Draft Theme this year

[Jamie_B]

There are two things I see as a "theme"

 

1. Guys that came in for their 30 visit

2. Big Swing on picks, meaning a few guys have boom or bust potential. 

 

Seems like this draft will be talked about how good it is or how we can't draft in a couple of years. Not a lot of in the middle 

 

Now we wait and see on these guys. 

[sparky151]

I'd call it a "back to basics" draft with no QBs or RBs, only 1 CB, more TEs than WRs and several O-line and D-linemen. 

[dex]

Having dived deeper to the draft thing than ever before via a million articles and podcasts, I think the Bengals went BPA from the 5th round round...so the final half of the picks.

 

The first 2 rounds were always going to be for Big Bodies in the trenches, one on each side of the ball. I believe their realistic Plan A targets in the 1st round was Latham and Murphy. Latham never made it even close to pick 18 and Murphy went right where he himself thought he would go...to Seattle at 16. I think the top Plan B targets in the first were Fuaga and Mims. We may never know which one they would've taken if both had been available, of course only Mims was.

 

Once the OT was taken in the 1st round, then it was always going to be a DT in the 2nd round. Many of them went off the board early, most of them undersized 3Ts with promising pass rushing traits even if the college production was somewhat lacking. Jonny Newton never had a chance to reach the Bengals pick at 49, but I'm wondering if Anarumo thought Sweat might make it to the pick. Would the Bengals have taken Sweat if he had been available at 49? Considering that the Bengals felt they had no choice but to take Jackson at 97, I'm guessing they probably would have. We know that they really liked Sweat, had him in for a Top 30 visit. But once Sweat was off the board, then they became hyper-focused on Jenkins, who is a great run stopper in a 3T body.  So of course they were relieved when Jenkins fell to them at 49.

 

I believe the Bengals were planning to go WR in round 3 all along. Seems pretty obvious that both Troy Walters and Dan Pitcher loved Burton's tape. They even seemed to make sure that particular Top 30 visit didn't leak out. Once they became fixated on Burton's tape, then the deep background check happened. Once they decided they could live with his profile, he became a big focus for round 3. Even though there was a big run on WRs in round 2, only 2 were taken before the Bengals pick at 80 in round 3. Even though the Bengals beat writers were caught off guard by the pick, everything seems to indicate Burton was the big receiver focus all along. So they took their guy exactly when they planned to. I think Burton will be the game one starter with Chase/Higgins in September.

 

James Casey is one of the most respected position coaches on the team, but they had failed to give him even one rookie TE to develop in quite a few years. Casey was the one who settled on Sam Laporta as the best TE in the deep '23 class, even though two or three others were rated ahead of Laporta by most evaluators leading up the draft. Still early, but it looks like none will end up being better than Laporta. This year Bowers was easily the top TE in the class, and there was no consensus on who the next best TE was. Casey knew he wasn't likely to finally get a TE to develop until the 4th or 5th round, but it seems like Erick All was his TE2 because of his versatile skill set. Once the doctors okayed the medicals, then All became a mid round target just behind Burton in terms of adding weapons for Burrow.

[Le Tigre]

46 minutes ago, Jamie_B said:

2. Big Swing on picks, meaning a few guys have boom or bust potential. 

The Dave Kingman Theory

 

Clout

 

 

OR

 

 

 

Out

[|BlackJesus|]

Another minor theme 

 

[dex]

I'm much happier with the draft from the offensive side than the defensive side. Part of that, I admit, is my belief that the 3 best position coaches on the team last season were Dan Pitcher, Troy Walters and James Casey. Pitcher is now been deservedly promoted to offensive coordinator, and I don't think enough has been made about changes he may make to the structure of the offense. Clearly he wants to be less predictable with their personnel groupings than they may have been in the past, especially when Burrow has been healthy. Some of it may be with the way the offense evolved to survive the loss with Browning at the helm. They did better than any of us had the right to expect because of those tweaks. Now the key is to continue to transform the offense with an elite QB like Burrow.

 

The key picks for me were Burton in the 3rd and All in the 4th. Burton may have the best hands in the entire draft class, but he lined up both inside and outside for Alabama even if he was basically known as a deep vertical threat on the outside. I think he will play both slot/outside this season, which means that Chase will have the opportunity to do the same. That's what Pitcher wants.

 

Even with him missing so many games, All has already done a bit of everything at both Michigan and Iowa. He says he didn't even come to Michigan as a TE. The Michigan coaches tried him out as a receiver first, then began to line him up everywhere. Here is Pitcher's comments after the All pick:

 

"He can be the (slot in) 12, he can be the single tight end on the field in 11. He's got experience in wing sets, in multiple tight end sets," Pitcher said. "He's a guy that can play on the move, a guy that can play at the point of attack. He truly is versatile."

 

[alleycat]

I just alluded to this in the McKinnley post, but there is an overwhelming theme I see coming out of this draft after watching all of the highlights and interviews. Sure, this is no doubt a home run vs. strikeout kind of draft, but here's why I'm very positive:

 

They have drafted personalities. Characters. Dawgs. So much of the makeup of this team is about drafting good guys, team-first ballers, and one of the thing that permeates this group is high-effort guys who seem very Alpha, for whom beating up the other guy seems like something that they actually take pleasure in (maybe too much, Jermaine Burton - although even Burton, you can see that he's obsessed with he game, obsessed with winning, and despises losing and getting beat).

 

If nothing else, this team continues to build its culture, which I think has been one of our X-factors (along with having a football god as our QB) to our success. 

[texbengal]

15 hours ago, dex said:

Having dived deeper to the draft thing than ever before via a million articles and podcasts, I think the Bengals went BPA from the 5th round round...so the final half of the picks.

