Scouting is a team game. Your organizational front-office depth is tested as even your area scouts can play a big role in the future health of your franchise. But teams only go as far as their stars take them. And in the world of the NFL Draft, the stars are those coaches who have college experience on their resume.
This isn’t a new phenomenon. Paul Brown gave Ohio State its first championship in 1942. In 1946, Brown took over the Cleveland Browns and started one of the greatest stretches of success in NFL history. One of the largest contributing factors was the way he revolutionized how organizations compiled and analyzed draft data. His coaching tree includes names like Don Shula, Bill Walsh and Marty Schottenheimer, who all benefited from implementing Brown’s draft infrastructure.
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Pete Carroll is the present-day, college-to-NFL pied piper. He rebuilt USC into a dynasty, winning national championships in back-to-back years. Then Carroll returned to the NFL in 2010 and has led the Seattle Seahawks to the playoffs every year but one and has been in back-to-back Super Bowls, hoisting the Lombardi once.
He’s also had huge success at all stages of the draft.
The Seahawks have made 48 picks during the five drafts since Carroll took over. Fifteen of those guys were starting for the team last year, and six have turned into Pro Bowlers. All but one of them is still with Seattle, and that one guy is Golden Tate—he worked out so well he became a cap casualty and signed for more money with Detroit.
One thing college coaches are adept at doing is projecting how college-to-NFL positional changes could pan out—understanding how body types, skill sets and system fits play into the equation. It’s something they have to constantly do while managing an NCAA roster. Challenges like: “Player B played X in high school but we need him to play Y in our system.” And: “Because of our scholarship situation we need player A to switch positions to balance out our athletes across the depth chart.”
Among NFL teams, the Seahawks have been the best at handling these types of situations in the Carroll era. They drafted the league’s best corner in Richard Sherman, someone who spent some time previously at wide receiver in college. They also gambled on J.R. Sweezy, a defensive lineman in college who the Seahawks converted to the offensive line. Sweezy is now Seattle’s best interior lineman on one of the best offensive lines in football. Starting at right guard, he’s missed only one game in the last two years.
Of course, you have to hit on blue chippers, which is literally the first thing Seattle’s staff did with Russell Okung and Earl Thomas in the first round in 2010.
But getting lucky late is even more lucrative as you get high performance at low cost. Amazingly, Carroll has chosen Russell Wilson in the third round (No. 75 overall), K.J. Wright in the fourth (No. 99), Kam Chancellor (No. 133) and Sherman (No. 154) in the fifth, and Sweezy in the seventh (No. 225). All have become among the best players in the league at their respective positions.
Chip Kelly is the next in a pipeline of coaches with college credentials finding NFL success. He embraces the college-coach label that precedes him, and has added nine of his former Oregon Ducks to his roster while showing a preference for Pac 12 players in the draft.
For the second season in a row, he’s let go of his leading receiver in what is increasingly becoming a passing league. That’s because he knows better than most that 12 wide receivers went in the first two rounds of the draft last year and this year’s class is expected to be top-heavy once again. As much as Kelly’s splashy free-agent moves have been a talking point, the bedrock that allows him the flexibility to make those moves has been his work via the draft.
This is not to say college coaches have it easy—or that the process is fool proof. Kelly himself admits the draft is a crap shoot. “When you draft someone in the sixth round and you say, ‘Hey, we got a steal,’ my first question is, why didn’t you take him in the fifth, then?”
That said, if the draft truly is an inexact science, then the guy at the helm with the largest amount of data at his disposal is still in the best position to make the tough decisions. From Paul Brown, to Jimmy Johnson, to Pete Carroll, to now Chip Kelly and Bill O’Brien, in most cases when a former NCAA coach has been successful early in his career, it’s thanks to the draft.
Inevitably this week when a former college coach reaches for a pick that’s not highlighted on the “best available” ticker, don’t fret. That coach who has made the jump from the NCAA to the NFL is best able to decode how college players will translate.