Sports have a magical effect, and it’s what’s most special about sports – anything can happen. Predictions are very hard to consistently get right. If the best team always won, there would be no fun in being a fan, as you would know who wins every game before the season begins. Sports would become a mathematical equation of team building, rather than game-playing. The volatility is fascinating. It’s what caused both of the NFL Superbowl LVI teams (Bengals and Rams) to lose to the Jets – who currently hold the 4th overall pick in the upcoming draft – in each team’s last matchup against them.
Scouting is no different and is possibly one of the hardest projections to make. Every position is vastly different. The hit rate of draft picks is so low, and there are so many immeasurable variables involved, for example:
- Work Ethic
- Coaching
- Scheme Fit
- Professional Confidence / Early Career Momentum
- Maturity
- Team Support
Some of these can be roughly measured through an interview, but even that isn’t exact. The rest is up in the air.
This is why we consistently see late-round players and even undrafted players make massive NFL impacts.
Scouting has come a long way over the last decade, and the hit rate has improved, but there’s still room to grow. While I can’t claim to get everything right, there are a few things I think are most indicative of NFL success, and I will break them down for you here, position by position.
All Positions
There are 2 types of positions in football – Proactive positions and Reactive positions.
The definition is pretty straightforward – proactive players dictate the moves and timing, and the reactive players react to them. Proactive positions include – QB, RB, WR, TE, EDGE, DL, Reactive positions include – OL, LB, DB.
Proactive players don’t need to be great at all facets of their game. If they are mediocre at most, but truly elite at one or two moves, they can excel using those moves. A well-rounded player will never be a difference-maker.
Reactive players MUST be at least mediocre at all facets of their game. Any flaw in their game in any way will be exploitable, and is a much bigger knock to their evaluation than it would be to a proactive player. A well-rounded player is the ideal. Being very good but not special at every part of your job as a reactive player, that will get you very far. Of course, to be a difference maker you must also have a special trait, but a well-rounded player is better than a player with elite traits and big flaws.
There are a 2 traits that are paramount for all positions:
- Quickness – Reactive positions must react with enough quickness as to not fall behind. Proactive positions must have the quickness to get ahead.
- Football IQ – This is clear, instinctual players can overcome certain deficiencies by being a step ahead of the opposition.
Any player without these traits, reactive or proactive, will suffer a huge value hit.
Another thing to look at is breakout age. Players that breakout in their Senior year generate a few red flags. The game of football is complex, and the longer you play it the more you pick up on nuances and tricks that put you ahead of the competition. Most players really get that throughout college with good coaching. Dominating when you are ahead of everyone else in your mental understanding of the game, not to mention the size and speed advantages, isn’t nearly as impressive as dominating earlier on. In fact, only managing to breakout in a player’s senior year devalues his breakout significantly.
Quarterbacks
As the hardest and most important position in football, getting this right is important. As a proactive position, there are a few traits that hardly bust completely:
- Mobility/Arm Strength combo – The ability to extend plays is great, but if extending the play takes away your ability to push the ball downfield, defenders can start crashing mid-play. If a QB is able to extend a play and still push the ball downfield, that makes defending him even harder, as it seems any area of the field can be exploited at any time.
- Improvisation/Accuracy/Mobility combo – With good mobility and improvisational skills, that means the defense can never commit to any type of play (QB run or pass). Having the defense on their heels is a great quality, but if your accuracy suffers by the mobility then it ruins the effectiveness. With this trio, it makes QBs very hard to stop.
Any individual traits is important, but no one trait can cover-up big flaws. Arm strength can’t fix poor accuracy. Mobility can’t fix poor field vision.
The Scouting Combine athletic measurables aren’t very important, although an explosive 10-yard split could be beneficial. What’s most important to check at the Combine is Hand Size and Height. Despite what people think, having small hands makes everything harder in the NFL. Unless a QB is elite at nearly everything else, small hands will without question affect his game immensely.
Another important note – consistency and accuracy are overrated. Consistent and accurate QBs are good, but unless they have special abilities they will never be special QBs.
Consistently accurate CFB QBs include – Baker Mayfield, Tua Tagovailoa, Jared Goff, Josh Rosen, Mitch Trubisky.
Inconsistent and erratic CFB QBs, who had a special combo include:
- Patrick Mahomes (mobility/arm strength combo)
- Josh Allen – (mobility/arm strength combo)
- Joe Burrow – (improv/accuracy/mobility combo)
- Justin Herbert – (mobility/arm strength combo)
It should be clear which side is more dominant. When drafting a QB, getting one that will likely be a good starter is never ideal, as you will annually have to deal with the “should we replace him” questions. Players like Jimmy Garoppolo, Tua, Kirk Cousins, Jared Goff are annually discussed as potential trade candidates.