 

The first 2 rounds were always going to be for Big Bodies in the trenches, one on each side of the ball. I believe their realistic Plan A targets in the 1st round was Latham and Murphy. Latham never made it even close to pick 18 and Murphy went right where he himself thought he would go...to Seattle at 16. I think the top Plan B targets in the first were Fuaga and Mims. We may never know which one they would've taken if both had been available, of course only Mims was.

 

Once the OT was taken in the 1st round, then it was always going to be a DT in the 2nd round. Many of them went off the board early, most of them undersized 3Ts with promising pass rushing traits even if the college production was somewhat lacking. Jonny Newton never had a chance to reach the Bengals pick at 49, but I'm wondering if Anarumo thought Sweat might make it to the pick. Would the Bengals have taken Sweat if he had been available at 49? Considering that the Bengals felt they had no choice but to take Jackson at 97, I'm guessing they probably would have. We know that they really liked Sweat, had him in for a Top 30 visit. But once Sweat was off the board, then they became hyper-focused on Jenkins, who is a great run stopper in a 3T body.  So of course they were relieved when Jenkins fell to them at 49.

 

I believe the Bengals were planning to go WR in round 3 all along. Seems pretty obvious that both Troy Walters and Dan Pitcher loved Burton's tape. They even seemed to make sure that particular Top 30 visit didn't leak out. Once they became fixated on Burton's tape, then the deep background check happened. Once they decided they could live with his profile, he became a big focus for round 3. Even though there was a big run on WRs in round 2, only 2 were taken before the Bengals pick at 80 in round 3. Even though the Bengals beat writers were caught off guard by the pick, everything seems to indicate Burton was the big receiver focus all along. So they took their guy exactly when they planned to. I think Burton will be the game one starter with Chase/Higgins in September.

 

James Casey is one of the most respected position coaches on the team, but they had failed to give him even one rookie TE to develop in quite a few years. Casey was the one who settled on Sam Laporta as the best TE in the deep '23 class, even though two or three others were rated ahead of Laporta by most evaluators leading up the draft. Still early, but it looks like none will end up being better than Laporta. This year Bowers was easily the top TE in the class, and there was no consensus on who the next best TE was. Casey knew he wasn't likely to finally get a TE to develop until the 4th or 5th round, but it seems like Erick All was his TE2 because of his versatile skill set. Once the doctors okayed the medicals, then All became a mid round target just behind Burton in terms of adding weapons for Burrow.

Very good summary. Not sure on T if Latham was the guy, but it wouldn’t shock me… and I think Newton was likely the guy they wanted at DT.
 

Being a Michigan fan, I saw a lot of their games and I liked Jenkins… he plays hard and is physical. He’s a leader and an energizer bunny. That said, always wondered why he didn’t get more pressure/sacks on the QB. Maybe it was the way he was used, not sure. But Newton really flashed in that way… Jenkins is a guy you appreciate for sure, but he doesn’t pop when you watch them. I think he’ll be a solid rotational guy, and hopefully more than that. 

[texbengal]

2 hours ago, alleycat said:

I just alluded to this in the McKinnley post, but there is an overwhelming theme I see coming out of this draft after watching all of the highlights and interviews. Sure, this is no doubt a home run vs. strikeout kind of draft, but here's why I'm very positive:

 

They have drafted personalities. Characters. Dawgs. So much of the makeup of this team is about drafting good guys, team-first ballers, and one of the thing that permeates this group is high-effort guys who seem very Alpha, for whom beating up the other guy seems like something that they actually take pleasure in (maybe too much, Jermaine Burton - although even Burton, you can see that he's obsessed with he game, obsessed with winning, and despises losing and getting beat).

 

If nothing else, this team continues to build its culture, which I think has been one of our X-factors (along with having a football god as our QB) to our success. 

100%. Lots of attitude/passion and love of football. Looking forward to seeing and hearing about how they’re developing. 

[T-Dub]

Still feel like they only drafted an OT because they just about had to, given Brown's injury history. They waited until the very bottom of the draft to add anything else to the OL. For a team with a couple of marginal starters and no depth to speak of anywhere on the line I don't think they did nearly enough to improve. It's clearly been their weakest area foe a very long time and Mims alone won't fix that.

 

 

[Griever]

Draft grade compilation of sorts

[|High School Harry|]

The Bengals theme this year was to draft ten guys and throw them on the wall along with ten or so of he dingleberries who have been hanging on here

for the last few years and see who sticks.

Mims ✔️

Jenkins ✔️

Psycho ✔️

to be continued... 

[sparky151]

Stealers have probably outdrafted us the last 2 years and the Ravens the last 3 years. With 10 picks we should have done better this year. 

[I_C_Deadpeople]

The Athletic had a two part article, a deep dive on the Rams drfat process. Very interesting, I will post Part I below and Part II in another post. 

 

‘Finding Rams’: One year behind the scenes of the NFL Draft scouting process, Part I

Jourdan Rodrigue

May 2, 2024

138

HERMOSA BEACH, Calif. — On the opening night of the 2024 NFL Draft, the Los Angeles Rams decided to wait eight of their allotted 10 minutes on the clock before submitting their selection to the league.

It had been eight years since the franchise’s previous first-round pick. Eight minutes felt symbolic.

 

 

L.A. would take Florida State outside linebacker Jared Verse at No. 19. And for every selection, there’s a phone call from the general manager.

“Hey, Jared, this is Les Snead, Los Angeles Rams …”

Snead’s call is a beginning and an end. Months spent by the scouts on research, evaluation, discussions and debate are over. Whether a player succeeds or fails now depends on a number of variables, some that will come to reflect upon the scouting process and some that are out of evaluators’ hands entirely.

