situation, do you think this was primarily a financial move? Also, in your estimation, was it something the team had to do, given its cap situation?

J.I.: Graham’s 2015 cap hit to the Saints went from $11M prior to the trade to $9M after the trade (by virtue of his future-year signing bonus allocations accelerating into the Saints’ 2015 cap). Therefore, because there was not a significant amount of cap relief achieved by trading Graham, one cannot directly attribute his departure to the goal of improving the Saints cap situation.  However, because the draft provides cheap labor and theoretically the quality of that labor is improved in the earlier rounds, the Saints indirectly took a step in improving their cap efficiency by using the first-round pick acquired in the Graham trade on ILB Stephone Anthony (not to mention the acquisition of veteran OC Max Unger via this trade to solidify a viewed position of need).

We’ll have more to come from J.I. next week. In the meantime, make sure to check him out on Twitter and register for his website (it has free sections, and it’s very reasonably priced).

 

WSW: When, Why and Where Do Teams Gamble in the Draft?

07 Wednesday Oct 2015

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Some years ago, I had a conversation with former 49ers scout Oscar Lofton that we filmed for ITL. It was pretty wide-ranging, and I had the time of my life as we discussed a number of topics related to scouting. Here’s an interesting story about Deion Sanders that Oscar shared that day.

One thing we talked about was a team’s philosophy toward the last rounds of the draft. My contention was that teams see them as throwaway picks, and I know the 49ers did specifically because, in 1996, they drafted identical twins Sean and Sam Manuel out of tiny New Mexico State as a sort of lighthearted public relations move.

Here are some excerpts from our conversation with my analysis and conclusions after each passage.

Lofton: “From late-fifth round all the way through the seventh, sometimes you have — because of a trade . . . or because of some kind of deal that’s happened, or some compensatory trades that have been made, or people that left your club — you get some of those picks, and you try to kind of stack up with some sixth-, seventh-round people.”

Analysis: I think this is interesting because even though Oscar left the Niners in the early ’00s, he’s admitting that even then, the team looked at any picks after the late fifth round as strictly a gamble, and therefore they rolled the dice on players that were boom-or-bust types. My observation is that teams are doubling down on this now, taking guys that fit all the metrics but that might not have the Football IQ they need. I think a great example of this is the Saints, a team that hit big on some boom-or-bust types (TE Jimmy Graham) as well as late-rounders (WO Marques Colston) and undrafted free agents (DE Junior Galette), then got lulled into a pattern of gambling earlier in the draft, which came home to roost in 2014 with several picks (second-rounder Stanley Jean-Baptiste and fourth-rounder Khairi Fortt) that, one year later, are no longer on the team.

Lofton: “Generally like from the fifth round on, sometimes . . . you take some phenom, you know, some guy that can jump out of the gym and everything, but he’s a football player, not just somebody that can run fast, but can catch, or can cover, or whatever you need him to do, but some kind of athlete sticks out at that level. What does he bring that makes us a better team? Well, he brings speed as a receiver, or he brings deep coverage ability as a defensive back, or he brings the ability to pass rush off of stunts, you know, as a secondary member or something, or a great special teams presence, or . . . the ability to return a punt, or to run after catch.”

Analysis: Maybe this is the key. Though scouts I talk to agree that good teams take the best athlete available early in the draft, maybe the best strategy late in the draft is to draft for need. Take an athletic ex-basketball player if you have a need at tight end or defensive end, or an ex-wrestler if you need a good interior lineman, or a track guy if your secondary is too slow.

Lofton: “You say, ‘those aren’t that important to the team,’ but you look at how many of the seventh-round people and the free agent people that have made (the Niners), and made us better, and they become crucial to you. Usually the ones that flop big are the first rounds, the . . . early picks, you know? Because you put so much into them, and then because you’ve got so much into them, you have to hang with them for so long. So while you’re hanging with them you’ve got to have somebody playing. So some of those seventh-round picks and free agents are doing the playing, and they’re getting all the money until you can figure out a way to unload (the struggling first-rounders), or until they develop.”

