Here’s Part 4 of our breakdown of former Browns GM Ray Farmer’s presentation at our seventh annual ITL Seminar in Indianapolis last month. Click here to review the first half of his presentation.

• Here’s Ray’s take on late-round picks vs. UDFAs: “If I know that one percent of seventh-rounders make it, but three percent of college free agents make it, would y’all call me stupid for trading seventh-round picks away? . .  . Seventh-rounders have got a one percent chance. I’d rather trade my seventh-round pick, move up in another round, get a better player that I like, don’t take anybody in the seventh round, then bring in 55 guys for a workout after the draft, and let the cream rise to the top.” It’s an interesting strategy. When you go that route, you may lose a chance at the marquee UDFAs, but you put the numbers on your side. Often, a team will strike gold at these camps, but it makes scouts nervous because their favorite post-draft players don’t make it to these camps.
• Like most scouts, Ray doesn’t put much stock in a player’s pro day. “It may change them from a free agent to a priority free agent,” but it won’t move him into the third round. “When ball is done being played, that’s it.” So don’t put too much into a much-hyped pro day.
• On the other hand, bad character will drop a player. This is a bit of a departure from last year’s speaker, ex-Bears GM Phil Emery, who seemed to lean more in favor of talent over conduct and behavior.
• Every year in April, some of my agent clients are getting no interest whatsoever from teams. It’s hard for me to do this, but I have to tell them that their client is probably not going to be a post-draft signee, much less a draftee. On the other hand, if a scout calls, there’s an even-money chance the player will get signed as an undrafted free agent. The real difference-maker, however, is if a position coach is calling. That’s when you know a team is interested.
• Ray says that it’s easy to figure out who a team is looking for, if you pay attention. That makes sense. There’s so much information out there now about free agent signees, futures deals, numbers on contracts, etc., that a good agent should know exactly what teams are the best for his client.
• Ray makes an interesting point about how teams could significantly reduce the amount of money they spend in free agency — they could hold free agency after the draft. So often, teams sign veterans to plug holes, then get to the draft and find that they could have drafted cheaper, younger players at those key positions.
• If your client carries a jug of water to weigh-ins, hide that jug from the scouts, because it says “his weight ain’t real,” according to Ray. Yet every year, you see kids in line at weigh-ins at each all-star game carrying a jug of water. Use common sense.
• Ray recommends that players drop all their social media accounts during draft season, because teams are scrutinizing them for any false moves.
• Here’s an interesting quote from Ray: “There are a number of quarterbacks in this league that have lived the exact lifestyle that (Johnny Manziel) led for their first three, four, six, seven seasons.” Of course, he’s referring to the party lifestyle, not the domestic abuse allegations. It’s interesting. I agree with Ray: part of Manziel’s failure in Cleveland was his lack of discretion. Another part was that he failed to realize he was a marked man when he entered the league, and he needed to rein things in a bit.

With the first half of Ray Farmer’s presentation annotated (here and here), we press forward to check out the first 10 minutes of the second half of Ray’s presentation.

