There was a video floating around from Hard Knocks of Jayden Daniels answering questions during a team interview. It seems like they give them a playbook and then run through it with and then throw wrinkles at them.
I mean, it can’t be an actual playbook, right? That’s a lot to learn for an interview, especially if 10-20 other teams are also providing material. And a team isn’t going to give actual plays to someone who might end up on a different team.
I think you’re missing the point of these draft grades. It should go without saying that every pick is a crapshoot.
These draft grades are based on perception. Is the team perceived to have navigated the draft process deftly and did they spend their scarce resources wisely based on the perceived market value of players at that time. Then secondarily did they address their needs on paper with their picks without being perceived to have reached for a given player. This is all just a snapshot of what we think right now.
Naturally, everyone can say that draft grades are pointless, and we shouldn’t pay any attention to them. This is indisputably true. But if you’re going to give a draft grade (or comment on someone else’s draft grade) you’re basically accepting the rules of the game. These grades aren’t arbitrary, even if they sometimes appear to be, they are based on an individual’s reading of how this process works. If the consensus says that a player had a second-round grade and you take him in the first, you either need to mark their grade down or you need to make the case that the consensus was wrong or that the grader’s read of the consensus was wrong.
Saying that Tom Brady was a 6th round pick isn’t relevant. If it was then every single team that didn’t draft a QB in the 6th deserves an F grade. All that does is prove that perception can be wrong, which you know, duh.
I think it varies a lot. Some teams interview Xs and Os, some interview “fit”, and some interview character. Some players get a chance to get flown out for in-person “top 30” interviews but most only ever meet at the Combine for like 15 minutes.
Not every team is handing out a playbook to every prospect or even every prospect they are flying out. Some will want to talk through plays from their college tape. Some will talk about sample plays from NFL tape to see how they read it as it happens. Some will give them 4-5 plays/concepts from the playbook they want them to learn and discuss. But many won’t ask a single “football” question, especially if they aren’t QBs.
In lots of cases they just want to talk in person about various red flags that pop up. The Bears had Isaiah Bond in for an in-person interview, but he went undrafted. It’s almost certain that the whole point of that was to figure out what the real story was with the accusations against him. Apparently no one liked those answers. They might want to have their own team doctors look at an injury. More than anything, I think it’s usually just a vibes check.
As a side note, the Bears didn’t draft a single player from the list of those who they had out for in-person interviews. I don’t know exactly how to interpret that.
Yes that’s how I understand it. Some give a very abbreviated playbook to see how they break down the play on their own. It shows their football IQ and also their willingness to work on their own beyond what they are contractually obligated to do. Then (if I’m allowed to mix sports metaphors) they may throw some curveballs and change the plays on the fly. I guess it’s a way to try and weed out a JaMarcus Russell or Johnny Manziel who made the choice to just wing it at QB.
That’s… something. Not sure what.
I imagine it’s a mix of (1) guys that they decided they didn’t like, or didn’t fit, based on the interviews, like Bond, and (2) guys they liked, but who were already gone by the time the Bears would have considered drafting them.
Taking a QB (edit: late) in the 1st who was graded as a 2nd rounder can be defensible on the grounds of rookie contract length.
EDIT: I just remembered the humiliating Daniel Jones pick at #6 overall and felt compelled to clarify: trading up from early 2nd round to late 1st round can be defensible. If they had pulled a Daniel Jones and drafted Dart #3 overall, contract length would be irrelevant compared to what a monumental fuckup that was with Jones and would have been with Dart.
That’s my thoughts on the matter. I’m happy because they took Carter at #3. Dart at #3 would have been a disaster.
It can be, but at the end of the day you’re weighing the value of the chance that that 5th year gets exercised against the capital spent to move up. If the player is a1st round talent who’s sliding, you’re probably better off trading up to secure the 5th year versus waiting until day 2. If the player is a 2nd round talent, you’re probably not, because the odds of that 5 year being real become scant. In other words, is it an Aaron Rodgers/Lamar Jackson type situation or is it a Teddy Bridgewater/Tim Tebow/Brady Quinn situation. I don’t think anyone would have argued at the time that Teddy or Brady being available in the last third of the draft was a huge surprise.
