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Evaluating the NFL Draft can be demeaning. It’s easy to cast a prospect’s movie for hours on end and factor in all the available analysis, and in a few years your preliminary assessment turns out to be a long way off. But all is not bad. Hits also happen a good deal of the time. And you can learn a lot from both outcomes.
I started this series during the pre-draft 2020 process. And last year the lessons I described were:
- Don’t underestimate arm strength and mobility for QBs
- Trust the combination of a major production * and * an awesome combine
- Continue to grow with the league
They all apply, especially the last one, which is general.
It is essential to recognize the lessons that the annual NFL educated crapshoot session provides. These are the lessons I learned in my comprehensive assessment of the last seven preliminary classes (the most recent three here at CBS Sports).
Lesson 1: Don’t automatically assume an academic position = only an NFL position
Most of the time, looking at a college prospect assumes that the assessment is based on whether they are playing that position in the NFL. And with receivers, pre-snap alignment is important. In college, the vast majority of slot machine widths are smaller, super-fast weapons. Some teams use their wide spreads as a “big window” to gain an advantage against shorter nickel turns. And with the latter type comes another assumption – that a prospect’s coaches place the widest in the lunge because they have a hard time beating press coverage and need more room to function effectively.
And this assumption thus limits the value of said wideout in the NFL. They can only play one position because that’s all they played in college, and they got the slot machine “boost” from their coaches. Or it’s easy to think of all of these things.
I squarely sniffed at former LSU star and current Vikings star Justin Jefferson – my 64th overall prospect last year – for several reasons. His time spent mostly in the slot machine as a 6ft 1m, 202lb skinny guy created the illusion in my head that he had to run routes out of location to open.
[Dwight Schrute voice] FALSE.
Jefferson played 92.3% of his snapshots in 2019 during LSU’s legendary national title season. As a rookie in Minnesota? Only 30.6%. And, of course, he rocked in every way imaginable for the Vikings as a rookie.
Without direct access to the coaches, we cannot treat the pre-snap roster or a specific position as any, end where that prospect can play in the NFL. Jefferson’s situation at LSU, with Ja’Marr Chase and potential first-round pick Terrace Marshall in the same receiving contingent made him unique, and heck, maybe Ed Orgeron and Joe Brady. knew how dynamic a road racer was and how cunning Jefferson beat the press to the line and realized putting him in the slot would lead to a tie After production. And, really, they were right.
It had nothing to do with an inability to generate space on its own, requiring location designation only.
And this concept is true for all positions. An edge shaver that never fell in the blanket strength power in the NFL. A slot wedge could play outside. A shorter and more athletic college attacking tackle can have a future in custody or even in the center. This is why it is vital to spot the traits.
Apply the lesson to the 2021 draft class
Rashod Bateman from Minnesota has a Jefferson-like profile. He’s over 6 feet tall, doesn’t look immensely devious in the movie, and has walked many routes from the slot machine during his illustrious career with the Golden Gophers.
Did the Minnesota coaching staff feel they needed be primarily in the slot machine to win? Or were they just maximizing his skills?
Lesson 2: Insane production in a cushy middle school environment is actually a red flag in QB
We are now at the point where the production of college quarterbacks may no longer matter. Or, at least, the statistical output at the station improved so much, so quickly, that we weren’t able to process the numbers and put them in the right context.
Think about it – of the last three quarterbacks to be chosen first overall, Kyler Murray’s last college season completion percentage of 69% is the lowest. Yards per attempt numbers are typically well over 10.0 for first-round picks. Baker Mayfield essentially snapped a bunch of quarterback efficiency metrics, a fact that was part of the reason he was almost universally liked as a prospect. Then, the following year, Murray was more efficient in terms of yards per attempt. Then the following season, visibly raw passer Jalen Hurts moved to the Oklahoma schedule and had a season almost identical to Mayfield’s two years earlier. Bananas.
