Guess who’s coming to dinner … With the annual pro day marathon winding down, personnel staffs across the NFL are returning to their respective war rooms to put the finishing touches on their team’s boards as we enter the final run up to the 2016 draft. This is also the period in the draft process when teams host the majority of their visits from out-of-town prospects. Every team is allowed to bring in up to 30 players from out-of-town schools for interviews and medical tests, however, they are not allowed to work players out who come to their facilities. Teams are still allowed to work players out, but they must go to the players school or home tone to do so. Meanwhile, teams are also allowed to bring an unlimited number of players from schools in their local region for visits. Of course, on-site visits have been going on for some weeks now; for the record, this is our unofficial list of whose been where, however, as a general rule few teams actually announce who the have in for visits. As has been noted before, one has to be careful reading too much into which players are visiting which teams as teams often do not select any of the players they have actually had in for visits. However, several things can be gleaned from the visit trends. For example, if a player has a visits with a number of teams clustered in the same general area in the selection order then there is a good chance that that rates somewhere in that range. At the same time, if a disproportionate number of a team’s visits include players at one position, then there is a pretty good chance that that particular team is indeed looking hard at that position for one of their premium picks. So far this year, for example, Tampa Bay has had 13 players in for out-of-town visits and all 13 are on defense. At the same time, it is important to keep in mind that many teams bring in players that they have questions about. This year, for example, enigmatic Ole Miss DT Robert Nkemdiche, who may be as talented as any player in this year’s draft, but was being described as ‘weird’ and ‘strange’ by scouts even before he fell out of a second-story hotel window, apparently trying to evade police checking out a noisy party in his room, reportedly has either visited, or will visit as many as half the teams in the league before the start of the draft. Other guys who seem to making an inordinate number of visits include Southern Cal tweener LB/S Su’a Cravens, Georgia OLB Jordan Jenkins and Clemson SS Jayron Kearse. The other tell is when a player not considered to be rated all that highly start making multiple visits may indicate his grade is on the rise.
