This Week Has Been the Worst Week to be an NFL Scout

Post-draft is a tough time to be an NFL scout.

The last few weeks of April, as each NFL club prepares for the annual NFL Draft, are without question the best time to be an NFL scout. All the work that each scout has done over the past 12 months comes to fruition as each team assembles its Draft Board. Over a three-day period, the team selects several players to hopefully improve their team.

To say it is satisfying would be an understatement.

As good as those few weeks are, the next week, literally just days after the NFL Draft, is the worst week. Why? Unlike in the coaching profession, where clubs make changes to their staffs in January, clubs make changes to their scouting staffs the week following the NFL Draft. Already this week, at least 20 scouts, either from college or pro scouting departments, have been let go across the League. That includes two long-time scouts for the Chicago Bears, Area Scout Drew Raucina and Senior National Scout Sam Summerville.

In some cases, a scout’s contract is up, and the team decides not to renew it. In others, the club has a new General Manager, and that person wants evaluators that he knows, so he has to let some men go to bring in new guys that the new GM knows and trusts. Of course, there are cases where the scout just isn’t a good enough evaluator and needs to be replaced.

When it’s a new General Manager making the changes, it often means that the evaluators being let go were “decision makers” from the previous regime. That would include the Scouting Directors or Directors of Player Personnel. Again, it’s not because the person doesn’t do a good job, it’s because the new General Manager wants his own people. It’s a part of the job that scouts know and accept when they get into the business.

There is another reason, and it has nothing to do with new GMs or a scout’s performance. That reason is many clubs are hiring or adding to it’s Analytics staff and because Personnel Departments run on tighter budgets than many of the other departments that means in order to hire a new analytics analyst, they have to let go of a scout. The General Manager is trying to improve his staff, yet he has to cut people in order to add people in other areas. Yes, it doesn’t make sense!

Being that I worked fulltime for NFL clubs for over thirty years, I know the importance of evaluators. It’s their job to find new talent to help the club improve. The budget people within an organization don’t see it that way. Why is that? Most scouts don’t live in the city of the club they work for, and so they are only in the office for maybe six weeks in any given year. Those six weeks would be for scouting meetings and training camps.

Basically, because they aren’t seen on a daily basis, some within the organization don’t appreciate their value. It’s an “out of sight, out of mind” situation.

In the last 10 to 15 years, the size of the coaching staffs of most clubs has doubled. Where there used to be a coach for every position, now there is a coach and an assistant to that coach, as well as several quality control coaches. When I started in the League, a coaching staff would have maybe ten men, including the Head Coach; now, the staff may be 18 to 20 people. At the same time, scouting staffs are about the same size. That doesn’t make sense, as finding quality players is what scouts do.

What’s ironic is that a General Manager can often get fired because of the results of each of his Drafts, yet he is forced to keep his personnel staff small, which makes it that much harder to find good players.

Yes, I am biased because scouting has been my life’s work. I feel for these people who have lost their jobs this week. Fans often look at results, meaning how the new player performed, but don’t forget, these men have families to feed and mortgages to pay. In order to do that, they now may have to find work in an area where they may not be nearly as happy as they were finding players for their clubs. Being a scout isn’t always as glamorous as it seems.