Date Archives November 2011

Donate to Sexual Abuse Prevention

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Let's do something to help prevent sexual abuse and promote greater awareness. Photo by Arianna Marchesani.

I think one of the best things about the community of football fans is its generosity with good causes. I think in light of the events at Penn State, I’d like to remind everyone that one of the organizations I had scheduled to donate a share of the revenue from the 2012 Rookie Scouting Portfolio is Darkness to Light.

[Just to be clear, while I would love for you to buy the RSP if you haven’t in the past – and I’m certainly going to use this as a way to make your decision a bit easier. But in the grand scheme of things, it’s more important that you donate to reputable organizations that focus on the prevention of these types of crimes – RSP or not.]

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I found Darkness to Light on Charity Navigator last year and chose it based on its mission:

“Darkness to Light is a national organization and initiative. Our mission is to empower people to prevent child sexual abuse. Darkness to Light’s public awareness campaign seeks to raise awareness of the prevalence and consequences of child sexual abuse.

Again, even if you don’t purchase the Rookie Scouting Portfolio publication I encourage you to find an organization like Darkness to Light or RAIN to assist.

If you are an annual reader of the Rookie Scouting Portfolio publications, I had a poll available on this page for you to determine how much of the allocated percentage of sales revenue I donate to Darkness to Light. I’ve decided instead that I’m going to play benevolent dictator on this decision. I’m giving that percentage solely to Darkness to Light.

Even if you don’t have the dough to spare, you can donate something far more important: your time and willingness to learn how to prevent this from happening in your life. This weekend, I have added pages to help us learn about this epidemic in our society and how to minimize its impact in our homes and communities. If you can learn football stats you should commit some of these stats about sexual abuse to memory. Once you read the facts, learn how to protect children from becoming another statistic.

I think as football fans it’s a good idea we send a message that while we get idiotic about the sport, we’re not a complete bunch of idiots.

Reads, Listens, Views 11/11/11

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The best (and most underutilized) weapon in Cleveland. Hoping Cleveland changes this post haste.

Friday is the day of the week I like to thank you for being regular readers of the Rookie Scouting Portfolio blog. Hopefully you find the content as enjoyable to read as it is to write. I value the comments on the blog and email messages a great deal – keep ’em coming.

If you wish to show your appreciation while purchasing a gift that keeps on giving, Continue reading →

Scouting Abuse

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Sometimes these skills of evaluation I write about here apply to more vital parts of life. Today's post is one of those times. Photo by Hebedesign.

I’m sick of hearing about the Penn State scandal. You should be, too. What we’ve learned is vile.

I promise you that I’m not writing a piece that begins with “we need to pray for these kids,” and move onto talking about Sandusky, Spanier, Paterno, McQueary, or Penn State students. They aren’t worth the time I just spent writing their names. Football doesn’t even deserve to be a secondary subject.

This post is a plea for you to do something difficult. Continue reading →

The RSP Blog’s Top QBs (2006-2011)

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Jaguars QB Blaine Gabbert looks little like the prospect I watched at Missouri. Find out why, below. Photo by PDA.Photo.

Ranking players is perhaps the least important part of the analysis I do when I create the Rookie Scouting Portfolio. It’s the conversation starter. The attention-getter. The marketing schtick.

It’s the three-sentence summation of a complex subject that you need to learn to give at a cocktail party or you come across as David Fincher’s depiction of Mark Zuckerberg in the Social Network. As much as I value Twitter for attracting readers like you to the work I do, I’m not much on cocktail party chatter. My primary goal with the RSP is to profile skill position players and analyze their games to evaluate their current skills and potential. Continue reading →

Series Anouncement

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Jake Locker makes my top 20 prospect list for the RSP from 2006-2011. Find out why this week. Photo by NeonTommy.

The 2006-2011 RSP Rankings series that began last week with running backs will resume this week with the top 20 quarterbacks. Sundays and Mondays are usually pretty slammed, so expect to see the first installment of the quarterback rankings on Monday night.

By the way, I went 19-8 in my Fantasy Throwdown match ups this weekend and I only moved up two spots on the leaderboard. I’ve found the IDP challenges the most enjoyable. We had over 400 completed challenges last week. Join us.

Q&A’s of Yours Truly

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I’m just a regular guy who has chosen to lead an irregular life.

