How Scouting College Players Has Evolved Under Shanahan

[Schneed10]

Originally Posted by GTripp0012

I think they've been doing stuff differently, but we're talking about the same guys here.

Scott Campbell and Morocco Brown are well-respected personnel guys, but they were well-respected personnel guys when Cerrato called the shots. It's the same guys, the same front office. Having a different way of doing things can be refreshing, or it can just be a different means to the same end.

If people are waiting for me to rip Scott Campbell for peeling back the curtain a bit as to how the Redskins run things now as opposed to before, that's just not someplace I'm going to go. The Redskins draft record under Cerrato in the first couple of rounds always suggested our scouts were as thorough as anyone elses.

I don't deny that it's still the case, and I'm glad Rich Campbell was able to give us a little bit of a look at the Redskins front office. But it's the same front office. It really is. It's year, what, six? Seven? Eight? It's clear to me Shanahan has changed a couple things here and there since mid-season when the heat got turned up on him, but the only thing we can do hoping that things are better now is to wait for it and hope. Because things clearly are not changing before the 2012 draft: we're sticking with the current course for one more year.

There is no alternative for the fans to passively hoping that they're getting it right.

I'm sorry Tripp but I have to really rip you for saying it's the same front office, because that makes no sense. Is it the same scouting group, sure. But when people refer to the "front office", they are referring to the person(s) who are ultimately making the player acquisition decisions.

Scouting departments are front office support people, not decision makers. They evaluate the talent. They evaluated it for Cerrato and now the evaluate the talent for Shanahan. But that's a huge delineation.

Shanahan, his son, and Haslett are defining and communicating the type of players they are looking for, while Campbell and his team go find them. In the past, Campbell and his team would go find them, and Vinny would end up picking whoever he thought would work best for Zorn.

But Vinny and Zorn weren't communicating, and it's clear in this article that Campbell was saying he wasn't getting much in the way of direction from the decision makers at the top. So it's no wonder Vinny went with the BPA strategy when he was in charge - the communication was so poor between coach, GM, and scouts that he didn't even adequately grasp what the team needed.

Scouts are only as good as the decision makers they support. You can provide all the quality analysis in the world, but if the decision makers can't communicate well enough to put the analysis to good use, then shitty decisions get made.

I think with the way Shanahan is making better use of Campbell's abilities, it bodes well for improved drafting and team composition going forward.