In the process of putting together a roster, the draft is just the beginning — every club must look to outside sources to fill out the rest of the squad. The day-to-day task of accounting for injuries and suspensions, filling holes and adding depth, and keeping the team as competitive and talented as possible falls under the purview of the less famous and less understood counterpart to the college scouting team: the pro personnel department and its cadre of scouts. 

Before pro scouts can even start to look to outside options — free agents, guys on the street, or potential trade targets — it’s essential to evaluate each and every player already on the roster, from the top down.

The duty for every pro personnel department is to create and manage a database of every player in the NFL, every signable player without a team, and a number of players from lower-level or international leagues. The term “no stone left unturned” is probably a motto for more than one team.

“You’re gonna be scouting the CFL, the arena league,” said Dan Hatman, who worked in personnel departments for the Giants, Eagles, and Jets who is now a director at The Scouting Academy. “When the UFL and XFL were around, [we scouted those leagues, too]. Anybody that’s not college eligible. We’d go through as many of those players as humanly possible — in addition to grading all 32 teams’ rosters every single year — so you constantly have updated grades on everybody who’s in the league.”

The initial impression may be that when disaster struck for both of these teams [Detroit Lions and Philadelphia Eagles], the subsequent moves were desperate and random. But while it’s certain that neither squad wanted to have to turn to free agency and trades to address newly created roster needs, their reactions were neither arbitrary nor panicked. These moves were the result of months, and in some cases, years of scouting, evaluation, and contingency-plan preparation, and both teams were able to act quickly to deal with the loss of key players because of the behind-the-scenes work of the pro scouting departments to build what’s frequently called a “short list,” “ready list,” or “emergency list.”

To keep the ready and/or emergency lists properly updated, teams typically work out a group of free-agent players every Tuesday, when the rest of the team has a day off. “We’re bringing in guys off the ready list or bringing in guys as favors to agents,” Hatman said. “Say you’ll have an agent call and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got this guy who’s bugging me because he hasn’t worked out for a team for a while. Can you bring him in and work him out?’ He does that because every workout goes on the transaction record, and it’s one of those things. ‘Oh, you know, X, Y, and Z worked him out. Now we gotta go look at him. We gotta vet him.’ That’s what every department does.”

 

For some teams, the pro personnel team becomes almost an HR department. “When I became a director, I thought it was really important that I was around the team,” McCartney said. “I went to practice every day, I watched, I was around the players, I knew what the issues were. The outside world has no idea what’s going on in the inside of an NFL building a lot of the time. I think people would be shocked to learn how many issues there can be that they would never in a million years hear about. A football player has a mental breakdown. A guy’s struggling at home in a relationship, and some guys can manage that, others can’t. It’s relationships. They’re people. People have problems.”

These problems can affect a player’s availability during the week or on Sundays, and the team, at times, must make roster changes to account for that. “There’s all kinds of little things like that,” McCartney said, “and [teams] must strike balance between the short term and the long term.”

This cycle goes on year after year. And it’s always changing and evolving with new coaches, new players, new schemes, and new pro personnel. The methodologies, the scouting reports, and the ready lists must be continually updated and improved.  

I'm heading to Las Vegas in two weeks with a few of the 8 Man Rotation folk (Kris Dunn, Steve Boese, Lance Haun) to take in a couple days of NBA Summer League action.  Worth revisiting this July 2013 post.  If you're in the area, come join us.
 
On July 13-16, I will join three of my colleagues behind the 8 Man Rotation in Las Vegas (we always leave one behind to keep it going in case something befalls the rest of us) for two to three days to catch some NBA Summer League action.
Why do we want to head to the desert in summer time to spend 8-10 hours a day in a gym watching exhibition basketball when those games don't matter?
 
Because, in actuality, the games DO matter....for those playing.   In his piece on Grantland, Steve McPherson describes what it is like for those involved:

These are guys who have worked their entire lives to be one of the 450 players in the top basketball league in the world. Guys who spent their whole lives being one of the best basketball players in any situation they ever found themselves in. And now it’s just the grind. They’re simply looking for their shot.

