couchscout
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Once again, just wanna say you're welcome to all those who stop by to thank me, ask questions or otherwise contribute to the thread. You guys are the reason I keep writing these each week. I do everything I can to answer all questions, and once again I apologize if I've missed yours, but keep them coming.
The Evolution of a Scout
If you have no interest in my childhood or how I became a scout, skip this section. I found it rather odd that one of the most frequent requests I get from people in PMs is asking how I knew I wanted to be a scout, or how I became a scout. This is both answers in one.
I was a strange kid, I could spend all day indoors during the summer reading, playing video games, tinkering with legos. While everyone was outside playing sports, I laughed at the sillyness of wasting time trying to prove who was born with more athletic gifts. I had no idea how mental sports, and in particular the sport of football are.
As an 11 year old, I had never so much as touched a football in my life. I spent most of my time hanging out with the kids that lived in our apartment complex, in particular one kid and his family. A lot of the neighborhood kids spent a lot of time there, mostly because the dad was such a cool guy. He was very mercurial, always sketching on his notepads and coming up with crazy ideas. His wife would eventually leave him and take his son with her, but somehow all the kids still hung around at his place (maybe it was the Super Nintendo and sparkling new copy of Street Fighter he'd just bought for his son.) He was previously in the military, but didn't work now because the government gave him some outrageous sum of money because he came up with some idea during the gulf war that saved them hundreds of thousands on fuel. During the 92 season playoffs, before the Cowboys game, he made a "bet" with all the kids, essentially he would give us all 5 dollars if the Cowboys won. We owed nothing if they didn't, but it was enough to get me to sit down and watch the game. Obviously the Cowboys went on to win that game and win the Super Bowl, and my life was changed forever. I haven't missed a Cowboys game since.
A few weeks later, one of the neighborhood kids got a football for his birthday and we all started playing. It didn't take long before we had broken up into standard teams that always played together. Of course, I had my team practicing, which the other teams made fun of us/me for. Very quickly I was in class drawing up plays, I remember "inventing" play action, before I even had a clue what it was. I called it a "circle pass" because the QB turned in a circle faking the handoff. By the age of 16 I had a full playbook for my 3 on 3 touch football team. Also, around that age I started to get some athletic ability (previously I was simply known as the slow kid who caught EVERYTHING). I started to stand out on the football field, and started to get noticed by the coaches because I not only knew my assignment on every play, but everyone elses as well. I started thinking about the game as the chess match that it is, spent hours figuring out what the design of a specific play was meant to do. What were it's inherent strengths and weaknesses. Not typical 16 year old stuff.
At age 18, a very little known PC game came out called Legends 98', this game had a full blown play creator in it, and I went straight to work. By the age of 21 I had used that game to develop an entire offensive playbook. For the record, I drew up a WR slip screen way before I ever saw it used in a game, not that I lay ANY claim to having invented the play. I graduated from college and went straight into the coaching ranks. It was at this time that I started to realize that I was much much better at the scheming and talent scouting part, and not nearly as good at the leader of men part. It slowly started to dawn on me that scouting was were I would fit in best.
I started doing a lot of self scouting for the teams I coached, using our game film to come up with tendencies, tell the coaching staff what players would fit better at other positions, etc. Before long it was obvious that my benefit to a coaching staff came entirely from those actions, and I really brought nothing when on the practice field. My coaching career was going down in the dumps and I already knew in my heart of hearts I didn't have some of the essential personality traits to be a really successful coach. I started spending more time in the film room, and then started recording Cowboy games, watching them dozens of times trying to catch everything I could from every angle I could. I was doing this entirely for my own need to be scouting, I never thought I'd actually be scouting in the NFL.
That fateful day, as much of my life was falling apart around me, I had that chance encounter of which I've told you all about. My life again was changed forever. Funny how a stupid bet by a Cowboy hater is what turned me into a life long Cowboy fan, and shaped my life in ways that I could have never seen.
