Scouting Department vs. Front Office

[kungfoodude]

6 minutes ago, 45catfan said:

You know when this downward spiral started?  When Tepper went all-in on analytics. Let scouts scout and let the nerds play Xbox.

This is an underrated comment. I do wonder if our analytical approach is literally completely broken. The numbers/models are only as good as thosd creating them. And they damn sure aren't better than watching the tape and having seasoned evaluators break people down.

[SmokinwithWilly]

Since Jake this team has had no real direction. It was speed and hands on the outside with Smitty and possession with Moose. Smash mouth running with JStew and speed with DW. Out defense was strong MLB and a viscous front 4. 

Since then, we've had Cam but never had a plan to build around him and now we have this bastard turd of a brainchild dreamed up by Tepper and Co. 

How can you expect any scout, coach, player to know what to do when there is no clear message from the top? I have no idea what this team is supposed to be. There has to be a blue print to build. Right now we have a sketch drawn with a ketchup squeeze bottle on a fast food tray liner. 

[GoingsGoingsGone]

I feel like we've gotten a lot better at FA scouting in recent years, particularly those bottom of the roster type guys. That's not to say things are 'good', but do believe things have improved there.

College scouting has been a disaster. It's not inaccurate to say that the best piece of talent evaluation at this franchise in the last 5 years was done by Julie Rhule.

[AceMan]

I hate our scouting department for several reasons:

I hate the scout that pushed for "Muhsin Muhammad" model...

Moose was a great player for us, but my God, the impression he left on our scouting department is OVERWHELMING HORRIBLE!!!

I'm so tired of "2nd round, big, possession" receivers because obviously we keep missing on them!

 

[Bear Hands]

Spencer and Kirksey have been here since 2021 running the college scouting side of things. And then there’s Robert Haines who has been here since 2015, worked his way up and now as the top national scout.

All seem pretty active in decision making based off of the offseason “behind the scenes” videos the team makes.

We have some newer area scouts— those people will typically hand in reports early December. The team reviews, folds those assessments into the full draft prep by the new year. End of the year around bowl season is usually really active internally but is not usually shown. Come draft season, they’ll already have plenty of stuff on prospects when we’re just starting to dig in.

Jeff Morrow is a name you may have heard, he finally retired after being here since the early 2000s.

[NorthTryon]

1 hour ago, kungfoodude said:

This is an underrated comment. I do wonder if our analytical approach is literally completely broken. The numbers/models are only as good as thosd creating them. And they damn sure aren't better than watching the tape and having seasoned evaluators break people down.

Yeah, this ain't late 1980s Oakland and this ain't baseball! You need top tier talent and serviceable rotation players. I used to take guys like Al Wallace and Mario Addison for granted. But even our marginal talent gets over paid and whisked away. I thought YGM would be back on a very serviceable deal. Nope, outta here on the first thing smoking.

[Khyber53]

2 hours ago, CBDellinger said:

Hurney is by far and away the best GM we have ever had.  Had Matt Rhules slob ass listened to him we'd have traded up and drafted Herbert.

While that is praise for Hurney, and he gets an awful lot of criticism, I have to agree just on the basis of how bad the rest of our managers have been. Still, under Hurney's drafting, we were competitive, or near champs, more often than not. 

Now, we're just the chumps sitting at the big poker table that are borrowing chips to try and fill an inside straight. We don't understand the game, we're behind and we're looking desperate.

[CPantherKing]

It's the management which would be the Teppers and their analysts. Keep Pounding scouting culture as a core element was gutted going into 2019 to a support role.

The prime years of the 2011 rebuild was wasted by failing to develop the core leadership and culture of the team. The championship players were ridden with few long term leaders added (also poor core player career projections like Smitty, Gross, Cam, Kuechly, CMC). 2017 was the big blow with the loss of McDermott and Beane in an apparent front office implosion. Hurney managed a respectable save for 2017 leading to the Panthers last playoff game.

