Inside the numbers: NFL high-schoolers from the states

16 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

We’ve spent a lot of time over the last week going inside the number of NFL players on rosters the opening week of the season. Today, let’s take a long look at high schools of active NFL players to see where most got their start on the gridiron.

Not surprisingly, we find that the Southeast is still the place where football players are bred, and the Northeast is the least, at least when it comes to HS-to-NFL talent.

  • Which state has the best high school football? Well, based on number of players sent to the NFL, it’s California, with 277 players in the league (based on Opening Week rosters). Florida is No. 2 with 255 players, while Texas is third with 242.
  • No other state has more than two hundred. Georgia is fourth with 125, while Ohio is fifth with 101.
  • The top six schools (California, Florida, Texas, Georgia, Ohio and Louisiana) produced 1,078 of the 2,186 active NFL players, or 49.3 percent. The remaining 44 states produced 1,086.
  • Top six states in NFL players per capita: Louisiana (returning champions), Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Georgia. All SEC states.
  • You could probably win a lot of bets by asking people to guess which state produced the sixth-most players, just outside the top five. Though the Northeast isn’t necessarily known for football, it’s New Jersey with 71.
  • More on the lack of talent in the Northeast: New York is the third-most populous state, but is just 18th in the total number of NFL players with 40. It’s also seventh from the bottom in per capita NFL players.
  • Only one state has no NFL players. It’s Vermont.
  • North Dakota, New Mexico and Rhode Island have only one each. That’s as many as each of the countries of Ghana and Estonia have produced, and half as many as Germany and Great Britain.
  • Pennsylvania has a reputation for its high school football, and has produced a fair share of Hall of Fame quarterbacks, from Montana to Marino, but it’s barely in the top 10 with 65 players.
  • The Bayou State, Louisiana, is 25th in population, but sixth in NFL players (78).
  • Massachusetts is the 14th-most populous state, but has only produced 15 NFL players. That’s No. 32 among the states.

WSW: Finding (and missing) on Welker

15 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Scouts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

In the spring of 2011, I had a chance to sit down with former Cowboys scout Jim Hess for a lengthy interview. We talked about a number of topics related to scouting and the inner workings of NFL football, and it was a lot of fun both because Jim is a mentor to me (I call him one of my ‘uncles in the game’) and because he could discuss details of things and answer questions on issues like few can.

One of the topics we discussed was two players he had a chance to see during his days with the Cowboys, both undrafted wide receivers who went on to lengthy NFL careers: Miles Austin and Wes Welker. Jim really broke things down on how Welker slid through the draft, then bounced around before finding stardom with the Patriots.

Here’s a transcript of a portion of the interview:

“I don’t know as much about (ex-Cowboys, now-Browns WR) Miles Austin. He was also a free agent, but Miles had the measureables. He looks like a receiver, he’s gotten . . his frame’s filled out more, plus he had great speed and great explosion. He would be a guy, you would wonder, can we develop him? (Broncos WR) Wes Welker, I know a lot more about Wes because I personally scouted Wes. I had the Big 12, plus the Southwest and some overlapping areas, so I was at Wes Welker’s pro day.

“I don’t think Wes went to the combine, but I was at his pro day, and he didn’t look very good. He didn’t run very fast, and he’s not very big. Y’all have seen him on television, and he’s not very big. I didn’t really think I could sell him to Coach (Bill) Parcells, and I really didn’t try. I put a free agent grade on him . . . and in my write-up, in my summary, I said, ‘this guy could be a steal in the five, sixth or seventh round.’ Why? Well, he had produced. Totally produced everywhere he had been. Player of the Year in Oklahoma. All-American, or at least all-conference, at Texas Tech. Punt returner, kick returner, great hands and great quickness, but I knew Bill wouldn’t draft a guy like that. Not that small. And you have to admit, Welker, you didn’t hear of him in the pros until he got with the Patriots.

“Let me explain something to you there, too. Would you have ever heard of (NFL great) Brett Favre if it hadn’t been for (former Packers head coach) Mike Holmgren? Would you have ever heard of (NFL great) Joe Montana, if it hadn’t been for (former 49ers head coach) Bill Walsh? You can go on and on like that, and sometimes it’s just the luck of the draw and you get with the right team, the right system that knows how to utilize you. I believe Wes went to San Diego first, and nothing came out of that (Editor’s note: He went to camp with the Chargers, then spent two seasons with the Dolphins), but you can go on and on with players like that, and the league and just happened to be the marriage at the right time, and you can probably put Tony Romo in that category. Would it have been (quarterback) Tony Romo coming to the Cowboys without (former Cowboys QBs coach) Sean Payton being there? But you got a lot of that going on, but what you looked at with Wes, he had been successful at everything he’d done, and I didn’t have the guts to put a draftable grade on him, but I did in my write-up say, this might be a steal in the lower rounds. Now, when you get to the lower rounds, roll the dice, because I can’t tell. I’ll be honest. Maybe that’s one of my (weaknesses). . . I was a coach scouting, not a scout scouting.”