Analysis: Oscar’s take here is what makes me scratch my head. It seems counter-intuitive to gamble with the last three picks of the draft when there are so many players out there that excel despite being late picks or not drafted at all. More and more, teams are taking players who come from the lower levels of college football, or who played other sports primarily or otherwise excelled in workouts despite meager on-field credentials. There’s a fine line between taking a player with upside and taking a player who’s got as much chance of winning the lottery as he does of making the team.

Three Things to Watch For in ‘The Agent’s’ Finale

06 Tuesday Oct 2015

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I hope you’ve been enjoying the eight episodes so far of ‘The Agent,’ the first show to truly take viewers behind the scenes of the world of player representation. Tonight’s show (10E/9C on the Esquire Network) wraps the series. Here are three things I found interesting about the show.

  • I guess the idea of a draft party is just something too tempting to resist to families of players that are draft-eligible. I understand; potentially being selected in the draft represents the culmination of a lifelong dream not just for the young men involved, but for their extended families as well. But what happens if you’re not one of the 250-odd players drafted? Or, as happens frequently in tonight’s episode, you’re drafted much lower than you expected to? It’s agony seeing your dreams die (or dim), but when it’s on camera, or when you’re accompanied by everyone you know, it’s infinitely worse. Tonight, you get to see families experience the crushing despair of lost hope when young men go undrafted. There’s somewhat of a happy ending when teams all post-draft, recruiting them for UDFA deals, but it’s a pretty hollow victory. But to all players hoping to be drafted next spring: if you weren’t invited to watch the draft in Chicago by the NFL itself, consider planning a very subdued draft-day get-together.
  • When I watch movies based on true stories, I like it when, right before the credits roll, they show what happened next to the main characters, how their lives played out. To the credit of the show’s producers, this takes place for all the players signed by the four agents profiled in the show. I’ll warn you — it’s not all happy endings. This is inevitable, but the striking thing to me is how much recruiting, hand-holding, flattery, protecting, and, yes, coddling, goes into signing a player who winds up as an undrafted free agent or late-rounder. The price of signing a player who’s even on an NFL radar screen is to treat him as if he’s a certain Hall of Fame talent. That’s sad but true. Every year I get a few new agents who claim they’re going to get tough with their players and provide no kid-gloves treatment. It’s very hard to do that when these players have been given special treatment all their lives.
  • On a related note, Peter Schaffer of Authentic Athletix spent a big part of this series pumping up Washington State QB Connor Halliday, encouraging him and patiently walking through the process with a young man whose draft chances were limited. Tonight, Peter is repaid for all his good will and financial investments by being hung up on when Halliday goes undrafted. Most players not only have a limited memory of the good things agents do for them, but are quick to blame an agent when things go poorly. This is another reality of the game.

I hope you’ll check out our live-tweet tonight. Lots of good insights as we wrap a fun nine weeks. See you tonight.

A Key Marker for NFL Success

05 Monday Oct 2015

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Last year I did a report on how the league was made up, based on opening-week rosters. I analyzed a lot of things about the league, but today, I want to focus on the teams that drafted the most players into the league because I think it’s a good baseline indicator of which teams do the best job of drafting.

As you may recall, last year’s report indicated that the teams that had drafted the most players into the league were the 49ers (59), Packers (54), Steelers (53), Ravens (51) and Texans, Patriots and Seahawks, all tied with 49. Last year, six of the seven had winning records, five of the seven made the playoffs, and two of the seven played in the Super Bowl.

This year, the Pack leads with 56, followed by the Niners (55), Steelers (52), Texans (51) and Bengals (50).

Last year’s bottom five were the Saints and Redskins, tied for last with 32 each, followed by the Bears with 33 draftees, the Bills with 34 and the Browns and Colts with 37 each. This year, the Giants are all alone at the bottom with 30; Tampa Bay next to last (31), Washington (32), and the Colts and the Bears with 36 each.

What does it all mean? Here’s how I see it.

