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You would see them in press boxes across the league throughout the summer.
Talking about pro scouts, who are different than college scouts.
Pro scouts travel around the NFL during the preseason looking at preseason games, evaluating talent, to suggest waiver claims for their organization.
This summer there were no games to scout, so the job of the pro scouts changed.
So how are they trying to search out gems from other teams this year?
One way, according to a league source, is by monitoring the Twitter feeds of NFL beat writers around the league to see which players are looking good in various camps.
There were no fans at camps this year, and you know darn well, in the past, there were reps from opposing team, looking at practices.
So this year, no preseason games, and no fans at practices, so the only eyes at these practices, that might comment on who’s looking good, were the beat writers.
But pro scouts better be careful whose information they are buying into. There are some beat writers who know what they are looking at, but others don’t.
Another way they were trying to gather some information is looking at practice video snippets teams put on their websites.
You might see some drills and scrimmage action that is helpful. It would’ve been wise for teams to limit the practice video they put on their website and Twitter this summer.
So it’s going to be interesting to see what happens on the waiver wire claims this year at the final cut down.
“You just never know what’s going to happen because with no preseason games, there’s not really film on some of these guys,” said Adam Gase.
Because there was no preseason action, there is a feeling around the league, it might be easier for a team to slip a player to their practice squad this year on the final cut down, without as many guys getting claimed.
One really tough part of the evaluation process involves tackling and toughness. Since there was no preseason, and in practice, teams don’t want you tackling teammates, they just want you to wrap them up standing, how do you know which guys are “All Florham Park,” but might be soft in real games, with real tackling?
“It’s an imperfect science for sure, but, that’s what coaches and front office people get paid to do, is evaluate that and do everything they can and be right on those judgments,” Gase said.
I think what’s going to happen is team personnel departments are going to base waiver claims on if they liked the player in college. Let’s say the Jets wanted to pick a player in the sixth round, but another team beat them to the punch, and that player is waived, they might put in a claim based on the draft grade they had on the player. The problem with that is the guy might have had a lousy summer, and you didn’t know it.
And obviously teams will claim young veterans, who actually played in NFL games the last few years. so this is pro tape on them.
But the pro scouts certainly had to get creative this year to earn their paychecks with no preseason games to scout.
September 4, 2020
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