 

Jared Verse is the first Rams’ first-round draft pick since they selected Jared Goff No. 1 overall in 2016. (Eric Thayer / AP Photo)

And less than two hours after this year’s draft ended, Rams scouts had a list of 2025 prospects emailed to them, the onset of their process all over again.

Over the last 10 months, The Athletic was granted access inside the team’s scouting and draft operation — from shadowing scouts on school visits and all-star events to sitting in on the internal meetings that shaped the team’s draft board and attending the beachside mansion where they held their draft. Some details do not include identifiers to protect the competitive nature of the process.

They call it “finding Rams.”

---

During his first interview with The Athletic, Rams senior personnel executive Taylor Morton looked out the back window of his Florida home and realized he had to set the phone down for a moment. “Call you right back,” he said in a relaxed drawl. “There’s an alligator in my backyard.”

Scout enough years and nothing rattles a person.

Morton met Snead almost 25 years ago at Auburn. They’ve stuck together since, launching their pro careers in the Atlanta Falcons’ personnel department, where they bonded more closely via the trials of lives spent on the road.

One year, on a scouting trip in the Southeast, their car blew a tire on the highway. Neither could figure out how to attach the spare. Sweating, furious and past due for their appointment, Snead grabbed the intact tire and heaved it into a thicket of brush next to the road. They laugh about it now, and when the two reminisce, people have a hard time telling their voices apart.

 

 

Morton joined Snead again in St. Louis when Snead became GM of the Rams in 2012, before the team moved back to L.A. in 2016. He is one of six evaluators with the “senior personnel executive” title who are known informally as “over-the-top” scouts (OTT). Each region of the country also has an “area” scout who builds profiles and evaluations of the players over multiple years, flying under the radar at games, practices and pro days.

From May to July, the scouting staff puts together an initial list of about 200 prospects for OTT scouts to “cross-check” from September through November — about 20 per week — to supplement the work of the area scouts. Other players are added as the process continues.

 

Left to right: Ray Farmer (Rams senior personnel executive), Les Snead (Ram GM), Taylor Morton (Rams senior personnel executive), Matt Berry (Seahawks senior director of player personnel) in Atlanta in 2002. (Courtesy of Taylor Morton) 

The two groups of scouts, plus analysts and consultants, make up a staff of 25. Many have been together for a decade or longer, and the continuity has led to a shared language that helps move them through evaluations and in and out of debates.

The Rams allow their scouts to live in their respective evaluation areas. Snead, Morton and director of scouting James Gladstone believe the literal distance between them for most of the year discourages “groupthink”; Morton also believes remote work increases productivity and generally sticks to the Southeast for any in-person college visits during his cross-checks.

He has done this for a quarter-century and knows that each school merits a different approach. The evening before his visit to a Division I program in early September, Morton connected with the area scout to refresh his information about the two players he wanted to get a closer look at. The area scout also flagged a few others who might eventually make the Rams’ list.

 

 

The day started in the early morning hours at the pastry window of a local Starbucks. Morton ordered a bag full of assorted baked goods to be presented to the assistant at the front desk of the program’s coaching offices. Years ago, before college film was widely available to watch on personal computers, these pastries probably would have gotten Morton first dibs on the remote in the school’s film room — the other NFL scouts in attendance would have had to defer to how he wanted to watch tape.

Now, the pastries are both a small gesture of kindness — Morton remembers certain favorites — and a signal: when they are set out at the desk, sources in the building know to find him and give him a tidbit or two about one of the players he’s evaluating.

“They don’t have to accommodate us,” Morton said. “Our business is all about relationships.”

Some schools are finicky about the level of access provided to scouts, whether from paranoia about information-sharing or simply because they want players focused on the season ahead. But this particular program allowed Morton a full-access visit, including a practice viewing, alongside a handful of other scouts.

Most college football programs have a pro liaison who is authorized to discuss draft-eligible players with visiting scouts. Scouts keep almost as many notes on that liaison and the amount and quality of information provided as they do on prospects themselves. The liaison set Morton up in a private room and logged into the school’s film system as Morton fired up his iPad and got comfortable with the toggles on the remote.

 

Morton had already watched tape on these prospects, but his presence in that particular room served another purpose. College staffers quietly rotated through as Morton asked questions about schemes, personalities, practice and study habits. He has a rule: Never criticize a player’s tape in front of a coach or staff member but certainly listen if they have their own critiques.

Other scouts underwent the same process in separate rooms throughout the football building. By lunchtime, they all convened in Morton’s room and waited for the pro liaison to join. Many knew each other — one had a lighthearted but unprintable nickname for Morton — and they caught up on families and travels.

 

 

They shared more unwritten rules similar to Morton’s: Don’t abuse the liaison’s time by asking about underclassmen. Don’t go to the school in person if it’s obvious only one player is drawing interest. Don’t make coaches uncomfortable or paranoid. Don’t visit your alma mater’s rival during rivalry game weeks. Stay at hotels with free breakfast, fill an insulated coffee cup with eggs and bacon and bring it to the school to consume mid-morning.

Background checks with the pro liaison and the strength coach started in the early afternoon. The scouts sat around a large table with the pro liaison at the head and got out their tablets. One veteran scout instead used a paper notepad and two different-colored pens.

Most NFL teams have a data and information processing system, usually constructed in-house, into which scouts, coaches, medical staff, front office executives and others input notes on players. The Rams’ is JAARS, “Joint After-Action Review System,” built a little over a decade ago by director of data and analytics Jake Temme and analyst Ryan Garlisch. Before JAARS, the Rams used magnets on a giant whiteboard.

