How the Patriots Scout Top NFL Prospects | Do Your Job

[Music] it's early March in Foxboro the crowds are silent but not all is quiet in Gillette Stadium beyond the field and Patriots football operations the personnel department is busy working on a new team for the upcoming season let's follow the Patriots Scouts along their journey of building a team whenever someone asks what do you do and and the response is well I scout for the Patriots and and the the response is oh that must be fun you watch football all day and you know you go to a couple games and you know that's that you turn off the light at night and you go to bed and I'll set the sacrifices that our scouts make with their families cannot be emphasized enough people think that this job is easy like it's fantasy football day and it's not you have to come here work hard pay your dues learn your system put your head down and go and you can do those things you have a shot to make it our scouts are on the road typically ninety days a year so that's 90 days that they're away from their family coaches and scouts will attend pro days all over the country to visit with college prospects for one final time before the NFL Draft it's a tough time of year for our scouts they went to the combine in [Music] you're at a product pretty much every single day of the week they're gone six out of seven days of the week this time of year for basically you know a month straight [Music] hey let's go coach and so this is gonna be the back corner of the cone when they go through the mini combine at the pro day our Scouts job is to evaluate the players performance based just on that pro day there's no position no guaranteed of position workers we're more the Holy Cross yeah well you don't have to stay in this order if you're ready let's go good jump good jump our scouts job is twofold they have to evaluate the player whether or not he is talented enough to play for us whether he's got the skill set to fit in our system to evaluate the techniques that he's been taught on the field whether or not his skill set can translate into the techniques that we're going to teach him on the field and so there's the football component that our scouts are evaluating 60/30 the other part of it and which is just as important as the football part of it is the makeup of any prospects we're trying to determine how smart a player is how dedicate a player is how tough a player is our area Scouts are involved on helping to answer some of those missing pieces but a lot of those things come combined and beyond it's on the Knicks the Monte's the coaches so now maybe it's on the position coach when he flies out to meet with say Quan Berkeley or whoever it is to really put his stamp on and say okay well you know what yeah you know Patrick was right safe on it may not it may not work here or and I'm just using it like say one partly be fine here but that's not gonna be our problem now it's time for the coaches to see if that player can become one of us a lot of the guys you work out are guys you look at and say hey this guy's really got a chance but there's something more I've got to find out about them maybe it's his personality maybe at the mental side of it maybe it's something physically you couldn't see on tape or that you've got to confirm in person to me there's nothing more valuable than getting your hands on the guy and spend a day with them getting them personality-wise getting to know them how he is when you're coaching them listen we all want you to do is whatever you normally do to warm up that's we're gonna do when you're ready to roll you tell me we bring the coaches into this process around the same time and they can go in and have a little bit different perspective than our scouts have maybe they go in and get involved in the actual workout and they ask the player to do specific drills that we ask our players to do in our practice so that gives the coach the ability to evaluate prospects performance with players our current II furthermore it gives a chance for our coaches to finally sit down and meet with these players one on one all I want to see you doing we start doing his psyche charting and punting is just catch the ball we'll get to the drill work part in a second but I can watch both these at the same time I can see I know what I'm looking for to me it's big to put him into some kind of situation ask him to do things you're not asking doing practice and get feedback from that guy's personality and how he reacts to when he's put in an uncomfortable position beat it beat it there beat it what happened what happened what happened what happened you catching a lot of balls low right now you're kind of tempo time and them up were you kind of catch them on the run I don't want you to waste any steps going laterally or backwards I want you to beat it there so this nose turns over I want you to think catching on this pecks is gonna break her it to the middle your body and you can catch it when you change something on somebody like I went out there today and changed things on this punter no one he probably isn't gonna react great and have a couple bad punts now I want to see where he goes is he going to tank does you stick with it and trust the coaching you know how is he gonna respond and those are windows into what you know the future may hold there you go there you go going back better better although the field remains quiet the entire stadium is buzzing draft day has arrived it's time to see months of assessments evaluations and analysis come to fruition the month of April was spent finalizing our draft board so now our scouts have have watched tape for two years they've gone out and seen practices and by that time we have all the information we need to set our draft board and that we just right up until draft day in April [Music] alright guys write this name down last name win WY and him first name Isaiah offensive line Georgia Thursday's coach Bell check how you doing congratulations we're gonna make you a new home pitcher when we get on the clock debating we should take this guy over this guy at that point that those decisions have been made we adjust to what the players have been picked before us and we we just move right on down the board and see who's available for the most part you know all the major decisions come draft day are completed it's just waiting to see how the board Falls free agency after the draft is it's kind of like the overtime part of the draft because there will be several players that you may have had your affable grades on that didn't get drafted I think this place would be a good spot for you as a free agent you know just how you played down there's a good good fit for for what we do up here defensively so I think you'd be a good fit up here so I think you just need to keep us in mind you know what I mean we got a good track record with developing young defensive linemen and think you got a lot of things what we look for a real exciting time is towards the end of the draft and the free agency period starts and their strategy involved with you know we think we need to draft this player in the seventh round because we think that if we don't we're not going to get it in free agency so there's a strategy component that comes into it late in the draft we always say it doesn't matter how you get