[Ben E Lou]

As always, a big "thank you" to Jim for continuing to do these.

--Ben

1. When examining two players at the same position to draft, what are the most important overall factors in deciding which one to choose? Would you rather have a player with good bars and mediocre combine scores, or good combine scores and mediocre bars?

I look at combine scores first, as they correlate to a wider skill set. There's less chance that a player with a superior skill set will have misleading combine scores. Bars more confirm an assumption about a player. They tell me that good combines might give me a player with a specific individual skill I'm looking for.

I'd rather have the great combine score, all other factors being equal.

I don't as much choose between two players as I examine my roster before the draft and choose specific skills I'd like to improve. For instance, I might look at my offensive line and think that I really need to find someone I can run behind in a couple of years. So then I focus on finding an offensive lineman with good combines whose bars indicate can run block.

I also look for potential affinities and conflicts. I like having a team that gets along well, so it's a bonus for me to find a good player who will like his position leader. In that respect, I'm often looking at two or three players at entirely different positions when it comes time to draft in a specific slot. It seems I'm rarely deciding between two at the same position, as everyone looks so different.

In later rounds, I like to draft players with high volatility.



2. We've read that height and weight matter to some extent. Anything to look for with height and weight when drafting, such as do tall defensive linemen block more passes, or tall wide receivers catch more, or heavy defensive linemen stop the run better but get tired easily?

With weight, a player close to the ideal weight for his position will perform better (100% of his real ratings) in most areas than someone who is too heavy or too light. The difference, however, is very slight, as players can't move to positions they're ill-suited to play because of their weight. This does not affect quarterbacks, punters, kickers and cornerbacks. I honestly don't remember why I excluded cornerbacks specifically.

Same for height, except the cases are much more limited. Height matters most for quarterbacks, and slightly for receivers, defensive linemen, cornerbacks and safeties.

In the future, I hope this mechanism becomes a lot more sophisticated, applying to specific skills rather than simply any area determined to be more a physical skill than an experience skill (I'll leave that particular follow-up for another time).



3. What role does the scout play in identifying players to draft?

The skill bars, as always, are seen through his eyes. The scouting error is larger with potential draftees, so a scout's skill with a position group is very important.



4. What do the "Underrated/Overrated/As Scouted/Hard To Read" tags mean? Are they relative to the bars, the overall bureau rating, or something else?

These relate to the skill bars. A "very underrated" player likely has true ratings that are significantly better than the bars indicate. The better the scout, the more likely this is a correct impression. Now I realize that doesn't necessarily make sense. Why doesn't the scout just change his bars after an interview? I wanted a permanent record of the interview process, so you could go back, see who you looked at, and quickly revisit the thought process behind interviewing. Given the scouting mechanism, anything else would result in a "tell" that other teams could pick up on.