 

Once purely an information-storing program to help keep team personnel organized, the constantly updated JAARS now helps the Rams build out and combine hundreds of thousands of data points that form the DNA strands of any one prospect’s profile. And its value lies not only in its player data — JAARS is the keeper of an entire language. Some Rams staffers joke that the system will eventually need a new, more human-sounding acronym to reflect its approaching sentience.

Morton added his notes from the pro liaison and strength coach to the corresponding JAARS profiles in a shorthand that included colors and emojis. The strength coach had the deepest insight into any of the draft prospects. He and his staff spend the most time with them throughout the year, and he discussed everything from practice and training habits to whether a player’s frame could handle more weight or subtract it and how teammates interacted with each other — lots of details Morton could use.

The scouts pressed the strength coach on specifics — among Morton’s favorite questions is, “Do you trust (the player)?” — then scheduled individual meetings with position coaches for after practice. They spent practice on the sideline. Morton roamed up and down the field, quietly meeting with support staff and hardly reacting as they told him things, which encouraged them to tell him more.

Morton’s wife, Carissa, joins him on trips when her schedule allows, and this visit ended with dinner at a local spot they both knew from years of travel. He filed his last notes into JAARS before the drive to the next college. Four days later, the Rams’ regular season began in Seattle.

 

On Fridays in late October and early November, as OTT scouts finished their cross-checks, they also held position meetings with the idea of eventually creating a consensus “top 15” per position. Until April, that list is very malleable. Round-by-round projections or grades are never assigned.

Gladstone, the scouting director; Temme, the director of data and analytics; and scouting strategist Nicole Blake are on every Zoom call. So is Snead, but he tries to speak or react very little. The point of the meetings is to get OTT scouts discussing players as candidly as possible, and Snead believes that having “the boss” responding to debates or presentations introduces a subconscious bias to identify prospects he might like.

 

 

Gladstone, a former high school teacher and football coach in St. Louis with an MBA in education administration, runs all of the draft-related meetings — even when Snead is in them. He sees the reports and data entered by scouts and analysts, then selects certain threads to pull or people to call on for more information or even debate. Sometimes Gladstone is a conductor. Sometimes he is an instigator.

 

Les Snead was a pro scout for 14 years and has been GM of the Rams since 2012. (Michael Hickey / Getty Images) 

“The way we operate in meetings is a passion project of mine,” he said.

Scouts viewed Gladstone’s shared screen as he moved through 20 prospects. Every time JAARS is opened in full, an enormous amount of information is on display — a detailed language predicated on visual cues. Each player profile features his college headshot and a long row of tabs that can be individually expanded.

JAARS tabs, which have movable sliding scales, contain information on anything from character and mental assessments to medical history, athletic testing results and the composite scores built by weighing the different results together. The number of total tabs along a row varies by position — some weigh over a dozen different physical traits.

There is a section where staff can easily access film cut-ups and a section for “chatter” — leaks, agent-driven reports, videos of workouts shared on social media, quotes from news conferences and more. There is also a section for anonymous surveys, created by Temme and Blake, that gather a variety of opinions from scouts after each position evaluation to help the group better understand its consensus or disagreements.

Consensus opinions of prospects’ top strengths are “superpowers,” while weaknesses are “kryptonite.” A section called “the wisdom of the crowd” references group opinions or collective findings.

 

 

A JAARS tab’s color gradient quickly shows where a player currently sits in terms of production, testing, medical checks or in scouts’ opinions. Outlier colors more easily catch scouts’ eyes when absorbing massive amounts of information. Blue, red and maroon are favorable; green and purple, less so.

Those colored tabs can also be stamped with “badges” (emojis), which represent evolving sentiment — fire and sun symbols signify favorable evaluations while an icicle or snowflake means a scout is cooling on the prospect. On the far side of the row, scouts can also assign a player different badges to quickly describe other traits, from a brain emoji to a beaker or set of glasses, a medical cross, a flexing arm, an hourglass, a dynamite blast and dozens more.

 

Scouts stamp badges and change colors on prospects throughout the entire year. Spoken as a language, it sounds something like this: “(OTT scout) has a maroon hot on (name) after a health flag was cleared up by two school sources — no longer snowy, and medical badge was removed.”

JAARS reflects both Snead’s decades-long tenure as a scout and his rejection of many of the profession’s archetypal practices. Scouting reports used to be hundreds — if not thousands — of words long apiece. Snead grew to hate scouting language and terminology and loathed reading the lengthy reports almost as much as scouts did writing them. Eventually, scouts do compose a “one-liner” that summarizes their general sentiment of a player beyond the colors and shapes — but even those reflect an entrenched, idiosyncratic language.

One year, a senior scout was cross-checking a prospect with a generally average evaluation — lots of greens, some purples. But his color suddenly spiked blue on a tab that assessed ball skills. The player, average in most categories and tests, simply caught everything thrown his way. The scout stamped a hand emoji on the blue tab and wrote two words in his one-liner: “Peripheral cyanosis.” Blue hands.

Gladstone believes the colors and badges deliver a clear point of view in a simple way. And the fact that each scout can see a picture and mentally translate it into dozens of words in an instant reflects the staff’s continuity.

As the group rolls through the Friday meetings and toward the new year, JAARS constantly receives new data from area scouts still on the road and from OTT scouts as they continue their cross-checks and gather information from all-star events like the Senior Bowl. By now, they all know to be malleable and to speak up when they have the floor, because someone is always listening — or watching, via JAARS.

 

 

At the end of every session, Gladstone opens the virtual room for a period of free discussion they call the “water cooler.”

It comes with a story: Before the second day of the 2018 draft, two personnel executives ducked down the hall to grab a snack and a water refill. Snead followed a couple of minutes later, and as he approached the two men, he overheard them discussing an outside linebacker they really liked with a level of gusto they had not shown in the meetings. Snead turned around, walked back to the draft room without the two others knowing he had been there and later called in his pick for Ogbo Okoronkwo in the fifth round.

