The Draft Scout

Evaluating players for the 2021 NFL draft has been a challenge. The season wasn’t played on-schedule. Games were canceled with very little notice. Players opted-out. Then players opted back in. Then other players opted-out midway through the season. Oh, and the NCAA decided this year didn’t actually count so everyone has an extra year of eligibility if they want to use it! Tracking draft-eligible players is a big part of the job—making the list of 500+ prospects each summer and then whittling it down to the final top 300 is a lot of grunt work. But it has to be done. This year was the most complicated of my career given the lack of information available on players returning to school.