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View Full Version : Scouts and Interviews: An After-Draft Look


cuervo72
05-14-2008, 02:35 PM
So, IHOF just got through their draft and training camp, and I decided to take a look at how the results of the camp lined up with what my scouts told me through interviews. I'm not sure what exactly might be gleaned and I don't expect to come to any real conclusions, but I figured it would be an interesting exercise.

To start, this is my scout:

http://www.fof-ihof.com/upload/cuervo72/scout_mel_conway.png

Disregard that he is listed as the scout of the "Beaumont (TX) Vigilantes". That's a result of my neglecting to set up a batch file to swap out nickname and city files between FOFL and IHOF. We're really the Frederick Red Menace. Anyway, our scout is basically good across the board - good with YT and everywhere else but DB (VG), RB (F) and K (P). That's ok though, I didn't interview any RB or K anyway. So we'll regard him as "good".

We used all of our 60 interviews, and they came back as follows:

Very Underrated: 9
Underrated: 8
As Scouted: 6
Overrated: 5
Very Overrated: 21
Hard to Read: 11

Well, HtR right off the bat is pretty worthless, and means that immediately 18.3% of what my scout has to say can be thrown out. My guess here is that the best scout will only have a read X% of the time (say 90%), and each step down decreases the hit rate. No real data here, but that's my guess. Anyway, here's how the HTR guys actually ended up faring:

http://www.fof-ihof.com/upload/cuervo72/2017_htr.png

Four good, one neutral, and six bad. Nothing much else to say here really, though I really would like Lee Madison right about now, and I am somewhat surprised at Nowlin and Shea's drops.

On to As Scouted.

http://www.fof-ihof.com/upload/cuervo72/2017_as.png

I took a late round flyer on Raymond Murphy because we are weak at TE and he REALLY gets along with our position leader (Murphy has a 100 personality). It's interesting that the range here is pretty small, going between -2 and 2. Even the negatives in that range aren't catastrophic as camps go (-3 and you start to worry a lot more), and +2 is ok but not a huge breakout. Mel, you did pretty well here I think.

Working our way up from bad to good, the Very Overrated group.

http://www.fof-ihof.com/upload/cuervo72/2017_vo.png

I'd consider the top three to be misses here, as they don't look to be overrated at all (certainly not Schweitzer). If you consider the rest basically accurate, Mel hit 18-21 or 85.7%. That may or may not be argued though, as some of the -1 and -2 guys in that list (who might have qualified as "as scouted", as they overlap that range) look like they'll turn out just fine if they level off quickly. If we only consider those with -3 camps or worse, we're down to a 13-21 or 61.9% success rate. So in general Mel did pretty well, though some of his classifications could be debated.

Now for the overrateds.

http://www.fof-ihof.com/upload/cuervo72/2017_o.png

Eh...I'm really not sure what to make of this. Four guys, one of which had a good camp, and three others who weren't great, but aren't really busts either (Weber looks more than ok). Tough to differentiate from the As Scouted group really. (note: there is actually one guy missing here, and that's because he wasn't in SD's change tracker results, as he was still in the FA pool. But he was -2 in his uh, personal camp.)

The Underrateds.

http://www.fof-ihof.com/upload/cuervo72/2017_u.png

This list is filled with guys who were on our radar, and many went either just before or just after our first round pick (more on him below). Eight guys, seven who had positive camps. 87.5% success rate, and Hatcher is just a head-scratcher (had VERY solid combines).

And now for the Very Underrateds.

http://www.fof-ihof.com/upload/cuervo72/2017_vu.png

That's right baby - nine very underrateds, and we drafted four of them! Um...but as you can see, three of those four had -5 camps. WTF Mel? These results flat-out stink, honestly. Burns was an obvious creeper, and went at 1.8. Herttna was there when we picked in the first, but we took Wickland instead. D'OH! Now, I'll grant that six of nine of these guys had non-negative camps. But that is only a 66.6% "non screw-up" rate, and four of those were no better than +1 in camp. Not anything I'd call Very Underrated. And the guys who were -5, those are just flat-out wrong.



So, overall what do we have? Well, it appears that Mel did ok overall, and steered us out of some bad picks in the VO list (though it could be argued some of those could be obvious by looking at combines) but really failed us where it counted most - trying to identify those diamonds in the rough. Then again, just how many of those diamonds are there? Taking the list as a whole, here is a quick breakdown on camp changes:

+6 and above: 10 (I scouted three of these, one was VO and two VU)*
+3 to +5: 16
+1 or +2: 53
0: 58
-1 or -2: 67
-3 to -5: 96
-6 and below: 67

* of these 10, three are PK, one is an UDFA RB, one is an UDFA DE.