And occasionally, there are people with websites and blogs that want to ask me questions about football and sometimes, how football contributes to my irregular life. If you’re curious, I have a short page of links to these Q&A interviews. (Link fixed, BTW)

At the top of this short page of interviews is a link to Dynasty League Football’s November 5 interview conducted by Eric Dickens.

Reads, Listens, Views 11/4

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“Welcome aboard the S.S. Campbell. This is your captain, Cecil Lammey!”

I couldn’t resist…

It’s that time of the week where I like to take a moment to thank all of you for making it a habit to read the Rookie Scouting Portfolio blog. Hopefully you find the content as enjoyable to read as it is to write. While I enjoy the comments on the blog and email messages a great deal – keep ’em coming – if you wish to show your appreciation and get a gift that keeps on giving order the 2011 Rookie Scouting Portfolio. It’s currently sold at what I call a “Lockout Jitters price” of $9.95. Get it while the aftershocks of those jitters is still in effect. Previous issues are available by emailing me (mattwaldmanrsp@gmail.com).

On behalf of the Footballguys staff and all of you who read his work, I’d like to wish Footballguy extraordinaire and RSP blog contributor Dr. Jene Bramel a speedy recovery. The good doctor did the fantasy football broadcast equivalent of “playing hurt,” by phoning in his segment on Thursday night’s Audible podcast from a hospital bed.

Continue reading →

Logic (Newton) or Chance (Luck)?

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By rookie QB standards Cam Newton has been incredible. In fact, he's been terrific by any standard. Photo by PDA.Photo

If you were in charge of player-personnel decisions for the NFL team that had the opportunity to choose between Cam Newton or Andrew Luck, which quarterback would you take? I think this is probably one of the most compelling questions I’ve seen all season. There are so many layers of analysis to explore with this type of question.

While Newton was considered a fine quarterback prospect, only a few really nailed him as a player capable of making a Peyton Manning/Carson Palmer impact early in his career. And even fewer did as good of a job debunking the “running quarterback” myth with Newton than Chris Kouffman and Simon Clancy. Their analysis of Cam Newton was dead-on this winter. I highly recommend you make this your lunchtime read. I think the work they did was most impressive and something to learn from.

But then there’s Luck, who is considered the best prospect in the last 20 years. Unlike Newton, Luck is a three-year starter in a pro-style offense that uses West Coast concepts. Luck also has freedom to change plays at the line of scrimmage with the authority of veteran pro quarterbacks while Newton played in what is conceptually recognized as a highly simplified offense by comparison at Auburn. Furthermore, Luck is an athletic quarterback who is more physically mobile along the lines of Ben Roethlisberger or Tarvaris Jackson than Peyton Manning or Tom Brady.

So what do you do, take arguably the “best quarterback prospect in the past 20 years” or take arguably “the best performing rookie quarterback in the past 20 years?” Continue reading →

FantasyThrowdown.com: Free, 1-on-1, and Addictive!

0 Comments read Matt Waldman
Check out my new one-on-one fantasy game. It’s free!

Most of you reading the RSP blog play fantasy football. If you’re like me your favorite part of fantasy leagues is the draft. There’s nothing more enjoyable than assembling a team, except perhaps the week you play a heated rival and get a chance to smack talk like you’re Hines Ward and he’s Terrell Suggs.

I’ve been touting a fantasy football game for the past 7-10 days that is a free, simple, convenient, and fast way to play every day and it’s also challenging enough to keep you coming back for more – FantasyThrowdown.com. I think it’s a great innovation to playing fantasy football because its one-on-one match ups allow you to challenge anyone, anytime.

You can play 20 times in a week or you can play once a month – whatever fits your schedule. It’s so easy to learn that I’ve had very few people need to ask me a question about how to play because if you’ve been in a fantasy league, it’s truly an intuitive game to learn.

Here’s the basics (for more complete directions go here):

  • Challenge a friend or another person on the site.
  • You and your opponent determine the three games for that week that will comprise your player draft pool.
  • Pick your games wisely as well as your draft order, because you each get to block a player from the draft pool during the draft. If there’s only two good QBs from those games you selected, you can set it up to force your opponent to settle for a scrub.
  • Draft your team.

Drafts take 10 minutes if you and your opponent are both online. Or you can stretch out the draft throughout the course of the week or even do predraft settings. Play standard or IDP, PPR or non-PPR. We now have flex options – including 2-QB lineups! And the site has live chat and connects to Twitter and Facebook.

Challenge me to a game either by registering and looking me up on the Leaderboard in the Lobby (matt) or use my email address: thegutcheck@gmail.com.