It’s much better to go for the players with elite traits, in the hopes of getting a star. Worst case scenario, you are back in the QB market. Being in QB purgatory is much worse.
Traits combos that are death knells to the position are:
- Lack of Arm Strength and Mobility
- Small Hands and average Arm Strength
- Lack of Accuracy and Arm Strength
Of course, there are always exceptions, but betting on those exceptions is very poor planning. As is visible, arm strength is crucial in overcoming flaws, and the lack of arm strength and any other major trait is detrimental.
Running Backs
As a proactive position, and a pretty non-complex one at that, having any combo of these elite individual traits can set you over the top:
- Elusiveness
- Vision / Anticipation
- Burst
- Size/Speed combo
Of course, having only one of those traits isn’t enough if the rest of the player’s qualities are bad, but being mediocre at everything and elite at one of these will get a player very far. Furthermore, a combo of these traits can even make-up for big flaws everywhere else. For example – a player with elite vision and burst will be hard to stop, even if he lacks long speed and elusiveness. He will consistently get at least a few yards given even passable protection.
Good examples for this are:
- Alvin Kamara – Vision + Anticipation + Burst combo, lacks top-end speed
- Derrick Henry – Size/Speed + Burst combo, lacks elusiveness and change-of-direction ability
- Christian McCaffrey – Elusiveness + Vision combo, lacks elite size and top end speed
- Josh Jacobs/Clyde Edwards-Helaire/David Montgomery – Pretty good at everything, not elite at anything = not an elite game-changer
A trait that is very overblown in my opinion is speed. As long as a ‘Back isn’t slow, all the other traits are significantly more important than long speed.
Combine measurables that are important to watch at the combine are:
- 3-cone drill – Change of direction ability is paramount to Running Back success.
- Height-Weight ratio – Smaller backs will need to be elite at almost everything else to be successful in the NFL, and bigger backs will likely be able to withstand contact better. Additionally, smaller backs will struggle at early-down work, and bigger backs that don’t have speed or elusiveness will struggle on passing downs. It’s important to match these measurables to a player’s play-style.
Another number I look out for is career carries and age. Players that come into the NFL at 22+ and with 500+ carries under their belt historically don’t last as long. This isn’t a capital offense, and many great players were very impactful in the NFL after having a lot of CFB mileage. That being said, teams prefer to draft players with a longer potential NFL “shelf-life”.
Death Knells for the positions are:
- Small size and lack of Receiving ability
- Poor Vision and Elusiveness
- Small size and lack of Speed
Wide Receivers
More than any other proactive position, Wide Receivers can have the most flaws, but as long as they have one of these elite combos, they will be unstoppable:
- Size + Height + Speed – DK Metcalf, Ja’Marr Chase
- Size/Height + Route Running/Separation – Davante Adams, Justin Jefferson
- Top-End Speed + Change-of-Direction – Tyreek Hill
- Size + Tackle-Breaking – AJ Brown, Deebo Samuel
Having any of those combos, almost guarantees NFL success. Additionally, being good at everything but elite at even only 1 trait will also help, such as – Cooper Kupp (football IQ), DeAndre Hopkins (ball skills).
If a WR only has 1 elite trait, but many other concerning ones, that usually doesn’t project well to the NFL. Being big can’t compensate for poor separation ability. Great separation ability can’t compensate for lack of size or ball skills.
Interestingly, ball skills and good hands aren’t great indicators for NFL success, assuming the player isn’t dreadful at it. Every minimally successful WR in the NFL can catch the ball reliably, and they have good ball skills as well. To be a great NFL WR, a player must have a trait or combo that separates them from the rest.
The Scouting Combine is the most crucial for WRs, as nearly all of the drills are directly correlated to a trait they must have. Still, there are a few measurables that are more important than the rest, including:
- Hand Size – Most scouts undervalue the importance of this. Hand size directly correlates to ability to catch the ball more easily.
- 40 yard dash – Of all positions, this is most important for receivers. This shows the ability to separate or succeed downfield. Slower players will struggle to separate. It’s important, however, to remember that 40 time isn’t always indicative of play speed. Only extreme results at the Combine should cause you to overlook a player’s speed on tape.
- 3-Cone – This shows change of direction ability, which directly correlates to route running.
- Height/Weight ratio – Tall thin WRs seldom become stars in the NFL. Very short WRs also have the odds stacked against them. There are many ideal body types, but having the weight to be able to hold your own when attacking passes or taking hits is very important. Lighter receivers will struggle with the physicality at the catch point.
- Wingspan/Arm Length – Obviously, the longer arms the player has, the larger the catch radius.
A bad Combine measurement in one of these areas isn’t a stock killer, but the player will have to compensate elsewhere. Putting up poor numbers at multiple traits of the aforementioned ones is very hard to come back from.
