Drafts

As mentioned in my previous two posts, I've been reading The Draft by Pete Williams. I'm probably about two thirds of the way through now - work and general life make progress slow! 

It finally settled into the 'year inside the NFL's search for talent' that the front cover promised. I suppose some background knowledge is required at first, hence lots of information about other draft years and how it used to work. It follows 2004-5, and now that I'm a good way through the book I can see which players it was actually following as well.

The outcome of the draft that year hasn't yet been fully revealed, and it's something I have no prior knowledge of. I'm interested to find out what happened (yes, I know I could look it up on the internet but it's not the same). Some of the players I'd heard of and I know they are current NFL stars, but there are plenty that I hadn't heard of, and now I'm not sure whether they a) didn't get drafted, b) got drafted and flopped, c) got drafted and are just 'okay' players who don't have a lot of hype surrounding them or d) got drafted, are pretty good players but have never been in any of my fantasy teams, thus drastically reducing the chance of me having heard of them. 

I knew that college football is a big thing in the States, and I assumed that scouting for the NFL would therefore involve watching a lot of college games. What I didn't know is just how much work goes into scouting on the NFL teams' part, how much work goes into recruiting on agents' parts, and how much preparation is involved for the players themselves. I guess I'd figured that scouts turn up to college games and then pick the players they like (providing they're still available at the time of the team's draft pick). I never realised how much the players are 'shown off' in the pro bowl, senior bowl, pro days etc and had never heard of the combine or the Wonderlic. It's pretty interesting to gain more understanding on how teams/scouts assess players, and how much difference to the players' ratings certain scores are (for example, how quickly they can run forty yards). It's fascinating how tiny, tiny differences in times (fractions of seconds) have such an impact on a player's appeal. Learning things like that make me understand why the money is such a big deal - agents spend thousands of dollars getting their players trained up enough that they put on a good show, with the aim of getting them drafted as high as possible - higher draft picks mean higher signing on fees, which means more money for the agents. And the differences between the first round and even the second round are huge.

So there's still so much to learn. Luckily it's fascinating!