The ones hoping for that shot are almost universally flawed in one way or another: undersized or stuck between positions; not good enough at one specific thing to be useful to a team; dogged by problems we can’t even see, the kind of stuff many of us carry around.........

But for these players — who are among the top one or two percent of basketball players in the world — it’s their big chance. Not to become something they’re not, but to see their years of work turn them into what they’ve always been striving toward.

• Not enough actionable content.  Schedule yourself better.  The program comes out early.  The presentations are available for download ahead of time. There are not a lot of surprises. The SHRM blog squad put out 150+ posts during the conference.  The SMART stage and the #Take10 sessions provided a ton of great content.  The twitter stream was a blur. There were 900+ exhibitors ready to answer your specific questions.  You had 18,000 peers that you could have approached and bounced ideas off of. If you couldn't find actionable content, you were not looking hard enough. Further, the RFP for the 2018 conference is due July 15. If you think you can do better, prove it. 
• Lines were super long for the bathroom.  Yes, they were.  Yet, many of the men's bathrooms were annexed and became women's bathrooms. Do you have a better solution? Should they cap attendance?
• Events started at 7:00 am, and I was tired from the night before.  Go to bed earlier.  They've had 7:00 sessions every year I've attended since 2001.  The game is the game. 
• There were not snacks at mid-morning or mid-afternoon.  Are you pre-schoolers?  Is it the responsibility of SHRM to feed you 24/7?  Pack some snacks to take with you.
• Lunch was mediocre.  You were warned.
• I had to wait in line for the buses.  The schedule is posted well in advance.  If you want to be closer to the convention center, book your room now (or when housing opens again in November).
• Long walk to get to sessions/sessions were full.  Yep. Leave earlier. Do you have a better solution?
• SHRM board members get prime seats at sessions.  Yes they do. Perk of the job. Want better seats? Get to the general session earlier.  Should SHRM start selling prime seats as add-ons to the conference registration?
• Wi-fi sucked.  Yes, it did.  It was frustrating.  You survived. 

A very advanced form of lie detector that measures contractions of the iris muscle and the presence of invisible airborne particles emitted from the body. The bellows were designed for the latter function and give the machine the menacing air of a sinister insect. The VK is used primarily by Blade Runners to determine if a suspect is truly human by measuring the degree of his empathic response through carefully worded questions and statements. 

 

• "I hate 6:30 am classes." "Not to mention 6:30 is quite early." "Maybe have earlier in the day...I was tired and may not have retained all the material."  I understand that you are trying to maximize your recertification credits, but no one is forcing you to attend the conference, let alone an early morning or late afternoon session.  Further, how does this in any way help the speaker?
• "Room is too hot." "Room was freezing." I'm sorry that the room temperature did not meet your needs, but, again, how does that help the speaker?  How will it help him or her improve the content?  Save it for another area of the attendee survey.
• "Horrible Speakers." The session was a bit dull and boring." As a professor who gets student reviews every semester, I can get 29 out of 30 positive ratings, but the negative one is going to be the one I mull over and remember.  Unfortunately, there is nothing provided as to how and why the session was horrible.  Where is the information that could help the speaker do better? Would you like to receive this comment about you and your performance?
• He wore a suit and was quite formal (for a session by an attorney on labor law)." "Her shoes were ugly." Again, how does this help the speaker? Your taste may be different than theirs. Further, if this is where you choose to focus on in your appraisal, maybe there are other underlying areas that might be more appropriate.  Unless there is something outrageously wrong with the outfit, it might help NOT to focus on attire at all in your feedback.
• "Didn't realize the keynote and the breakout session were the same speaker."  The program was available four months in advance, and you didn't bother to read it before attending?
• Two people evaluated and gave a 100% very satisfied rating.....to a speaker who canceled at the last minute. C'mon, man.  Really?!?!?

On Monday night, my wife had control of the remote and had the TV set on HGTV.  An episode of "Tiny House Hunters" (which is a misleading title - I keep expecting it to be about little people looking for homes that are height appropriate) was on.  I wasn't paying much attention until this ad came on: