Halfway between Week 5 and Week 6, and almost a quarter of the way through the 2023 NFL Draft process, it’s time to once again check in with Shrine Bowl Director Eric Galko and Shrine Bowl Director of College Scouting Shane Coughlin. Where are we now on the Shrine Bowl’s timeline, and what new knowledge has the process brought this week?
Shrine Bowl selection process for the 2023 NFL Draft is on the horizon
Just a few calls ago, “months” was the word Galko used to characterize the time we had left before invites went out to Shrine Bowl prospects. Now, the word is “weeks.”
Time is a constant. That’s a hard truth that the Shrine Bowl staff is reacquainted with each and every cycle. But by now, there’s a system in place. Galko knows better than anyone how fast the whole process can play out.
“In some ways, our Day 1 and Day 2 of the NFL Draft is coming up in 2-3 weeks,” Galko said. “We’ve got to know who our top guys are really early. I think now is the time where, we’ve got a lot of green players, and we feel good about them. We’ve got a lot of yellow guys, so we’ll see where they’re at. And now it’s time for our staff to go back and watch every game.”
With more football still left to play in Week 6 and beyond, the book doesn’t close on any prospect just yet. But as Galko has said in previous meetings, you only need so much of a sample before a prospect shows you things they’ve already displayed. It’s about watching the tape until all your questions are answered. And at this point, there’s enough tape to get most of the job done.
“You don’t want to make a conclusive report off of the first five games,” Galko cautioned. “But in general, five games is enough to build a good evaluation. So for our staff now, it’s not necessarily about living in the moment, but looking back and making sure what we think we saw week-to-week is actually true to the scope of the first month.”
For Director of College Scouting Shane Coughlin, who oversees more of the day-to-day work of the Shrine Bowl scouts, the mode of operation is similar. Right now, the Shrine Bowl evaluators are still answering a lot of questions. But more and more, they’re starting to narrow it down to where they want to be.
“Every week, we get closer and closer to the truth,” Coughlin exclaimed. “I think now is the point where I’m giving the staff the accountability, responsibility, and the confidence to be aggressive in their summer evaluations, aggressive in their early-season evaluations, and pushing more guys to the forefront of our consideration. We’re going to be doing a lot of cross-checking and a lot of discussions — not necessarily reporting back from scout to director, but more of a collaboration now.”
Of course, the collaboration takes place mainly in the preliminary work. When the time comes to decide whether or not a prospect receives an invite, that’s up to Eric and Shane to make that determination. It’s a careful structure of delegation that allows scouts to have the best understanding of their specific prospects while Galko and Coughlin process and filter that information through the national scope.
“It falls on Shane and me to make a player green for the invite,” Galko explained. “We let our scouting assistants and scouting consultants not worry about the invite process day-to-day because you can kind of get lost in the weeds a bit. I want these scouts to focus on, What is [a prospect’s] NFL projection going to be? Not ‘are they going to be an invite or not?’ They don’t have the national perspective as well as Shane and I do. We’re looking at boards and how prospects are ranked every day. So, for our team, it’s about a lot of communication.”
That communication is especially paramount, Galko says, when considering the timeline that the Shrine Bowl is working on. And circling all the way back to our very first chat with the Shrine Bowl staff, summer scouting is a process that helps this communication flow effortlessly through the early weeks.
“It sounds crazy to have guys that are green, that we’re good to move forward with this early,” Galko admitted. “But that’s where the preseason comes in, and that’s where a lot of discussions comes from.”
It’s not just about looking into the past and looking at what prospects have shown, however. It’s also about playing the probabilities, discussing different opinions and projecting outcomes, and exhausting those outcomes through a hypothetical lens. Galko refers to it as playing devil’s advocate within the scouting sphere, oftentimes taking NFL grades under the microscope.
“Let’s say an NFL scout that I trust has a PFA grade on this guy,” Galko theorized. “Make the argument: Why is that going to be true? Let’s say a scout has a first-round grade on this guy. You make the argument, ‘why is that true?’ You kind of play the devil’s advocate both ways sometimes and get to the truth, as Shane said earlier.”
