Tag: Football Outsiders

  • Futures: Why Scouting Gets a Bum Rap – A Front Office Overhaul

    Futures: Why Scouting Gets a Bum Rap – A Front Office Overhaul

    Scouting gets a bum rap. “Of course Waldman would say this,” you proclaim. “He’s a scout!” I may perform the fundamental role of one, but I am not a scout. This elicits laughter from my friend Ryan Riddle. The Bleacher Report columnist who holds Cal’s single season sack record and played with the Raiders, Ravens,…

  • Football Outsiders: Three in the Boiler

    Football Outsiders: Three in the Boiler

    A series I started this year at the RSP blog is The Boiler Room. One of the challenges involved with player analysis is to be succinct with delivering the goods. As the author of an annual tome, I’m often a spectacular failure in this respect. Even so, I will study a prospect and see a play unfold that…

  • Futures: Arkansas RB Knile Davis

    When I saw the 2012 Lewin Career Forecast, I had already studied Russell Wilson. In fact, I told a panel of draft analysts on a National Football Post podcast (beginning at the 17:42 mark) that included Josh Norris, Wes Bunting, and Josh Buchanan that Wilson was my sleeper quarterback in this draft. I was cynical…

  • Futures at Football Outsiders: UNC Guard, Jonathan Cooper

    Futures at Football Outsiders: UNC Guard, Jonathan Cooper

    Explosive, agile, and purposeful, Cooper has what it takes to play in the NFL for a decade if he can stay healthy. There was an important decision to be made at the offices of Futures this afternoon: the boss or the wife? The work boss saw Knile Davis run a 4.30-forty at Indy; calculated the…

  • Futures: DE’s Bjoern Werner and Damontre Moore

    Futures: DE’s Bjoern Werner and Damontre Moore

    As a football fan, odds are high that you at least had a brief love affair with professional wrestling. Mine lingered a while. It was an obsession lasting long enough that when I think of defensive ends, they remind me of the ultimate “heels” from professional wrestling promotions: big, bad, freakish athletes capable of putting…

  • Reads Listens Views 12/14/2012

    Reads Listens Views 12/14/2012

    Listens Thank You Fantasy football is slowing down and draftnik season is heating up. I’ll be here and at Football Outsider’s providing analysis of the 2013 prospects as I compile my research for the 2013 Rookie Scouting Portfolio, which will be available for download April 1. If you’ve never seen the RSP publication, 2006-2012 versions…

  • Reads Listens Views 11/16/2012

    Reads Listens Views 11/16/2012

    Listens More on La Havas later. Views Part I – Real or Photoshop? I don’t care, it’s cool . . . At Fantasy Throwdown: Annual Thanksgiving Tourney & IDP Tourney!!! To our regulars out there, thanks for playing Fantasy Throwdown, including providing feedback and helping build a great community of fantasy football players.To our mailing list…

  • Futures: Texas FS Kenny Vaccaro

    Futures: Texas FS Kenny Vaccaro

    Studying football players is a solitary pursuit. So it feels good when a performance catches your attention and months later you learn that it did the same for another writer, scout, or talent evaluator. Everyone enjoys that kind of validation. One of those moments occurred last spring when I was watching Keenan Allen. As fun…

  • Futures: Florida TE Jordan Reed

    Futures: Florida TE Jordan Reed

    Last week, I wrote about Notre Dame’s Tyler Eifert and how his skills fit into the growing pantheon of versatile tight end play that is in vogue in the NFL. But versatility can have a number of different meanings depending on the talents of the player and his fit within an offense. The word doesn’t necessarily mean…

  • Futures: West Virginia WR Tavon Austin

    Evaluating players is a long process. It doesn’t end when an analyst watches a few games of a prospect. I want you to keep this in mind as you read this take or any take that I provide of a player before his college career has ended. My methodology of evaluation is as detailed as…