Posts tagged Russ Lande

Reads Listens Views 12/7/2012

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Listens

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My bud Adrian is traveling through Asia. He met a Dane in Thailand, who hipped him to this Norwegian soul singer-instrumentalist. If you want proof that the world is round just let this pass through your brain one more time: A Texan in Thailand having a guy from Denmark recommend a Norwegian musician who sings soul.

And he’s good. Here’s another.

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Thank You

If you’re a new follower of this blog or my Twitter account, thank you for doing so. This blog provides analysis year-round as I research, write, and edit my annual publication the Rookie Scouting Portfolio. Now it its eighth year, the RSP is available for download every April 1st. Beginning last year, I allowed readers to prepay/order the RSP beginning in March for the April download due to reader demand to make it so. I will do the same again this year – stay tuned.

Most of all, I want to thank those of you who purchased the 2012 RSP and/or previous RSPs, which are available year-round.  Thanks to you, I have donated over $1800 to Darkness to Light to fulfill my pledge to readers. D2L is a non-profit with the mission of preventing sexual abuse through community training and awareness. As someone who understands the lasting damage that can happen from this type of abuse, raising awareness may not always prevent this predatory behavior, but the ability to help parents and communities understand how to deal with abuse can limit the scope of the damage that often occurs when a victim’s cries for help are met with denial or blame.

If you haven’t purchased the RSP in the past but you enjoy the content on this blog, I encourage you to take the plunge. Past issues of the RSP (2006-2011) are available for $9.95 at the link above. The 2012 RSP is $19.95 and I donate 10 percent of each sale to this cause. Get something that my buddies at DLFootball.com say is worth every penny while supporting a great cause in a fight to prevent sexual abuse.

Fantasy Throwdown

To give full disclosure, yes, I beat my wife in a Throwdown. She challenged me to a game of Fantasy Throwdown last week. Click on the photo for a close up of the score.

AvM ThrowdownBut this wasn’t the best family game of the week. My daughter, Chandler, read my blog post and challenged her sports-loving boyfriend.  Didn’t turn out so well for the boyfriend.

MvA copy Chandler ThrowdownAlthough the Cowboys game wasn’t scored when she took this screen shot, she won a nail-biter. Not bad for someone who has only watched football a little bit in her life. Perhaps there’s some sort of osmosis in play here, right? Wishful thinking I suppose. Anyhow, try FantasyThrowdown. It’s free, simple to play, and addictive.

Football Reads

Non-Football Reads

  • Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math – If you read one thing today – no, if you read one thing this year – read this article by Bill McKibben. Yes, there’s still hope.
  • The Cliff Notes to McKibben’s Must-Read – Yes, I know something about you guys, thanks to the power of analytics. Read it.
  • Capitalism vs. Climate – Naomi Klein’s article from The Nation. Her main takeaway? “The fact that the earth’s atmosphere cannot safely absorb the amount of carbon we are pumping into it is a symptom of a much larger crisis, one born of the central fiction on which our economic model is based: that nature is limitless, that we will always be able to find more of what we need, and that if something runs out it can be seamlessly replaced by another resource that we can endlessly extract.”

Views

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Perhaps another reason not to believe everything you see on TV? Fantastic stuff.

RSP Writers Project Q&A: Russ Lande of GM Jr. and The Sporting News

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Looking for a player with Darren Sproles’ style? Former NFL Scout and draft analyst Russ Lande tabs Falcons RB Jacquizz Rodgers for this role on his ground-centric offensive attack. Photo by McD22.

Russ Lande is a former NFL scout with the Rams and Browns who produces the draft publication GM Jr. and provides content for The Sporting News, including its annual draft guide. Lande has also appeared on television, including The Big 10 Network and ESPN2. Here’s a Q&A I did with Lande in the New York Times Fifth Down a couple of years ago at the Senior Bowl.

