I think our scouting staff is gaining more respect around the league, but let's face it, the one thing that gets you respect in the NFL is winning and winning consistently. You never hear that a team that is a consistent loser makes great personnel choices. All teams, no matter the wins or losses, have some great scouts who can make a difference. The ones you hear about as fans tend to be because those teams win, but the good personnel departments around the league know who the good scouts are on the teams that don't tend to win as often.
We did add a few new scouts this year to replace those who left, and I would think that the makeover of the scouting department is fairly complete. Les wanted to spend a full year with a lot of the scouts to get a feel for final decisions and to see a whole scouting year in action and then make some decisions. We added a few former players to groom and made some other transitions that should benefit the department.
As for drafting from the south, I think that is more coincidence than anything, plus, last time I checked, that conference, what do they call it, the SEC or something like that, has some pretty good players! Most teams do pay attention to the southeast and tend to have more veteran scouts there because of the depth of talent. In fact, our new director of college scouting, Brad Holmes, has been our southeast scout the past few years, which is a somewhat natural progression for scouts. Additionally, we just finished a study about which players from which regions have the most success overall and are redeploying our scouting resources to make sure we are targeting our efforts in the proper areas.
The group we have now should be together for the next few years, and what's perhaps most important, they have a good relationship with the coaching staff. As important as it is to get a handle on the talent of prospects, being in sync with the coaching staff and knowing what kind of players will thrive in our coaching system.
As for differing opinions, for most players we usually have 4 to 5 scouts who write a report -- the area scout, the national scout, the college director, the player personnel director and a position coach, plus potentially a coordinator and Les. So it's rare that we have a report with just two scouts and that they differ. Usually there is much more information on a player than 2 scouting reports. If not, maybe rock paper scissors?
KD