From that day forward, Gladstone worked “water cooler” periods into meetings.

 

Morton hit the road again in late January, this time to Mobile, Ala., for the Senior Bowl. The first day’s work began, once again, at a local Starbucks.

Special assistant to the GM Andy Sugarman stood in line a couple of paces behind Morton with scouting fellow Michael Young behind him. Morton ordered a large black coffee and egg white bites, stashing the latter in his bag. Sugarman got a ham and Swiss croissant while Young ordered a venti iced blonde espresso, with four extra shots — eight total. Light ice. Scouts.

The Rams are among a couple of teams who do not attend the Senior Bowl en masse. After 2020, Snead, McVay and their direct staff stopped going to Mobile in person because they felt they could work more efficiently remotely.

All 32 teams receive the same data and tape from the event, so Temme and the Rams’ video team upload measurements and daily film cut-ups from drills and practices into JAARS. The video cut-ups of drills and game film are organized by player, so Snead and others can watch those in sequence without jumping from player to player all over a field as they would in person. Temme also receives tracking data, a highly valuable resource in assessing how a prospect moves when actually playing football.

GO DEEPER

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Because the film of each practice drill uploads daily, Snead found his staff could get through the entire week almost in real time. When they traveled to the event, they only began watching practice cut-ups after they got home, so the prospect evaluation process after the Senior Bowl used to take the Rams two or three additional weeks.

 

 

They still believe having an under-the-radar presence at all-star events is important — Young’s report from last year’s East/West Shrine Bowl helped reiterate to senior staff that nose tackle Kobie Turner, an eventual starter and Defensive Rookie of the Year candidate, was bigger than he looked on tape — and the trio of staffers in Mobile absorb what Morton refers to as “free-flowing information” throughout Senior Bowl week.

 

A third-round pick in 2023, Kobie Turner finished third in AP Defensive Rookie of the Year voting. (Kevin Sabitus/AP)

Morton watches some drills in person, but he’ll comb through most of the week in film study. He uses his time on the sidelines to get information from the many college position coaches and coordinators in attendance.

“When you have the opportunity to talk to somebody — particularly if they have coached or know one of the players at the (practice), to me that takes precedence over watching practice,” said Morton.

GO DEEPER

Inside the Rams' major changes to their draft process, and why they won't go back to 'normal'

As the first practice of the week began at the University of South Alabama’s Hancock Whitney Stadium, the three men split up. Sugarman spent the first half in the metal bleachers with several dozen other scouts and team personnel before moving up to the press box. Young and Morton rotated between the sidelines and the stadium’s lower bowl.

They seemed to know everybody — Morton stopped to talk with two college head coaches and a handful of assistants at various points of the practice. He got a full report about one draft-eligible prospect from a coach after running into him outside the bathroom. (Later in the pre-draft cycle, fans of that college noted the Rams as the lone absence among NFL teams from that player’s pro day.) Young asked questions of different contacts while keeping one eye on the drills and simultaneously typing notes into his phone.

When the three met back up at Sugarman’s rental car after practice hours later, the tidbits of information flowed. Morton finally finished his coffee from the morning and ate the egg bites that had been sitting in his bag the entire day.

 

 

Turns out nothing can rattle a scout’s stomach, either.

After a brief dinner break, the three men reconvened at the Mobile Convention Center, joining a horde of NFL coaches and scouts slowly making their way to a cavernous room on the ground floor sectioned into 32 spaces by tall black curtains — one per team. This is where the nightly prospect interviews took place, a process nicknamed “the car wash,” where four players at a time rotate from space to space — team to team — in 10- to 15-minute intervals over three nights.

For some coaches and senior scouts around the league, it’s the first meeting between team and potential players, but the Rams don’t believe conducting interviews in this setting is valuable. The sessions are late after a full day of practice and classroom work — some players get to their scheduled interviews after 9 p.m. — and prospects are trained for the process by their agents.

“By the time they get to the Senior Bowl and the East/West and all the all-star games, they’ve been coached up somewhat,” Morton said. “And then at the combine, it’s even more so. … The more they are interviewed, the more they know what questions are coming at them.”

The Rams find value in these settings by collecting a large amount of a specific type of information. Over the last couple of years, they have administered to players a customized version of an existing personality, emotional intelligence and leadership assessment called HEXACO. Their version was developed by Sam Walker, a former Wall Street Journal editor who wrote “The Captain Class” — a book on leadership qualities within championship teams — and now consults for the team.

The test consists of 28 questions and takes about six minutes to complete. The answers go directly into JAARS for Walker’s analysis. He hopes to project how each player’s leadership qualities could best be maximized in the Rams’ environment taking into account the team’s existing personality balance. Between the nights of interview sessions at the Senior Bowl and East/West Shrine Bowl, the Rams annually file over 300 customized HEXACO submissions.

 

Young, Morton and Sugarman each set up a computer along a few tables in their section and directed players to them as they filtered in. Young reassured them that “there are no right or wrong answers.”

Because the players moved through rooms in groups of four, there was often someone waiting on a computer. After setting up the others, Young would open up a conversation with the waiting prospect. His strategy was to immediately mention a detail or connection with each that he had identified beforehand — a coaching contact, something he picked up from film or even a move he saw at practice that day.

 

 

“Just finding different ways that I can relate to them,” Young said. “Once they look at you and they know you’re doing your research and your homework, their eyes get a little bit bigger.”

Like every other data point compiled by the Rams’ scouts, the test is eventually weighed with a number of other items, like the area and OTT scouts’ sourcing on character and personality (the “deep dig”), formal background checks, learning assessments and more. “All of it is just a piece of the puzzle,” Morton said.

