Explaining my evolving scouting process for the NFL Draft

This gives insight into how I evaluate and re-evaluate prospects throughout the year

I have a new top 250 2024 NFL Draft big board dropping next week. Before that goes live, I wanted to give an overview of my scouting process since I’ve seen some people ask about different parts of it. Mainly, I want to explain how I can cover so many prospects and why the reports from the summer aren’t updated after the season. Strap in for a lot of rambling.

I start scouting players more than a year ahead of the draft, watching All-22 for a combination of the top returning prospects and some unheralded sleepers. For example, Michigan’s Mike Sainristil was a top 70 player on my 2024 board last May. Illinois’ Isaiah Adams debuted as a top 100 player in May as well, and Yale’s Kiran Amegadjie was a top 70 player by July.

I continue writing reports throughout the season and pre-draft process, adjusting the tape I watch as I go. However, my opinion on prospects is pretty well-informed by the end of December because of the film watching that occurs during the season. The reports come out gradually because they take time to write, and I bet no one wants me to send them 250 individual prospect profiles via email all at once. Doesn’t seem like a smart way to build a loyal viewership base.

During the season, I constantly review prospects’ performances as part of a weekly stock update segment. Across the course of a full season, this weekly post lets me get a new look at the prospects I watched over the summer. Players are re-evaluated based on All-22 tape from the current season, and I often end up re-watching games several times because I like focusing on one player at a time when first evaluating a prospect rather than trying to evaluate four prospects on a unit simultaneously. It’s horribly inefficient, but it works for me.

Exercises like big boards, positional rankings, and mock drafts force me to double check my work and help me organize my thoughts.

Scouting services, members of the media and sometimes members of college programs or NFL teams act as my cross-checkers by supplying their opinions and thoughts through their own work or private conversations. I often stick with my evaluations (trusting my first instinct has helped me more than overthinking ever will), but sometimes those outside opinions provide new insights or perspectives that change how I view a player. It’s good to be confident in your evaluation, but it’s bad to be too cocky.

It helps that I’ve been doing this long enough that I sometimes have multiple reports for players. New Miami quarterback Cameron Ward went back to school for 2025. I wrote him up in the summer of 2022 and 2023. Any player that I evaluated in the summer based on their 2022 tape who returned to school is in a great spot. By the time they enter the 2025 NFL Draft, I will have seen three years’ worth of their games (2022, 2023, and 2024).

I evaluated but didn’t write up Marshall running back Rasheen Ali (highly underrated by the way) this year because I already did his write up in the summer of 2022. I’ve watched three years of his tape, so I don’t need to do a write up because I have a massive list of mental notes on his game (I might write him up later anyway because I like him so much).

Some players who receive summer evaluations, like Notre Dame’s Joe Alt and Houston’s Patrick Paul, show significant year-over-year improvement and raise their grades throughout the season. Others, like Washington’s Rome Odunze, raise their grades by dominating in a way I didn’t anticipate. Many of the “pros” and “cons” I list still remain useful but need to be re-contextualized based on the 2023 season and tape.

Prospects also trend the opposite direction. Penn State’s Kalen King and Miami’s Leonard Taylor entered the season as top 50 prospects and finished the year with Day 3 evaluations after both posted the worst campaigns of their college careers. I get some evaluations wrong in the summer, but I also find a few year-long draft crushes to hang my hat on.

Additionally, I raise or lower my opinions on players after seeing them in-person at events like the Senior Bowl. The part of the scouting process that involves standing next to a prospect, seeing their movements at the ground level, and observing how they interact with other players can change a lot. Michigan’s Roman Wilson, Western Michigan’s Marshawn Kneeland, and Washington’s Edefuan Ulofoshio benefited significantly from that process this year.

Why don’t I re-write scouting reports when my grade or opinion on a player changes? Simple: It’s time consuming. I’m trying to get a comfortable feel for 300 or more prospects in the class while getting a head start on the 2025 class. Not everyone is getting a two-page Word doc dedicated to them.

No one gets re-written because the time I would spend writing another evaluation on a player I already feel comfortable with would prevent me from watching prospects like Anim Dankwah from Howard (2024), Jalen Coker and C.J. Hanson from Holy Cross (both 2024), Tyson Bagent from Shepherd (2023), Caleb Murphy from Ferris St. (2023), Julius Faulk from Delta State (2022), and New Hampshire transfer to Minnesota Max Brosmer (2025) or Monmouth transfer to Rutgers Dymere Miller (2025). Those reports are the most fun to write!

I would love to make a living doing this someday, but I don’t have that kind of time right now. So please understand that just because a player’s report grade is outdated doesn’t mean I haven’t watched them recently. I might even already be watching their teammates for the 2025 NFL Draft.

Thank you for sticking around until the end of that. For reference, this story is around as many words as some of my scouting reports, and it took me 100 minutes to write before editing. If you have any questions or suggestions for me and my scouting process, please feel free to leave them in the comments or message me on Twitter @Sam_Teets33.