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Futures at Football Outsiders: What’s After Clowney?
by Matt Waldman Jadeveon Clowney is one of the headliners of the 2014 NFL Draft, but defensive end is not this year’s marquee position. One of the predominant reasons is the current prevalence of the 3-4 scheme in the NFL. A true 4-3 end capable of stopping the run and pressuring the quarterback at an…
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Futures: Texas Tech TE Jace Amaro
Jace Amaro has the physical skills and baseline football acumen to generate talk that he’s a future Jason Witten Futures: Texas Tech TE Jace Amaro by Matt Waldman The best NFL teams possess three characteristics on the field: resiliency, intimidation, and explosiveness. Two are psychological and one is physical. All three are methods of managing…
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Futures – Intuition and Process: FSU RB Karlos Williams
Futures: FSU RB Karlos Williams by Matt Waldman People love the idea of being one step ahead of everyone else. It’s why the question, “Who is a player you like in next year’s draft?” is one of the most common I receive. I spend so much time studying the prospects most likely to declare for this year’s…
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Futures at Football Outsiders: Texas A&M QB Johnny Manziel
Futures: Texas A&M QB Johnny Manziel by Matt Waldman Management Style and Quarterbacking In last week’s Futures on Georgia quarterback Aaron Murray, I described quarterbacking styles within the context of task-oriented management and creative management. Be it a white-collar, blue-collar, or athletic career, these are two basic ends of the spectrum when talking about management styles. Task-oriented…
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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,…
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Futures: Unknown, Unsung, and Underappreciated
When you’re in my line of work, the most memorable players are often the unknowns, the underappreciated, and the underdogs. One of the most memorable for me was a player I watched in September 2006, whose performance against a top-ranked Tennessee Volunteers defense was so good that it belied his 24-carry, 72-yard box-score entry. Here’s…
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Futures: The Hybrid RB Evolution
March is the month that I take 14-to-18 months of research and use it to generate rankings and analysis for the April 1 Rookie Scouting Portfolio publication. The labor involved in this compressed time period involves a workweek with hours averaging in the triple digits. I believe this will be the last year I have to…
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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…
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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…
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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…