Evaluating NFL Draft Prospects

JKool · 05-03-2008, 08:14 PM

Canton, nice point about starts versus games played. That is a good distinction. Further, it makes a nice point about how the College coach's judgment about the player gets packed into how we evaluate him - the coach's decision about who to play, when, and how often tells us something about the player.

Smitty, you get paid only in kudos... as usual.

Hagan, I'm sure that the measurements are not the best way to judge, this would be like evaluating a player ONLY in terms of his stats. As Euph points out, that is worthless (I think that is overstated, but point more or less taken). Thus, 40 times (which, as we saw in our earlier thread, are not correlated to NFL success) would be of little benefit if the player can't judge the ball or is always out of position.

Game tapes introduce a different kind of problem. Observations of a player can be colored by our beliefs, background theories and so on. That is, if we already think a player is quite good, we might be willing to overlook/forgive certain kinds of slip ups that we would hold against a believed "lesser" player. In a sense, the stats take out some of the subjectivity of our "viewing."

Thus, it seems like there is a trade-off between game tape (for example) and measurements. This might be one place where scouting is more of an art than a science?

05-03-2008, 08:14 PM	#9
JKool 1000 Posts + Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: Madison, WI Posts: 2,423	Re: Evaluating NFL Draft Prospects Canton, nice point about starts versus games played. That is a good distinction. Further, it makes a nice point about how the College coach's judgment about the player gets packed into how we evaluate him - the coach's decision about who to play, when, and how often tells us something about the player. Smitty, you get paid only in kudos... as usual. Hagan, I'm sure that the measurements are not the best way to judge, this would be like evaluating a player ONLY in terms of his stats. As Euph points out, that is worthless (I think that is overstated, but point more or less taken). Thus, 40 times (which, as we saw in our earlier thread, are not correlated to NFL success) would be of little benefit if the player can't judge the ball or is always out of position. Game tapes introduce a different kind of problem. Observations of a player can be colored by our beliefs, background theories and so on. That is, if we already think a player is quite good, we might be willing to overlook/forgive certain kinds of slip ups that we would hold against a believed "lesser" player. In a sense, the stats take out some of the subjectivity of our "viewing." Thus, it seems like there is a trade-off between game tape (for example) and measurements. This might be one place where scouting is more of an art than a science?
	"... I was beating them with my eyes the whole game..." - Aaron Brooks