Posts tagged Mike Wallace

NFL Films’ Greg Cosell Part I: Personnel Interrogation

0 Comments read Matt Waldman
NFL Films senior producer Greg Cosell indulges my interrogation of his knowledge of league personnel. Giants DE Justin Tuck is one of many suspects. Photo by Chris Pusateri.

It might be a dream job, but NFL Films senior producer Greg Cosell understands what work is. The process of studying the game of football is a methodical one. Doing it well requires the attention and the appreciation of the minute detail, patience, and a large dose of humility.

Entering his third decade with NFL Films, Cosell has been studying football with this intense level of scrutiny longer than the average person reading this blog has been an adult. If football knowledge were gold then Raiders offensive coordinator Al Saunders’ appraisal of Cosell in a recent New York Times feature places the man behind the long-running ESPN program Edge NFL Matchup  on par with Fort Knox:

“Greg is just a brilliant man when it comes to” the strategic and personnel facets of the league, Raiders offensive coordinator Al Saunders said. “Tremendous insight, a tremendous knowledge of personnel, a great command of the intricacies of the game from a strategic standpoint.”

This week I will be featuring a recent conversation with Cosell Continue reading →

Who is Phillip Tanner?

0 Comments read Players, Running Back

[youtube=http://youtu.be/olYhvsfdSso]

If you watched the Cowboys-Chargers preseason game last night then you saw a rookie running back putting on a display of what Cecil Lammey likes to call, “running hot.” There were probably 4-5 running backs in this game that ran hot. However, if I were to provide a photo next to Lammey’s definition in the yet-to-be-written football dictionary the image of Cowboys rookie Phillip Tanner running helmet-less through the Chargers secondary would be my first choice.

Who is Phillip Tanner? Was last night a fluke? Does he have a shot to stick to a roster? Let’s consult the 2011 Rookie Scouting Portfolio for some insight.

Players like Tanner, Denarius Moore, or other camp surprises who aren’t rated as high as their abilities in preseason have shown are one of my favorite topics of discussion, because they get to the core of what scouting is and what it isn’t. Most players graded have NFL talent. If you look at the history of the NFL draft, there were twice as many rounds at one time than there are now. Some of the greatest players in this game where drafted in rounds that don’t even exist today:

  • Deacon Jones was a 14th round pick.
  • Johnny Unitas was a 9th round pick.
  • Bart Starr was a 17th round pick.

I could list several others, but you get the point that a player registering on the collective Richter Scale of NFL scouts has the talent to develop into a contributor. These are young men capable of learning a lot in the span of a few years and their games can improve significantly in a short period of time. In addition a college system or surrounding talent can hinder a player’s ability to show his true potential. This is why teams will still value height, weight, speed, strength, agility, and conditioning over great technique. Sometimes teams err too far on that side, but there are always players who validate the notion that drafting a great athlete who didn’t consistently show great positional skills with his college team might yield gold.

Phillip Tanner is a free agent from Middle Tennessee State. In some respects he was overshadowed Continue reading →

Conversation With NFL Draft Scout’s Chad Reuter-Part II

0 Comments read Matt Waldman
Clemson's DeAndre McDaniel plays a position that Chad Reuter says has an underrated difficulty to evaluate. Photo by whateyesee13 http://www.flickr.com/photos/whateyesee13/

If you thought ESPN analyst Matt Williamson’s path to becoming a paid evaluator of talent was unusual, consider NFL Draft Scout.com senior analyst Chad Reuter. The Wisconsin native learned about the craft of personnel evaluation from a decade of interactions with NFL scouts and general managers.  Although he lacks a football background, he managed to transform a hobby into a job because of his tremendous analytical skills, sincere passion for the game, and a veteran scout’s work ethic.

In this multi-part conversation, Reuter and I spent a couple of hours discussing a variety of topics related to player evaluation. In Part I of this conversation, Chad and I discuss why he enjoys studying offensive line play, evaluating technique versus results, and balancing these two behaviors with the craft of projecting a player’s future in the NFL. In this portion of our discussion we cover his path to studying football as a full-time job, a defensive position that is difficult to evaluate, and why “instincts” and “intangibles” may not be innate after all.

Waldman:Tell me about your background and how you got into this profession.

Reuter: I came into it kind of backwards. I’m not Mr. Athlete by any stretch. I was not a player. But I knew enough about the game. I think most athletes who get into scouting or work in a front office have the initial advantage of having played, but then they have to learn how to analyze what they are seeing when they are watching film. Obviously some of them may know their position, but they don’t know all of the positions. I came in backwards. I had the analytic skills and then I applied them to football.

I had a fan site called Packerdraft.com and I started in in 2000. I started applying my analytic skills to football in terms of what was being seen on the field, but also looking at the data side – analyzing trends and trying to figure out what some of the numbers really mean.  So I started doing that and it earned me opportunities to work with teams doing some consulting.  After a few years of that, I left my state government gig to do this full-time.

Waldman: What was that gig?

Reuter: I was a research analyst for the department of transportation. My education is in economics and public policy analysis.

Waldman: With that kind of education and position you must have a fairly extensive understanding of statistics.

Reuter: My job was more or less to ferret out information that was helpful for our decision makers in the building – not just putting a bunch of numbers in front of people. I spent a lot of time pointing to things that some people said had merit, but actually didn’t. Most of the time I was telling people that statistics could be misinterpreted and used to mislead people than actually used to help!

(Laughter)

I find it also being the same thing I do with football. Continue reading →