Posts tagged Greg Cosell

Reads Listens Views 1/4/2013

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Has the RSP been your MVP (Most Valuable Publication)? The 2013 edition, like Adrian Peterson, is on schedule (Photo by Langzi).
Has the RSP been your MVP (Most Valuable Publication)? The 2013 edition, like Adrian Peterson, is on schedule  to deliver the goods (Photo by Langzi).

Now Accepting Prepayment for the 2013 RSP

I’m spending the weekend with a bunch of Footballguys  watching the playoffs and talking shop. Meanwhile here’s some welcome news for those of you who have asked me when you can prepay for the 2013 RSP. The answer is now: If you wish to prepay for the April 1 download of the 2013 Rookie Scouting Portfolio, you can do so at www.mattwaldman.com. I have already evaluated 130 skill players for the 2013 edition and just like last year, included with the purchase of the RSP will be access to download the wildly popular, Post-Draft Add-On. I publish this updated analysis after the NFL Draft and it includes updated positional rankings, tiered fantasy rankings, ceiling scores, and a ton of post-draft analysis that comes as part of the 2013 RSP purchase. With 10 percent of each sale going to Darkness to Light, it’s a must-have for draftniks, football fans, and fantasy owners.

New RSP Blog Series – The Boiler Room

Photo by Sebastian Niedlich
Photo by Sebastian Niedlich

[People] don’t like to break a player down, look at his particulars. That involves details. Most people get bored with details. Because in order to look at the details, you have to love what you’re doing, and you have to be highly motivated. I loved playing football. I relished the details.

– Jim Brown

One of the challenges involved with player analysis is to be succinct with delivering the goods. As the author of an annual tome, I’m often a spectacular failure in this respect. Even so, I will often study a prospect and see a play unfold that does a great job of encapsulating that player’s skills. When I witness these moments, I imagine that if I were part of the production team at a major network putting together highlights for a draft show or I was working for an NFL organization creating cut-ups for a personnel director, I try to imagine if this highlight will boil down this prospect to his essentials.

That’s the thinking behind The Boiler Room – analysis of what makes a player worth drafting by boiling down as much as I can into a single play. Unlike the No-Huddle Series, The Boiler Room is focused on prospects I expect to be drafted, and often before the fourth round. My first subject of the series will be 2013 Rose Bowl MVP Stepfan Taylor. Read it Monday morning.

Views – Kenny Garret, Kenny Kirkland, Jeff “Tain” Watts, and Robert Hurst Blowing the Roof Off

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFM9tIKZGjk&feature=share&list=PLX1Nx57UJgZkH87bmhCgXsp0QxzlCVPXZ]

Listens

Football Reads

Non-Football Reads

  • The Lives They Lived  – A good series that featured those who died in 2012 by focusing on how they lived.
  • Living Apart: Fair Housing In America – There were three pillars created to desegregate America. Perhaps the most important is the one that is least enforced.
  • Segregation Study – See how things of changed (Atlanta) or how they basically stayed the same (Cleveland).

Reads Listens Views 4/13/2012

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For Maximum Effect: Mute the sound on this Cliff Branch highlight and open a second window on your browser and check out my link to the Gap Band’s “You Dropped a Bomb On Me,” later in this post.

Thank you

The response to the publication of the 2012 Rookie Scouting Portfolio has been great. I appreciate the feedback from old and new readers alike. I’m already setting plans in motion to make 2013’s publication even better and I’m actually Continue reading →

Reader Email Bag

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49ers fans beware. Manningham is a terrific talent, but his skill for working at his game hasn't been part of the package.

This email bag includes topics pertaining to Robert Turbin, Blaine Gabbert, physical skills and techniques I value from players at each skill position, and of course, Mario Manningham.

(From Alexandra): When evaluating a player entering the draft, what are the positives of his skills that make a difference once in the NFL, and what are the negatives of his skills that are correctable in the NFL?  Which negatives are not so correctable and therefore devalue the potential of the player in the NFL? Continue reading →

Revolutionary

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Ideas, events, and poeple can all be revolutionary. Tony Hawk gave skateboarding wings. Could a current NFL player ground the conventions of quality? Photo by Raka 18.

We fear what we don’t understand. And what we do understand is often rooted in the past. Statistics are a record of the past. Conventional thinking is also rooted in the past. But what is conventional today was revolutionary yesterday. And what was revolutionary yesterday was often met with skepticism, fear, and scorn.

The round earth theory was revolutionary. Democracy was revolutionary. Civil rights is (unfortunately still) revolutionary. Continue reading →

Talent and Production: The Great Emotional Divide

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Brandon Marshall epitomizes the unpredictability of determining the mental-emotional makeup of a player making a successful transition to professional football. Photo by Geoffrey Beall.

This is my seventh year studying the on-field performance of football players. I can say unequivocally that I know more about the techniques and strategy of the game than I knew when I began. I’m also beginning to realize that I have learned just as much about player evaluation during the four months I have spent creating content for this blog. However, much of what I have learned from my interviews of colleagues has less to do with technique, strategy, or what to physically seek from a player and more to do with what none of us know.