While Morton and Young floated between players and made conversation as the prospects finished their assessments or waited for their turn, Sugarman quietly observed. His unique role in finding Rams was only beginning.

Coming Friday, Part II …

[I_C_Deadpeople]

‘Finding Rams,’ Part II: One year behind the scenes of the NFL Draft scouting process

Jourdan Rodrigue

May 3, 2024

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Editor’s note: Over the last 10 months, The Athletic was granted access inside the Los Angeles Rams’ scouting and draft operation. This is the conclusion of our two-part series. Find part one here.

LOS ANGELES — Andy Sugarman always books his first one-way flight on March 5, the day NFL teams are allowed to visit draft-eligible prospects. He will not see his Northern California home again until late April, after the draft.

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Each spring, Sugarman, the special assistant to Los Angeles Rams general manager Les Snead, annually visits two dozen or more players — he saw 33 this year — zig-zagging across the country on a series of one-way flights as Rams’ scouts and coaches hone in on specific prospects.

Sometimes Sugarman is still on the road mere days before the draft begins. Once during draft week, he made it to Snead’s L.A. office for an hour before being told he had to get back to the airport to see a new prospect.

“They get into debates on guys and I get sent,” Sugarman said.

Sugarman coached in the NFL for nearly two decades, mostly tight ends, but he looks like he teaches high school algebra. Gray-haired, quiet and small-framed with oval glasses, he’s an inconspicuous presence on college campuses and in football buildings, which is how he likes it.

The Rams do not typically conduct official “30 visits,” where teams are allowed to host up to 30 prospects at their facilities each spring, except for extreme cases when they feel they need more medical information. Those sessions must be reported to the league and, therefore, frequently leak in the media.

Sugarman’s visits do not as long as they are in person and within a 50-mile radius of the player’s school or hometown. Snead doesn’t want other teams to know who the Rams are paying closer attention to, and he and Sugarman believe in approaching prospects in their own world, where they may be more comfortable and more themselves.

Sugarman’s sessions can take the entire day. He asks prospects to teach him their college schemes — how they teach is often a reflection on how they best learn. Sugarman also wants to know how they think about the game: Do they know just their assignments or others’ as well? Can they break down why opponents attack them in certain ways? If they went to an all-star game like the Senior Bowl, can they recall certain plays from the offense or defense they learned there?

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Often, they go to lunch so Sugarman can see how the player acts when he thinks his “classroom” session is over — how he interacts with waiters, cashiers or fans, whether he stays engaged in conversation and is comfortable and curious enough to ask Sugarman questions. “You really get a chance to know a person,” Sugarman said. The former coach later files his notes into a special section of JAARS.

Snead and other senior staff believe that someone with a coaching or playing background has to do this job. A scout evaluates skills, while a coach watches how the player fits within a certain structure.

“It’s just a different way to look at it,” Sugarman said. “I don’t have a scouting background. I have a coaching background. You look at things a little differently, you look at what the schemes are and whether they are making mistakes or not.”

His intel on how players learn and communicate is weighed alongside several others, including the results of the customized HEXACO leadership test and wide-ranging background checks from team officials and scouts’ own sourcing in a process head coach Sean McVay calls “finding Rams,” players who fit his culture.

 

Sean McVay just completed his eighth NFL Draft as the Rams’ head coach and had a Round 1 pick for the first time. (Ryan Kang/Getty Images)

Sugarman’s frenetic travel itinerary illustrates the shifting debate or level of interest in a prospect based on discussions between assistant coaches and the scouting staff. Coaches receive buckets of film from Snead and the scouting department in three waves over March/April and by then have access to the in-depth reports in JAARS. The coaching and scouting sides then meet deep into April. If they are stuck on a player, or if there is an argument, a question or exaggerated interest, Sugarman books a flight.

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The work done during this time can lead to roster-altering decisions, even for late additions to the itinerary.

Last spring, Sugarman was traveling through the Southwest when he got a call from scouting director James Gladstone. Could he add this receiver from BYU to his schedule in between schools? Western area scout Vito Gonella kept raving about Puka Nacua in meetings, and when coaches got to his tape, a few gave him “hot” badges despite his grouping in a lower-ranked cluster of prospects.

At BYU, Sugarman spent several hours breaking down film with Nacua and came away floored by his energy, schematic knowledge, recall and quick grasp of new concepts. “He was talking like he was a coach,” Sugarman said. “He was teaching (the offense). He knew every player’s job, including the linemen.”

“This guy will transcend quickly,” Sugarman wrote in JAARS. The Rams drafted Nacua with their last pick in the fifth round, and he broke the rookie receiving record in 2023.

GO DEEPER

Inside Rams rookie WR Puka Nacua's big numbers, from work behind the scenes

The Rams don’t formally attend February’s NFL Scouting Combine as a coaching or scouting staff, so outside of the odd handshake or getting a HEXACO result they didn’t previously have, they do not generally meet with prospects there. Certain Los Angeles executives hole up in quiet parts of the hotel complex around downtown Indianapolis, the annual site of the combine, but they are on what Snead calls “specific missions” that have more to do with overall offseason roster-building, networking and analytics. The Rams’ scouting department and coaching staff continue to work remotely or at their Thousand Oaks, Calif., practice facility with combine drills broadcasting on office T.V.s and athletic testing numbers uploading in real time to JAARS.

 

The Rams’ medical and athletic training staff do attend the combine because the formal medical assessments conducted there are a crucial part of the total evaluation. Players go through the process position by position across the span of several hours when they arrive in Indianapolis. The medical testing site is split into six separate rooms, with team physicians and athletic training staff from all 32 teams spread out among the rooms. Each player takes six physicals, one per room, with his information then entered into a shared database among the teams.