Insights on NFL players and career length

14 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

On Monday, we dug into the roster makeups of all 32 teams going into the 2014 season, focusing mostly on size (specifically, height). Today, another look at the players who step between the lines on Sundays, focusing primarily on length of career.

  • It’s often said that it’s a young man’s game, but sometimes it helps to understand how, well, disposable NFL players are, as well as how finite a pro football career can be. Here’s an illustration: more than 21 percent of the players in the game are rookies (467). That’s more than any other class and at least three times more than any draft class after 2010.
  • The total number of players from the 2012 draft class (324) is equal to the number who’ve had careers of at least seven years. That includes all the players from the ’96, ’98, ’99, ’01, ’02, ’03, ’04, ’05, ’06 and ’07 draft classes.
  • The number of players in the league from the ’14, ’13 and ’12 draft classes is more than half of the total players in the league (52.3 percent).
  • After the ’08 class, there are no draft classes with more than 100 players still in the league. After the ’05 class, there are none with more than 50.
  • If you’re recruiting quarterbacks as clients, understand that not many make it to the second deal. There are 18 in the league from the ’14 draft class, 13 from ’13, 14 from ’12 and 10 from ’11. However, there are only five from ’10, four from ’09 and five from ’08. There are 29 total from all remaining draft classes beyond that.
  • Strangely enough, linebackers seem to have the best shelf life. There are 40 from the ’11 class still active, which exceeds all other positions. Wide receivers is next with 31. No one else has more than 30.
  • Offensive linemen seem to have a rather short shelf life. There are no offensive guards still active who entered the league before the 2005 draft. There are just four offensive linemen who entered the league before the 2004 draft.
  • While we’re at it, there are no cornerbacks, defensive tackles, wide receivers, running backs, tackles or guards who entered the league before the 2003 draft class. It just goes to show that when the speed (corners, receivers, rushers) or the maneuverability (tackles, guards, defensive tackles) go, it’s pretty much sayonara. So if you’re a player, or hope to be some day, focus on your legs, speed and quickness.

The long and short of 2014 NFL rosters

13 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

On Friday, we took a look at the size, shape and composition of the NFL as it entered the 2014 season. Today, we’ll take another look at things and pass along a few more observations, focusing on heights.

  • Used to be that the primary metric for getting drafted, getting a UDFA contract, being signed off the street, or otherwise given a chance to play in the NFL was pure playing ability. However, as more and more teams go to objective measures and take an ‘analytics’ approach to scouting, size is becoming more and more important. Case in point: only 400 of 2,186 players on active rosters on opening weekend 2014 (18.3 percent) are listed under 6-0.
  • What’s more, excluding kickers, those under 6-0 play only three positions: running back, wide receiver and defensive back. There are also 11 LBs among the 398 as well as one long-snapper, but those are statistical anomalies.
  • Got a client who’s a little on the short side? Check out the Redskins, the only team with 20 players under 6-0. There’s also Tampa Bay and Cleveland, both with 19; Denver (18); and San Diego (17). Those are the five teams with at least 17 players under 6-0.
  • Also: There are a total of 10 NFL players 5-7 or shorter. The Bucs have three of them.
  • On the other hand, stay away from Oakland, the most size/speed-obsessed team in the league under former owner Al Davis and continuing into the era of GM Reggie McKenzie. The Raiders had only four players under six-feet tall on their roster on opening week.
  • Meanwhile, the Bears had 6, Bills 7 and Panthers 8. Eight of the 32 teams had 10 or fewer players under 6-0 among their 63 under contract (53 active plus a 10-man practice squad).
  • Giants KR Trindon Holliday is the shortest player in the league at 5-5.
  •  Chiefs OT Eric Fisher is one of seven players who are tallest in the league at 6-9.
  • The median height of NFL players is 6-3 (311 players). Next is 6-2 (288), then 6-4 (279).
  • The average height is just over 6-2.

