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NFL announces changes to off-season Combine / Scouting


Inigo Montoya

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https://www.nfl.com/news/nfl-memo-details-different-format-for-combine-individual-workouts-will-be-held-o

 

The NFL has announced some changes that will make it more difficult for NFL teams to evaluate potential Draft prospects this off season.  This year there will be no East-West Shrine game to showcase underclassmen declaring for the Draft.  The Combine will also be modified this year.  There will be no in person work outs allowed at the Combine by teams.  They will have to conduct in-person workouts during the player's college program Pro Day.  The Combine lasts several days and there is plenty of time for each team to grab a prospect for a face to face meeting.  A college Pro-Day is...one day.  Going to be hard for a team to get any significant  face time with a prospect when two dozen other teams are trying to evaluate them too.

 

No medical evaluations at the Combine this year.  The NFL is looking to have some sort of get together for shared medical evals some time in April, not very long before the Draft.  No in-person psychiatric evals at the Combine.  All of that will need to be done by video conferences.   When you take these changes and also factor in the diminished ability for teams to evaluate college players during the 20-21' college football season do to the decreased number of games played, player opt-outs, and travel restrictions, this year's Draft will end up being more of a roll of the dice than normal.

 

This is another instance where the Bills' institutional stability should provide them with an advantage heading into the Draft.  The Bills were very lucky that they did not have any of their front office personnel poached by other teams.  I think most of us expected to lose a couple of our scouting / player personnel people this season.  Having the Bills' scouting department remain intact, not having to bring in a bunch of new scouts and rebuild that group, should give the Bills an advantage over those franchises who have had turnover this off-season in their front offices.  There are seven new GMs in the NFL this year, and a lot more lower level front office turn over around the League.   Let's hope this stability gives Beane and his crew an advantage for this year's Draft.  

 

Edited by Inigo Montoya
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this is going to drive the scouting teams WILD,  you have combine separate from pro-days for a reason.

 

the days are separated because it is a judge of... IS that player having a better day then average or good day?

 

less to compare to.  our stability has little to do with having one less day to make a scout report... also this messes up the scouting report chains out there..   they do scouting report viewing the college year the player has had then it gets kicked up to the person scouting on combine. when the combine scout is done with report the report gets kicked up to pro day scout.

 

This messes up scouting chains at the NFL team level, the media level and to people like us who like to look through all the reports.

 

Now its all on pro day..  what a mess

I must also add it sucks for the players as well.. Normally if they are not ready or well for the first day... ill of for what ever reasons they can make it up... Sorry this is just so dumb

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2 hours ago, Inigo Montoya said:

https://www.nfl.com/news/nfl-memo-details-different-format-for-combine-individual-workouts-will-be-held-o

 

The NFL has announced some changes that will make it more difficult for NFL teams to evaluate potential Draft prospects this off season.  This year there will be no East-West Shrine game to showcase underclassmen declaring for the Draft.  The Combine will also be modified this year.  There will be no in person work outs allowed at the Combine by teams.  They will have to conduct in-person workouts during the player's college program Pro Day.  The Combine lasts several days and there is plenty of time for each team to grab a prospect for a face to face meeting.  A college Pro-Day is...one day.  Going to be hard for a team to get any significant  face time with a prospect when two dozen other teams are trying to evaluate them too.

 

No medical evaluations at the Combine this year.  The NFL is looking to have some sort of get together for shared medical evals some time in April, not very long before the Draft.  No in-person psychiatric evals at the Combine.  All of that will need to be done by video conferences.   When you take these changes and also factor in the diminished ability for teams to evaluate college players during the 20-21' college football season do to the decreased number of games played, player opt-outs, and travel restrictions, this year's Draft will end up being more of a roll of the dice than normal.