Pretty harsh curve there. Out of sixty interviews, I was able to correctly identify four guys in the +3 to +5 range, though quite a few of the players in this range went undrafted. So I don't know...maybe the main goal of the scout and interviews in this stage is not to identify hidden gems, but to help avoid bad picks? If that's the case, my scout still did a fairly bad job of things, as we had a 1, a 3, and a 6 crap out in camp (we did not have a 2, and a couple of extra 3s escaped ok).

A couple of caveats on those camp casualties though. One, Rufus O'Neal, was a No Workout guy. In previous patches, these guys worked out a good deal of the time (though I did have a couple that did not). In this patch, a guy skipping the combine isn't as big a tell. But, I assume that's why you have interviews, and my scout honked that one. The other two guys are QB, and those guys ALL seem to turn to poo except for a select few. There were 25 QB tracked this stage, and here was the spread:

+3: 2
+1: 1
0: 2
-1: 3
-3: 5
-4/-5: 5
-6: 3
-8/-9: 3
-13: 1

Drafting a QB is just a risky proposition, and it almost doesn't seem worth it beyond franchise types - all of the non-losers of this group here were UDFA with no more than a 33 future before camp, save for one guy...who happened to go 1.3, with an 80 rating. Certainly doesn't seem worth it to scout these bastards, though by chance I *did* scout Pat Levine, who was +3 (all the way to 7/30, whee), only to forget about him after the draft.

MalcPow
05-14-2008, 05:35 PM
Good stuff Cuerv. I've also noticed that the VU tag can mean big hits or big misses. On some of the VU guys that had flat camps, I'd wait a year and see what happens next camp/during the season. Some of these guys don't show their true colors in year 1, and it may be unfair to judge your scout simply by the first camp movement.

The other point of note is that QBs are another breed entirely, and I wouldn't really hold your scout's whiffs there against him. There are actually starters to be had outside of the top franchise guys, but my long term testing has me convinced there are really only two or three starter quality QBs in most drafts. Which basically means, if you see a can't miss stud at the top, there are probably only one or two other guys left that are worth a crap in the rest of the heap. (This actually makes sense if you think about it. If a starting QB is likely to stick around in the league for 10-12 seasons or so, then two or three entering the league each year would probably create the right long term talent mix.)

cuervo72
05-14-2008, 07:01 PM
That's the conclusion I've basically had, I just thought I'd take a shot at a guy who looked a little different. I'm just hoping he doesn't tank *that* much at this point, and that he can run things ok enough. Which basically is to say, "don't throw picks". The -5 is discouraging though, as I'm guessing he loses at least that much more in subsequent camps, and will probably be lucky to wind up in the mid-40s.

gstelmack
05-14-2008, 08:40 PM
That's the conclusion I've basically had, I just thought I'd take a shot at a guy who looked a little different. I'm just hoping he doesn't tank *that* much at this point, and that he can run things ok enough. Which basically is to say, "don't throw picks". The -5 is discouraging though, as I'm guessing he loses at least that much more in subsequent camps, and will probably be lucky to wind up in the mid-40s.

Well, Teddy Parmalee, my WOOF QB, is -21 from his post-draft potential (60 -> 39) but has posted 13, 12, and 14-win seasons since his 6-win rookie season and just won the Doggie Bowl with a huge end-of-the-game drive. Mind you, he's got a great defense helping him win, but when he needs to make throws, he makes them.

So look beyond the scouted rating...

MalcPow
05-14-2008, 10:19 PM
Well, Teddy Parmalee, my WOOF QB, is -21 from his post-draft potential (60 -> 39) but has posted 13, 12, and 14-win seasons since his 6-win rookie season and just won the Doggie Bowl with a huge end-of-the-game drive. Mind you, he's got a great defense helping him win, but when he needs to make throws, he makes them.

So look beyond the scouted rating...

Well sure, a guy like that is good if you want to win bowls. But you'll never have the top Power Rating with a 39/39 guy under center. :)

cuervo72
05-14-2008, 11:29 PM
Well, Teddy Parmalee, my WOOF QB, is -21 from his post-draft potential (60 -> 39) but has posted 13, 12, and 14-win seasons since his 6-win rookie season and just won the Doggie Bowl with a huge end-of-the-game drive. Mind you, he's got a great defense helping him win, but when he needs to make throws, he makes them.

So look beyond the scouted rating...

Also true - I was 6-6 and went with this guy, who went 4-0 to finish the year and took us to the Conf. Championship. He was at most rated 37 or so.

http://www.thefofl.com/players/player.php?player=3140

Of course, we drafted a combine stud the next year (who would never last until 2.24 today), so Otto never threw another pass, but held a clipboard for two more years. But yeah, he and his INT rating were pretty good (was in 2k4, so it wasn't hidden).

