I understood what you ment, I dont buy into scouts cus guys like Marques Colston Tom Brady Donald driver terrell davis lance moore Pierre thomas ect werent 1st round picks or expected to do well and jimmy clauson is supposed to be Dan Marino reincarnated, I dont have the game films scouts watch but I know pro football theres a lot of guys who wont make this roster this year because the team is just plain loaded, teams will pillage the practice squad, guys like Isa Quddus may not make the team this year but he def can play in the Nfl else where as for a few others, articles are more often then not biased opinions of regional sports writers who give homer opinions, take the reggie bush deal for instance, b4 he became a dophin they bashed him because hes not a true rb. Reggie worked for coach paytons offensive scheme so it didnt matter if he wasnt a true rb Reggie is an amazing athlete with game changing ability, so you have to maximize his touches the best way for that is having him at RB. Now that hes in miami they say hes gonna live up to the hype, I say their qb issues will doom not only the team but he aswell

Well I guess my original point of comment referred to your statement about JP possibly being a "mid round gem" and I meant that it wouldn't be surprising considering he was highly rated by scouts in general, but concerns about his ability to play physical dropped him from the first rounds. Overall, scouting is not an exact science, and like with any system that requires human evaluation... it can be very fallable, but that is not to say that it has no worth

And I agree with what you're saying about scouts and sports writers, but if you are conscious of the potential bias involved when reading said articles, you can gather some useful information without having to absorb their point of view in its entirety.

I trust the scouts, not the sports writers. For every Jimmy Clausen, Tom Brady or Pierre Thomas they judge incorrectly, they are right about 5 more. The issue is that people only notice when they are wrong, in fact, when they are spectacularly wrong. Look at the percentages of Hall of Fame players vs. the round they are taken in the draft, it supports that. And for each of those players there was a scout who saw something good in them, but they aren't going to spread it around because that would push the players into higher rounds and make it harder to get them.
It isn't an exact science, no one is ever 100% or even 80% correct, but they are still very good at their jobs, and beat picking players at random by a large margin.

I don't doubt that Williams is going to grab Johnny Patrick and shake him like a rag doll before he sends him in the game highly mnotivated. I had a coach who would do that to poor tacklers. Rugby coaches can still do that.

My friend from New Zealand told me what they do in those piles to get a guy to loosen his grip on the ball, and I haven't been able to look at that game in the same way after that...

Since this board is supposed to be PG-13, I'll leave you just with a hint in the form of a smiley. http://yoursmiles.org/msmile/fun/m0121.gif

They do a similar thing in soccer games to get players to lose control of the ball. If you watch closely during the world cup, and know what to look for, you'll see it happen a couple times.

How... when... I've never heard that from any soccer player. I'm not saying that it couldn't happen, but I'm just wondering in what type of situations 'cos there's not that much body contact in soccer, so it would be pretty obvious. Even in corner situations, the players usually have their arms at shoulder level. Are there any video clips where a TV camera would've caught it on tape?

And in World Cup of all the places... don't these people have any shame? http://yoursmiles.org/tsmile/rulez/t2027.gif

Look for when a player is guarding the ball on the sidelines, or when they are going up for a goal kick or corner kick. Most teams have a certain dirty player that they will send out if the refs are sleeping.

I think I'm just going to take your word for it... not really my cup of tea as they say.