Now, We Sit and Wait

Really happy to have you hanging with us.

Folks, we have some great topics for Drew to dive into. Stay tuned.

Something I’ve always been curious about. In my personal experience with interviews I’ve had some really good interviewers and some really bad ones. I’ve also interviewed a ton of people.

It’s always baffled me that they use tools like the Wonderlic at the combine that are obviously not predictive of anything useful and made me question whether NFL teams are very competent at the actual interview process or whether things just sort themselves out through film review, camps, and a few seasons.

You said you feel like the NFL is pretty close to a meritocracy, but I’m curious about the experience of actually interviewing with all the teams and doing workouts for them. Do you feel like they do a good job of revealing someone’s talent, character, and on-field decision making in that process?

Also, glad you contributed here. Welcome.

Great question. I feel they do a sound job of revealing those things. What scouts see on film is more important than anything else. Unless you see a guy has what it takes on film, you won’t give him a shot period. But, on film, there are several intangibles that make it difficult to pinpoint what makes a guy tick. So, NFL teams have put together a process that best help them understand the method to a players madness. Is he instinctual? Is he a sharp student of the game? Is he a freakish athlete that simply excels over his opponents? All the tests players go through during the process are an attempt quantify, or add merit, to the eye ball test that causes one to approve or disapprove whether a player can make it in the NFL. Sometimes a guy’s film supercedes anything he could do (or not do) at the combine or Pro Day while another guy’s approval is contingent on the meetings, Wonderlic, and workouts. Either way, the film sets the basis while everything following that supports it or causes a player to get denied.

A very nice summary of what it must feel like while waiting to see if you’ll make millions, just get an NFL look, or be damn disappointed while no one calls. It must be a surreal feeling. Unless your name is Andrew Luck or Robert Griffin, you really have no idea when you’ll get the call, where you’ll end up moving to, who you’ll end up playing with and for.

Have you caught up with Joel Klatt since The Hit?

I can still hear that one. It was Dec 3 2005, 92 degrees at Reliant and CU had given up about three minutes into the first quarter. But that hit sent a message. It was also payback for the Big 12 Championship loss to the buffs.

Next thing you know Klatt is out of football working as an announcer on FSSW.

Really interesting and insightful post. It’s great to hear from you.

Really enjoyed it. Very cool to have you contributing here. Makes an awesome site even better.

Glad to have you aboard, Drew. My favorite memory of your playing days was watching you smother Heisman thief Reggie Bush in airtight coverage… only to set him up for a bone-jarring Ced Griffin hit.

That was an INT, btw. You were robbed.

I have so many questions, but so few that would be deemed appropriate by management.

I think you captured the feelings of what these guys are going through very well. There isn’t a more competitive, more exclusive fraternity on the planet and waiting to hear you’ve made even Step 1 must be riddled with anxiety.

I wrote something about the “too smart and too many life options for football” premise and I wonder if you can expand your personal thoughts on that. Sadly, I think there may be some merit to it. It takes a pretty special make-up to be both extremely bright (or is it a certain kind of intelligence that’s distracting?) and to possess the singular focus and capacity for endless monotony that pro football entails. Not to mention the calculus you start to do in the middle of your career when you’ve gotten paid, the injuries are mounting, and you’re starting to look at risk-reward.

Also, I need a good agent or runner story. Thanks! Looking forward to your next installment.

I was going to ask a question pretty similar to Scip’s football-related intelligence question, but here’s one that’s kind of related to evaluation and film breakdown in general.

I’d love your thoughts on the degree to which reasonably smart, savvy fans with DVRs and some time on their hands can reach pretty correct conclusions about player performance and coaching performance (the latter as it relates mainly to scheme/play design). Some of the (we presume) best content on this site has featured insightful breakdowns of things like Harsin’s run game schemes, and most of the best post-game post-mortems and analyses make an effort to evaluate or grade individual performances to some degree. Some of this site’s best authors have been involved in lengthy discussions in this forum and others around the conclusions they draw from those analyses, and some folks always tend to push back with a variation on the refrain of “you can’t know what you’re talking about if you’re not a coach.”

I tend to believe that things like player perfomance (not trying to be a pro scout and evaluate how a college player will translate to the pros, but how well he’s performing/executing on a given play) and scheme can be largely knowable by fans who take the time to learn and understand the fundamentals of scheme, design and assignments, but I’d love your thoughts.

Can we as fans make statements like,

“The DE is the only guy who could reasonably have outside contain responsibility here, and he let himself get hooked inside - he made a mistake by not keeping his outside shoulder free.”

Or

“The center has tried and failed to reach block a DT in a 3 technique five times in this game. Either the play design is asking him to do something unreasonable or he’s made a mistake on his assignment five times, but either way there’s something amiss in the coaching booth.”

with some degree of accuracy, or are we always going to be swinging in the dark if we haven’t been in every positional meeting with the players and coaches? And what would you recommend that we as fans do or learn to be smarter evaluators and critics of the game?