Bonsignore sez, Rams draft process most in-depth in the NFL

Inside the Rams’ draft process, ‘the most in-depth system in the NFL’

Vincent Bonsignore

https://theathletic.com/937732/2019/04/22/inside-the-rams-draft-process-the-most-in-depth-system-in-the-nfl/

While​ Aaron Donald was​ routinely wrecking opposing​ offenses​ at Pitt,​ that​ penchant for​ defensive​ domination​ caught​ the attention of​ Billy Johnson,​​ a young assistant scout for the Rams whose duties included cutting game video of college prospects.

Johnson was so green at the time he probably should have just kept his mouth shut and focused on the immediate task, which basically meant churning out highlight videos as fast as possible. To expedite the process, each prospect’s tape got cut in four-game increments, nothing more.

For all the terror Donald was creating in college during his senior year in 2013, you didn’t have to be Vince Lombardi to figure out he was barely 6 feet. That might have been fine for the Big East and ACC. Was Johnson really going to make a smallish defensive lineman the hill he died on so early in his scouting career?

But there was just something about Donald’s sheer dominance that Johnson couldn’t resist. And the more game film he cut, the more adamant he felt Donald was a can’t-miss prospect.

“I was supposed to cut up four games, but I think by the end of it I did every game because I was having so much fun just watching him play,” Johnson said.

Eventually, Johnson popped into the office of JW Jordan, the director of draft management, to talk up Donald. And while it was still relatively early in the Rams’ draft evaluation process that year, their grade on Donald didn’t line up with Johnson’s lofty assessment.

Still, Johnson kept persisting.

“He was the first guy to have the courage to say, ‘Hey guys, this short guy has got some really good stuff,’” Rams general manager Les Snead said.

Johnson’s opinion prompted Brad Holmes to take a trip to Pittsburgh to get an up-close look. In the Rams’ fall evaluation process — which involves six area scouts covering seven geographical boundaries and four national directors in Holmes, Taylor Morton, Ted Monago and Marty Barrett — Holmes was “going over the top” of the area scout in charge of Pittsburgh. In short, when a prospect lands heavily enough on the Rams’ area scouting radar, it’s time for that region’s national evaluator to get an in-depth, in-person look.

It’s not unlike what Holmes and the Rams’ three other national scouts did a number of times over the last six months while going about the comprehensive process of building the Rams’ prospect board in preparation for this week’s NFL Draft. The Rams essentially wrapped up their evaluations last Friday when Snead and his staff and head coach Sean McVay and his staff buttoned up player grades and assessments for their Tier 4 group of prospects — players they have designated as likely undrafted free agents.

The Rams will spend the next few days monitoring league rumors and scuttlebutt and bracing for any late-breaking news, but the bulk of their work is done. The draft board they began building in late November — and then spent significant time over the ensuing next four months tinkering, tweaking, debating and mastering — has essentially been put to bed.

“It’s 98, 99 percent done, but I’ve always said that until a decision has been made, there’s nothing wrong with an insightful piece of data that changes things,” Snead said. “It might not be anything monumental, but it might cause a player or two in the same area code or zip code to flip the order you have them, first or second or third. So you’re always tinkering. But most of the data has already been collected.”

All that is left now is for the draft to play out. And if this Thursday, Friday and Saturday turn out anything like the 2014 draft, when the Rams reeled in one the most dominant players of this era, the ensuing celebration will be epic.

How the draft process begins

The Rams’ draft evaluation kicks off each year shortly after Memorial Day when the first official list of draft-eligible players gets distributed to NFL scouts. Each area scout then receives a list of prospects to evaluate in their region. The Rams’ scouts have already compiled information based on their notes from the previous year and the intelligence they have gathered at college pro days.

“That extra background, that jump start, is imperative,” Holmes said. “Because there’s never enough information to compile.”

By August, or shortly after the Rams’ draft staff finalizes their plan of attack for the upcoming season, area scouts begin a four-month scouting tour covering all the schools in their assigned area. That typically means visiting schools at least twice a season, although it’s not unusual to make a third visit to get one more late look to address any lingering questions.

