Oct. 2-8

At Inside the League (and at most other places), we’re trying to get back to normal after a difficult 2020, and the temptation is to believe that’s exactly what’s happening, if slowly. However, perception is not always the same as reality, and that’s especially true in the NFL scouting arena.

Granted, incremental changes in NFL scouting don’t matter much in the grand scheme of things, and asking evaluators to deal with an evolving national landscape shouldn’t be too much to ask. Still, the changes we’re seeing aren’t all Covid-related, and the rapid rate of change across college (and even high school) scouting are the kind of thing we think (and we think you think) matter.

Based on conversations with scouts over the past two weeks, here are the issues they’re facing.

Portal madness: A college football team’s roster changes daily these days; no college coach who benches a player does so without acknowledging, at least subconsciously, that it could lead directly to the player transferring. As rules on player movement liberalize, it’s getting even more widespread. That means the team a scout thinks he’s about to see when he shows up on campus can be very different from the one he actually sees.

Recruiting is changing: In the old days, if a team like Ohio State knew it was losing a redshirt sophomore to the NFL draft after a standout one-and-done season, it hoped it could develop his backup to step up the following season. These days, such schools are hiring analysts and even former NFL scouts to mine the transfer portal for that player’s replacement. We’re hearing that, more and more, schools are even using back channels to encourage players to switch. This is also influencing recruiting of high schools as bigger teams take fewer risks on prep players. Scouts tell us the players that need more development are seeing fewer FBS invites, forcing them to go the juco route. 

Combines too broad: Partially due to the limitations put on National Football Scouting and BLESTO last spring, the two combines didn’t get the closest look at teams’ best players, i.e., no junior pro days (or at least, heavily redacted junior pro days). Scouts tell us that this has led to a “when in doubt, call them prospects” philosophy, and the result has been mid-major teams (and even some FCS teams) who have upwards of 15-20 “draftable” prospects that they have to consider. It’s made the job of winnowing out the truly NFL-worthy prospects almost untenable.

Schools not allowing entry: Just a few years ago, schools – not all, but many/most – were very welcoming of NFL representatives, and though coaching staffs put rules on scouts, access was fairly available. These days, some scouts tell us they think college coaches are using Covid protocols as a control measure. That means evaluators are going from showing up and spending several hours with the clicker inside field houses to calling up Hudl links and watching them in their private vehicles in the field house’s parking lot. That’s a big change.

The impact of NIL: Yes, like everyone else, we were/are fans of players seeking compensation for the work they do on Saturdays, and we’re excited about the new opportunities that NIL brings to people at every strata of the game. Still, it was naïve to think, especially in Year 1, that this would have no impact on players based on the new pressures and expectations that come with the growing professionalization of the game played on Saturdays.

Are these the only issues? Far from it. This is just a cursory summary based on the things we’re hearing repeatedly in our conversations with the people out there determining the best players in the 2022 draft class. Are they impossible to overcome? We’re not saying that, either. However, as a football insider yourself, we wanted to pass along what’s happening at the ground level, because changes at the roots could (will?) eventually manifest themselves on Sundays. Could people who deal with scouts have perfectly logical reasons for implementing some of these changes? Sure, but we didn’t talk to them. We talk to, and try to represent the interests of, scouts.

We will continue to track the evaluation industry as it grapples with the challenges of a shifting culture, football and otherwise. In the meantime, here’s a look at what else we saw, heard, read and said in the business of college and pro football this week.

Jim Hess, 1936-2021: Last Saturday night, we lost a giant in football, especially West Texas football. We tweeted it on Sunday, then blogged about it Thursday, the day of his funeral. We hope we at least captured a bit of the loyalty, class and consideration that he showed to so many thousands of people over the years. Longtime NFL scout Jeff Smith, who worked with and alongside Jim during Jim’s decade with the Cowboys, said this: “Jim was a great football coach and a better person. I loved making a scouting visit wherever he was coaching because he understood my job and did everything he could to help me get all the information I needed. Once he got into scouting, whenever you were making a school call and he was there, you knew that it was going to be a good day. He was an old-time football guy. There was no (BS) about him. Texas football has lost a great one.” We couldn’t agree more. Hundreds of friends, family and even fans visited Robert Massie Funeral Home Thursday morning for visitation and Stephens Chapel at Angelo State University Thursday evening for his funeral. His obituary gives a good overview of his life and times, and the link to the video tribute played at his visitation (included with the obituary) will be a treat to all who knew him. We offer our deepest sympathies to his wife of 64 years, Carol, and his daughters, Kim and Terri, and their families.

Catching Up: Jeff Smith, 74, spent time with several teams (Seattle, Dallas, Denver, Philadelphia, Miami, Atlanta) both as an area scout and as an executive. We caught up with him this week.

