Lazy scouts and overworked scouts

By now, you all have identified some of the recurring themes on my blog this draft season:

1. Few men are qualified to evaluate the QB position
2. Fewer still are qualified to coach the QB
3. Most QBs selected in the 1st round don't make it.
4. Draft a QB #1 overall and you will have 5 wretched years if he goes bust
5. Scouts mis-evaluate QBs all the time.
6. If you are a team in need of QB, and thinking about drafting him in the 1st, you better not pay any attention to the Scouts.
7. This goes double for you if you are thinking about making him the #1 pick
8. Mayock is pretty reliable; Kiper is not.
9. Clausen is over-rated, Tebow is under-rated.

With all this in mind, I had a very interesting conversation with an associate of Steve Rosenbloom. He shed some very interesting light on this subject. What did he tell me?

1. Most teams don't have nearly enough scouts on staff. This is particularly true of the small market teams. Small market teams run on small budgets, and they cut corners in scouting
2. Not coincidentally, these are your bad drafting teams. These are the teams suffering from poor draft productivity.
3. Under Steve Rosenbloom, the Rams had lots of scouts; between 5 and 10 usually. Not coincidentally, the Rams drafted extremely well, getting guys like Jackie Slater in the 3rd round and Dough Smith for free.
4. Nowadays, the Rams don't have many scouts on staff. Some coaches are asked do double duty as draft scouts. This is not the normal coaching consult, where position coaches are asked what they think of key prospects. Rather, position coaches are asked to identify key prospects. Not coincidentally, our drafts stink.
5. Some small-market teams, such as the Bengals, are notorious for having just one full-time professional scout. That is all. My buddy doesn't know how many scouts the Rams currently have on staff, but he bets it's just one or two.
6. When you have only one scout on staff, and when he you have many positions of need, you are in trouble. This is sure-fire recipe for an over-worked scout, one who cuts corners and misses thing.
7. One of the 'efficiency' tricks over-worked scouts like to employ is avoid looking at anything else but a draft-candidate's last season in college. If the player was a 3 or 4 year starter, 2 or 3 years of game film will be dismissed summarily. Only the 'senior' year will be examined closely.
8. Overworked scouts don't watch college games per se. Rather, they watch breakdown tapes.

There you have it folks! This is the parsimonious explanation for the current rankings of Clausen and Tebow. Everything you need to know to understand their relative positions in this year's draft can be found at point 7 and 8.

If you watch 3 years of complete Notre Dame games, not breakdown tapes, you are not going to be that impressed with Clausen. If you watch 4 years of Florida games, not breakdown tapes, you cannot help but be impressed with Tebow.

To put a very fine point on it for you: Clausen didn't do anything until 2009. You wouldn't know that if you skipped 2007 and 2008 in the name of efficiency. If you only watched Tebow's 2009 film, I can understand why you might not be in love with him. In 2009 Florida had very few weapons to compliment Tebow. Tebow dragged a poor offense to the goal-line with a lot of option running. Such was not the case in 2007 and 2008. Of course, you would never know that if you skipped 2007 and 2008.

Simply stated, many scouts have not seen the good Tebow and the bad Clausen. They are making an imbalanced decision based on one year of break-down tapes.

One of the biggest reasons why I am a Tebow booster and Clausen detractor has to do with the way they handle red-line, balls to the wall situations against big-time competition. As far as I know, breakdown tapes don't give you much of any information about down, distance, quarter, score. They don't tell you if this is the key possession of the game or not. They don't tell you if the game is on the line on a certain play.

If you want to see the good Tebow, you need to watch the 3rd and 4th quarter of the BCS Championship Game 2009. You will see Tebow making clutch play after clutch play with the championship game on the line. He did this against a powerful opponent in Oklahoma. You will see Tebow make tough throws into tight windows. He hits his receivers on the money.

You'll see Maurkice Pouncey controlling Gerald McCoy also.

I dare anybody to find me such a piece of footage for Clausen.

Of course, you won't know any of this if you are just one little 'ol scout watching breakdown tables of the 2009 season only.