Jason Garrett - Having called plays before, I'm well aware of the fallacy of trashing play calls. It's funny how you only get trashed when they don't work. I never had a single fan/parent/whatever send me an email or confront me and say "when you ran the ball down there from the 5 yard line and scored a TD, that was a terrible call, good thing you scored, but that was a terrible call." In fact, more often than not in those situations, I was getting applauded for surprising the defense and doing something unorthodox. All I can do is sit back and trust that Jason does as much self scouting as he says he does, and will figure out why this team is not scoring when they get in the red zone.
Tony Romo - I swear there is not a QB in the league that gets less help than Tony Romo. He's got receivers dropping passes, linemen letting him get killed, no running game to speak of, seemingly none of his receivers know any of the plays. It's a good thing the defense helps him out some, because otherwise he'd have a massive complex. Other than that, it's very clear he's still feeling pain, it's already been discussed at length in another thread here, so I won't get too far into it. But he's still very antsy in the pocket, and he's looking to get rid of the ball in a hurry. New England sat back in soft zone coverage almost the whole game, and Tony was more than happy to make the quick read, throw a quick pass for a few yards and live to play another play. I thought he managed himself and the game extremely well, and when we needed a big drive from him, he responded big time. Wish the rest of the offense would have done the same (I'm looking at you Miles Austin, Demarco Murray, Kyle Kosier and Tyron Smith)
Dez Bryant - I was asked via PM to look into Dez's route running this week. In general, I try not to talk Dez too much, because I'm quite critical of him. If I had no other info about him other than what I see on tape, it would be completely obvious to me that he doesn't study his playbook. But I also have now two sources that tell me the Cowboys are not at all happy about how little of the playbook he knows. Much like Roy Williams, the Cowboys only ask Dez to run a few routes. Slant, fly, drag, dig, that's pretty much it. He rounds off his dig route, which is disappointing to see. He doesn't stick that foot in the ground and explode inside, which leads to him getting open fine against zone coverage, but he's not beating man coverage on that route. He doesn't run what are known as "pro" routes, like the deep comeback, the stick nod, the jerk, the post corner and post corner post very often. Most likely that's because he's not very good at them. All that being said, to say Dez is a bad route runner would be inaccurate. It's that he hasn't learned all the intricacies of route running yet. There is so much to running routes, even most advanced football fans have no idea about. There is a whole jargon just for route running, I could sit here and have a conversation with a pro WR about running routes, and a lot of the people who will read this thread would only understand about 60% of it. The good news about Dez is that unlike almost every other player in the NFL, he doesn't have one single physical limitation. Once he figures out the mental part of it, he'll be one of the most dangerous players in the league. Let's hope he's still a Cowboy when that happens.
Miles Austin - Catch. The. Football. I'm so infuriated with Austin right now, it's hard for me to describe. We got our QB out there playing with a broken rib, behind a line that seems intent on getting him killed, and you can't catch the damn ball when he actually get the time to throw it to you? If I'm coaching this team, he's seeing signifigantly reduced play time until he learns how to catch. Oh, and P.S. I love Miles Austin!
Demarco Murray - Murray was a mixed bag on Sunday. He's hitting the hole a little better, and admittedly he's gotten better about that each week. He's still trying to bounce the play outside too much, once he learns that he's not the fastest guy on the field anymore he'll turn into a pretty good back. I'm still on the fence with Murray, I need to see more carries to come up with a true eval of him. For now, all I can say is that there is clearly potential there, he's just gotta start hitting the hole with authority, and stop looking to get to the edge every play.
The Offensive Line - This is a deeply flawed unit. The team wants to utilize more athletic linemen to run more plays designed to get the running back out on the edge, and in space. The problem is that our center is much more suited for a straight ahead run game. On wider running plays, he has to make reach blocks that he simply doesn't get out of his stance after snapping the ball fast enough to do. If you ask him to snap the ball and eliminate the guy directly in front of him so the back can run through the A gap, he can do that with consistency. And of course, the rest of the OL is not suited to that play style. I think the overhaul of this OL is a year away, as much as I like Costa for what he is, I don't think he fits with the rest of this line. I have a feeling we will have a new center here next year, and Costa goes on to have a decent career elsewhere. Sidenote: Kosier played the worst game I've seen him play as a Cowboy by FAR. He was getting absolutely killed with consistency. He'll rebound I'm sure, but I found it interesting that it wasn't our younger players that contributed the most to our offensive woes.
