May 14-20
The 2022 NFL Draft is now three weeks in the rear-view mirror, which means we’re well into “jobs season” for scouts and executives. As always, this represents good news for some, bad for others.
So far, we’ve seen the kind of turnover we expected a year ago. Whereas last year there was plenty of movement, most of it was restricted to in-house maneuvering. Less than a month post-draft, we’ve seen some respected names leaving the game and several established evaluators switching teams. At present, we’ve seen 95 scouts and executives see a change in status since the start of the ’21 season, putting us on pace to jet past the normal 130-140 moves we see before players report for camp in August. With more expected, we could even rival last year, when we recorded 286 moves, the most we’ve seen since we started tracking jobs season in 2012.
Let’s take a look at the pluses and minus. First, the good news:
· We’ve seen two evaluators who were out of scouting for a full year, Chicago’s Ryan Cavanaugh and Philadelphia’s Matt Russell, return to the game. Recent trends show that being out of NFL evaluation for a full one-year cycle is almost the kiss of death.
· Good scouts are being rewarded. The Bears elevated area scout Breck Ackley to Assistant Director of College Scouting this week, while Jets area scout Alonzo Dotson was made a National Scout by the Bills. Ackley and Dotson were recognized by their peers as two of the 20 best scouts (10 in each conference) in the game, and were given plaques for making our first-ever BART List at the 2022 ITL Combine Seminar. Four other scouts in the AFC (including new Giants GM Joe Schoen and new Bears GM Ryan Poles) and six in the NFC (including new Bears AGM Ian Cunningham) earned at least 10 BART List votes from their peers in voting last September. Only 74 of the 377 scouts who met eligibility requirements for the award got at least 10 votes.
Now for the bad news:
· Since this time last year, 28 scouts and evaluators have been discharged (most not voluntarily) by NFL teams. This number does not count a scouting assistant who’s out in Philadelphia and Steelers GM Kevin Colbert.
· Those 28 scouts totaled 599 years in the league, averaging a whopping 21 years in evaluation.
· Eight ex-NFL staffers had at least 20 years in the league; six (Las Vegas’ Walter Juliff with 35; Las Vegas’ Dave Razzano and Jacksonville’s Tom Gamble with 34; Philadelphia’s Tom Donahoe and Dallas’ Lionel Vital with 31; and Las Vegas’ Jim Abrams with 30) had three decades or more in the business. Then there’s New York’s Ken Sternfeld, whose first season with the Giants was 1981. That’s 41 years.
Obviously, not all departures are involuntary, and we’ve seen the exit of some executives who’ve earned their gold watches and then some. What’s more, change is good, and every industry needs regular infusions of fresh blood. Still, there are a lot of still-vital evaluators with loads of connections and key contributions who are on the street now. As always, we hope as many as possible find a way back into the league. Others feel the same way.
We’ll remain on the case. In the meantime, let’s recap the changes just this week.
As always, all of these moves are listed in our Scouting Changes Grid. We’ll continue updating our big board until camps open later this summer.
Now let’s take a look at what else we saw, heard, read and said in the business of college and pro football this week.
Catching Up: Bob Ferguson was a GM for three NFL teams during his 36 years in the league, which included time with the Seahawks, Cowboys, Bills, Broncos, Cardinals and Colts. We caught up with him this week.
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Where are you living and what are you doing now? “I’ve been retired since 2011. I’ve lived between California, Seattle and Mesa, Ariz., and we’ve spent time in all three areas, but my wife had a stroke, so we settled here in Arizona. I just take care of my wife, and my daughter helps.”
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Do you miss the job? What do you miss most? “The people. I don’t miss the job. I put in 36 long years and had a lot of stress in a lot of great places. I worked in some tough places, for (former Bills owner) Ralph Wilson, (Cardinals owner) Bill Bidwill, I mean, l loved the guy (Bidwill). We didn’t agree on anything, but I loved him. So there was a lot of stress along the way. We went through a lot of changes over the years. I was on the Competition Committee, so we went through the ‘tuck rule’ and overtime and everything.”
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Do you keep in touch with any of your former colleagues? “Well, not really. The one guy I talk to more than any other is a guy I hired as a training camp intern, (former Giants GM) Dave Gettelman. He was a training camp intern when I was in Buffalo. But I have not talked to a lot of those guys in years. I was pretty close to (former Cowboys executive) Gil Brandt and (former NFL head coach) Chuck Knox, who’s passed away. I was fortunate to be in my 20s and working with (former Cowboys head coach Tom) Landry, (former NFL head coach and executive John) McVay, Brandt, Knox and others, and I didn’t know how lucky I was.”