Death Knells to the position include:
- Poor Separation ability and Ball Skills
- Lack of Size and Speed
One thing to remember with receivers, NFL success isn’t always an indicator of a correct or incorrect process or not. This makes hindsight review of your process difficult. Sometimes, a subpar WR will have a good connection with a QB, and assuming he is at least average, large target numbers will eventually lead to production.
Tight Ends
This is the only position that is both proactive and reactive, depending on the task. When blocking, it is a reactive position, and when receiving it is proactive. The traits should be examined as such.
Additionally, this position is practically comprised of 2 positions – OL and WR. The important traits and notable Combine measurements is just a combination of both.
One important and undeniably necessary trait is size. Smaller Tight Ends, regardless of how quick, great at blocking, or great at receiving they are, will struggle to ever produce in the NFL.
Offensive Tackles
Being an offensive tackle is extremely physically demanding. Players must be not only big and strong but also nimble, quick and agile.
Practically, those are the important traits to examine while watching tape. As a reactive position, severely lacking either strength or agility can be critical. Players who lack agility will have defenders running around them constantly, and players who lack strength will greatly struggle against NFL strength.
It’s important to note, these traits can be compensated for in other ways, in which case it’s not as detrimental to their pro abilities.
Agility can be compensated for with explosion off the snap and a great hand punch. This stuns the defender and causes them to miss a couple seconds, which makes the lengthy process of bending the edge longer.
Strength can be compensated for with the use of explosiveness, and leverage. If a player has elite explosiveness off the snap, he can force the defender to generate the strength from a standing position, which is much harder to do. Additionally, with good leverage, it’s very hard to push a blocker back.
One more trait that is highly coveted is versatility. Offensive Line is a position with a ton of injuries, and having 5 quality backups is rare. Having positional versatility limits the amount of quality backups that are necessary, which is very valuable.
All other traits are important, but aside from quickness, football IQ, agility, and strength, everything else is just a bonus. It’s not very hard to get by with a lack of hand fighting skills or with a lack of anchor, as long as the other traits exist. Additionally, like all other reactive positions, assuming an OT is elite at one of these and even above-average at the other, that will catapult him into elite draft status.
Important Combine measurables to focus on are:
- 20-yard Shuttle – This is the true test of explosiveness and the ability to generate a driving force from your lower half. This correlates very clearly to NFL success.
- Vertical & Broad Jumps – This is also a test of burst and functional lower half strength.
- Arm Length/Wingspan – Players with short arms will have a very hard time not only gaining leverage, but not being forced into bad leverage situations. That is very hard to overcome, and he will need to be elite at nearly everything else to still be a dominant O-Tackle.
Other Combine measurables are obviously important and indicative of physical tools (except for the 40-yard dash), but they are much easier to overcome. Height or Weight anomalies aren’t issues as long as it doesn’t affect the other traits. The 3-Cone is important, but usually at that size, agility on tape is different from the 3-Cone numbers. Blockers don’t have to change direction, rather move laterally. Surprisingly, the Bench Press is also not a great indicator. Many players have come into the league with great Bench numbers and failed, and vice versa. This only indicates upper body strength, but that is useless without lower body power.
Interior Offensive Line
This position is one of the least athletically demanding positions. What’s most important here is anchor and football IQ. This position is very complex, with multiple schemes to understand. The edge is easy to understand and spot the assignment (mostly), but the interior has many blitzers and crossing pass-rush patterns, which all need to be picked up by the interior blockers. Failure to understand the schemes and nuances of the game will lead to poor NFL success.
Anchor is also very important, as most interior defenders carry a lot of weight and/or power, and the interior blockers will need to be ready to combat that.
This position is hard to evaluate, as most players don’t have elite traits, and most players are very well-rounded. The key is spotting the cerebral players who understand the hidden concepts and patterns, and if they have the requisite physical tools – jackpot.
The Combine is mostly unimportant for interior O-Linemen. The 10-yard split is a good measurement of explosiveness, and the Bench Press is a good measurement of upper body strength, but those traits can be compensated for easily. Combine measurables for this position are merely beneficial for prospects, not crucial.
Death Knells to this position are pretty simple. Any player that lacks functional strength and size, will undoubtedly struggle at the next level.
Interior Defensive Line
Like the interior O-Line, this position is mostly size, and isn’t as much about athleticism. Of course, elite athleticism is a plus, but it is far from a perfect indicator of success.
When scouting this position, I always make sure to check technique over size and strength. Size and strength are must have traits, and being a rag-doll is very detrimental, but having elite strength doesn’t always translate directly. It’s important to remember, NFL interior linemen are bigger and stronger than in CFB, and winning with power will be significantly harder.
Therefore, I always try to look at technique, and to see in how many ways can the defender get to the QB. Players who displayed elite hand strikes and “getting skinny” ability get massive bumps, even if they are lacking in other areas.