It’s not at all clear that Dart would have still been there in the second round for the Giants to draft him. “People were talking” is about as garbage a cite as a cite can be, but for the NFL draft, people talking is a real thing. Here’s an example:
I didn’t watch the video. The blurb text above is the whole article outside the video. But it does lend credibility to the idea that regardless if Dart was graded as a 2nd rounder, he was very likely to have been selected by someone in the first round. Waiting until the second round would have essentially been passing on him.
There is also speculation that the Rams would have taken him at 26, and then when the Giants jumped ahead of them they opted to trade down.
I’m bored so I figured I’d try and puzzle it out. Here’s the Bears’ official visits stolen from here.
Ashton Jeanty, RB, Boise State (source)
Omarion Hampton, RB, North Carolina (source)
Kaleb Johnson, RB, Iowa (source)
Breshard Smith, RB, SMU (source)
We were very clearly targeting RB early. It’s been well reported that we tried to trade up for Jeanty, so that one is obvious. We interviewed Hampton who was gone. We passed on Johnson 3 times, and everyone passed on Smith until the 7th round. I am as certain as I can be that we were all-in on Henderson and we probably didn’t schedule with him specifically to try and fly under the radar. Whether we disliked Johnson and Smith’s workouts or if we simply brought them in as a smoke screen is impossible to know.
Isaiah Bond, WR, Texas (source)
Kyle Williams, WR, Washington State (source)
Tre Harris, WR, Ole Miss (source)
Dontae Fleming, WR, Tulane (source)
Jaylin Layne, WR, Virginia Tech (source)
Kelly Akharaiyi, WR, Mississippi State (source)
It seems like we were planning on targeting WR in the 3rd round or later but then Luther Burden fell into our laps. Bond was almost certainly a character review. Williams and Harris were drafted not long after Burden, who knows if we’d have picked them in the 2nd had we scored Henderson instead. The other guys are basically no-names, it’s kind of weird we even had them in since 2 of them weren’t even drafted.
Tyler Warren, TE, Penn State (source)
Jalin Conyers, TE, Texas Tech (source)
This feels like the same situation as Henderson. We obviously preferred Loveland and never had him in for a meeting. I can’t imagine we skipped Warren based on some interview, but I suppose it’s possible. More likely we loved Loveland and gave Warren a chance to win us over, he didn’t. Simultaneously we wanted to keep our interest in Loveland secret. Conyers was another guy who wasn’t drafted.
Anthony Belton, OT, NC State (source)
Will Campbell, OT, LSU (source)
Josh Conerly Jr., OT, Oregon (source)
Jonah Savaiinaea, OT, Arizona (source)
Dylan Fairchild, G, Georgia (source)
Campbell, Conerly and Savaiinaea seem like legitimate targets. Campbell was gone in the first and we were probably interested in Conorly or Savaiinaea in the 2nd, but they never made it back to us. Belton came off immediately before we took Trupilo following a trade back. We could have drafted him instead of trading back, impossible to know if we’d have drafted Belton over Trupilo had both been on the board at 2.24. Fairchild we could have had but presumably liked Trupilo better, but again, interesting that we took the guy we didn’t meet over the one we did.
It’s also vaguely weird that all the OLs we met were drafted before day 3, yet several of the skill position guys were undrafted entirely.
Nick Martin, LB, Oklahoma State (source)
This guy went in the 3rd not long after we took Turner. We did end up drafting a LB with our next pick in the 4th, a guy who wasn’t even at the Combine. I would believe that our interest here was serious but the board didn’t work out.
