Written by Jason Askew

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For a GM in the NFL this is the time of the year that separates the men from the boys. The NFL draft is probably the most important factor in competing over the long haul for any NFL franchise and over the next few weeks we will explore both preparation for the draft and get into some player evaluations. Tom Heckert showed his worth last year by having a great draft. He will try to continue the momentum this year.

Mike Holmgren and Heckert got off to a great start last April when they made draft day choices of Joe Haden,TJ Ward, and then got Colt McCoy in the third round. These picks represent exactly what GMs strive for when making draft day selections . You want the first round guy to become an impact player of the future and challenge for a starting role right away and you want the second round guy to show flashes of the same while slowing stalking down a veteran to take his job. This actually happened in reverse for the Browns pick-wise but it netted two impact starters none the less. McCoy was possibly the biggest surprise and could ultimately prove to make the biggest impact down the road.  The jury is still out on the rest of the picks but as third day guys they are expected to take some time to develop.

Before you can make any pick you need to gather the information used in the decision and this is a bit of what goes into it.

Scouting

Most scouts have regions they cover and have been keeping an eye on most prospects for years and the guys who do these jobs are true gym rats and football junkies. A good scout will have talked about many of these guys for the first time when the players were still sipping milk in high school cafeterias. Many of us start talking about a player after bowl games or seeing them in the scouting combine but by this time a good scout will have likely made a final evaluation based on practices watched, games seen in person, and plenty of game tape.

Scouts start watching practices in August and continue to evaluate games in the coming months. There are 120 FBS schools and 124 FCS schools. It is a scout’s job to have a report on all players in his area at each school in their assigned region.

They are out every day to various campuses from August to November and most would have already done plenty of work on these guys in terms of character and off- field behavior before the calendar flipped to a new year. Speaking specifically about the Browns, their scouts spend most of December talking about character issues (getting into both on and off the field issues) for draft eligible players so there are no surprises when draft day rolls around.

January and February they prepare for the upcoming combine and watch even more tape.

At the combine they get to interact with the coaching staffs of their respective teams and really start to relay the information they have gathered on specific players. The scouting department and the coaching staff then start merging and sharing information in order to get the evaluations of players completed.

March is dedicated to Pro days and more film evaluations. The coaching staff and scouts work closely in watching live workouts to verify player attributes in-person that they had previously seen on film. These live workouts really stimulate conversation between coaches and scouts because a coach may attend a workout without having seen much film on a particular player. The player then has a stunning workout and the scout’s reports may not have such glowing reviews. At this point the tape is visited again as they try and determine why a player has not shown the same ability on tape as he did in person. This period of evaluation leads right up until April when the draft board starts to take shape.

Stacking the Board

The term stacking the board refers to the ranking of players. Players are ranked in a couple of different groups. They will have a positional ranking and an overall ranking. The positional ranking is simply a stack ranking against other players who play his position. Overall rankings can be a lot more complicated because these rankings have other variables involved such as schemes, character, and medical reports.

The top of the positional rankings are pretty straight forward in that the guys who rate pretty high in all the various skill sets will be first. The middle and bottom tend to be very different team to team because of the different schemes a team may run. For example, if a team runs a cover 2 scheme, they will rank CBs differently than a team who likes press-man coverage. Teams who two-gap will rank d-linemen differently than teams that gap-penetrate.

Teams usually have a round system or some type of numerical system to grade players. The round system simply assigns a grade to a prospect based on what round they should be picked based on talent. This has nothing to do with the round you think they will get drafted. It is the round they should be picked based on talent alone. The round picked could vary based on how many guys are rated for that round. If you have a second round grade on 40 guys, then obviously some of them will get drafted in the third round. Some teams use a numbering system. Let’s say our system uses a 9 to 4 numbering system with 9 being a perfect rating. Players would grade out falling somewhere between 4 and 9 based on their skills.

To actually stack the board you would now take the players and put them in order of round rankings for the one system and number value for the other system. Once this is done you would go back through and move guys up and down in their like groups based on the total package the prospect offers. Some of the things that factor into the total draft package will be skill level, impact, potential, football character, off the field character, passion for the game, football intelligence, medical reports and position played.

This is when organizational continuity is critical. You truly need the people stacking the board to fully understand exactly what you are going to ask a player to do. The coaching philosophies and technique that your team uses is critical in the ranking of players. The elite players that are scheme transparent (whose skills will translate in whatever system they play) will be at the top of the board. The rest of the players will have strong points and weak points. This is the reason draft boards can be so dramatically different once you get through the guys who can play in any scheme. One team’s trash can truly be another team’s treasure.

