Scouts View: Building the Player Profile

Garrett, Stephen and Ciskowski have structured their draft and player eveluation very similar to the team I contract for.

Having the Southeast with all of the football programs there is a job abd a half.

When I am live at a game I am more looking at how a player interacts with his coaches and team through the course of a game. This gives me some good insight to his charcter and competitor rankings. When I see guys who come off of the feild and they are talking with their position coach or coordinator I look to see if he is shacking his head no, has an attitude or is he watching and listening his coach, is he talking and communicating with his teammates.

It is hard to evalute skill watching tv tape or a game live. You will catch some stuff, but when I watch tape I may rewatch the same play 3, 4 times or more for each player I am evaluating.

This is my time to not only scout but pitch my services to agents, draft prospects and teams. Combine week is another big week. I normaly steer clear of the Pro Bowl and Super Bowl. These are the weeks I start working with draft prospects. After this week, other than some meetings, I will be done with scouting for this draft.

I really like the way you write – you refer to players and team personnel with respect and insight rather than some of the hyperbole and mean-spiritedness we get from other sources. Thanks, man and best of luck.

I want to know this as well

I had played football in college and had very close friends who played and are now coaches in college or the NFL. I would work for them as time allowed during my military career. As I was leaving the Army in early 2007 a friend of mine who was a college coach asked me to work with 2 of his players who were entering the draft. I did so for no pay and after both had great combines and pro days and were drafted both hired me as a personal offseason coach and to work with them during the season. Over the next few years I gained more clients. Most of my clients are current Cowboys. I wanted to get into scouting after my first year on a contract basis so I chose to scout 5 players and covered all expenses on my own and sent the reports out to NFL teams. I did this every year paying all travel expenses on my own. It was just this last year that I was finally hired to scout DB’s for a team in this years draft.

As for the structure and what Dallas is doing I think they are on the right track now. I do think there was a disconnect during Wades years. I think Garrett started putting his fingerprint on the draft starting in 2010. I think if you look at 2010 and 2011 drafts the Cowboys have gotten some good players. The structure of the Cowboys college and pro scouting departments and the interaction they now have with the coaching staff is very similar to the team I contract for. Last offseason the Cowboys even started an inhouse statts and analysis department.

the eagles…

Under a traditional scouting model you have a grade chart for all measurements. Guy is X height and weight so a chart says he gets X grade. He ran X time in his 40 so the chart for his position group says he gets an X grade for that. He played in an option or spread offense so the chart says you deduct x from his grade.
On top of all this you end up with a scout and GM saying he gets X points for intangibles. Basically they say he just looks like a football player. Ask them what that is and almost every scout that uses just a traditional model will tell, I don’t know what it is, but I know it when I see it.
The team I work for took a lot of time, research and money to identify and measure what exactly those intangibles are. What is outlined above is a part of that. They also use brain analytics to measure other intangibles such as vision. We talk about QB’s and running backs having great vision. So what actually is great vision? It is the brains ability to quickly see patterns and diagnose where those patterns are moving to.
Currently there are only about 8 teams in football that are changing their model of scouting. Every year MIT/Sloan school holds a Sports Analytics Conference. They have videos of all of their past panels and speakers posted on their website. Much of what I will touch on in my scouts view series is discussed in depth there.

I think he is a late round/UDFA as a TE/H Back. He would be a good pickup for the Cowboys as a priority UDFA. He still needs to develop but does have a strong work ethic and high charcter. He is a smart kid. I think he was hurt by being spread around so much but he does show good blocking, route running skills.

I think Still is talented, but never put it all together, he really reminds me a lot of Marcus Spears

I think Odrick was a better prospect maybe

Would the cowboys consider him? Or would they not even put him on their big board?

They can be monsters. Burfict, Ta’amu, Brockers have that potential also.

Watching him play you knew he was special. He really had it all. Great skills, smart, high character, great vision. He was always around the ball. Can play the ILB position with no problem and be a big contributor on special teams also. The tandem of him and Lee gives us 2 guys who can play sideline to sideline and make big plays. From a scouts view I see Carter being every bit as good as Lee and they will be a very dominate force.

Guy who due to size will probably be a UDFA is Asa Jackson, DB from Cal Poly. He is a fast kid who dominated in college at that smaller school level. He has looked good here at practices and drills at the senior bowl. He would be a perfect fit for the Cowboys. He could play in some of the Boy’s sub packages his first year. He is a big threat when returning punts where I think any team that takes him will get a lot of value in his first year.

Decastro is a force at guard. You can go back and look at his games the last 3 years and you do not see him getting beat. He has very quick feet and can pull and block. Stanford is not what you would consider a program with a strong running attack but the averaged over 200 yeard rushing a game. His pass protection skills are one reason Luck is considered the top QB in the draft. Off the top of my head I think Luck was only sacked like 8 or 9 times this last season. If the Cowboys take him at #14 I think it is a great pick.

Konz is another great blocker with quick feet and can pull and get outside to block. My only concern is what is his longterm health outlook. If the doctors think the blood clotting is a 1 time issue I would say take him.

When you look at both Decastro and Konz and the strong points of both Smith and Free who also have quick feet and can pull and block you start to see the potential of that line. Either would be a great addition to the Cowboys who can start in their first year and have an impact.

I want to answer any question I can. For me it is easy to engage about talk about the Cowboys. This is something I really love. When it comes draft time, I love to talk about prospects. I am a huge Cowboys fan but also a huge football fan. I really do not hate teams but there are some I pull for or certain players I pull for. I grew up with football and during my time on deployments I always took in as much football as possible. Lucky it was the internet age.

Vernon Gholston, Mike Jenkins, Matt Flynn, Terrell Thomas and Josh Sitton. I had previuos ties to Sitton and Jenkins.

This along with a players position skill grade, tests and medical determine his final grade. This part is used to determine his probability of longterm succes in the NFL.