• Ray called agents ‘professional ambulance chasers,’ but in a good way. “If a kid takes a bad hit in practice, you should know. If a kid rolls his ankle, you should know.” It’s true. Ray relates a story about a player who suffered a minor injury during the early part of practice, and after a writer Tweeted it, Ray immediately got a call.
• In Ray’s two seasons with the Browns, they had 161 players on their draft board (total!) the first year and 168 the second year. From these lists, they drafted their players and signed their underrated free agents. That’s from a list that started of about 2800 players, he said. That’s about right for all teams. Obviously, that 150-170 players varies per team, but only by about 100 players. So out of that 2800 players to start with, there’s only around 300 players that all NFL teams saw as draftable. Now, think about every player you’ll read about on your favorite Twitter account or draft site as having a legit chance of being drafted. Five hundred players? 600? 800? That’s the disconnect between media perception and what the league really sees. There’s a big difference.
• Of course, the powers that be in the league don’t care. They want to see the event hyped up as much as possible. But the people doing evaluation aren’t looking at nearly as many players as you might be lead to believe.
• Ray asks a key question of players on the bubble: “Can he run 4.5 and cover on kickoffs? Because if he can’t, he can’t play.” That’s a great question for an agent to ask himself when he’s looking for sleepers that can make a team despite going undrafted.
• Ray reminded the crowd to understand what a team does before trying to pitch its scouts on a player’s ability. He even said he’s insulted when an agent calls him with a player that’s obviously a bad fit. This is so important.
• The idea that ‘coaches coach and scouts scout’ is an old-school mentality, according to Ray. The new-school idea is that everything is collaborative. Of course, at the end of the day, someone makes the final call, but I think teams try to sell all decisions as team decisions to mitigate the damage and criticism if things go wrong.
• Ray encourages agents to tell their clients to be humble, “even if they’re not humble.” That’s because scouts will take a player who’s full of himself as a challenge, even if he’s just confident, not cocky.
• The Browns gave scouts two years to prove themselves. Ray had planned on evaluating his scouts this year, but he got let go before he had a chance to complete their evaluation. This differs from most teams, which, I’ve heard, give their scouts three years.
• What’s true of scouts is true of players: no one wants to develop anyone anymore. They want someone who’s ready right out of the chute. “No one wants anything but instant coffee anymore,” Ray said.
• The way to get an undrafted free agent signed for the most money possible is to start planning for him to go undrafted in the fifth round. Rather than waiting and hoping, the good agent starts politicking with teams after the fourth round and trying to find his best situation. The time for negotiating is not after the draft, but during the draft. This is a key distinction. After the draft, take whatever is offered to you, Ray recommends, because if you don’t, it’s on to the next one.
• Also, Ray advises, “don’t take the money.” In other words, don’t hunt for the $10,000 UDFA bonus to make yourself look good. Hunt for the team that gives your client the best chance to make a 53 and earn $435,000 as an active NFL player. This takes a little extra work on your part, but it’s critical. The big bonus is meaningless if your client is on the street in September.
• Ray said that, for a lot of teams, evaluation is over once the combine starts. The combine is no more than confirmation. I guess that’s true of pro days, as well. Though you hear about sleepers and whatever that suddenly shoot up the board in late February and March, those players didn’t move with teams, just with media folks. The NFL already knew about them, for the most part.
• Ray was asked about analytics, and he illustrated its value this way. He asked, if you knew that only players that caught at least 75 percent of catchable balls would be successful in the NFL, would that be valuable information? Sure it is, most would answer. OK, but what’s a catchable ball? At some point, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. At the end of the day, really every number is subjective, or almost every one.

We’ll finish up with our dissection of Ray’s presentation next week.

Today, a few notes on Ray Farmer’s presentation at our seventh annual seminar in Indianapolis last month. It’s a continuation of Monday’s post. Today’s post covers the second half of this video.