  • The Packers are highly regarded for their draft acumen and that’s proven by the numbers. It’s one reason the Packers always challenge for the title, and also perhaps the reason other highly successful teams (like the Chiefs and Seahawks) are there because they brought their GMs in from Green Bay.
  • It seems clear that a good QB can mask a lot of deficiencies. It struck me as odd going into last season that two of the worst-drafting teams, the Colts and Saints, were seen as Super Bowl contenders. We know now that the Saints were nowhere near worthy of that hype, and a year later, the Colts are seeing a similar dip. After a mighty fall to the bottom of the ‘total players drafted’ standings this year, it could be curtains for the Giants if something were to happen to Eli.
  • Conversely, a bad quarterback can kill a team’s chances despite a generally high talent level. The Niners and Texans were both top-five teams last year when it comes to identifying talent, but you could argue that those two teams have gotten the worst QB play in the league so far this season.
  • Last year, of the six teams at the bottom, three either changed GMs (Redskins and Bears), cleaned house in the scouting department (Saints), or had second-year GMs (Bills and Browns). That leaves just one outlier.
  • I’m looking at you, Ryan Grigson.  As recently as 2012, Grigson was Executive of the Year, but now, the case is being made by the Colts faithful that it’s time for him to move on. Grigson has made a series of questionable trades and seems to lean on the AFL, the CFL and even the NFL Veterans Combine and the Super Regional to sign players ‘off the street’ when the team should maybe look harder at the draft. It’s coming home to roost.

WSW: The Value of Risk

30 Wednesday Sep 2015

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In this space, I often wonder if I’m leading readers astray as I encourage people to ‘go for it’ in the football business. What if I’m leading people down a path that winds up in a bad place? What if they take a risk and it works out in a really negative way?

As I was searching for today’s War Story, I came across this from Phil Emery, the former Bears GM who spoke at our seminar last January. Phil is adamant that if you’re going to succeed in football, or even in life, you have to take a few leaps.

“Take risks, and don’t be afraid of them, OK? I’m sure there’s very few people in here that have talked to the one-percenters that are all the political debate about, the top one percent of wealthy people in the United States. OK? I’m not one of those. I didn’t come from there, if you are, you’re very fortunate, OK? You probably took risks to get there. Take risk.  I’ve always kind of looked at it, and I reminded myself when I got the job in Chicago is, you’ve never really had anything, so swing harder. Don’t choke up on the bat, OK? Don’t choke up on the bat. Swing hard. I swung hard, OK? It didn’t work out, but I’m proud of one thing: we weren’t afraid to swing. Nobody left me at the plate looking at the ball, OK? We spent every dime we could spend, and we tried to make the best decisions that we can, or we could. So that’s my advice. Remember, anything is possible. Do it for the benefit of others, and don’t be afraid to take risks. The more risk you take, the more change will happen in your life, and ultimately, change makes you stronger.

“I counted up, I’m going to be moving on my 20th move post-college. I’ve made 20 different moves. I’ve had 11 different jobs, and my wife’s been with me for 18 of those moves, so she’s gold, OK? We’ve been together for 34 years, and every one of those changes benefits you down the road. The things that I did as equipment manager benefited me as a GM. Why? Because I could walk down to that basement and knew exactly what that person was doing, and those organizational tasks help.”

If you’re more of a visual person, check out 7:56-9:38 in this video and you can hear it from Phil himself.

Three Things to Watch For in ‘The Agent’

29 Tuesday Sep 2015

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Episode 8 of ‘The Agent’ is tonight (10E/9C). The show covers the first three rounds of this year’s draft, and have plenty of intrigue and behind-the-scenes pageantry and byplay.

Here are three things I thought worth noting.