  • Where are you living and what are you doing now?: “I live in Eloy, Ariz., in a 55-plus community, Robson Ranch. Eloy is a very small town right outside Casa Grande, Ariz., about 50 miles south of Phoenix and 60 miles north of Tucson. We have kind of a little bit of everything. I’ve got some mobility problems . . . but I’m involved in a couple of charity things, like Support Our Troops. We have a lot of veterans and do a lot of good things for vets and their familiies . . .  and help with some things at the schools, and programs that feed kids. There’s a lot of poverty here. Other than that, I play cards with friends, we have a wonderful pool set up here, and I can work out any time I want. I usually make it over there four to seven days per week, and I’m over there in that pool, and it really helps. It’s hard to diet here. You go to play cards and everyone puts out food and you tell yourself you won’t eat it, but they have the crackers and cheese out and it’s hard not to. My wife and I also travel a lot, and until Covid hit, we were pretty active on the cruise ships.” 
  • Do you miss the job? What do you miss most?: “I do not miss the job of scouting itself, the airplanes, the rental cars, the hotel rooms, but I miss the people terribly. I’ve been out since 2005, though I did some consulting work for the BC Lions in the CFL for 7-8 years. Bob Ackles was the GM there . . . and he asked me, . . . ‘are you interested in a part-time job?’ I told him, they owe me a full year’s salary (at Atlanta), so I can’t take it. He said, ‘well, nose around, keep track of what you spend, and when contracts up, come work for us.’ I absolutely loved working for Bobby Ackles. He and (former Cowboys and Dolphins head coach) Jimmy (Johnson) and (former NFL executive Dick) Mansperger were the bet combo of personnel and coaches I’ve ever been around.” 
  • Do you keep in touch with any of your former colleagues?: “I do. I keep in touch with (former NFL executive) Ronnie Hill, and also (Giants GM) Dave Gettleman. He’s a very, very good guy, a very good personnel guy. . . Dave is gonna have that (team) fixed. . . Dave is about a year or two away from having a really good ball club.”
  • Do you go to any live games (HS/college/pro)?:  “I don’t. I was going to. I went to college games when I was a consultant for the BC Lions, but I have found that I can watch on TV and get the game and what I need off of TV, if I’m interested. I don’t have to hear the announcers because there’s very few I like. I’ve been trying to go to the local high school games. Eloy won the Class A championship, so I’ve been trying to go to one of their homes games and I think I’m gonna get it done this weekend.”
  • Are there any players you love to watch and/or feel close to due to your work in the game?: “I’m a big work ethic guy, and both of those Watt brothers (J.J. and T.J.), I love to watch. I really like some of the offensive lineman but they don’t get any recognition but you watch them and they don’t give up sacks, and they make their blocks. The kid (Blake) Martinez, the linebacker out of Stanford with the Giants, I like. When I watched him at Stanford, he didn’t time well, but you put the film on, and all the guy did is make all the tackles. He’s a little like (former Dolphins IB) Zach Thomas.” 

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.

Agent changes: This week, we began getting caught up on our lagging hiring-and-firing reports. Our July report was pretty slow with just four changes, but things got much more interesting in August (22 changes). We’re (finally) just one report behind, which we’ll try to get done this week. In the meantime, review all the changes this year and this decade here.

Know Your Scouts: This week, we wrapped up our Profile Reports for the 2022+ draft cycle. That means it’s on to our team-by-team look at the scouting departments (pro and college) for all 32 NFL organizations. We’ll kick things off on Monday with the 49ers, and we’ll continue with one team each day, Monday through Friday, continuing until Thanksgiving, at which time we’ll launch our popular All-Star and Signings Grids. We look forward to going in-depth on each team’s evaluators, how long they’ve been on the job, where they went to school, and how they got where they are. Here’s a look at our year-by-year Know Your Scouts features over the last 10 years. See you next week.

The BART List: We noticed that many people subscribed to our newsletter over the past week, hoping to get a look at the 10 AFC and NFC scouts voted the best in the business as part of our BART LIST voting. In case you missed it, and want to sift through all 20 names, here’s last week’s Wrap. 

Next week: With the deadline for agent fees for 2021-22 now passed, we expect the NFLPA to publish the full list of certified contract advisors in the coming seven days. That’s always interesting as we’ll have a new total of agents, we’ll know which firms brought on new agents, and we’ll get a sense of where members of the class reside (typically the highest concentration are in Florida, New York/New Jersey and California). We look forward to learning more about the people who aspire to represent today’s NFL player. Get one last look at the current agent class, as it stands, here. We’ll also kick off our Know Your Scouts series with five teams (49ers, Bears, Bengals, Bills and Broncos); we see it as must-know information if you ever want to evaluate college players professionally. We also hope to have our September Agent Changes report, which will finally get us up to speed after weeks of delays. As for the rest of it, you know our schedule pretty well. We’ll have Rep Rumblings; a post in our weekly blog, Succeed in Football; we’ll have tweets as we have breaking news/info on our Twitter account; and we’ll be back, as always, next week for another Friday Wrap. Come join our squad! You’ll love it.