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The NFL Draft Information Trade: How Teams Gather Nuggets of Knowledge to Shape Draft Decisions
By JENNY VRENTAS
April 23, 2019
Ian Rapoport found himself in an uncomfortable position. The NFL draft was due to start in a matter of hours, and one team’s general manager was asking him to play the role of carrier pigeon.
“I need you to tell [a second GM] that I’m not going to draft [a specific first-round prospect],” the GM told him.
Rapoport, an insider for NFL Network, didn’t know what to make of this request, and he didn’t want to do it. Just tell him you spoke to me, the GM insisted, and this is what I wanted him to know. Rapoport agreed, as long as he could be transparent. So, he contacted the second general manager, explained what the first general manager had told him, and….
“Why don’t you tell [the first GM] that he’s full of sh--,” the second GM replied, “and I don’t believe him.”
Underlying the intrigue and drama of the NFL draft is a black market for information. Teams need to know about more than just the players—they also need to know who else likes the players they like and where in the draft order they have to be to get those players.
They cast a wide net to get that information, one that includes media insiders like Rapoport and ESPN’s Adam Schefter, and even each other. One agent recalls being surprised to see a text exchange between two high-ranking executives from different teams about a player he represented. One of the execs told the other that his team was not going to draft that position high that year, but he really thought the other team should take a look at this particular player. He concluded by saying, “You owe me.”
Several GMs referred to the intelligence trade as “critical” to maneuvering the draft, so much so, that they refused to even talk about their tactics. “I wish I could tell you,” Seahawks GM John Schneider says, “but I don’t want to give that up, you know?” And, like any underground economy, you can never be sure if the goods you’re getting are legitimate, but that certainly doesn’t stop anyone from trying.
“That’s what it’s like this time of year,” Rapoport says. “Everyone wants you to know they are not interested in what they actually are, and everyone is wondering, ‘If we want to make this move, how actually feasible is it?’ ”
That scenario he found himself in before a previous year’s NFL draft is the perfect example. We’ll never know for sure if the first GM was indeed full of sh--, because he never had the chance to draft the player of interest—the second GM traded up in front of his team and nabbed him.
The draft is a culmination of a year’s worth of scouting. Teams watch, measure, grill and rank hundreds of NFL hopefuls to fill out their rosters with new, and relatively inexpensive, young talent. But none of that work matters if you can’t get the players you want the most. “The whole key to the draft,” Schefter says, “is knowing where you have to get guys and knowing where you can wait on guys.”
Before other teams and the media come in to exchange info, teams’ intelligence-gathering starts within their own staffs. Each club has a pro personnel department that spends the year scouting and studying the rosters of the other 31 NFL teams. While the college scouting staff is front and center leading up to the draft in evaluating the class of NFL prospects, the pro personnel staff contributes in a different way. They put together detailed lists of each club’s roster strengths and weaknesses, and biggest needs, giving their own team’s decision-makers an informed picture of who might be going after what, first in free agency and then in the draft.
Most teams still use oversized three-ring binders stuffed full of information in their war rooms, and these often include a single-page cheat sheet for each team in the league. On the front will be the team’s depth chart, additions and losses in free agency, and its top needs. On the back is a list of that team’s top 30 visits and who on its staff attended which college’s pro days. When Daniel Jeremiah, now a draft analyst for the NFL Network, was a scout for the Ravens, Eagles and Browns, he was responsible for sending this info as part of his write-up from each pro day for Baltimore to include on these cheat sheets.
The week of the draft, college scouts phone players to confirm their contact information on draft weekend. If they can keep the player on the line, they ask a short questionnaire, including his list of visits and private workouts. If a player mentions “a team that didn’t want me to say,” Jeremiah says the long-running joke among scouts is to reply, “Oh, and how are the Patriots doing?”
In Atlanta, GM Thomas Dimitroff says the pro personnel staff is also responsible for tracking what each club’s decision-makers are saying publicly, including during the ritual of the pre-draft press conferences. Ravens GM Eric DeCosta termed his the “Liars’ Luncheon,” but other teams are always watching and scouring for clues. “Sometimes you just listen,” 49ers general manager John Lynch adds, “because some people are better than others at hiding,” aka lying.
https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/04/23/n...edia-adam-schefter-ian-rapoport-rick-gosselin
By JENNY VRENTAS
April 23, 2019
Ian Rapoport found himself in an uncomfortable position. The NFL draft was due to start in a matter of hours, and one team’s general manager was asking him to play the role of carrier pigeon.