Some observations on the league’s 2014 player makeup

10 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Every year, we compile a detailed report on the league’s active rosters (practice squads included) for our clients, based on the rosters for the first weekend of play. It’s a LOT of work, but always bears interesting info when we get it done. Here are a few things I thought were worth passing along:

  • There are only five players left in the league whose careers started in the 90s. Predictably, two (Adam Vinatieri and Phil Dawson) are kickers. Interestingly, Peyton Manning, coming off perhaps his best-ever season, is the second-oldest player in the league after Vinatieri, at least based on when he started his career (1998). Colts backup Matt Hasselback also launched his career in ’98. The last of the five? Oakland’s Charles Woodson.
  • Of the 2,186 players in the league, 791 (or 36 percent) are undrafted free agents. More than a third of the players on active rosters were not judged to be among the best 250 players in his draft class. That’s something to think about.
  • Among all the first-round picks still in the league, the biggest position group is (surprise) linebackers (37). Quarterbacks, one of the hardest positions to scout, are sixth (26). Running backs are ninth of 13 positions listed with 16; it’s interesting to see how the league has evolved as there are more safeties (20) than rushers or tight ends (10).
  • It’s exciting to hear about small-school players who find a place in the league, but statistically the number of players from outside FBS/Division I-A are minuscule. Less than 15 percent of all players in the NFL are from outside FBS (14.4 percent). If you’re DIII, you can pretty much forget it, statistically, as there are only 15 NFL players from the smallest NCAA division. There are only five from NAIA, which works out to .2 percent of the league.
  • There are 13 first overall picks still in the league. Of that number, nine are quarterbacks.

We’ll go inside the numbers a bit more next weekend. Have a great weekend.

Big firm? Small firm?

09 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by in Agents

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Earlier this week, I had a lengthy conversation with a young law student who’s dedicated to being an NFLPA-licensed agent someday soon. Among the topics we discussed was internships. He’s worked with agencies before, and wants to continue his learning. His question to me was, should he look large firm or small firm?

The easy answer is to go with a small firm. The opportunity for growth is huge, and there’s no limit to what he’ll be asked to do. In addition, he will have a chance to see, up close, what the firm’s principals do, and measure their success. His first experience was with a small firm, and he got marketing expertise rather quickly due to their handing him several accounts (much to his surprise). The downside to working with a small firm was easy, too. They only had one client who drew draft attention, and when he didn’t make a roster, there wasn’t much to do. For this reason, he said he’s thinking trying to make a run at a big firm next.

I think it’s a good idea, but if you’re in a similar situation, there are a couple things to think about.

The first item is the high barrier to entry. Everyone wants to intern with CAA, Athletes First, Rosenhaus Sports, or whatever. The truly elite agencies have dozens and dozens of applicants. I worked with one top-ten agency this summer trying to find them a new hire, and after sending them the cream of the crop among newly certified contract advisors, they wound up rejecting all of them and starting over, hoping to find a young, hard-charging Ivy Leaguer. Most firms are the same way. They want guys who have a pedigree AND a fire-breathing work ethic, so the first drawback is the difficulty in landing an internship. It’s a serious barrier to entry.

The second negative is that if you go to such an agency, you better burn your ships. The odds of your getting hired will be very long, so you’re going to have to work like you’ve never worked and be able to adapt to any situation (and succeed at it). I know lots and lots of young agents who got their first taste of the sports agent business as interns with big firms, but ultimately weren’t hired. They spend years trying to chase success on their own, but lacking the client list, sizzle and muscle of a big-time firm, don’t get there. The pedigree gained from an internship with such an agency doesn’t translate to success.

So which way is the smart play? To me, if you’re looking to land an internship next semester or next summer, send out lots of resumes to agencies big and small. Just know that, depending on the size of the firm that picks you up, you’ll have to adjust your strategy.

 

WSW: Patriot problems

08 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Scouts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

I was talking today to Brian Woods, commissioner of the first-year FXFL, about the kickoff of his new league and the start of play this weekend. In the course of our speaking, he proudly mentioned several recent signees that were with NFL teams this summer.

“We just signed Jeremy Gallon, who was out of Michigan and drafted by the Patriots this year,” Brian said. “In fact, we have two players the Patriots drafted this year in our league.”

That statement really gave me pause. The fact that both OG Jon Halapio (6/179) and Gallon (7/244) are not only ex-Patriots, but not even in the NFL anymore, was not lost on me. In fact, it reminded me of a conversation I had with an AFC Director of College Scouting at the combine this spring. He was discussing scouting in general, and mentioned that New England, despite the fact the Belichick brand is still one of the strongest in football, has failed to find talent the way it used to.