As opposed to the much more hectic and intense regular-season setting when coaches and teams are busy game-planning for their next opponent, the late-summer environment of training camp is more relaxed and conducive to evaluating players and gleaning important data. Without the pressure of a big game looming, college coaches are more likely to spend time with scouts, who are then able to build a more thorough profile by asking more probing questions. Is the player a hard worker? Does he learn quickly? Is he a good teammate? What’s the family background? Does he fight through injuries?

A passion for football is extraordinarily high on the Rams’ list of character traits. And if a prospect’s numbers don’t reflect their overall athletic ability and measurables, a red flag is raised. Determining whether the low numbers are the result of poor effort and competitiveness or merely a correctable issue that more coaching can fix is often the difference in where that player ends up on the Rams’ draft board.

Or if he is simply removed altogether.

“There is a player in this draft, probably in the first or second round, that’s like that,” said Brian Xanders, the Rams’ senior personnel executive and former general manager for the Denver Broncos. “He has all the measurables and all the athletic traits and the size and length, but his production is low. And it usually goes back to the competitiveness, the drive, the urgency to get off blocks. It gets back to maybe some instinct issues (and) you’re not reading the blocking patterns quickly enough. And passion, football passion. We grade football passion and their makeup so deeply with the area scout. And then on the interviews, we try to pull it out of them.”

No matter who scouts consult, though, there is always the risk of bad, tainted or biased information. The good scouts have built enough relationships on each college campus that they don’t rely on just one source.

“And that’s where we get into: Is there a bullshit meter going on with the quality of information that you can get?” Holmes said. “You gotta be aware of the company line. I always refer to it as the factory, kind of the assembly-line information.

“Because as scouts, we come in those schools Monday through Thursday, or Friday sometimes, during football season. And they have a guy designated — or coaches know scouts from every team for the most part — and it’s like they’re saying the same thing over and over. They’re trying to help the kid, obviously, but on our end, we’re like, ‘Are you telling us everything?’ Because from my experience, and this is my 16th year, stuff will come out after the fact. And usually, unfortunately, sometimes after the guy gets drafted.”

It’s not unusual for a scout to drive to three schools, sometimes four, within a week. Out west, that could mean spending Tuesday in Berkeley to catch Cal, Wednesday in Eugene to see Oregon and Thursday in Seattle to watch Washington. But given the importance of the information and accuracy and thoroughness of the reports that the scouts eventually write about each player, their schedules are closely monitored in order to help ensure they aren’t over-exerting themselves to the point of diminishing returns.

“Sometimes players start running together, they start looking the same. Or you might be in a bad mood. You’re tired,” Holmes said. “The information you’re compiling is such a critical part of the process, you really need to be as fresh-minded and rested as possible in processing it.”

The positions the draft team play

The process repeats itself during the regular season when scouts circle back to schools to get an in-season look at players. A typical day starts at 7 a.m. or so (depending on the college teams’ practice times) when scouts arrive on campus and meet with the schools’ pro liaison or football operations assistant. If it’s an afternoon practice, scouts will spend the first part of the day scouring game film of that program’s pro prospects. For Power 5 schools such as USC, Ohio State or Alabama, that could mean evaluating up to 10 to 15 players at a time.

During practice, the scouts zero in on prospects during individual position periods, agility drills and scrimmages. This is where trained eyes become critical.

“You want to see them physically, the physical profile they fit for their position,” said Marty Barrett, the Rams’ national scout who goes over the top of the Rams’ western region area scouts to get a more extensive look at priority players.

Not all teams enlist national cross-checkers, relying instead on their area scouts only. When national scout Ted Monago was with the Chicago Bears, for instance, then-general manager Jerry Angelo preferred a much smaller staff in which the area scouts were essentially the directors of their regions.

“And those scouts owned those areas,” Monago said.

The Rams, however, like to get multiple eyeballs on players in similar settings in order to paint a more comprehensive picture. That is part of the reason why Snead built a draft staff comprising versatile components that can all be used in a variety of roles.

“Kind of like a basketball team that can all shoot, dribble and pass,” he added.

Taylor Morton, a senior personnel advisor and essentially Snead’s right-hand man, brings a wealth of wisdom and college and pro personnel experience. On the draft side, he goes over the top to evaluate the top prospects across the country. A former college assistant and head coach, Morton isn’t a big talker, according to Snead, but when he does speak up, his words carry significant meaning.