 

This is another instance where the Bills' institutional stability should provide them with an advantage heading into the Draft.  The Bills were very lucky that they did not have any of their front office personnel poached by other teams.  I think most of us expected to lose a couple of our scouting / player personnel people this season.  Having the Bills' scouting department remain intact, not having to bring in a bunch of new scouts and rebuild that group, should give the Bills an advantage over those franchises who have had turnover this off-season in their front offices.  There are seven new GMs in the NFL this year, and a lot more lower level front office turn over around the League.   Let's hope this stability gives Beane and his crew an advantage for this year's Draft.  

 

 

You may have alluded to it and I missed it - Beane touched on a lot of these in his post-season presser if anyone is interested - but IIRC he said teams would not be allowed to bring prospects into their facilities this season either. 

 

 

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Just now, RunJoshRun said:

When it comes to crunch time next year against the Bucs, Titans & Chiefs all on the ROAD are you totally positive we have our QB?  I wonder?

 

Are you suggesting that perhaps we don't? If you are, then by all means, state your case. We've got time to discuss it before Allen is back on the field. But nobody's got time for ambiguity (best case) or trollish teasers (worst case).  

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4 hours ago, Augie said:

This offseason hurts every team, but it hurts the best run organizations the least. That means it can actually be an advantage, since I sincerely believe we have a top level front office and top scouts. 

Yep, might mean someone slips to us that wouldn't normally be there... especially bc generally the worst FIS are picking towards the top. Every advantage plays to teams that have their **** together! 

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4 hours ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

You may have alluded to it and I missed it - Beane touched on a lot of these in his post-season presser if anyone is interested - but IIRC he said teams would not be allowed to bring prospects into their facilities this season either. 

 

Matt Miller also had Bills south east area scout AJ Highsmith on his new podcast recently. Was a really good interview and among other things he talked about the challenges of the scouting process this year. You can tell he has been indoctrinated with a healthy dose of the process, what I took away from it was "it's different, there are some challenges, but we can still do our job so no excuses." 

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9 hours ago, LABILLBACKER said:

Because of us being right up against the cap we can't afford a bad draft this year. No Maybins or McCargos.


Wrong GM’s LA.  In Beane we trust.  It does concern me on the medical amd psych. Evals.  Doctors throughout this country are performing their tasks with more precautions.  I know Inigo you said something about April, but this is the most troubling.  You get most of what you need by scouting tape more than a 40 time.  They are nice to have, but seeing these guys play for two years will tell you more.  

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3 hours ago, machine gun kelly said:


Wrong GM’s LA.  In Beane we trust.  It does concern me on the medical amd psych. Evals.  Doctors throughout this country are performing their tasks with more precautions.  I know Inigo you said something about April, but this is the most troubling.  You get most of what you need by scouting tape more than a 40 time.  They are nice to have, but seeing these guys play for two years will tell you more.  

40 times, in particular, are more valuable for players coming from lower level of competition where they may appear fast vs the lower competition, but not be particularly fast by major college/NFL standards.  For guys at the top colleges playing against top colleges, the game tape should pretty well tell you their speed.
 

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I mean how many people are actually in attendance at the combine? I think there’s 330 players plus 100 or so coaches and staff plus some people coordinating the event , so maybe 500 total?  They can’t do testing of these people and form a bubble for the week?

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13 hours ago, PrimeTime101 said:

this is going to drive the scouting teams WILD,  you have combine separate from pro-days for a reason.

 

the days are separated because it is a judge of... IS that player having a better day then average or good day?

 

less to compare to.  our stability has little to do with having one less day to make a scout report... also this messes up the scouting report chains out there..   they do scouting report viewing the college year the player has had then it gets kicked up to the person scouting on combine. when the combine scout is done with report the report gets kicked up to pro day scout.

 

This messes up scouting chains at the NFL team level, the media level and to people like us who like to look through all the reports.