Rob Ryan vs. Wade Phillips vs.........Michael Irvin???
I remember hearing Michael Irvin say on the radio once (and I'm pretty certain it's been brought up here before as well) that back in his playing days, it was players beating players, but now its scheme beating scheme. I don't think there is a more accurate way to put it. These days, it's ALL about your scheme, and how you choose to implement it. The absolute biggest difference I see between Phillips and Ryan is that above statement. Wade looked around and saw the immense amount of talent on this defense and said "ok, we're just gonna line up and execute, because we have better players than you". Where Ryan said, "wow, these players are awesome, when I put them in my scheme and design plays to fit their strengths, we're gonna put the brakes on a lot of offenses". This defense is so much more active under Ryan than Phillips, both pre and post snap. They are twisting, stunting, looping, running E/T games, etc. They are actually using the surprise jam on tight ends, where someone that doesn't even appear to be covering the TE jumps over at the snap and really holds up his route, then jumps back into their responsibility. It's unreal to see, I don't know how many noticed, but Jay Ratliff had Hernandez one on one at one point He caught the ball, but he was tackled immediately. Our LBs aren't doing the same things over and over like they did under Wade and it's confusing offenses. The predictability is out the window!!
The idea that all we have to do is execute is a complete fallacy. A good example is if the defense has called a double A gap blitz. If by chance on that one play, the offense has called a WR slip screen, all the execution that exists on this planet is not gonna stop the offense from getting about 10 yards. There is no counter for it. And thats what Michael meant by scheme beating scheme. A lot of big plays you see in the NFL these days are more a product of a proper play call against the right defense than anything else. Ryan understands this and has concocted an amazing scheme. I have a feeling he'll be as revered defensively as much or more than his brother by the end of the 2012 season.
The Evolution of a Scout
If you have no interest in my childhood or how I became a scout, skip this section. I found it rather odd that one of the most frequent requests I get from people in PMs is asking how I knew I wanted to be a scout, or how I became a scout. This is both answers in one.
I was a strange kid, I could spend all day indoors during the summer reading, playing video games, tinkering with legos. While everyone was outside playing sports, I laughed at the sillyness of wasting time trying to prove who was born with more athletic gifts. I had no idea how mental sports, and in particular the sport of football are.
As an 11 year old, I had never so much as touched a football in my life. I spent most of my time hanging out with the kids that lived in our apartment complex, in particular one kid and his family. A lot of the neighborhood kids spent a lot of time there, mostly because the dad was such a cool guy. He was very mercurial, always sketching on his notepads and coming up with crazy ideas. His wife would eventually leave him and take his son with her, but somehow all the kids still hung around at his place (maybe it was the Super Nintendo and sparkling new copy of Street Fighter he'd just bought for his son.) He was previously in the military, but didn't work now because the government gave him some outrageous sum of money because he came up with some idea during the gulf war that saved them hundreds of thousands on fuel. During the 92 season playoffs, before the Cowboys game, he made a "bet" with all the kids, essentially he would give us all 5 dollars if the Cowboys won. We owed nothing if they didn't, but it was enough to get me to sit down and watch the game. Obviously the Cowboys went on to win that game and win the Super Bowl, and my life was changed forever. I haven't missed a Cowboys game since.