Xanders has an extensive 25-year NFL background that includes 14 years in the front office and coaching staff of the Atlanta Falcons, four years as Broncos GM and three years in the Detroit Lions’ personnel department. Snead leans heavily on Xanders’ ability to see football from a coaching, front office and analytical perspective.

In evaluating college prospects, for instance, the analytical breakdown focuses on factors like games played, games started, games played with injuries and games missed due to injuries. If the prospect plays defense, the emphasis is on production values such as sacks, hits, quarterback pressures, tackles for losses and forced fumbles and the ability to get off blocks and be instinctive.

Does the production reflect the athletic ability, speed, play style, competitiveness and savviness? On the offensive line, are they up giving sacks, pressures and quarterback hits?

“The data points are there for all positions, and you can see it,” Xanders said.

The Rams scale everything by color to categorize the percentile each player falls among their peers, with blue and red numbers representing high-end production.

“The great thing Les does is, you have your job responsibility and he lets you do that job, and you’re expected to own that job and take ownership of those tasks,” Xanders said. “And when it’s time to meet, you better be ready. There’s not a lot of micromanaging or over the top or supervision, but when you do have to meet, you have to perform.”

Jordan, the Rams’ director of draft management, organizes and analyzes all of the data submitted by scouts. Part of his role is to detect faulty, incomplete or flagged intel that may need to be vetted more thoroughly.

Holmes, the director of college scouting, manages and develops the area scouts and goes over the top to cross-check prospects.

Monago, the assistant director of college scouting, has more than 18 years of NFL scouting experience and is an immediate go-to source for Snead on information about a particular player.

Barrett, the Rams’ national scout, is the “adult in the room,” according to Snead, and whose poise and level-headedness enable him to express dissent without stirring up emotion.

Then there is James Gladstone, the senior assistant to the general manager and for whom Snead credits his wife, Kara, with discovering when Gladstone was an assistant coach on their son’s high school football team in St. Louis. Gladstone manages Snead’s schedule, among other things, in order to carve out the necessary time to devote to all the various tasks at hand.

That might mean creating hour-long windows to focus on the draft during the week between August and November when Snead is more preoccupied with the Rams’ season. Or being the buffer between Snead and rest of the Rams’ staff.

Time management is critical.

“So he can continue to focus on getting the boulder up the hill,” Gladstone said. “And any pebbles that tend to fall off to the side, I’ll address.”

Everyone has a position to play. And a perspective to lend.

“As you’re trying to build a 3D model of the player to get to a final analysis, the inputs are coming from different angles,” said Kevin Demoff, the Rams’ chief operating officer and executive vice president of football operations. “And it’s not a team of rival concepts. It’s a team that is completely different in how they look at players in trying to come to an ultimate conclusion. And while it’s a vocal and opinionated group. it’s also an egoless group.”

It’s one of the reasons the scouts’ role is so critical during the fall evaluation process, as they put the first set of Rams’ eyes on more than 500 draft-eligible prospects. The foundation they lay helps facilitate the deep dive the entire staff makes on prospects from November through April.

“I’m always aware of how our board’s looking, but it’s based on the work the scouts are putting in during the fall,” Snead said. “Their highest grades are how our board is initially set at that point. We don’t put a Rams grade on it till November, December, January.”

In Barrett and Monago’s case — along with the rest of the scouts — that means spending three to four days a week on college campuses and watching as many games as possible in person. And even with the advancement of all the technology over the years, their eyes and instincts remain incredibly powerful tools.

“I read this once: A really good scout can see the unseen,” Monago said. “Or as (longtime NFL personnel man) Ron Wolf said, ‘A scout with no instincts is like a submarine with a screen door.’ You’ve got to have them.”

“What does the player look like physically and athletically?” Barrett immediately wants to identify. “If you’re watching practice, and this is a little harder prior to the combine, but you’re trying to get the athlete right. What you see on tape, what you see in person and in practice. How is he athletically?

“Then you evaluate the actual play and performance by going through the game film. And there are things we’re getting from coaches: work ethic, how they learn, dependability, toughness, family background.”

From which a profile begins to emerge.