WebEwbank
05-15-2008, 05:41 AM
I have been experimenting with only drafting VU, U, AS, and HTR.

It's definitely working, at least in the first round, where I invest most of my time in SP.

I have less than 10% busts but not - alas - too many boomers...

I don't shy away from HTRs; taking this, possibly mistakenly, as the scout passing on offering an opinion.

gstelmack
05-15-2008, 07:04 AM
Well sure, a guy like that is good if you want to win bowls. But you'll never have the top Power Rating with a 39/39 guy under center. :)

:p

I'll take the bowl...

MIJB#19
05-16-2008, 06:25 PM
Well, Teddy Parmalee, my WOOF QB, is -21 from his post-draft potential (60 -> 39) but has posted 13, 12, and 14-win seasons since his 6-win rookie season and just won the Doggie Bowl with a huge end-of-the-game drive. Mind you, he's got a great defense helping him win, but when he needs to make throws, he makes them.

So look beyond the scouted rating...No offense, Greg, but bringing up Parmalee in this context is comparing Apples with Oranges. With the state of the IHOF right now, a guy like Parmalee would have been out of football by now. It'll require about 10 more seasons to have most of the pre-FOF2007 quarterbacks out of the league. Had IHOF been a pure FOF2007 league, like WOOF, your point would have been a very good one.

QuikSand
05-16-2008, 07:33 PM
I find that it's tough not to get excited about a player that your scout has tagged as (very) underrated, especially when you're getting down into the value parts of the draft. But it does seem that unless there's at least *something* else to back up the impression -- even just one outlier combine score or something -- then it's just a lot more likely that the U/VU is coming from a scout error rather than a guy who is just tons better than he looks and your scout was the only one to see that.

I am finding myself drifting back toward using my scout for mostly special cases. With combine monsters, I just tend to ignore anything from the scout that doesn't back up the combine... and for combine duds that the scout likes, I'm increasingly inclined to do the same and trust the combine far more.

So, I think going forward I plan to use most of my interviews for their (secondary, to most people) value in refining potentially maxed-out ratings or voids, to determine the strength of potential affinities/conflicts, and that sort of thing.

RedKingGold
05-16-2008, 08:02 PM
I find that it's tough not to get excited about a player that your scout has tagged as (very) underrated, especially when you're getting down into the value parts of the draft. But it does seem that unless there's at least *something* else to back up the impression -- even just one outlier combine score or something -- then it's just a lot more likely that the U/VU is coming from a scout error rather than a guy who is just tons better than he looks and your scout was the only one to see that.

I am finding myself drifting back toward using my scout for mostly special cases. With combine monsters, I just tend to ignore anything from the scout that doesn't back up the combine... and for combine duds that the scout likes, I'm increasingly inclined to do the same and trust the combine far more.

So, I think going forward I plan to use most of my interviews for their (secondary, to most people) value in refining potentially maxed-out ratings or voids, to determine the strength of potential affinities/conflicts, and that sort of thing.

+1

I basically only use interviews now on guys who I think might slip into the later rounds and who have questionable combine skills or simply look odd.

If a guy has solid combines, I'm more likely to just use the eye test.

cuervo72
05-16-2008, 10:15 PM
+1

I basically only use interviews now on guys who I think might slip into the later rounds and who have questionable combine skills or simply look odd.

If a guy has solid combines, I'm more likely to just use the eye test.

Wickland in this case was that kind of guy. "Traditional" combines were ok but not spectacular, jump was quite good and pspec was off the charts (91). Timing was in the max range (turns out now he's a 98...close, but not 100+). And he was stupid enough to possibly have a good INT rating despite just an ok sol score (going by your study :) ).

The only other thing I though about - and this is probably not the case - is that maybe for the QB, interviews might tell you something about avoid INT. Say, if the draft rankings took visible bars into account, but not avoid INT. If the scout might somehow "see" aINT after an interview, maybe guys who had good ratings there might register as U/VU. IOW, maybe the draft list thinks visible bars look like a 45, but the scout factors in the aINT and thinks he's a 50. I highly doubt that's the case, but it did pop into my mind.

MIJB#19
05-17-2008, 04:32 PM
I did the same thing Cuervo did, looking back at which 60 players I interviewed and then looked at the by SkyDog created training camp movement of all those guys. I would have liked to post the details, but that would require me to redo the research as I lost the data. Maybe later on, if I feel like doing that.

What jumped out to me, and what was pretty much on par with what Cuervo posted above is that I saw training camp averages of somewhere around:
very underrated: +4 / -3
underrated: +4 / 0
hard to read: +4 / -4
as scouted: +4 / 0
overrated: +4 / -4
very overrate: +4 / -4

Afrementioned center Jeffrey Hatcher actually messed up the average of the underrated group, as all others were showing a trend of +4 / +2.