A few weeks later, one of the neighborhood kids got a football for his birthday and we all started playing. It didn't take long before we had broken up into standard teams that always played together. Of course, I had my team practicing, which the other teams made fun of us/me for. Very quickly I was in class drawing up plays, I remember "inventing" play action, before I even had a clue what it was. I called it a "circle pass" because the QB turned in a circle faking the handoff. By the age of 16 I had a full playbook for my 3 on 3 touch football team. Also, around that age I started to get some athletic ability (previously I was simply known as the slow kid who caught EVERYTHING). I started to stand out on the football field, and started to get noticed by the coaches because I not only knew my assignment on every play, but everyone elses as well. I started thinking about the game as the chess match that it is, spent hours figuring out what the design of a specific play was meant to do. What were it's inherent strengths and weaknesses. Not typical 16 year old stuff.
At age 18, a very little known PC game came out called Legends 98', this game had a full blown play creator in it, and I went straight to work. By the age of 21 I had used that game to develop an entire offensive playbook. For the record, I drew up a WR slip screen way before I ever saw it used in a game, not that I lay ANY claim to having invented the play. I graduated from college and went straight into the coaching ranks. It was at this time that I started to realize that I was much much better at the scheming and talent scouting part, and not nearly as good at the leader of men part. It slowly started to dawn on me that scouting was were I would fit in best.
I started doing a lot of self scouting for the teams I coached, using our game film to come up with tendencies, tell the coaching staff what players would fit better at other positions, etc. Before long it was obvious that my benefit to a coaching staff came entirely from those actions, and I really brought nothing when on the practice field. My coaching career was going down in the dumps and I already knew in my heart of hearts I didn't have some of the essential personality traits to be a really successful coach. I started spending more time in the film room, and then started recording Cowboy games, watching them dozens of times trying to catch everything I could from every angle I could. I was doing this entirely for my own need to be scouting, I never thought I'd actually be scouting in the NFL.
That fateful day, as much of my life was falling apart around me, I had that chance encounter of which I've told you all about. My life again was changed forever. Funny how a stupid bet by a Cowboy hater is what turned me into a life long Cowboy fan, and shaped my life in ways that I could have never seen.
Jason Garrett - Having called plays before, I'm well aware of the fallacy of trashing play calls. It's funny how you only get trashed when they don't work. I never had a single fan/parent/whatever send me an email or confront me and say "when you ran the ball down there from the 5 yard line and scored a TD, that was a terrible call, good thing you scored, but that was a terrible call." In fact, more often than not in those situations, I was getting applauded for surprising the defense and doing something unorthodox. All I can do is sit back and trust that Jason does as much self scouting as he says he does, and will figure out why this team is not scoring when they get in the red zone.
Tony Romo - I swear there is not a QB in the league that gets less help than Tony Romo. He's got receivers dropping passes, linemen letting him get killed, no running game to speak of, seemingly none of his receivers know any of the plays. It's a good thing the defense helps him out some, because otherwise he'd have a massive complex. Other than that, it's very clear he's still feeling pain, it's already been discussed at length in another thread here, so I won't get too far into it. But he's still very antsy in the pocket, and he's looking to get rid of the ball in a hurry. New England sat back in soft zone coverage almost the whole game, and Tony was more than happy to make the quick read, throw a quick pass for a few yards and live to play another play. I thought he managed himself and the game extremely well, and when we needed a big drive from him, he responded big time. Wish the rest of the offense would have done the same (I'm looking at you Miles Austin, Demarco Murray, Kyle Kosier and Tyron Smith)
Dez Bryant - I was asked via PM to look into Dez's route running this week. In general, I try not to talk Dez too much, because I'm quite critical of him. If I had no other info about him other than what I see on tape, it would be completely obvious to me that he doesn't study his playbook. But I also have now two sources that tell me the Cowboys are not at all happy about how little of the playbook he knows. Much like Roy Williams, the Cowboys only ask Dez to run a few routes. Slant, fly, drag, dig, that's pretty much it. He rounds off his dig route, which is disappointing to see. He doesn't stick that foot in the ground and explode inside, which leads to him getting open fine against zone coverage, but he's not beating man coverage on that route. He doesn't run what are known as "pro" routes, like the deep comeback, the stick nod, the jerk, the post corner and post corner post very often. Most likely that's because he's not very good at them. All that being said, to say Dez is a bad route runner would be inaccurate. It's that he hasn't learned all the intricacies of route running yet. There is so much to running routes, even most advanced football fans have no idea about. There is a whole jargon just for route running, I could sit here and have a conversation with a pro WR about running routes, and a lot of the people who will read this thread would only understand about 60% of it. The good news about Dez is that unlike almost every other player in the NFL, he doesn't have one single physical limitation. Once he figures out the mental part of it, he'll be one of the most dangerous players in the league. Let's hope he's still a Cowboy when that happens.