  • The players spotlighted tonight all have major family parties complete with guests, food, and people crowded around a TV set. This is very common, very tempting, and in my mind, a big mistake. The draft is an incredibly vexing and unpredictable event. You’ll notice that the agents don’t attend any of these events, and there’s an obvious reason why: they don’t want to be the focus of everyone’s ire if (when?) things go wrong. If you’re like me, you’re going to be especially sympathetic with Kentucky DT Za’Darius Smith, who winds up getting pursued by an irritable broadcaster that absolutely insists his selection is imminent . . . until the picks pass by and it’s not. Smith is a really patient and engaging young man before he finally hides from the guy.
  • One note on the sports media: when I worked in newspapers, we would occasionally get phone calls from people that wanted to settle a bet. I remember, in ’95 or ’96, I was working at a paper in Lubbock and some guy called, asking us who the best QB of all time was (my vote went to Marino; everyone else said Montana). The point is, there’s some perception that sports writers/reporters/etc. know more than the rank-and-file fan. These days, I’m not sure that’s true. They may have a few more connections, and may have some insights they don’t share with readers, but for the most part, the wide variety of information sources and deeper analysis means fans don’t have to take a backseat to media these days. The guy who keeps bugging Smith is pretty much Exhibit A.
  • One more note on the media: often during the run-up to the draft, you’ll hear that a certain player interviewed with 7-8 teams at the combine. This is always spun as the teams that have the most interest in the player. That’s not true. It’s often the teams that have the least interest in the player, because they didn’t even get basic interviews done during the draft process; they’re just covering their bases, nothing more. This manifests itself tonight when the agents list the teams they expect to draft their clients. In most cases, they’re dead wrong. Teams have become quite adept at hiding their true intents, and often, the teams an agent lists as having the most interest are actually the teams where the agent has the most contacts. He’s talked up his clients with his buddies on those teams, and therefore, he feels his client has an excellent chance with them. But really, it means nothing. Watch for this tonight.

Make sure to join me for more insights tonight on the ITL live-tweet.

Second Chance

28 Monday Sep 2015

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Last Wednesday, I was having lunch with a client and his partner who are in wealth management for several athletes across all the major sports. I’d met my friend’s partner before, but this was the first time we really had to talk, and I found out he had roots in Cleveland.

I told him the only time I’d been to old Municipal Stadium, a place where the Browns really had a home-field advantage, was sometime in the 90s, when Bill Belichick was the head coach. I remember that game because it was a dreary day in Cleveland between two really bad teams, the Browns and the Saints, neither of whom seemed to have any clue about how to run an offense. “It’s Bill Beli-choke against Jim Moron,” I remember my friend, Ryan, saying of the Belichick-Mora head coaching match-up that day.

I mentioned, while looking over the menu, that people forget that Belichick wasn’t nearly the ‘genius’ he’s considered to be today back then, when he was coaching the woeful Browns. “Here we go,” said my friend with a wry smile, knowing I’d struck a chord with his partner.

It became somewhat of a ‘soapbox’ moment. He discussed his belief that Belichick was one of the main reasons Cleveland lost the Browns, then had to reassemble the team as an expansion franchise. “The team wasn’t good enough to have a guy like Belichick, who didn’t get along with the media, as the face of the franchise,” he said.

I had to admit he was right, though I’d never thought about it that way. The strain between the team and the fans only worsened when owner Art Modell made it clear he wanted a new stadium, and soon it became inevitable that the team would leave.

If Belichick hadn’t gotten a second chance in the game, history would remember him as the guy who lost a lot and showed up to his press conferences wearing a rumpled hoodie and a frown. But he did get a second chance, applied the lessons about defense he’d learned at the knee of Bill Parcells, made the right decision about his quarterback, and the rest is a different kind of history. The key is that Belichick learned from that experience, sticking to his guns on the things he knew still worked, but improving.

This lesson is especially poignant to me this week after so many would-be NFL contract advisors found out about a week ago that they’d failed the agent exam. This year, the NFLPA chose to change up their exam quite a bit, and also made some other choices that lead to my view — admittedly based on anecdotal evidence — that this year’s agent class will be down significantly from the usual 150-200 that pass the test. We won’t know for sure until the new class is posted on the NFLPA website in late October or November.

Maybe you’ve suffered some other setbacks as you’ve attempted to build a place in the football world for yourself. The key, I feel, is to not think of yourself as a bum, or washed-up, or whatever, if you fail, especially if it’s a very public, very embarrassing failure. History will only remember your success, so keep on fighting. You may one day be considered a ‘genius,’ like Norman Einstein.