No Foolin’! We are in the homestretch … Its April 1st which means its also April Fool’s Day; it also means we are finally in draft month with the draft set to start in barely 25 days. And with the pro days, with the exception of a few stragglers, now in the books, NFL personnel execs and scouts got the weekend off, but will be heading back to their respective war rooms to put the final touches on their value boards and assess their options later this month. Of course, teams will also be hosting their allotted out of city visits from selected prospects. Every team is allowed 30 such visits at their sites where prospects can be wined and dined, interviewed and subjected to certain medical; however, teams are not allowed to work out or otherwise physically these players. Teams, though, can still work out players, but they must go to the campus or hometown of the specific player to do so. Teams are also allowed to invite to their sites as many prospects as they want from schools in that team’s geographic region and those players can be physically tested.
The other aspect of the visits is they can provide some insights into what teams are thinking and where players are currently graded. If, for example, a team includes a disproportionate number of players from a particular position among their allotted visits t is a pretty good indication that that team is looking to address that particular position with an early pick. At the same time, because teams generally invite players that they think they have a chance to actually draft, if a player has multiple visits with teams picking in roughly the same part of the opening round then that’s a good indication where that player is currently graded. The other thing we also look for are players who are considered to be more fringe prospects but who are getting visits with multiple teams which may tend to indicate that they may not necessarily be all that ‘fringy.’