Lande’s RSP Writers Team has a makeup of players that is largely unique from other squads Continue reading →

RSP Writers Team: Russ Lande, GM Jr. – The Sporting News

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About Russ Lande

If you want to learn something right away about former NFL scout Russ Lande, note his preference for quarterbacks with great awareness and accuracy over pure arm talent and athleticism (I agree). Photo by Parker Anderson.

Russ Lande began his football career as a scout with an unpaid position as a part-time recruiting intern with the UCLA Bruins. The next year, Lande was a pro scouting intern with the Los Angeles Rams and then transitioned into the role of scouting administrator from 1994-1998. He learned from the likes of Jack Faulkner, Dick Vermeil, Mike White, Bud Carson, Charley Armey, and Nick Aliotti.

Lande founded GM Jr Scouting and published his first annual GM Jr’s Guide to the NFL Draft (“The Guide”), starting with the 1999 NFL Draft. He also worked in the XFL as an east coast scout and later earned a job with CBS Sports’ television show NFL Today as an editorial consultant. Soon after, the Cleveland Browns hired Lande as a Midwest Blesto Scout responsible for evaluating senior players at over 70 colleges and universities. Since 2007, Lande has been the draft expert for The Sporting News.  His company, GM Jr. Scouting LLC supplies The Sporting News all NFL content for the NFL and NFL Draft, both online and in their annual Sporting News Pro Football Draft publication.

Lande’s RSP Writers Team was originally composed with a $140 million cap through a miscommunication that we had about the rules (which was my fault). When I gave him more time to redo his team with the extra $10 million, he made tweaks to his quarterback depth and added Matt Hasselbeck. I think this is important to note, because I believe Lande is confident enough in hi selections that the extra $10 million didn’t make a huge difference except at one position.

Because I regard Lande as an industry peer when it comes to studying prospects, I enjoyed discovering players we both like: Hasselbeck, Juron Criner, Donald Brown, Taylor Thompson, Glenn Dorsey, and Cordy Glenn. The fact that Criner reminds me of Cris Carter and Lande describes the rookie as having “the best Continue reading →

A Tebow-Fox Back Story

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Tim Tebow, John Fox, and Brian Xanders offer a confluence of unique backgrounds to create this great NFL story. Photo by Wade Rackley.

The X’s and O’s of Tim Tebow, a podcast produced by Doug Farrar on Shutdown Corner featuring Cecil Lammey, provides great analysis on the Broncos quarterback.

I had the pleasure of speaking with former NFL scout Russ Lande this week in Atlanta about Tebow, and Lande shared an excellent back story about Broncos coach John Fox that I think adds to the confluence of events that helped create this situation in Denver.

Lande explained that after John Fox left the Oakland Raiders he was hired as a consultant for the St. Louis Rams where Lande was working at the time as a scout. Lande was assigned to break down tape to assist Fox in a presentation of information and as they worked together, the future Carolina and Denver head coach told Lande that he agreed with the great Nebraska head coach Tom Osborne that the option could work in the NFL

Fox told Lande that if he were given the opportunity to coach for an organization that had management with the courage to do so, he’d try to bring the option to the NFL. As Farrar and Lammey mention in the podcast, it was John Fox who initially brought the Wildcat to the NFL. And it only goes to show that the combination of Tebow’s skill sets, Fox’s affinity for the option, and personnel man Brian Xanders’ flexibility has produced the most intriguing story of the NFL season.

RSP Football Writers Project

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I anticipate Drew Brees starting for at least one team for the RSP Football Writers Project, published this spring. Details below. Photo by eschipul.

Secretly, we all want to build a football team. It’s why we’re passionate about every player recruited, drafted, traded, and signed. It’s why we play fantasy football. It’s why many of us are fanatical about the NFL draft.

After a few weeks of my rants to Footballguys writer Sigmund Bloom about Steelers tight end Heath Miller as one of the more underrated players in football or how the Browns don’t use Josh Cribbs’ talent, Bloom got the kernel of an idea:

Why not let football writers build teams and write about them? And I want your help. Continue reading →