here you can be drafted undrafted all that matters is your opportunity when you gets here when you get here to make things happen so we treat that free agency like this overtime we got to score more points it's really it's an open opportunity and that's how coach Belichick looks at it it's not where you come from it's what you can do when you get here they could be a good opportunity for you this is really the only time in the college process that it's a recruitment process so we're trying to sell them on us having a good situation for them you have to be in here to really see what it's like it's a free agent frenzy I mean phones are ringing a lot of times you may have agents that are contacting you coaches players themselves who feel like there will be a good fit for your football team we've had success here with our undrafted free agents this year we had JC Jackson he David Andrews as a captain for us now he came as an undrafted free agent and so that's that's an important time for us to identify the right players and to then get the deal sealed with them to bring them into our team so we can build a competitive 90 man roster as the dog days of summer are upon us the team returns and so do the scouts to get a look at the current team and to get a jump on the 2019 draft class once our scouts leave leave here in late July early August really the meat of their schedule is from August and through Thanksgiving one of the things that we'll do in the preseason in addition to the practice that will be online made available so we're going to do some comparison tapes some different positions we're going to go through the part of our preseason scouting process I'll put that you know put that together so we'll make that available to you guys the more you can evaluate these prospects employers against the best competition possible like bat matters smart tough dependable reliable good fundamental players that can play well under pressure but in the end the narrative that you put in the box of players future and saying exactly what he is for this team and what he'll do for us they can't over a holder emphasize the importance of that well everybody have a good fall be safe you know like I said you guys need anything throughout the course of the fall someone comes up like don't hesitate to reach out or ask just trying to make sure you get it taken care of as summer turns into fall it's back to school for the scout [Music] a typical day for a Scout is pretty crazy I mean you might wake up let's say 5:30 you may have to drive 30 minutes get to the school that's called 7:00 you got to watch tape offense defense special teams and now it's time to go to practice now it's time to get in the car and get to your next destination every day is a little different just depending on the school you're going to every start times a little different each day is a little different that's kind of one of the cool things about the job amidst the holiday season the scouts returned to Gillette Stadium to present their findings on this year's draft prospects there might be some variation in how we see the valuable players what we perceive as a need at the current time may not end up being a need by the time that draft rolls around in April so we we operate under the assumption that we're trying to build a completely new team I mean this guy's calling out everything like and he's generally bright this guy who loves football we would take more of him right yeah this guy will be fine in our program we basically present the player to Nick to Monty to the rest of the group of Scouts and we kind of rank them the guys we've seen in our area and basically we go over the skill set the fit the role what we think of the guys as players but when he's free this guy can close and he's a violent a clerk he's fast eco space he can tackle when you get this guy on the board if you guys go through everything with them the install he's gonna be dialed in he's gonna be ready to go he flips the switch when he's on the field he's highly competitive love-love ball no no off-field issues no concerns we never look at a situation and say oh it looks like we're all set at this position so we're not going to bother scouting position acts this year because we think we're in a good position to get through the the rest of the back door guys and then anything over here might have been a little low on this guy think he could end up rising at the end of the process but he's a good player that I definitely think would have parole for our team we do value a to our roster and know our players so we can continue to go out and find guys to make our roster better moving forward it's an imperfect science it's not a it's very subjective and that's ultimately what we're being paid to do is to give our opinion on the player you know everybody gets some right everybody gets some wrong we all see it a little differently but I think generally we're kind of all within the same ballpark you know it's funny sometimes the scouts just get a feeling that a player's talent just might be the right fit here a great example of that is Matt Slater you know Matt Slater coming out of UCLA he didn't really have a position he bounced back and forth between wide receiver and safety he wasn't really on a lot of radars in the scouting circle but the thing with Matt Slater is that every time he turned on the tape at UCLA this guy was a dominant special teams player here's a player that that really didn't have a role in college except as a fourth down player in the kicking game and we drafted him to do just that for us he's turned out to be one of the best special teams players in the league over the length of his career Matt Slater is a great example of you know our scouts digging deep finding something that a player can do and really it's been it's been a success of successful addition to the team for a long time the calendar has flipped to January and the playoffs are upon us and of course we're giving everything we got the scouts know it's time to hit the road again leave the emotions at home continue to find new talent to build a new team for the upcoming year we're ready for you it's difficult this is it's a tough business it's it's but we have to strive to be objective they understand that the business side of this this game shows up and that we have a responsibility to the organization to put the best 53 men on the team and sometimes that's gonna that's not sometimes that's gonna leave some people out on the outside looking in your own individual feelings can't impact what's best for the team and you can't necessarily always scout with your heart you just got with your heart all the time you can put some bad things on the paper now we all have players that we love you may give them a little bump but at the end of the day it's about finding the best players for our football team [Music] [Music]

Channel: New England Patriots

Views: 355,527

Rating: 4.8802547 out of 5

Keywords: NFL;, Patriots, new england patriots, patriots do your job, do your job, patriots scouting department

Id: ir5vmXq3Y5Q

Length: 14min 53sec (893 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 12 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Civilwarland09]

Really enjoyed this. It's a good inside look at a side of football that doesn't get shown as much.