BUCCANEERS: Measuring Up
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers, represented by a raft of about 40 coaches, scouts and medical professionals, will head to the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis next Tuesday. When they come back six days later, they’ll have a fully-nuanced draft board bearing the names of approximately 300 prospects.
Of course, that’s only because they have the draft board in good shape heading into the Combine.
This is how you avoid the curse of the “workout warrior.”
The workout warrior is always the most interesting figure at the Combine. He is, in most cases, a solid talent projected to be a late first-round pick, or maybe a second or third-rounder. Then he arrives in Indianapolis, blows the ceilings off his “measurables” and is suddenly a draft-board “mover.” That is, strong performances in tests such as the 40-yard dash and the 225-pound bench press repetitions suddenly make this once solid prospect into a potential star.
The danger here, for a team that might suddenly consider using a high first-round pick on this newly-created star, is that the player’s strong workouts become a bigger factor than his demonstrated ability to play football. It’s the “potential” trap. Upside.
And that’s why you don’t create your draft board at the Combine, or in its immediate afterglow. The Bucs are surely not alone around the NFL in arranging their draft board in mid-February then using the Combine to confirm opinions, settle debates or uncover potential problem areas.
“We just got through with our draft meetings – the preliminary, pre-combine meetings – in which we just basically line the board up,” said Buccaneers Director of College Scouting Dennis Hickey. “We get an idea and target some guys, which gives our coaches a feel of how to narrow down the list a little bit. There are over 300 players (on the board) and it’s hard for them to focus on every one, so we kind of target some guys in that way.”
The Bucs have spent the last few months not just targeting certain players but also specific areas of concern with those players. While the 40-yard dashes and the shuttle runs will draw the most media attention at the combine – and create the numbers that produce these workout warriors – there are two non-performance issues that are at the top of the Bucs’ list of concerns next week in Indianapolis: Health and head.
“Before the combine, we identify some concerns that we need to check out, medically,” Hickey explained. “It’s a good chance for us to alert our trainers and our medical staff as to what to look for with certain players, to make sure we check them out, whether it be an ankle or a shoulder problem or whatever. That way our medical staff knows what they’re getting into going into the combine.”
Confirming a player’s health is as important as determining his talents, if not more so. After all, as Hickey put it, a player who’s talented but can’t play “really does you no good.” And if he costs you a high draft pick without returning much in the long run, then he in fact can do you harm. This area of evaluation is also as tricky as pure talent scouting, but the Combine gives teams their best opportunity to erase as many doubts as possible.
“It’s a great chance for our doctors and [Head Trainer] Todd Toriscelli and our training staff to get to break these guys down,” said Hickey. “You identify future concerns and possibilities and help us try to predict which guys will be a medical issue. You can never completely predict that, but you can get a much better idea. And without their medical expertise, that is something we [as scouts] could never get close to predicting. They have all the equipment and people on hand there that they need for whatever examination they need to do, so it’s a great opportunity, very valuable.”
Getting a read on what’s inside a player’s head is even less exact, but the Bucs do their best each year by holding an endless string of face-to-face meetings with potential draftees. They’ve already knocked out 200 of these interviews and will get in another 60 at the Combine, which in recent years has regimented the evening meeting process more regularly than in the past, when it was something of a free-for-all. Many of the earlier interviews have been conducted by scouts, but the sit-downs in Indianapolis will involve members of the coaching staff, as well. That makes them particularly useful.
“It’s a chance to give our coaches a comfort level with the player, so they know his personality, his issues, his possible issues, whether he’s going to fit into their room with the other players, and so on. They’re just getting a feel for him. Sometimes they hear our character information, but that’s not the same as meeting them in person and getting their own ideas firsthand.”
In other words, if you want to move up the Buccaneers’ draft board at the combine, you’ll probably do it in the presence of doctors or coaches-turned-interviewers, not in front of stopwatches. The Bucs believe a young man’s football playing ability is best represented by the collection of videotape that his college career produced. While Hickey concedes that an out-of-the-ordinary 40-yard-dash time, good or bad, can significantly alter a player’s draft status, he insists that it’s rare for a single sprint to dramatically change the Bucs’ draft board.
“To me, the face-to-face interaction for the coaches and the medical staff is the primary benefit of [the combine],” said Hickey. “From our perspective, the number-one thing is their play from the season. The 40-time, while it’s nice and it’s a part of the evaluation, it’s confirmation, not the primary concern. We don’t start our evaluations with their 40-time and then see how they played.
“That’s the nice thing about having the meetings before the combine. We know what they are as a player. We want football players, not workout warriors. Hopefully, we can eliminate that by going over the meetings and lining up our board now, so it’s difficult for a guy who wasn’t a good football player and didn’t have upside to all of a sudden jump over other guys. You measure it, but it’s not reactionary. That’s not what the Combine is for.”
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