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AFM Magazine

AFM Magazine


Scout\'s Honor

One of the least known and loved groups of any organization is its scouts.
by: Steve Silverman
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WORKING IN THE NFL ISN'T ALWAYS ABOUT THE GLORY.

Despite working in the richest and most successful league in all of professional sports, there are still a great number of key employees who aren't household names. Yet without them, head coaches, star players and backups couldn't have the degree of preparation that is seen on a weekly basis.

Scouts are generally in the game for the love of it. Oh, they get paid for their work, but they don't command the big money made by the players, coaches and other key front-office personnel. Scouts usually get paid in the $50,000-$70,000 range, but part-timers start at $20,000.

Good scouting in the NFL is at the core of every organization. To build a good team, you need scouts who can look at college players and tell who is going to be good "at the next level." You need scouts who can look at other NFL teams' players and see who might be a good fit for your team and who would not. You need scouts who can look at an opponent and pick up their tendencies and trends while watching them compete in one game.

None of this is supposed to be a guessing game. It's nearly impossible to quantify a scout's ability to judge talent and breakdown an opponent's gameplan until years have passed. Scouts who do it the right way generally move up the ladder and have lengthy careers. Scouts who guess or aren't sure get shown the door after a while. It's the nature of the business.

When the Chicago Bears hired Jerry Angelo to take over as general manager this spring, he started to rebuild the franchise in his own image. In addition to a number of personnel changes - 1999 No. 1 draft pick QB Cade McNown has already been traded to the Dolphins - he has brought in a number of his own people in the scouting department.

Morocco Brown is the Bears' new assistant director of pro personnel. Basically, he is a scout who will look at other teams and break them down for the benefit of the coaching staff and the players during the regular season. He has also been a college scout and knows the rigors and routines of what it takes to find the best college players during the year.

"A good scout is never going to take the word of anyone else or anything he reads to determine who's a good player or not. You want to read all the information you can and see as much tape as you can so you can form your own opinion."

"It is a year-long process to find the best players," Brown explained. "A good scout is never going to take the word of anyone else or anything he reads to determine who's a good player or not. You want to read all the information you can and see as much tape as you can so you can form your own opinion.

"It's not just a matter of going to a game and putting your opinion down on paper either. First you have to schedule your visits. Some colleges will let you in any time they are practicing or playing; others have specific days for visits. For example, I can go watch Michigan practice on Wednesday or Thursday - any other day they won't let me in. I have to be aware of all the schools' rules, regulations and constraints or I will be wasting my time."

One NFC front-office executive spent 15 years of his career as a college and pro scout. He said that if a scout is going to do his job the right way, he truly has to love it. "You can't do this job if you don't love football, meeting people and spending a lot of time by yourself," he said. "You have to do everything you can to learn about a player. You want to know how he plays, but also how he conducts himself off the field. Teams make such big investments in players these days that you can't afford to go after someone that is going to be distracted by off-the-field issues and get himself in big trouble.

"But back to the job itself. You need to be extremely organized and the ones who do it best follow a routine. In the beginning of the year, you are looking at a wide range of players and you can't spend too much time with any one player or at any one school. If you aren't organized, you will waste time."

Where do scouts get their expertise? There is no set answer. Some scouts are former players, but it's not a necessity that for scouts to have donned the shoulder pads and helmet to be good at their profession. All a scout needs is a brief case, a cell phone, a lap-top computer and a stopwatch and off he goes.

"I've been around ball my whole life," Brown explained. "I think you get to know what makes a good football player through experience. From the way he plays, the way he talks, the way he looks you in the eye. Don't get me wrong - what the guy does on the field is the most important thing, but you have to see that he's real and that he really wants to play. Sometimes a guy will be a good college player but he won't be interested enough to take it to the next level."

Since a scout can see hundreds of players over the course of a season, it is important for him to communicate his observations back to his general manager in a timely manner. "I like to write my reports and send them back to the team that night," Brown said. "some guys will wait a few days or until the weekend. It's important that you not wait much longer than that so the observations are fresh."

Once a team's scouts has seen players once over the first half of the season, then they go back again to get a second look on players that have been impressive. Impressions get fine tuned and specific strengths and weaknesses are observed. A scout will also do more background work in an attempt to get an even better impression of what the player is like if he's drafted.

"We want to know if we're getting a high-maintenance player or not," Brown said. "If there's a problem with ego as a college player, what do you think is going to happen when they are getting paid big money at the pro level. The problem is certainly not going to disappear. It will only get worse. That's just a factor. You are not drafting on personality - you are drafting on ability."

Scouts rank college players by positions at the end of the regular season and college bowl games, and reputations are then cemented or blown up by performances in private workouts or the dreaded scouting combine at Indianapolis. In September an October, the combine is the last thing on most scouts' minds - but come by the time next year's Super Bowl is finished, it's nearly the biggest event of the year. That's because scouts have been seeing players all season, while general managers and coaches only get one or two chances to see their future employees before the draft.

"But it's important that too much weight is not put on the performance in the combine," said Brown. "It's not football. It's a bunch of tests that do tell you about a player's athleticism, but they don't tell you much about the way he plays the game. The combine is best when it is used to help clarify any questions that may arise about a player. But it's not a good way to base your draft."

NFL executives would no doubt agree with Brown's opinion - during the college football season. However, once the year is over, the combine becomes the focal point and everyone's perspective changes. A great workout by a player can overcome ordinary performances during the regular season."

"It's true," said one AFC general manager. "You ask me right now (late August) and I know it's how a player performs in the season that really matters. But during the combine, you get turned around. You can change your opinion on how fast a guy does the shuttle run or how many times he lifts 225 pounds. Those things don't tell you how well a guy plays football."

NFL scouts will also play a big part of providing their team's gameplan by making observations on upcoming opponents. Advance scouting can often mean the difference between victory and defeat. "Not only will I provide a report on all of a team's players, but I'll try to pick up as much as I can just from watching the sidelines," Brown said. "It's like watching a third-base coach in baseball. You can pick up a few things just by watching the hand signals when a play is called. If you are right, it could be the difference between victory and defeat.

"That where the rewards are in this job. If you can provide that one key piece of information your team might win because of it. It's a lot of work and a lot of times there are many long hours. However, when you can help your team win a game, it's a sensational feeling.

The timing of an advance scouting report is critical. A scout may have exactly two days to make an evaluation and observation of the upcoming opponent and get it to the coaching staff. "We (the Bears) put our gameplan together on Tuesday," Brown said. "If I'm at a game on Sunday, I have to have everything prepared - player evaluations, play-calling tendencies and other observations - ready by the time the gameplan meeting starts on Tuesday morning. If you can't get that ready, you just aren't doing your job."

They are the nearly invisible soldiers who provide much of the NFL's foundation. At times it's a thankless job, but at other it's a job that's incredibly rewarding.








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