Tua Tagovailoa was ultra-productive in Alabama. We’ve all considered his 69% completion, 11.2 yard-per-attempt season in 2018 with 42 touchdowns and six picks as unfathomable. Then, before his injury in 2019, his yards-per-attempt number was a mark higher than he had eclipsed the 70% completion threshold. Unreal, right? Turns out it wasn’t. Jones has completed 77.4% of his throws this season in Alabama at the same number of yards per attempt as Tagovailoa in 2018 with a better touchdown / interception ratio.
Mayfield rebounded from a second season in the NFL, but did he live up to the hype before the Cleveland Draft? No, neither did Murray, and Tagovailoa’s reputation took a hit after a rather disappointing rookie campaign. Injuries erupted a few times in Philadelphia in 2020, but looked horrible in other cases.
Another example that applies here – Dwayne Haskins completed 70% of his shots with 50 (!) Touchdowns in his last season at Ohio State. He hasn’t even reached the end of his second season on the team that drafted him in the first round.
And it all goes back to the college agenda, and more critically, to the talent around many quarterback prospects today. All Oklahoma quarterbacks had an abundance of teammates who entered the league. Same thing with Haskins.
Maybe Joe Burrow is going against the grain, but it’s hard to find the last quarterback – picked early – who played in an incredibly cushy environment – pattern, offensive line, receivers – who ultimately thrived. in the NFL. There’s Deshaun Watson, although Clemson’s offensive line wasn’t amazing, and then, yeah, good luck.
Apply the lesson to the 2021 draft class
Kyle Trask and especially Mac Jones. They’re the two easy-to-spot, incredibly statistically and analytically efficient quarterback prospects surrounded by plenty of future NFL players. Justin Fields could fall into this category to a lesser degree. The same applies to Trevor Lawrence at a lower level, especially because the 2020 Clemson Tigers send fewer picks to the upcoming draft than this schedule has had in many years.
Can Trask or Jones transcend their college environment when they get to the pros? Well, their positions in the NFL will once again matter a lot, more than other prospects in the job.
Lesson 3: Do all in your power to eliminate prejudice and be authentic
I have a mini obsession when it comes to my job – evaluating projects from prospects – doing whatever is possible to remove bias from the process, whatever that process is. And that’s still a major challenge. All of us – yes, each of us, including me – are inherently biased in many ways, and this echoes through everything we analyze.
More specifically with screening, prejudices appear in various forms.
Recency Bias – whether a prospect has an exceptional or terrible bowl game. Confirmation Bias – when a prospect who looks really quick on the movie runs, then gets a boost after running 4.37 at the combine. Availability bias – our brain quickly remembers a huge play from a prospect (good or bad), then our assessment of that prospect tips in that direction regardless of anything we witness. Anchor Bias – A prospect’s first film game swings our thoughts on him. The Halo Effect – we remember a cornerback from Ohio State we loved who thrived in the NFL and so subconsciously assume that all of Buckeyes’ turns are awesome or that we don’t. have never seen a good running back. [insert school] so it is more difficult to give a high mark to the last return of this program.
There is also a major “echo chamber” effect in every industry, especially given the pervasiveness of social media, and it is a major presence in the Boy Scout community. Impostor syndrome is also real.
From the start, I realized that these biases would lead to worse and inauthentic evaluations, and it is certainly not part of my job description to project my biases, that I realize they creep into my reporting. leads or they happen inadvertently.
And I’m not suggesting that I’m above all these examples of cognitive bias. Of course not. But I’m keenly aware of that – in everything I do – and certainly when it comes to spotting NFL draft prospects. It matters in itself. Watching leads on a movie, applying the analytics you yourself think are important, and getting a final grade whether or not it matches the rest of the group is, for me, the most essential part of scouting.
Apply the lesson to the 2021 draft class
The shortened university season, the loss of the combine and the increased use of professional days will create more ambiguity than ever. Large paintings should and probable (see: I hope) will be everywhere. It will be more difficult not to feel like an impostor or to avoid the echo chamber.
But for the purest and best possible evaluations of an entire draft class, recognizing biases and ways to combat them – a scoring system works well – is imperative.
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