If a team is looking for a run-stuffer or a traditional Nose Tackle, those abilities may not be as important, and the necessary traits will just be size and power. However, these players are hardly ever flashy, and at best, they will get the job done. Drafting players like that is very risky, as those traits don’t always translate. Still, some NFL schemes require those players.
Combine measurables to look at include – 10-yard split, Bench Press, and the Jumps. This is to check explosiveness off the snap, upper and lower body strength. The rest is all in the tape.
Edge Rushers
This position has a clear and sharp line between the 2 distinct styles of play. There are power rushers and finesse rushers. Of course, having only one method is never helpful, but let’s focus on those 2 styles alone here.
Power rushers will have a much harder time translating their game to the NFL, as NFL players are significantly stronger and bigger than CFB blockers. When they are forced to tackle and pursue in space, they will have much less success. Players like that are hardly more than quality role-players, and are hardly ever stars.
Speed/finesse rushers have the benefit of many moves at their disposal. Quickness, bend agility, and lateral mobility can lead to all sorts of attack-lane combinations, which forces blockers to stay on their toes. This can cause many blockers to lose balance or lose contain. Players like this can hardly be schemed out of plays, and you will need to have an agile and quick blocker to counter them.
For those reasons, being powerful is much less important than being quick, agile, and able to bend the edge. Players that lack the bend will suffer big drops in their stock.
Nearly all Combine measurables are crucial for this position:
- 40-yard Dash – Long speed is necessary to chase down QBs in todays NFL.
- 10-yard split – To measure explosiveness off the snap. This is crucial in beating the blockers to the spot, and keeping them off guard consistently.
- 3-Cone drill – Change of direction is critical, and it is directly connected to edge-bending ability.
- Vert & Broad Jumps – Shows lower body strength.
This position only has one “Death Knell” – Lack of Agility and Bend. As mentioned above, this is very harmful to a players stock and development. As always, there are exceptions, but it is very rare, and not at all a safe or worthwhile gamble.
Linebackers
As the leader of the defense, no trait is more important than football IQ. Athleticism is important and can be a huge plus, but many average-athlete Linebackers have been very successful in the NFL, such as Luke Kuechly. It is far from being a crucial factor.
There isn’t any individual trait that is more important than the rest. While coverage ability is important, it’s possible to be successful while being only average at it, as long as you are above average everywhere else. The same goes for tackling, and all athletic traits. Additionally, I don’t put too much stock into a player’s height. As long as he isn’t very small, and showed great abilities elsewhere, this hardly lowers a player’s stock at all.
There are multiple death knells to this position:
- Severe lack of Length
- True lack of Speed
- Severe lack of Change-of-Direction
More than any other reactive position, having a major flaw in even one of those categories will make it impossible to be a superstar on the next level. It also means the player will have to compensate heavily elsewhere just to be average, which is hard to achieve.
Therefore, Combine measurables to focus on are:
- Height + Arm/Wingspan
- 40-yard Dash
- 3-Cone drill
Cornerbacks
The absolute most important trait as a Corner is fluidity and ability to flip the hips. Players who are extremely fluid and flip their hips with ease won’t have a long road to climb to become elite, even if they are hardly mediocre at everything else. Players who lack fluidity and take extra steps when changing direction will always have the odds stacked against them. Regardless of how great their ball skills are or their play recognition is, they will never be able to mirror or pivot assignments at an elite level.
Another ability that is very important is ball skills. I don’t mean the ability to catch the ball, but rather the ability to be able to disrupt any pass. Being able to get your hands in the “bread basket” with consistency can make up for nearly all flaws (except poor fluidity). The lack of this isn’t detrimental, and many successful player aren’t elite at this, but having this ability gives the player a very high floor and low “bustability”.
Combine measurables to focus on are:
- 40-yard Dash – Long speed to keep up with receivers
- Height + Wingspan – To disrupt passes
- Vertical Jump – To be able to cover taller receivers
Death Knells to the position include:
- True lack of Speed
- Lack of Height/Length with average Speed
- Lack of Fluidity
Safeties
In this position, there are very few truly crucial traits. The lack of speed is detrimental, but unless a player is very slow, the speed issue can be worked around. All traits are important here, and none can be very poor.
All Combine measurables are important, and none are much more important than the others, except possibly the 40-yard Dash. Due to the versatile nature of the position, players with extremely different skill sets and strengths can be moved to different areas, and schemed in a way that accentuates their strengths. As long as there are no glaring weaknesses, anyone can succeed at the safety position.
Most Importantly!
Remember, LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES. There is no tool more valuable than looking back at players that hit or missed and examining what made that the case. It’s also important to check and tweak your process, constantly updating what you find most important. This was a list of what I have found so far, after going through many years of success stories and failures.
Check out all my scouting reports on my Author Page or follow my opinions and hot takes on Twitter!
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