• One thing that rarely gets mentioned is the fine line new agents must walk as they establish relationships with NFL personnel. Stay in their lanes and they risk never making the contacts they need. Push a prospect too hard and risk destroying any credibility if the prospect turns out to be a dud.
• When he ran Kansas City’s pro department, Ray classified every player into four categories: on the 53; one of the 46 that travels with the team and is squarely on the roster; ‘bubble plus,’ or guys who are just outside the 46; and the rest, the 3-4 players (maybe one on the ‘bubble plus’ list) that are constantly in danger of being upgraded. Everyone else who crosses his desk (street free agent, recently released player, etc.) was considered LS (long shot) or claim (as in, if he’s cut, he’s worth claiming).
• Of the ‘LS’ and ‘claim’ list, the two subdivisions are ‘practice squad plus’ and ‘workout.’ These are the only players that might rate a look, that might actually get worked out. Everyone else doesn’t even get a rating. The only way out of the ‘everyone else’ group is if you play in another league and generate more tape, which makes a player more interesting.
• At around the 28-minute mark, Ray talks about a player the Browns signed off the Cleveland Gladiators’ roster last season named Brandon Stephens. Here’s his story. Two interesting points Ray makes are that Stephens had his game film on his phone, so after a chance meeting with Ray, he could hand Ray his phone for a quick verification of skills. The other point is that Stephens had talent, but he got sunk when he pulled his hamstring. It’s just one more reminder that health is as important as skill level when it comes to making it in the NFL.
• Ray effectively says that if your client is 25, and he’s never played in the NFL, it’s time for him to start looking for another job. The learning curve is just too steep. That seems to be a rather hard and fast rule, and it’s one reason why ex-baseball players that start their careers late have such poor NFL careers.
• You can’t change what a player did on tape for four years. “That’s what he is,” Ray said. There’s nothing you can do to jump-start his prospects, plain and simple.
• Thousands of dollars are invested in interview prep for top prospects every year, but it all comes down to, ‘can I trust you?’ Ray says a player needs to get it all out in the open right off the bat. Ray’s example: “Hi, I’m Ray Farmer, and I killed three people on the way to this interview, but I just wanted you to know so we could get it out of the way.” That line got a lot of laughs, but it’s true.
• One of the questions I always get is, how do I build relationships with scouts? Ray says it’s all about people skills, and he illustrated this by his conduct at our seminar. Ray sat in the crowd before the program started and was never approached. Later, he walked outside, where several people were, and still no one approached him. Sure, people were intimidated, but you have to get past this if you really want to make friends with important people. I have the same struggles — it’s hard to risk messing up a relationship before it starts. But it’s a risk worth taking.
• Ray closes this segment by emphasizing the importance of building a relationship with your client, and truly knowing him. The difficulty is that schools spend four years doing everything they can to prevent agents from building relationships with their players (and often expressing very little interest in getting to know the agents themselves). The time agents get to spend building that relationship is usually after the hire, at which point it’s January or February and almost too late to make a change. It’s the paradox of the agent world.

We’ll have more later this week as we wrap up Ray’s presentation.

This weekend, Rick Serritella from NFL Draft Bible posted the video from our seventh annual seminar held a couple weeks ago in Indianapolis. It’s here, and of course, it’s totally free.

Today I want to talk about the first half of the presentation ex-Browns GM Ray Farmer gave (Rick broke it into two parts). Here are a few notes and observations after the second listen to the video. Note: These notes are only based on the first 26 minutes of Part 1. I’ll be back with more notes to wrap Part 1 Tuesday.

• Ray’s a pretty selfless individual and not a ‘me’ guy, and I think that comes through here. He’s a real person, very approachable.
• Ray mentions that he doesn’t have any real hobbies. He just watches football. That’s pretty cool. I find myself looking for escapes when it comes to my free time, and I think most people in the game are similar, but not Ray. It shows what kind of a passion he has for the game and everything around it.
• The first question he handles involves game tape. When he’s answering this question, keep in mind that he’s looking at it from the standpoint of a pro scout, not a college scout (Ray got the Browns job because he excelled at running the pro department in KC). Everything he says here involves players who are not draft-eligible; they’re players who are looking for an in-season tryout.
• He discusses how the pro scouting intern is the first person who looks at film that comes in, be it game film or a YouTube clip. If you’re looking to be an NFL intern, maybe it’s smarter to go the pro scouting route rather than another college scouting assistant. Pro scouting involves fewer people, meaning more opportunities.
• Ray was the only man in the pro department when Scott Pioli came to Kansas City to take over as GM in January ’09. For two years, he was the only guy in the pro department. If you’re looking to intern with a team, keep that in mind. There are just more opportunities on the pro side.
• This is pretty basic, but Ray points out that agents who think they’re buddies with a scout or director are only truly connected to them if they have their cell number. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you that secret . . . but that’s the reality,” Ray said.
• All NFL teams carry emergency lists by position. If you have a client who’s a street free agent, and he’s not at least on a team’s emergency list the September after he was draft-eligible, his NFL chances are nil, at least to me.
• Ray said that sometimes practice squad players are cut simply to prove a point. They don’t want PS players getting comfortable. He also said it’s important not to look at the practice squad as a developmental position. Show promise or you’re gone.
• There’s a constant push and pull among a player’s ‘champions’ on the team. There’s always someone who pushed hard to bring in a player, and he hears it from others if that player doesn’t perform. Hey, it’s human nature.
• Ray pointed out that Steelers OB James Harrison was cut 11 times before he made the team once and for all. This is why a player has to stay in shape and keep charging.