Then came the Teppers following the 2018 draft and you could see the culture shift in the organization going through that season. Hurney & Rivera were cut-off from football control in the 2019 offseason and visibly battled Tepper's data analyst hires to make football moves.

Since then, there hasn't been much of a scouting department factoring into roster building and big boards that could override the Teppers project picks and sports data teams with Rhule being fully on board for years. Panthers scouting now is just data collection and personality tests for the algo engineers. The scouting focus now is on diamonds in the rough and their most important interview question is "Do you like football?" Seems they just work for the AI prompt engineers.

[CBDellinger]

7 minutes ago, Khyber53 said:

While that is praise for Hurney, and he gets an awful lot of criticism, I have to agree just on the basis of how bad the rest of our managers have been. Still, under Hurney's drafting, we were competitive, or near champs, more often than not. 

Now, we're just the chumps sitting at the big poker table that are borrowing chips to try and fill an inside straight. We don't understand the game, we're behind and we're looking desperate.

The Luke and Cam picks are enough to make him drafting God among modern day GMs... throw in Peppers and 89 and he's sitting atop Mt Olympus... its the other stuff and FA that did him in.  I think was directed by ownership to give some of those crazy contracts out... but in the end he has to own it.

[BrianS]

I would not be upset if we hired Hurney as head of college scouting.  He certainly failed at a lot of the duties required of a GM, but man we had a lot of good players come through under his watch.

[Tr3ach]

Both.   Our gms are always obsessed with old ideologies of teams that don't work anymore and I have no idea how we haven't thrown out our entire scouting department in the past few years.  I don't think we have replaced hardly any of our scouting department over the year even though we are the worst drafting team in the league.  It makes absolutely no sense.

[strato]

3 hours ago, SmokinwithWilly said:

can you expect any scout, coach, player to know what to do when there is no clear message from the top? I have no idea what this team is supposed to be. There has to be a blue print to build. Right now we have a sketch drawn with a ketchup squeeze bottle on a fast food tray liner. 

To that part of your post, I think that exposes some of it. 

It is a collaborative process and they move the goalposts every year or every other year with GMs and coaches and coordinators and they go that way, and maybe these guys now don't fit for the new coaches and GMs. Rinse repeat.

Also, yes you have to listen to the scouts.

Two things:

We hired the leading analytical guy. Who is really impressive I thought, there was a long interview with him around the time of the Super Bowl if anybody wants to see it it is probably pretty easy to find.

So maybe that is in the evolving/transitioning stage right now. 

The other thing is something I have not heard put out there prior to Canales and Morgan talking about it and that is they had meetings with the scouts upon taking charge of things, that were aimed at setting evaluation standards, what specific skillset or attributes the players needed to have to fit what they want to build. 

Some of these things may have been addressed but we do not see the fruits immediately? 

[kungfoodude]

24 minutes ago, strato said:

To that part of your post, I think that exposes some of it. 

It is a collaborative process and they move the goalposts every year or every other year with GMs and coaches and coordinators and they go that way, and maybe these guys now don't fit for the new coaches and GMs. Rinse repeat.

Also, yes you have to listen to the scouts.

Two things:

We hired the leading analytical guy. Who is really impressive I thought, there was a long interview with him around the time of the Super Bowl if anybody wants to see it it is probably pretty easy to find.

So maybe that is in the evolving/transitioning stage right now. 

The other thing is something I have not heard put out there prior to Canales and Morgan talking about it and that is they had meetings with the scouts upon taking charge of things, that were aimed at setting evaluation standards, what specific skillset or attributes the players needed to have to fit what they want to build. 

Some of these things may have been addressed but we do not see the fruits immediately? 

If they did it was hard to tell with the 2024 draft. Boy that was a very Fitterer draft.

[HardcoreHokie]

3 hours ago, Bear Hands said:

Jeff Morrow is a name you may have heard, he finally retired after being here since the early 2000s.

Food Network’s “Sandwich King” left us, this explains everything.