Matt Waldman’s RSP Scout Talk podcast with Russ Lande begins a series devoted to evaluation misses and lessons learned. This week’s episode on tight ends underscores the theme of waiting on a revolution.
This episode of Scout Talk with Russ Lande is an informative conversation about the tight ends who we didn’t evaluate well and what we learned from it:
- Lande’s story about Butch Davis and Jeremy Shockey.
- Waiting for Godot: Why scouts were often too early with their valuation of players who would fit in the NFL today but no 7-10 years ago.
- Jason Witten and What Is Athletic Enough? Witten is much quicker than fast as well as a troublesome template for evaluating the athletic ability of good receiving tight ends who can block but not win downfield.
- Joe Don Duncan: Strong enough, quick enough, and tough enough, but size matters.
- Nick Vannett and the first-game bias that can occur with an evaluation.
- Chase Coffman and the issue with high-cut builds.
- It’s All About the Shoe Size: A story about safeties that applies to builds for specific positions.
If you missed the episode on wide receivers or the show on running backs, they are worth a listen.
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:04:03 — 117.3MB)
One response to “Matt Waldman’s RSP Scout Talk with Russ Lande: Tight End Evaluation Lessons and Mistakes”
Great show! Loved the final discussion you two had.
I think the hardest part about TE valuations is just how few targets and opportunities TEs get. It’s far too easy to overvalue one play (or a handful of posts) as being an intrinsic quality of a player. The representative sample sizes are just so low that it’s hard to definitively say, unless it’s Harrison Bryant being targeted 150 times over three seasons.