“There’s a spot to write down just about everything,” Barrett said. “Everything you see or hear or evaluate, you put a number on it.”

Each number is colored, creating a vibrant visual that enables evaluators to easily make an immediate determination of a player’s skill level.

“There are some critical aspects that are applicable to every player,” Barrett continued. “Speed. Athletic ability. Toughness. That is universal for every player. But then you get into the positional stuff, where it gets more specific. For a receiver, it’s route running and hands and the run-after-the-catch ability. For a running back, it’s vision. It’s cuts.”

As the scouts grind through campus film study and practice visits Tuesday through Thursday, they’re also working deep into the night after arriving at their next stop to write individual player reports. Fridays become valuable catch-up days to finalize any additional written work.

The information they’re compiling is inputted into the Rams’ in-house draft database, from which Snead and his staff can begin delving into reports. The Rams do a thorough talent and analytical scrub on all the data, with Xanders and Jordan playing a critical role in that process.

During the fall, Xanders cross-checks the Rams’ Tier 1 group of prospects, which makes up the very top of their draft board, by doing a two-year film breakdown on every player from that select group. He is also a trusted voice during the Rams’ group film evaluation from December through April.

Jordan, a former Notre Dame offensive lineman, analyzes the information to detect any information gaps or red flags that need further examination. Maybe the on-field performance doesn’t reflect the athletic numbers and physical traits. Or maybe a character or background issue needs untangling. Whatever the case, it’s Jordan’s job to determine the next step. And that might mean enlisting the help of one of the Rams’ security team members — which includes a former FBI agent — to dig into a player’s past.

Jordan also assists Snead in determining which prospects the GM needs to invest his time in during the fall.

“His plate is so full and his time is so stretched,” Jordan said. “So it’s just sort of telling him, ‘You really need to focus on this guy. Don’t worry so much about these guys over here.’”

The Aaron Donald decision

Six years ago, a similar process of scouting, evaluation and cross-checking led Holmes to Pittsburgh to get an up-close look at Donald. When he arrived on campus, Holmes had a bit of an ace up his sleeve in then-Panthers defensive coordinator Matt House, who was a quality control coach with the Rams two years before.

House, it turns out, played a key role by making one seemingly insignificant recommendation.

Practice starts at 3:30, he told Holmes. But you might want to show up about 45 minutes earlier.

“And I’m thinking, ‘OK, I’m not sure why I need to be out so early.’ But I’m assuming maybe Matt’s gonna give me some additional information or background on a different a player,” Holmes recalled.

When Holmes arrived at the practice field at 2:45, all he saw were the Pitt specialists going through their normal pre-practice routine. Nothing unusual about that. Then he glanced over to the Pitt bench, and what he saw blew him away.

Sitting all by himself, completely taped up and in full uniform and practically champing at the bit to get to work, was none other than Aaron Donald.

“And he had this body language that was screaming, ‘I’ve been waiting on this all day. I’ve been looking forward to this all day,’” Holmes said. “And I mean … it’s a Tuesday practice.”

“Did you come out early?” House later asked Holmes.

“Yup,” Holmes answered.

“Did you see it?” House asked.

“Yup,” Holmes said, sharing a knowing smile with House.

Nothing else needed to be said.

“Aaron just had an elite work ethic and passion for football that was so obvious,” Holmes said.

“So much of this is about knowing the player, which is what our job is all about,” Monago said. “And Aaron was a case in point of just knowing the player.”

That familiarity is developed and nourished by the scouting staff painting individual portraits of every single draft-eligible player. The colors they use cut across an incredibly detailed information spectrum, covering everything from a player’s size and strengths to his personal makeup and love for the game.

All of which gets scrutinized and evaluated by Snead and his staff and forms the foundation for the Rams’ draft meetings in November and December, when they begin horizontally stacking players position by position and then using those 22 position group rankings to help determine their vertically stacked big board. Every piece of information that comes in from that point on gets added to the player’s profile.

By late December, the draft board is shaping up in a very Rams-specific way as the staff grades and stacks players based on scheme-fit parameters. With McVay and his staff now entering their third year, the scouts’ familiarity with the current schemes and the required skill sets to excel in them is invaluable.