It can be an arduous process. But for Galko and the Shrine Bowl staff, this kind of scrutiny can help solidify prospects in the green range. It’s not dissimilar to the phrase “pressure creates diamonds.” If prospect profiles hold up under pressure, they’ve got a good shot at earning an invite.
“The green guys are the guys we feel we’ve tested every possible outcome of what the rest of the season, the NFL Draft process, and their NFL career could be, and we feel really comfortable that they’re going to be — not only an ‘above the line’ guy, but a really, really good NFL player.”
How is the grading process constructed for the Shrine Bowl?
In a way, it’s intriguing that, even after so many years of exploration and advancement in the scouting field, the concept of a grading scale can feel so nebulous at times. It’s one thing to have an awareness of a trait, and it’s another thing entirely to assign a letter or number grade to that trait. So how does the Shrine Bowl do it? How does the Shrine staff quantify a trait?
Galko is quick to clarify: Quantification, in and of itself, isn’t the method that the Shrine Bowl staff prefers.
“I’d say, instead of quantifying it, noting it and annotating it is important for us,” Galko reasoned. “We have athleticism grades for athletes, and they’re generally A through F. There are very specific things that make that. It’s not just a general ‘He’s an A to B’. There’s very substantial criteria we use based off of actual data. We have a good idea of who these guys are, and we take a lot of time on athleticism grades. It’s hugely important for us to be able to know that, and to be able to separate that.”
Galko says that the Shrine Bowl staff also has position-specific notes, with which they can place prospects within certain categories for each trait. It all adds up to a long, hyphenated tag for a prospect — in a language that’s uniquely catered to the Shrine Bowl staff.
Galko likens it to a quarterback calling a play. The terminology is specific and not ubiquitous or necessarily accessible to outside parties. But for the Shrine Bowl staff, it helps to efficiently convey what a prospect offers and how he projects. Because at the end of the day, especially for a staff that has to make decisions in late October and early November, efficiency is the name of the game.
“It’s a bunch of weird words you don’t understand, but if you know the language, Shane and I can get the grade, get all the other tags, and get a good sense of who these guys are,” Galko said. “Having our scouts know that stuff terminology-wise and being on the same page — when they do know it, it helps us to properly assess and compartmentalize. If he’s an A-athlete, but has a lower grade, what does that mean? It means that he’s got upside. He’s got some tools there. For us, it’s about painting a picture through annotations and notes. That way, we don’t get lost in words too much.”
In the lens of grading and annotating, Coughlin also adds that connecting a prospect’s traits to his performance and his abilities on the field is another necessary component of an NFL projection.
“Beyond quantifying, I always want to tie it to something that’s happening, that’s elevating his play at the position,” Coughlin elaborated. “That’s something that turns intrigue into a better football player, and a higher athleticism grade. You can talk about traits, you can talk about wingspan, you can talk about timed speed and jumps and all the testing numbers. But I think when you can tie that to a way that he’s winning, that’s when you get a higher grade and a better functional athlete.”
It is indeed a complex process and a very detail-oriented one. But for Galko and Coughlin, all of these details, tags, and categories work to reduce and minimize the ambiguity of the scouting process — a process where ambiguity can lead to risk and where risk can lead to failed evaluations. Galko created the Shrine Bowl’s scale a long time ago, and he’s tuned it with the intent of minimizing ambiguity and maximizing confidence.
“When I give a player a grade or a note, I double check what the standards are. They’re data-backed, they’ve been tweaked a little bit as the years have gone by,” Galko shared. “We’re very aggressive at not caring about round grades so much as what their role is. For us, it’s basically on a 1-10 scale, but 0.5 means a lot. We really harp on these details because the details turn a guy from a fringe rotational player to an adequate backup. It’s a big grade change and it’s a big difference in player.”
The most important thing for Galko is finding a way to condense words and observations into tangible categories and tags. Because that’s what makes the scouting process as strongly rooted as it can be.