“I need you to tell [a second GM] that I’m not going to draft [a specific first-round prospect],” the GM told him.
Rapoport, an insider for NFL Network, didn’t know what to make of this request, and he didn’t want to do it. Just tell him you spoke to me, the GM insisted, and this is what I wanted him to know. Rapoport agreed, as long as he could be transparent. So, he contacted the second general manager, explained what the first general manager had told him, and….
“Why don’t you tell [the first GM] that he’s full of sh--,” the second GM replied, “and I don’t believe him.”
Underlying the intrigue and drama of the NFL draft is a black market for information. Teams need to know about more than just the players—they also need to know who else likes the players they like and where in the draft order they have to be to get those players.
They cast a wide net to get that information, one that includes media insiders like Rapoport and ESPN’s Adam Schefter, and even each other. One agent recalls being surprised to see a text exchange between two high-ranking executives from different teams about a player he represented. One of the execs told the other that his team was not going to draft that position high that year, but he really thought the other team should take a look at this particular player. He concluded by saying, “You owe me.”
Several GMs referred to the intelligence trade as “critical” to maneuvering the draft, so much so, that they refused to even talk about their tactics. “I wish I could tell you,” Seahawks GM John Schneider says, “but I don’t want to give that up, you know?” And, like any underground economy, you can never be sure if the goods you’re getting are legitimate, but that certainly doesn’t stop anyone from trying.
“That’s what it’s like this time of year,” Rapoport says. “Everyone wants you to know they are not interested in what they actually are, and everyone is wondering, ‘If we want to make this move, how actually feasible is it?’ ”
That scenario he found himself in before a previous year’s NFL draft is the perfect example. We’ll never know for sure if the first GM was indeed full of sh--, because he never had the chance to draft the player of interest—the second GM traded up in front of his team and nabbed him.
The draft is a culmination of a year’s worth of scouting. Teams watch, measure, grill and rank hundreds of NFL hopefuls to fill out their rosters with new, and relatively inexpensive, young talent. But none of that work matters if you can’t get the players you want the most. “The whole key to the draft,” Schefter says, “is knowing where you have to get guys and knowing where you can wait on guys.”
Before other teams and the media come in to exchange info, teams’ intelligence-gathering starts within their own staffs. Each club has a pro personnel department that spends the year scouting and studying the rosters of the other 31 NFL teams. While the college scouting staff is front and center leading up to the draft in evaluating the class of NFL prospects, the pro personnel staff contributes in a different way. They put together detailed lists of each club’s roster strengths and weaknesses, and biggest needs, giving their own team’s decision-makers an informed picture of who might be going after what, first in free agency and then in the draft.
Most teams still use oversized three-ring binders stuffed full of information in their war rooms, and these often include a single-page cheat sheet for each team in the league. On the front will be the team’s depth chart, additions and losses in free agency, and its top needs. On the back is a list of that team’s top 30 visits and who on its staff attended which college’s pro days. When Daniel Jeremiah, now a draft analyst for the NFL Network, was a scout for the Ravens, Eagles and Browns, he was responsible for sending this info as part of his write-up from each pro day for Baltimore to include on these cheat sheets.
The week of the draft, college scouts phone players to confirm their contact information on draft weekend. If they can keep the player on the line, they ask a short questionnaire, including his list of visits and private workouts. If a player mentions “a team that didn’t want me to say,” Jeremiah says the long-running joke among scouts is to reply, “Oh, and how are the Patriots doing?”
In Atlanta, GM Thomas Dimitroff says the pro personnel staff is also responsible for tracking what each club’s decision-makers are saying publicly, including during the ritual of the pre-draft press conferences. Ravens GM Eric DeCosta termed his the “Liars’ Luncheon,” but other teams are always watching and scouring for clues. “Sometimes you just listen,” 49ers general manager John Lynch adds, “because some people are better than others at hiding,” aka lying.
https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/04/23/n...edia-adam-schefter-ian-rapoport-rick-gosselin