Things that even NFL GMs and personnel directors will never know for sure:

How a player will manage the great emotional divide that must be crossed in order to transition from college talent to productive pro.

The process is something that my friend and colleague Sigmund Bloom describes as trying to gain a complete view of a scene when the vantage point is through a keyhole. We only have clues that help us determine whether a player is equipped to cross this break. Continue reading →

Suggested Reading

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If this blog hit you out of nowhere the way Denarius Moore was a welcome surprise to you, read on for suggested links. Photo by Wade Rackley.

In recent weeks there have been a lot of new readers to the Rookie Scouting Portfolio. This site is constantly evolving and one of the things I intend to do during the next few weeks is to add a page that categorizes links to every article on the blog for easier navigation.

Whether you’re new to the site and haven’t had a chance to delve into it or you’ve been returning for a while, I thought it would be a good idea to provide some suggested reading:

Interviews

If you became acquainted with the RSP blog from the Greg Cosell or Dan Shonka conversations, I highly recommend checking out these posts.

Conversation with NFL Draft Scout’s Chad Reuter: This is the first part of a series of conversations I did with Reuter. It was pleasure to engage in football talk with a dedicated, intelligent evaluator of talent who uses his economics and player evaluation skills to present research information to NFL teams.

Conversation with National Football Post’s Wes Bunting: Just like Reuter, Bunting does the work. I should know, their processes sound eerily familiar to my early mornings. A very interesting read.

Film Study

Chad Spann is currently on the Colts' IR. He's a long-term sleeper to monitor. Learn more about his mind for the game below.

Grinding Tape: Chad Spann – Stiff arms and Green Dogs: How often do you get to read an interview where the interviewer and the subject are studying football together? This excerpt from a 2-hour study session (Just search “Chad Spann” for more) includes play diagrams and explanations of what the NCAA’s 2010 touchdown leader was thinking about with each play.

Walk on The Wild Side

The Unwritten Rules of Football and Life: These are transcriptions of podcast editorials I occasionally deliver at The Audible’s Thursday Night Roundtable with Sigmund Bloom and Cecil Lammey.

I’ll suggest other pieces each week until I create the navigation page. I hope these are enjoyable reading for you.

Dan Shonka Part III: Positional School

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Dan Shonka explains why former Arkansas safety Steve Atwater is a great example of how technique that was once lacking can be honed to a point that it brings forth other great skills lying beneath the surface.

I think it’s accurate to describe Ourlads’ Dan Shonka as one of the ultimate practitioners of football evaluation. Shonka has 39 years of football experience as a player, college recruiter, college coach, and a combined 16 years as a NFL scout for National Scouting Service, the Philadelphia Eagles, the Washington Redskins, and the Kansas City Chiefs.

Last week, Shonka agreed to speak with me about scouting, players, and the NFL. The scheduled 60 minutes became two hours of football talk that flew by. Dan was afraid I got more than I bargained for, but I told him that I got exactly what I wanted – just more than I could have expected.

I asked Shonka to indulge me in a game where I named a position on the field and he talked about skills he looked for that could or couldn’t be learned if the player didn’t exhibit them in the college game. Continue reading →

Dan Shonka Part I: Confidence and Competitiveness

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Former long-time NFL Scout Dan Shonka tells a great story where he had an epiphany about Peyton Manning at Tennessee. Photo by Jeffrey Beall.

Theory and practice, the ivory tower and the battleground. People will tell you that one is more beneficial than the other. I believe there’s not only a place for both, but they complement each other.

I think NFL Films senior producer Greg Cosell is one of the preeminent theorists of player evaluation. I call him a football theorist because he’s never played, coached, or scouted the game in an organization. Yet, this lack of practical experience doesn’t detract from his insights.

In many cases, it allows Cosell to step back and ask questions that NFL teams and personnel would like to think about. Chad Reuter is a similar kind of theorist. In fact he’s done research for NFL teams that lack the time or the knowledge to explore on their own. Thinkers have an important place in the world even if they purposely are doing work in quiet rooms away from the realities of the environments they study.

If Cosell and Reuter are football theorists, then I think it’s accurate to describe Ourlads’ Dan Shonka as one of the ultimate practitioners Continue reading →

Greg Cosell Part VI: Favorites

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(From L-R) Bill Walsh, Dick LeBeau, Don Coryell, Darryle Lamonica, Fred Biletnikoff, and Warren Wells. Photo by Diane Cordell

Parts I, II, and III of my talk with NFL Films senior Producer Greg Cosell – co-author of The Games That Changed the Game were portions of a recent conversation. Part IV and Part V about what goes into evaluating certain positions on the football field are from 2008. The final installment of this series features a short conversation about “favorites.”

Waldman: Who were your favorite players growing up?

Cosell: Wow, it’s funny because I watched football, but the NFL was probably my third or fourth favorite sport after baseball, basketball – the NBA and college – then football. I liked the old AFL. There were players in the old AFL Continue reading →