From there, teams can follow up with their own cross-checks. Rams’ VP of sports medicine and performance Reggie Scott combs through the medical information and inputs his own interpretations into JAARS along with a “risk grade” for each player. His grades and notes mark a major checkpoint in the Rams’ draft process.

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“None of us want to get blindsided,” Scott said. “There’s no competitive advantage here in that way because it’s player health. … It’s how we ‘risk’ them that is different. That’s where you (add) your proprietary information.”

In JAARS, senior scouting and coaching personnel can also find analyses on leaguewide position injury trends and patterns from the Rams’ schematic assignments, position and practice output demands. The latter studies, compiled by data and analytics director Jake Temme and scouting strategist Nicole Blake, use player tracking and weight training data acquired during practices throughout the season. They help determine what type of workload a player with a higher “risk grade” could reasonably manage if drafted by the Rams and whether that could be sustainable.

Temme and Blake also include studies on draft trends and a sliding “risk scale” in their analyses. If a player has a lengthy injury history, but also has an excellent physical skill set and/or emotional quotient, at what round might he be considered, and how would his risks be managed?

In January, after the college football season ends, Rams area and OTT scouts begin a set of virtual meetings with Gladstone. The area scouts are the lead voices in these meetings. Snead sits in, but his screen is off and he doesn’t chime in.

Temme and Blake are also on the call. From her office at the Rams’ practice facility, Blake pulls up the group meeting, controlled by Gladstone and his shared screen, on a large T.V. over her desk. Across her desk are three additional computers, one open to a view of Snead’s screen and another connected to a time-logging device.

 

On his screen, which the scouts cannot see, Snead manipulates what he calls “the call sheet” as they discuss prospects. The sheet looks like a series of rectangles that split players by position into different buckets. There are no round-by-round grades, only four overall tiers into which players are then “bucketed.”

By mid-April, all draft-eligible players are split into nine buckets based on the Rams’ finished evaluations, which include the medical and character checks completed in March and, for some, notes from Sugarman’s visits. The buckets aren’t always “rankings” — some are lateral to others. Additional categories are added in April as college free agency position committees begin (CFA, also called undrafted free agent or UDFA).

Buckets

NO.	TITLE
1	Math changer | Total package
2	Reliable starter
3	Math changing starter | Range of caution flags
4	Impactful contributor | Clean profile
5	Talented enough to contribute but less predictable
6	Trustworthy but less talented
7	Late IQ or PQ
8	Major concerns | Off board or reconsider at end of draft
9	Likely drafted | Not a Rams fit

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Committees, the 'Les Fund' and dance music: How the Rams' UDFA process works

The area scouts don’t see Snead move players around the call sheet — or hear from him — in meetings because he doesn’t want to influence their arguments about players. Blake, who can see Snead’s maneuvering, uses the time-logging device to annotate his moves and takes notes about what inspired them. She also flags any spikes in conversation between the scouts.

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For example, an area scout’s voice raised with excitement during a conversation about a prospect’s pro day. Gladstone asked the area scout to compare the player to another at the same position. As he did, Snead grouped the two together on his call sheet (unbeknownst to the area scouts). Blake filed the time and noted the nature of the spike. Over time, dozens of those charts are matched with prospects to create a tangible representation of the cliche, “scouts really stood on the table for (player).”

It is her job, Blake explained, to study how the Rams scouting department makes decisions. Each draft pick happens after a years-long timeline of micro-decisions, arguments, evaluations, sourcing and meetings. How did the group eventually reach its conclusion over that time? Blake can pinpoint the exact moment the tide turned for or against a prospect, what the discussion was like, who altered their own opinions after hearing others’ arguments, which staff members seemed to influence others and more.

Throughout pre-draft meetings in 2017, Snead kept noticing introverted area scout Brian Hill raising his voice when he talked about Eastern Washington receiver Cooper Kupp. Those moments — especially coming from a personality like Hill — built a stronger argument for Kupp in Snead’s mind that complemented harder data points, such as his GPS data from the Senior Bowl.

In 2022, when Blake was hired full-time out of Stanford’s MBA program, she and Temme began installing a process to turn the anecdotal moments in a decision-making process, such as Hill’s voice changing, into quantifiable evidence for or against the selection of a player during the crucial minutes of a pick.

Gathering this information also helps Blake engage in unique debates with Snead away from the rest of the group. On a particular day in January, Snead moved a player up one bucket on his call sheet and moved another down when the area scout expressed his excitement about the first player and as Gladstone drew out a comparison between the two.

During a break, Snead poked his head into Blake’s office. Didn’t Snead think he should simply expand the bucket instead of moving the second player out of it, she asked. The coaching staff, who would soon begin its first wave of draft evaluations, would get an initial exposure to only that first bucket of players, with the next bucket to follow a few weeks after. Getting on coaches’ desks in the first bucket is often a good thing for the player, but if the scouting staff was able to compare the first player to the second — unaware of the movement by Snead on the call sheet — shouldn’t the coaches do the same?

Snead’s call sheet remains in a state of constant movement between January and the week before the draft as meetings with scouts and then coaches continue. Draftniks and analysts — even other NFL teams — refer to lists of ranked prospects as “big boards” and keep them organized as such. But Snead’s call sheet looks more like the massive play card McVay uses in games. Both operate with similar strategies.

 

Where McVay groups preferred plays together depending on different scenarios and scribbles notes to himself in the margins, Snead groups positions and players on a massive screen in JAARS, moving between the nine buckets and using the program’s simplified language — colors, badges, one-liners such as “superpower” and “kryptonite” — to get quick refreshers on that prospect. McVay has less than 40 seconds to decide which play he’ll run and communicate it, and the rest is out of his hands. Depending on the draft round, Snead has between four and 10 minutes to make a player selection, and the rest is out of his hands.