“Knowing about a player is important, but it’s also our job to not get lost in the words, because that’s where the subjectivity comes in,” Galko continued. “If we can find the right traits and know how those things apply to the NFL player, that’s how we can get those grades right. So grades and tags are incredibly important for us.”
Galko brings up a quote from the 2011 movie Moneyball: “Guys, you’re just talking.” And he says while communication is important, extraneous information isn’t something to dwell on. Time is of the essence, and there’s little time to waste.
“We want to stop ‘just talking’ and we want to make a decision on who these guys are.”
Does scheme and personnel manipulation factor into evaluation?
With information efficiency in mind, another question is raised: Just how deep does the Shrine Bowl staff expand from the diagnostics of a prospect’s evaluation to their projection into the NFL?
Especially in the early goings of the 2022 NFL season, we’ve seen scheme and personnel manipulation take on added weight. The Bengals are a prime example. They’ve since started to right the ship, but early on, their inability to get favorable Cover 1 passing looks cost them. Meanwhile, teams like Miami, who could be flexible with their formations, found success toying with defenses.
Scheme and personnel manipulation are indeed important. But for the Shrine Bowl staff, it’s another example of judging which information is needed in a report and which information isn’t. For the Shrine Bowl staff, what’s most important is providing a report, with which coaches can then make their own schematic determinations.
“I’d say my priority is writing a report with which a coach can answer that question themselves,” Coughlin said when asked about schematics in scouting. “It’s hard not to inject scheme and personnel and sets into a projection. I think it’s important that you have a clear vision for a player. But at the same time, we never want to slant a report or a conclusion to say, ‘this is what he is’.
“At the end of a report, I want a coach or a general manager to say ‘He does fit us’ or ‘he might have some traits for us’ or ‘he’s a perfect scheme fit.’ I want to answer those questions more so than inject my vision. I’m going to tell you how he moves, how he wins, and give the coach the freedom and the knowledge to use them in their own scheme.”
Coughlin emphasizes that remaining personnel-removed is one way to focus solely on the diagnostics of a prospect’s report and maintain a purely evaluative mindset. As a scout, it’s easy to muse about different ways prospects can be used. But that’s ultimately not the scout’s jurisdiction. It’s the coach’s realm to decide how a prospect is utilized. Galko echoes that sentiment.
“We take a lot of pride in differentiating between ‘scout scout’ and ‘coach scout,'” Galko expanded. “As a coach, you’re going to watch guys a certain way because that’s the coach lens. How can I make this guy better? As a scout, you want to be a little more risk averse. What’s this guy’s weaknesses? How can he be successful? For us, it’s not about ‘hey, what would you change?’ You’re not a coach, you’re a scout. Assess what’s there, dive into how it works and how it doesn’t. Coaches can do more technique stuff, so it’s important for us to make sure we don’t get lost there.”
At the same time, however, Galko says there is a place for creativity in a scout’s report, especially when contextual factors might dilute a player’s current situation. He brings up UCLA’s Kazmeir Allen as an example — a talented, versatile prospect who hasn’t been particularly productive to this point.
“[Allen is a] really fast, really athletic guy who’s been used a million different ways,” Galko extrapolated. “He’s a guy that is too athletic and too unique not to be appreciated. But at the same time, he’s not a 1,000-yard player this season for UCLA. For NFL teams, you don’t want to say he’s not a guy because he’s not producing because he’s definitely impressive talent-wise.
“And I think his role could be much different in the NFL, and he could be much more productive in the NFL than he was in college. It’s really important, as a scout, to not lose track of really talented players, and try to be a little bit creative in saying, ‘hey, is there a world in which this guy can be successful?'”
In the eyes of the Shrine Bowl, the report ultimately looks to answer that question. And then, with the report in hand, it’s up to the coach to ask the next question: How can I make this prospect successful, or how can my team be successful with this prospect?
It’s not dissimilar to the Shrine Bowl’s own chain of delegation. Or, with Coughlin’s imagery, more of a passing of the torch.
“I want to answer as many questions about what he can do,” Coughlin characterized. “And I always want to answer the questions to lead [coaches] to an answer on their particular unique fit.”