Miles Austin - Catch. The. Football. I'm so infuriated with Austin right now, it's hard for me to describe. We got our QB out there playing with a broken rib, behind a line that seems intent on getting him killed, and you can't catch the damn ball when he actually get the time to throw it to you? If I'm coaching this team, he's seeing signifigantly reduced play time until he learns how to catch. Oh, and P.S. I love Miles Austin!
Demarco Murray - Murray was a mixed bag on Sunday. He's hitting the hole a little better, and admittedly he's gotten better about that each week. He's still trying to bounce the play outside too much, once he learns that he's not the fastest guy on the field anymore he'll turn into a pretty good back. I'm still on the fence with Murray, I need to see more carries to come up with a true eval of him. For now, all I can say is that there is clearly potential there, he's just gotta start hitting the hole with authority, and stop looking to get to the edge every play.
The Offensive Line - This is a deeply flawed unit. The team wants to utilize more athletic linemen to run more plays designed to get the running back out on the edge, and in space. The problem is that our center is much more suited for a straight ahead run game. On wider running plays, he has to make reach blocks that he simply doesn't get out of his stance after snapping the ball fast enough to do. If you ask him to snap the ball and eliminate the guy directly in front of him so the back can run through the A gap, he can do that with consistency. And of course, the rest of the OL is not suited to that play style. I think the overhaul of this OL is a year away, as much as I like Costa for what he is, I don't think he fits with the rest of this line. I have a feeling we will have a new center here next year, and Costa goes on to have a decent career elsewhere. Sidenote: Kosier played the worst game I've seen him play as a Cowboy by FAR. He was getting absolutely killed with consistency. He'll rebound I'm sure, but I found it interesting that it wasn't our younger players that contributed the most to our offensive woes.
Rob Ryan vs. Wade Phillips vs.........Michael Irvin???
I remember hearing Michael Irvin say on the radio once (and I'm pretty certain it's been brought up here before as well) that back in his playing days, it was players beating players, but now its scheme beating scheme. I don't think there is a more accurate way to put it. These days, it's ALL about your scheme, and how you choose to implement it. The absolute biggest difference I see between Phillips and Ryan is that above statement. Wade looked around and saw the immense amount of talent on this defense and said "ok, we're just gonna line up and execute, because we have better players than you". Where Ryan said, "wow, these players are awesome, when I put them in my scheme and design plays to fit their strengths, we're gonna put the brakes on a lot of offenses". This defense is so much more active under Ryan than Phillips, both pre and post snap. They are twisting, stunting, looping, running E/T games, etc. They are actually using the surprise jam on tight ends, where someone that doesn't even appear to be covering the TE jumps over at the snap and really holds up his route, then jumps back into their responsibility. It's unreal to see, I don't know how many noticed, but Jay Ratliff had Hernandez one on one at one point He caught the ball, but he was tackled immediately. Our LBs aren't doing the same things over and over like they did under Wade and it's confusing offenses. The predictability is out the window!!
The idea that all we have to do is execute is a complete fallacy. A good example is if the defense has called a double A gap blitz. If by chance on that one play, the offense has called a WR slip screen, all the execution that exists on this planet is not gonna stop the offense from getting about 10 yards. There is no counter for it. And thats what Michael meant by scheme beating scheme. A lot of big plays you see in the NFL these days are more a product of a proper play call against the right defense than anything else. Ryan understands this and has concocted an amazing scheme. I have a feeling he'll be as revered defensively as much or more than his brother by the end of the 2012 season.
Great read couchscout! You are one of my favorite posters on here