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Teams with a large number of picks, especially condensed into one section of the draft, characterize these picks as “throwing darts.” Prospects are imperfect in later rounds, but throw enough darts and the law of averages says a couple of them will work out. But Snead uses strategy here — these are informed bets, not blind throws.

Coaches will call certain plays based on studies of opponents’ tendencies. So will Snead. Temme and the pro scouts run programs that track trends and patterns in rival teams’ draft selections: When one team drafts receivers, do they only look for players who run a sub-4.4 second 40-yard dash? When another team drafts offensive linemen, will they remove a player with short arms from their board? How are character or injury flags weighed by certain teams?

Compiling and analyzing this data can help the Rams navigate the hectic later rounds. In 2023, the Rams had four fifth-round picks after some maneuvering via trades. Nacua, in his respective bucket, was grouped near the top of Snead’s call sheet entering the round. The Rams also needed a linebacker who could play special teams and a tight end, among other positions.

Snead and the staff in the draft room, including McVay, had to decide which pick to use on Nacua and identified other teams in that round who could be looking for receivers. Analysts pulled up those teams’ histories of preferred traits and previous selections at receiver.

Nacua had some injury issues in college and ran a slow 40-yard dash — both of which affected his draft stock. With that information in mind, Snead believed the Rams could wait out other teams who could be interested in a receiver. McVay rattled with anxiety beside Snead as he called in picks for outside linebacker Nick Hampton, offensive lineman Warren McClendon and tight end Davis Allen before finally selecting Nacua at No. 177.

It wasn’t assured that Snead’s bet against other teams would pay off, but the staff informed it with data and pure luck did the rest.

A year after Nacua’s historic rookie season, Snead likes to say that had the Rams truly known what he would do in the NFL, they wouldn’t have waited nearly five entire rounds to select him. “Hell of a plan,” said Snead of his maneuvering last year. “But next time, we’re gonna pick him earlier.”

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The Rams don’t have the space at their temporary practice facilities to house draft operations for their entire coaching, scouting and analytics staff the week of the draft, so since 2021 they have worked out of a series of mansions scattered around Los Angeles. This year, they decamped to a three-level, 9,200-square-foot home in Hermosa Beach that opened up over the Pacific Ocean.

It was stocked to bursting with catered food and fresh coffee, but some of the senior scouts passed around a bottle of apple cider vinegar in a paper bag first thing each morning, pouring a shot apiece into small plastic cups and knocking it back. They said it was good for their blood pressure.

Early Thursday morning, hours before the start of the first round, Snead made a series of calls. He checked with the Atlanta Falcons, who were scheduled to pick at No. 8, as well as teams situated around the Rams’ own pick at No. 19 to see what it might cost to move up or down in the round.

In their final meeting before the draft, Temme and Blake issued a last anonymous survey to coaches and scouts. On it, the group was asked a question: Who would you make a Ram? Florida State outside linebacker Jared Verse was one of three players who received the highest consensus.

 

Braden Fiske and Jared Verse are reuniting in L.A. after playing together at FSU last season. (Don Juan Moore / Getty Images)

Verse had been the topic of much conversation between coaches and scouts in the final weeks before the draft. The Rams knew they could not replace recently retired star Aaron Donald with one top defensive lineman or outside linebacker; it would take two or more players to get back even some of the production they had with the future Hall of Famer.

In early April, the staff held a series of meetings that argued for and against “pods” of defensive linemen and outside linebackers as potential tandems. Verse and defensive tackle Braden Fiske, teammates at Florida State, were identified among those tandems as having a unique chemistry. If the Rams could get Verse, they would also go after Fiske.

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On Snead’s call sheet, No. 52 (their second pick in the draft) was too far down to get any of the players who had more favorable evaluations. If they didn’t get Verse at No. 19, they’d still try to trade away from that zone. But if they had to trade up to get Verse, they probably wouldn’t be able to trade up again to get Fiske.

A week and a half before the draft, Sugarman quietly flew to Tallahassee. Analysts and fans were still buzzing about a report that the Rams traveled to Penn State to visit with outside linebacker Chop Robinson two days earlier (it was just Sugarman). His hours-long meeting with Verse slipped by unnoticed.

 

As the first round played out Thursday night — scouts at hard-wired computers with JAARS open on the screens in two large rooms on the top level of the house, and Snead, McVay, Gladstone, Blake, Temme and others in a separate “war room” with Snead’s call sheet on large monitors at the front — the board fell uniquely. Fourteen offensive players came off the board first, including six quarterbacks, before UCLA outside linebacker Laiatu Latu broke the streak at No. 15.

Just past 7 p.m. PT, the Minnesota Vikings traded up to jump the Rams and Cincinnati Bengals at No. 17. Outside linebackers coach Joe Coniglio started pacing back and forth along the lower level of the house, his phone in his hand. If the Rams were picking a player at his position, he’d be called two stories up a winding staircase and into the war room.

The Vikings took outside linebacker Dallas Turner. Coniglio took the stairs two at a time, and as the Bengals selected Georgia tackle Amarius Mims, a low rumble of celebration from the top level started making its way down into the rest of the house. “Got lucky when Jared fell,” a slightly disheveled Snead said later.

Teams spend millions of dollars, produce mountains of data and hundreds of scouting reports after thousands of hours of evaluation — and still, some of the draft will inevitably come down to pure, uncontrollable luck.

There are always curveballs. The Rams almost missed their chance to call Verse on Thursday night and tell him they were changing his life by sending his name to the league on their draft card at No. 19.

They had his phone number incorrect. It was one digit off.