It is ultimately up to the GM to understand exactly what the player will be asked to do in order to fully evaluate how effective the player can be. If the GM himself fully understands what will be expected of a player , he should be able to accurately communicate this to the scouts who are gathering the information.

Draft Scenarios

Now that the board is pretty much set, the heated conversations and games begin. The reason I say ‘pretty much set’ is because throughout April you will get differing opinions from the group of people involved in evaluating the players. Sometimes it is a coach who works a guy out, sometimes it is a scout who knows the kid very closely. There will be players who will elicit conflicting opinions and those opinions will have to be given a voice and various front office guys will plead their cases on why they feel a certain way about a certain player. Sometimes these various opinions can change to where a guy is added to a team’s board and sometimes it can get guys taken off the board all together.

This is also the time teams will do mock drafts of their own and take turns making different picks. This stimulates conversation and brings up different scenarios. Good teams don’t put themselves in a position to be dumbfounded on draft day. They talk about every possibility they can think of in order to have a game plan for the various situations that can play out over a three-day draft. These conversations can be very heated at times when opinions vary greatly, which is another reason why it is critical to know and trust the people you work with. You need to know that differences of opinion will not be a permanent wedge in communication or taken personally.  Also, a GM needs to be able to trust the opinions of the people he listens to and the employees need to trust they can be honest without facing any flack.

The whole time these guys are preparing for the draft they are also in constant talk with other front offices trying to gauge possible trade scenarios. Teams usually know in advance of the draft which teams they may be able to deal with come draft day. Front office people spend a lot of time developing relationships with each other in order to have willing participants when a trade is needed. That is why it is very common to see trades between two teams that have people who may have worked together with another team in the past. Trading with a team can be just as much about a comfort level as it can be about the raw trading of picks and people.

Draft Day

Depending on your personality draft day can either be the calm in the middle of the storm or the storm itself. Some GMs will feel the hard work is done and trust in the preparation they’ve taken. Some will be as high strung as a junkie looking for a fix.

There are a number of factors that go into a pick once the clock starts. Usually the earlier picks are pretty straight forward for teams. They have already targeted a player or group of players they want in the first and second round. Sometimes a guy they thought would be gone is available so they change up on the fly to honor their draft board. Sometimes there are no players they had targeted for the slot so they get on the phones and try to move down. In the later rounds players drafted already and unexpectedly available players play the biggest factor. If your next best player is at a position of strength you will skip over him and pick a player at an area of need that has a similar draft grade.

This year looks like it will test a GM like no other. For the first time since free agency began teams will not have the chance prior to the draft to fill their rosters and address needs. In years past a team could truly factor in areas of need with accuracy and the off-season plan was actually a coordinated plan. You would target free agents based on team needs but also while considering your draft position and draft strengths. This year teams won’t have any idea which players they will be able to attract in free agency so they’ll will have to make a choice; either just make the pick based solely on their draft board or choose to put extra emphasis on team needs.

Either choice can bring complications that an organization hasn’t had to deal with before. If you choose to draft based on best player available then you may have to over-pay for your needs when free agency starts so you can make a complete roster and competitive team. If you choose to draft based on current needs you run the risk of reaching for a specific guy and/or passing up a more talented player. I know deep down every GM is hoping for an agreement in early April. Football guys are truly creatures of habit and don’t really enjoy the unknown too much.

One last factor to making picks this year is the potential for a rookie cap. If front offices really feel like there will be a rookie wage scale implemented then you could see a change in philosophy. The potential change in philosophy would most certainly affect the top of the draft and QBs for sure. Teams would be more inclined to take a very talented player with high risk factors and players with a projected high ceiling. The QB position is one in which the commanded money becomes a huge factor. We all know the Jamarcus Russell story because it is a fairly recent one, but there have been many QBs taken high who never panned out while they made a king’s wage. The QB position is the hardest and arguably the most important position to fill on a team. If teams could take higher risk/higher reward guys for less of a financial risk you would see such players go a lot higher in the draft on a consistent basis.

There is a lot of work that goes into getting that little white card to the podium and we touched on some of it above. I think this year could offer some energy to the draft unlike many in years past.  Next time we’ll start getting into the players who could help the Browns get back on top.