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2015 NFL Draft


Mavric

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The Scouting Process Is F*cked

 

 

As you may have heard by now, Nebraska defender and first-round talent Randy Gregory is allegedly dropping off of draft boards due to some extremely vague psychological concern. OOOH MAYBE THERE’S A TAPE. Here’s the official report from NFL.com:

 

At least three general managers view him as a top-five talent. But according to more than a dozen coaches, scouts, personnel chiefs and GMs, there is concern about Gregory’s ability to handle the mental rigors of professional football. ... He has been taken off a several team’s draft boards, according to multiple sources.

 

There’s a lot about this that is f'd up. First of all, if Gregory is suffering from depression or some other serious clinical problem, I find it telling that NFL teams are more interested in leaking that information and/or scrubbing him their draft boards (is there an emptier power move than draft board removal?) than they are in setting up some kind of organizational support network and treatment options for any player that might have a mental problem. (Imagine football players having head issues … seems unlikely!) Honestly, I’m amazed ANYONE gets drafted. There will come a day when some GM is just like, “Christ, we can’t draft any of them. They won’t work within our system!”

At least three general managers view him as a top-five talent. But according to more than a dozen coaches, scouts, personnel chiefs and GMs, there is concern about Gregory’s ability to handle the mental rigors of professional football. ... He has been taken off a several team’s draft boards, according to multiple sources.

 

 

Secondly, that whole “ability to handle the mental rigors of professional football” is a pretty polite way of saying what they really mean. “We’re concerned the depression guy will puss out on us” is basically the substance of the report. It’s the precise wrong way of handling Gregory’s potential issues for a league that has supposedly gotten kinder and gentler after being shocked to learn out that some of its players like tossing their wives around.

 

The NFL scouting process has expanded and bloated over the years for a couple of reasons. First of all, the NFL itself is always starved for more offseason content, which is why they now broadcast the combine and pro days live on TV, and it’s why they came up with the veteran’s combine, so they could put jobless veterans through the torturous scouting process again. Scouting has become its own expanded, diluted version of the sport.

 

Secondly, no team wants to EVER be out-scouted. Like coaches who sleep on a cot in the office because they want everyone to know that they stared at tape until 3:30 a.m., every team wants to be the MOST thorough, the MOST diligent, so that they can draft a guy and go to fans and be like, “We locked this guy in solitary and interviewed him for 19 days!”

 

You can see this kind of scoutbraggin’ going on in pieces like this one about Ohio State’s Michael Bennett. “You’re not going to have to go through a three-month interview for any other job, as far as I know.” That’s because other jobs are not run by insane, stupid people. By next year, the “interview” will last four months. Soon, scouts will be grilling fetuses on trips formation scenarios.

 

The Gregory case serves as proof that that scouting process has become a dystopian athlete farm where scouts try to become pre-cogs who can accurately foretell when a prospect will disappoint them. Not only is a futile process, but it’s f'ing dehumanizing. If I were Gregory, I’d just walk away now, with both middle fingers up in the air.

 

 

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Great article. I totally agree. The NFL waaay over analyzes everything imo. College too. Combines, wonderlic tests, umteen scouts, umteen coaching staffs with 30 coaches all sitting in a room and that's just a few things. Things have definitely changed and a lot of it I see as a hindrance more than actually being beneficial to a team. It's gotten ridiculous.

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