 

Now its all on pro day..  what a mess

I must also add it sucks for the players as well.. Normally if they are not ready or well for the first day... ill of for what ever reasons they can make it up... Sorry this is just so dumb

Personally I'm ok with this. This will prevent the Aaron Maybins/Mike Mamulas. Scouts will have to rely on the tape without being influenced by the workout wonders at the combine. Interviews can be done by Zoom. I'm ALL about the tape!! To quote a legend "tape don't lie"

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https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2020/12/12/brandon-beane-reflects-on-drafting-josh-allen-when-many-had-doubts/

 

https://buffalonews.com/sports/bills/how-the-bills-front-office-arrived-on-josh-allen-as-the-teams-franchise-qb/article_013c597a-2b90-54d2-b964-3dc60895cf04.html

 

I remembered reading articles about all of the evaluation that went into the Bills drafting Josh Allen in 2018.  If the NFL had this year's restrictions on scouting in 2018, I don't know if the Bills draft Josh Allen.  The entire front office met with Josh repeatedly, including the Pegulas, before they finally became comfortable enough to make him their selection on Draft day.  For players like Josh who don't have an elite pedigree coming out of college, they are not going to have the opportunity to showcase themselves this off season like in years past.  More importantly, front offices will be be ham strung in their ability to do a thorough vetting of players who are on the bubble like Josh was. 

 

As @Virgil noted above, it's nice to already have our franchise QB in the fold.  I wouldn't want to be a team looking to find their franchise QB this year.  Lawrence at #1 is easy, after that, things get a bit more dicey.

 

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31 minutes ago, Solomon Grundy said:

Personally I'm ok with this. This will prevent the Aaron Maybins/Mike Mamulas. Scouts will have to rely on the tape without being influenced by the workout wonders at the combine. Interviews can be done by Zoom. I'm ALL about the tape!! To quote a legend "tape don't lie"

nonono... This is going to create more Aaron Maybins.. you think they already don't look at what they do at the college level? this is silliness... 

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13 hours ago, Augie said:

This offseason hurts every team, but it hurts the best run organizations the least. That means it can actually be an advantage, since I sincerely believe we have a top level front office and top scouts. 

yea I have to disagree with this one... How a team is run, goes through its daily business from now to the draft has 0 to do with "best run organizations" because everything has changed. the combine and pro day is separate for smart reasons and now no matter what organization or how good or bad it is has to change the process of how they go about scouting these players from the independent scouts to team scouts and all the way up the chain to the GM level.

 

This doesn't make the job of the organization easier by any means. improvement variables between their last game to combine to pro day is gone.

 

as stated earlier in the thread the only good thing about it is every team has to go through this hell this year of figuring out where players ranked based now purely on college level and where they at right now.

 

this will be just as hard for everyone...  wont be easier just cause a specific team is a well oiled machine...

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11 minutes ago, PrimeTime101 said:

nonono... This is going to create more Aaron Maybins.. you think they already don't look at what they do at the college level? this is silliness...  

 

There is nothing in this clip that justifies him going at 11. Sounds like, to me, that Mike Mayock is saying the Bills were enamored with his measurements at the combine and thought they could make something out of him. 

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3 minutes ago, Solomon Grundy said:

 

There is nothing in this clip that justifies him going at 11. Sounds like, to me, that Mike Mayock is saying the Bills were enamored with his measurements at the combine and thought they could make something out of him. 

answer my question.. Do you think they don't already highly study NFL film? I am not saying Maybin is a good pick but I think your missing the point I am getting att..  there was more video on him then 1 minute 9 seconds or less...  NE has had horrible picks to.. how good is their organization?

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6 minutes ago, PrimeTime101 said:

answer my question.. Do you think they don't already highly study NFL film? I am not saying Maybin is a good pick but I think your missing the point I am getting att..  there was more video on him then 1 minute 9 seconds or less...  NE has had horrible picks to.. how good is their organization?

I think they saw his speed/potential on tape. Saw his size at combine and thought they could make him into something. Same thing with EJ Manuel, except EJ tape was better

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