“The coaching schemes of Sean McVay and (defensive coordinator) Wade Phillips and (special teams coordinator) John Fassel, we have specific written-out scheme-fit requirements or traits, where, for players to do their jobs, they have to have certain run and pass requirements or traits that we look for,” Xanders said. “So you end up with a spectrum of guys that fit the Rams’ scheme. And the non-fits that may fit another system.”

As an example, offensive line coach Aaron Kromer is big on technique, backside cutoff speed, angles and lateral quickness to help win zone-scheme blocking assignments. He’s also high on hip and lower body power and hand use in order to use lock-out extension to lift defenders.

“As opposed to bigger, heavier linemen that fit better in a gap scheme system like in Pittsburgh or Baltimore or Philadelphia,” Xanders said. “So you match up what a player’s strengths are to what the Rams need.”

It’s also at this point in the calendar the Rams begin formulating their plans for the upcoming college All-Star games and the NFL combine in February.

“What’s unique about us is, we start so early,” Xanders said. “We start (meeting) in December whereas most teams start February, March or even early April on that group setting. So we’re way ahead in terms of preparation. So when we get to the All-Star games, we’ve already done the high ends of the board and we know the Senior Bowl players, the combine invites, we know all of it. Which is unique and, to me, it’s the most in-depth system in the NFL.

While the combine plays a significant role in assessing things like athletic ability, position-specific agility and weight room strength, that week in Indianapolis is also an important time to visit with players individually. The All-Star games also provide an equally important component, as the practice sessions leading up to the actual games enable coaches and scouting staffs to evaluate top prospects against their peers.

It’s where the Rams saw Donald dominate fellow top prospects. And that meant flourishing in one-one-one practice drills against a talented offensive line group featuring Zack Martin, Gabe Jackson and Jon Halapio, among others.

“His Senior Bowl performance, I mean it was the best Senior Bowl performance I’ve ever seen,” Holmes said of Donald. “I’m talking about the week of practice and the game. He just completely dominated it. And it’s no longer against ACC linemen that might make it to a camp or might not even get drafted. He’s dominating the best of the best from a senior standpoint.

“And then he goes to his combine and he just dominates that setting. He puts up rare numbers. And that’s when you’re like: What else does he need to prove? I mean are you still going to stick to size? Are you still gonna do that? He’s checked off every single box.”

The nearly year-long process grinds through the March pro days and personal visit period, then cuts deep into April when the Rams’ draft and coaching staffs gather together to evaluate hours and hours of film, discuss players and draft strategy and role-play every imaginable scenario that might occur throughout the entire three-day draft.

McVay and his staff are central parts of this process, with each position coach cross-checking the various prospects in their group. The input from the coaches gets baked into the scouts’ evaluations to eventually formulate the final position rankings.

And it isn’t enough to sort through and familiarize yourself with your own data and strategy. It also requires thinking like the 31 other teams. You also dig into their rosters to detect draft needs and tap into various contacts across the league to get a feel for who other teams might be targeting at various points in the draft.

Five years ago, the Rams opted to address their biggest need at left tackle by selecting Auburn tackle Greg Robinson at No. 2 overall while remaining confident that Donald, essentially a non-priority pick at a position of strength whom they coveted just as highly as Robinson, would still be there at No. 13.

And when Donald was, the Rams immediately selected him and began celebrating.

Interestingly, the Rams’ pick at No. 2 came via a trade with the Washington Redskins, who surrendered a bevy of picks to the Rams the year before in order to move up in the 2013 draft to select quarterback Robert Griffin III.

If the Rams only had their pick at No. 13 in the 2014 draft, Snead isn’t so sure they would have passed on Donald in order to address their offensive line.

“The derivative of that trade the year before, unspoken, is it allowed us to take first-round talent at a luxury position, but it was gonna make us dominant,” Snead said. “It would be like the Spurs getting a chance to take Tim Duncan when they’ve already got David Robinson. Where, if you’ve only got one pick, maybe it’s ‘Let’s be rational here and attempt to solve a problem.’

“You can’t say for sure, because maybe you talk yourself into ‘Hey, we’re more sure on Aaron,’ things like that. But you went into it thinking you could solve a problem and also get really good (at defensive line).”

The Rams can only hope they have as much good fortune in this week’s NFL Draft in Nashville, Tenn.