“Some of the players they took this spring we had as undrafted free agents,” he said. “I mean, in the fourth and fifth round, I had guys calling me saying, ‘can you believe the guy the Patriots just took?’ It’s been like that the last few seasons. It’s going to take a toll on them.”

You’ve probably read a lot about Tom Brady’s struggles this season, and in some quarters it’s become fashionable to ask if he’s done. But let’s look at the receivers the team has put on the field in the last 2-3 years. Just this week, the team cut Kenbrell Thompkins, a player they were starting last season. Aaron Dobson, a second-rounder in ’13, has been a healthy scratch several times this season. Meanwhile, though they’re carrying Josh Boyce (4/102/2013) on their practice squad, he’s far from a contributing member of their offense. Their 2012 seventh-round WR Jeremy Ebert is out of the league.

In the old days, the Pats were finding players like Deion Branch (2/65/2002) in the early rounds and Troy Brown (8/198/1993) in the latter rounds. Things have become so dire that they’re having to plug the holes in their receiving corps by signing castoffs from other teams like Danny Amendola and Brandon LaFell. In fairness, it’s rare that a team has a starting tight sent away on murder charges, and the injuries that have kept Rob Gronkowski off the field have been particularly damaging. 

Still, injuries are part of the game, and when you roll the dice on players flagged for character issues, those decisions could blow up in your face. It will be interesting to see if the Patriots’ scouting department can right the ship in time to give aging Brady one last shot at a title.

What really matters

07 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Agents

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

Tonight I’ll be speaking to parents of 2015 NFL draft hopefuls at a Houston-area hotel on behalf of a client in the financial planning industry. We’ll talk about the entire draft process from A-Z and answer any questions they have. Hopefully I’ll pass along a few things they hadn’t thought of, and they’ll be bold enough to ask questions if there are things I miss.

Usually when I address parents, I want to throw the kitchen sink at them. I want them to leave with every detail, to know things they never even thought about knowing, but tonight I’m taking a different approach. I’ve pretty much condensed things down to the bare minimum. I’m hoping this will give them more takeaways that they can actually use versus just bombarding them with knowledge so I can show what an authority I am.

If you’re in Houston, I hope you’ll join us tonight at 7 p.m. at the Houston Marriott Westchase (email me for more details or leave a comment here). It’s free, of course. If you’re not, here’s the SUPER-condensed version.

  • There is no ‘magic list.’ There are probably 500 players that every NFL team knows inside and out, and who will be given serious consideration in next spring’s draft. However, every year there are more players — it’s hard to put a number on how many — that only a few teams even know about, yet they wind up making NFL rosters. I’m not saying these guys wind up as future all-pros, but some have nice NFL careers. The point is, this is an inexact science.
  • No agent can get you drafted. I don’t care what they say when they’re recruiting you. I don’t care how long they’ve been in the business, or how many NFL clients they have, or how popular they are on Google, or whatever. An agent can help you along the process, and maybe with the right connections he can get a player signed as an undrafted free agent who might not otherwise have gotten that invite, but no one can turn a seventh-rounder into a first-rounder, or a non-draftee into a fifth-rounder. No amount of experience, or promotion, or combine training can do that.
  • If you want to improve your chances of making an NFL team, work on your speed and athleticism. Every year, I get agents who brag on how many reps their clients can do, and how strong they’ve gotten in combine prep. The thing is, that’s something they can do after the draft. NFL teams are seeking explosive players. They want players who can run faster, jump higher, and push past the other guy. Violently. The players that show they can do that consistently at the combine or their pro day wind up going from a late-rounder to a mid-rounder or from undrafted to drafted.

New beginnings

06 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by in Agents

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

As regular readers of this blog already know, I’ll be joining sports business icon Leigh Steinberg tonight on his new Yahoo! Sports radio show ‘Behind Closed Doors’ (shameless plug: I’ll be on from 8:30-9 p.m. CST). It got me thinking about Leigh’s career, and perseverance, and to some degree, mine too.

When I was in my early 20s, ESPN’s SportsCenter was in its prime. These were the days of Craig Kilborn, Dan Patrick, Keith Olbermann, Chris Berman, etc. I couldn’t imagine a sports career that could top being on SportsCenter. That was a major goal. But today, I can’t imagine being on SportsCenter, and I don’t know anyone who even watches it anymore. It’s become trite, and anyway, all the highlights you want to see have either (a) been broadcast or (b) are readily available online somewhere. The model has changed completely.

