NFL.com’s Lance Zierlein joins Matt Waldman’s RSP Cast for a conversation about the process of scouting, lessons we’ve learned over the years, the players who taught us those lessons, and 2019 prospects who’ve caught our eye.
One of my favorite RSP Film Room episodes was the clinic that Lance Zierlein gave about offensive line play when we studied Washington’s Brandon Scherff in 2014. Soon after, Lance accepted a job from the NFL to do scouting reports for the NFL.com website and appear on the NFL Network during draft season. Lance joined me for a post-Labor Day conversation about a variety scouting and player-related topics.
- Things Lance has learned about scouting over the years:
- The difference between scouting from a fan perspective and a team perspective.
- Why teams value physical traits highly, have standards for them, and give them a longer lifeline.
- Why it’s ok to like a player you’ve assigned a lower grade than a player with a higher grade.
- The value of good football character.
- Players that helped Matt and Lance learn valuable lessons.
- Colts GM Chris Ballard’s mentoring of Lance.
- Why you must do more than summarize how a player performed in college in a scouting report.
- Don’t get into the weeds with football technique if you’re overlooking that the player can get the job done at a high level.
- The value of studying NFL tape year-round as a preparation for studying college players.
- How Lance and I feel about the process of ranking players.
- Difficult evaluations for Lance and me and what we thought about each player.
- Matt: Raiders RB Chris Warren.
- Lance: Houston QB Deshaun Watson.
- Players from the 2019 NFL Draft class that have caught our eye this early.
- WR Tyre Brady
- WR Emmanuel Butler
- WR Olabisi Johnson
- RB Zach Moss
- Lance on his NFL.com gig as well as other lessons from Ballard.
- Areas of our scouting or the NFL’s that we think can improve.
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