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Do you go to any live games (HS/college/pro)? “No, I don’t go to any games these days.”
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Are there any players you love to watch and/or feel close to due to your work in the game? “Yeah, there are a few. I love watching the little magic man here, (Cardinals QB) Kyler Murray. Then also (Chiefs QB Pat) Mahomes, (Packers QB Aaron) Rodgers, and I’ve always been a (Bucs QB Tom) Brady fan. I like the Rams guys, too, some of those guys. One of my favorite players ever was (former Cardinals and Arizona State safety) Pat Tillman.”
Review the latest from other former NFL scouts and executives by accessing our Catching Up archive here. Want to hear from a former scout, or know someone who may be interested in being interviewed? Let us know.
Where’s Neil?: Inside the League’s founder touched down in Las Vegas earlier today for the 2022 Personnel/Recruiting Spring Clinic with his son, Jake, in tow. Make sure to say hey if you’re in town. He’ll be at this evening’s networking event at Beer Park sponsored by Tracking Football as well as Saturday’s full day of panel discussions and presentations. If you’re in town, make sure to look him up.
Time to get serious: Believe it or not, Saturday – yes, tomorrow – marks 60 days until the 2022 NFLPA Exam for future contract advisors. We typically recommend two months to get all the studying in necessary for a test that, by our count, only about 38 percent of applicants passed last year. Though success is possible, there are plenty of concepts and contingencies that make the test more than challenging. As we move closer to the exam, there are a couple of things we want all prospective members of the ’22 class to know, to wit:
- We have had four hour-long sessions with Ian Greengross of Ultimate Sports Agency, with our most recent one last night, when more than 30 students huddled on Zoom to work problems. If you’ve missed them, but want to join in, not to worry. We will have at least one, and maybe two, in June, and are discussing the possibility of going weekly in July. We’ll outline our plans more clearly in coming Wraps.
- Several people have asked about the videos as we record each session. Right now, we are exploring loading them onto a password-protected site and providing access to everyone who paid for each of the sessions. We are also exploring providing a price point for those who didn’t, but want access. More to come.
- As you know, we have two 40-question practice exams. We haven’t ruled out the possibility of providing a third this year, though the odds are long that we do.
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We have reviewed Practice Exam 1 and found a few issues (for example, No. 26 requires a little cleanup), and we’ll be adding one new question (there are 39 right now), but we didn’t find a lot of substantial changes necessary. We’ll be updating the exam on the fly (and, eventually, Practice Exam 2, as well). However, if you’ve been waiting for the go-ahead, we encourage you to move forward on registering for one or both. We’ll catch up sooner rather than later. As always, once you register, pay and get your account activated, you can take each practice exam as many times as you’d like.
- We’ve been asked about flash cards. At present, we have no plans to publish them. If we get enough interest, we may try to provide them, but we do not expect them to ready for this summer’s exam, in any case.
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In the past, we launched the ITL Rising Contract Advisors Newsletter at the beginning of June and published it four days per week through the exam. However, with the advent of the virtual exam, as well as our Zoom sessions, we don’t see as much need to start early on preparing students for the vagaries of travel to our nation’s capital. We’ll probably start later in June or even in July this year.
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You can get a complete picture of all our exam prep services in this blog post.
If you’re taking the exam, we’re here for you. Got more questions? Just respond to this email and we’ll do whatever we can to help.
Next week: It’s crazy but true that we still haven’t made any progress on dissecting the ’22 draft class. No lists of combine invitees who were snubbed by the draft, no lists of combine snubs who got the call. No points totals for agencies or training facilities, and no breakdown of UDFAs, tryouts and the like. We promise it’s coming. All of it. We’re also down an Agent Changes report with one due this week, plus an Agents by Total Clients list. We hope to get to both of them. Complicating things is a wild and woolly scouting jobs season that has kept us on our toes. All we can promise is that our Rep Rumblings will continue to be loaded. We’ll also keep up the pace on our Profile Reports, with Eastern Michigan, Florida, Florida Atlantic, Florida International and Florida State coming in the next seven days. We’ll also have something good in our weekly blog at Succeed in Football, and make sure you’re up to the minute on all scouting changes by following us on Twitter. It’s gonna be another busy week in football, but aren’t they all? Let us help make your job easier.
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