****This is my opinion of evaluating players. Please feel free to criticize and add in your own opinion. ****
1 Evaluations for fantasy vs real football are significantly different, obviously. For most NFL teams a mid second round pick and later is considered a success if the player is a solid role player. An a rotational or situational RB, an 60/800/7 WR, etc. For me these players are tough to consider a “success” because in most fantasy leagues these are players that are on the edge of starter vs back up. The probability vs potential ratio for NFL scouts is different than us fantasy “scouts”. This is extra important when reading about how to do scouting reports or player evaluations from some sources.
2 Pretty much throw away the off the field character concerns. This is another difference between NFL and fantasy. It doesn’t matter how the player fits in with the locker room as long as he produces on the field. If you don’t want to take a player for moral/personal reasons then by all means follow your heart but I think this is one of the most overblown aspects of fantasy/draft season. You’ll likely find some “character” flaw with every player, especially going into the NFL draft.
3 Have an option of the player as an athlete prior to seeing combine numbers. The combine just either confirm what you thought or make you go back and reconsider/rewatch a player.
4 Take breaks when watching tape to go watch highlights of elite guys. This does two things. First, it will help remind you what makes great players great. Second, it will emphasize the caliber of player you want. Watching lots of players (especially later round guys) I found that I start to grade on a curve. But just because a guy looks better than the others doesn’t mean he’s going to be good by NFL standards.
5 Acknowledge your biases. Everyone will have them. Whether it’s over grading a guy from “Your team”, dismissing a guy from a small school/lower division (I have an issue with this) or even putting too much stock into when you watched a game live, there’s a lot issues that pop up.
6 Start off with RBs. They are the easiest to evaluate because there’s less unknowns compared to the other positions.
7 Most of the time you can throw stats out the window. Scheme/system/competition has so much of an impact of stats at the college level that it doesn’t really help with the evaluation. It’s a good resource for finding players/prospects to evaluate but a lot of the time that’s where the stats influence should end.
8 For me, the only tape that matters is last years. The other stuff is used in the same way as the combine, basically just to confirm a position. There’s obviously exceptions but “he played hurt last season” is not one of them. Pretty much every player in the NFL plays hurt during the season too.
9 Most injures aren’t a concern. ACL’s used to be a killer but more than enough guys have come back that they aren’t a major concern anymore. Usually injuries are hard to predict as it is so adding in “injury potential” to an evaluation is just adding, to me, unnecessary difficulties.