In a similar vein, Leigh’s career has changed completely. Obviously, he’s known for a lot of things. He was one of the fathers of modern sports representation, if not the father of it, and he was the inspiration/model behind the movie Jerry Maguire. The number of legendary quarterbacks he’s represented is endless, from Steve Bartkowski and Warren Moon to Troy Aikman and Ben Roethlisberger. However, after a highly publicized lawsuit and some personal struggles, he fell from atop the sports representation business, and over the last decade, people around the business started referring to Leigh in the past tense.

Now here’s the interesting part: as Leigh showed when he helped Bartkowski land a mega-deal in the 70s, he’s adept at identifying trends and leveraging the market. He’s still an agent — client Garrett Gilbert, a QB from SMU, was drafted in the sixth round by the Rams this spring — but I think Leigh recognizes that the Dodge City environment that made a creative mind such a license for success 40 years ago is not in evidence today. As the agent business has saturated and competition has risen to great heights, he’s leveraging online radio, social media and more traditional methods (he’s authored several books, including one published this year) to tap into what I call the sports education market. It’s the one populated by hard-core football enthusiasts as well as the endless number of students pursuing sport management degrees in universities across the country.

Leigh is uniquely positioned to tap this market. Not only has he represented several members of the Hall of Fame and served in several roles related to sports and entertainment, but he’s indirectly played a role in the birth of several major agencies, including Irvine, Calif.-based Athletes First; Rep 1 Sports, also based in Irvine; and even Chapel Hill, N.C.-based Vanguard Sports Group, which was just launched by Joby Branion. Joby was one of the three agents who left Leigh in 2002 to launch Athletes First, and he’s a top agent in his own right today.

I think the takeaway from Leigh’s career is that the opportunity that everyone else is pursuing is not always the best one. When players were not yet using agents, or barely using them, Leigh found a way to enter that market and make it a success. When others flocked to it, he found another way to capitalize. Keep this in mind as you launch your career. There’s more than one road to success.

Opening doors

03 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by in Getting started

≈ Leave a comment

One of the reasons I always encourage people to give the football business a try is because when you make a strong push to do something against the odds, you usually wind up opening doors that would have never otherwise been opened.

Just today, I was talking to a client who’s still new to sports representation, having gotten certified the summer of 2013. While discussing strategies for recruiting this fall, he mentioned that he’d developed relationships that moved him into boxing representation. In that capacity, he manages a handful of pugilists, two men and a woman, all of them with five or fewer pro fights so far, all undefeated. He said that representing boxers involves finding fights as well as sponsors who will put their logo on the boxer’s shorts or signage in the venue.  He indicated that it was already a money-making venture with little start-up capital or heavy investment involved.

This is just one of several collateral professions you might pick up as a result of your work in football. Here are a few others:

  • Mixed martial arts: It’s not always ex-players who branch out into other combat sports like MMA. Sometimes, a client’s brother is involved in the sport and doesn’t have reliable representation. I have some agents who’ve been certified for years who are tempted to leave their NFL work behind because their MMA practice is emerging so steadily.
  • Wrestling: Believe it or not, I spoke to an agent who got certified two years ago who got into the NFL ring only to identify big, angry, physical types that could be molded into wrestlers. Here’s the best part: his business model actually attracted the interest of World Wrestling Entertainment. He invited me to meet with representatives from the WWE at last year’s combine but it fell through at the last minute. I’m still hoping to meet with them, for no other reason than pure curiosity. Also because I gave thought once to going to ‘bad guy school’ to learn how to be a wrestler in my younger days.
  • Sports law: OK, I guess this is the obvious one, but it still bears mention. Two of my longtime friends, Darren Heitner of Heitner Legal (and sportsagentblog.com) and Adam Kenner of Wolfe Law, both based in Miami, started off in representation. Actually, Adam never got certified, but he was a very close advisor/friend/assistant to David Canter of Davie, Fla.-based DEC Management. I’ve relied on both of them for legal advice and as a sounding board from time to time, and I’ve referred them both to my clients facing legal issues. Adam, especially, had my back when one of my reports drew the attention of a high-visibility rapper (Hint: I’ve got 99 problems, but that’s no longer one of them). They’re both excellent, partly because they’ve seen the business up close.

As you know by now, I’m a strong advocate of trying this business out, really going for it and pursuing your dream. One reason I’m so adamant is that even if you shoot for the stars, you might only hit the moon, and what’s so wrong with that?