Shemar Stewart, DE, Texas A&M (source)
Omarr Norman-Lott, DT, Tennessee (source)
Stewart was occasionally mocked to us in the 1st so this makes sense as a contingency plan. If he’d have slid to the 2nd I’d bet we’d have pounced, and fans would have rejoiced. Norman-Lott got picked immediately after Turner so we could have taken him. Whether the interview went badly or whether we were keeping our interest in Turner quiet is unknown.
Jahdae Barron, CB, Texas (source)
Jordan Hancock, CB, Ohio State (source)
Andrew Mukuba, S, Texas (source)
This is an interesting group. Barron wouldn’t have been a target at 10 but could have been taken if we traded back or if he slipped to the second, but CB was not an area of need. Not sure what the plan was here unless it was just to confuse teams about our plans. Mukuba we could have picked with either of our last two second round picks, so who knows. Might be a smoke screen or just a contingency we didn’t need. Hancock was drafted immediately after Frazier so another example of us taking a guy we didn’t interview at the same position and draft spot as a guy we did.
So it seems likely that Poles intentionally doesn’t interview the guys we actually want in the first 2-3 rounds. It seems unlikely that in all these examples the guy we interviewed did such a bad job that we passed. It feels more like strategy to misdirect. That said, I don’t understand the point of interviewing in person these random bottom-of-the-pile guys who didn’t get drafted and were never expected to, seems like a waste of everyone’s time. Feels like Poles has a bad habit for getting cute with this shit.
Without hindsight I am not sure there is much difference between the Aaron Rodgers/Lamar Jackson type situation or is it a Teddy Bridgewater/Tim Tebow/Brady Quinn situation.
Players who the pundits on average think will have 2nd round grade in reality have a huge variation, here are a few people who whould have been surprised that Bridgewater, Tebow and Quinn were not taken much further. So it is quite possible the teams that took them had them had graded them 1st round. Even if they hadn’t a second round graded QB might have a 20% chance of being good enough for their 5th year option to be taken, a high second round grade mght be a little higher than that (say 22%) but not much even guys taken 1st overall probably only get extended about 1 time in 3. It then becmes a question of whete the 5th year option is worth the cost of trading inrto the first round.
Bridgewater predicted to be No 1 overall
Bridgewater good enough to go first overall
Jon Gruden Predicts Tebow could revolutionise the game
Brady Quinn Mocked at 3rd overall
Today, the NFL fined the Falcons $250,000, and their defensive coordinator, Jeff Ulbrich, $100,000, for the prank phone call which Ulbrich’s adult son, made to Shedeur Sanders during the second day of the draft.
The younger Ulbrich admitted that he had seen Sanders’ contact information on his father’s unlocked iPad while he was visiting his parents, and wrote the information down in order to conduct the prank. The league indicates that the fines are in response to “failing to prevent the disclosure of confidential information distributed to the club in advance of the NFL Draft.”
There were apparently several other prank calls made to prospective draftees during the draft, including one to the Giants’ #1 pick, Abdul Sanders, which the league is continuing to investigate.
There’s gotta be a better way to secure this so the prospect getting a call knows who is calling, and other calls are blocked. It’s probably possible to do out-of-the-box with something like WhatsApp or Signal, and if not, it’s a fairly easy app to develop.
Or just do this over something like Zoom. I expect everyone has a smart phone, at least someone going into the draft is likely to.
Then you see the person calling you. A bit harder to fake that. And even better, the call can be shown later on media for fans.
Its got to the point that genuine calls are thought to be a prank. Grey Zabel was flown over to Seattle and given the job of informing Mason Grabel he was the Seahawks pick 234 on Saturday but Richman thought is was “some college kid pranking him with the call”
https://www.thenewstribune.com/sports/nfl/seattle-seahawks/article305154456.html
This part is pretty much true. 
According to Sanders, that phone (and number) was given to him just for the draft.
Shedeur said he had a specific phone that had been sent to him by Boost Mobile, specifically for the draft.
“The number was only in an email thread that the NFL sent out to only teams,” Shedeur said.
Link to NBC Sports
Right, but he didn’t have a way of knowing who was actually calling him. That seems like an easy loophole to close.