The Rundown: Scouting Staff Breaks Down Undrafted Rookie Free Agents | Page 2 | FinHeaven - Miami Dolphins Forums

The Rundown: Scouting Staff Breaks Down Undrafted Rookie Free Agents

I thought it was an informative article. I wouldn't mind more content like that from the team website. I suppose it's too much to ask for them to be more candid. The team might be surprised that it would strengthen the fan-team connection because the fans would take the team literature more seriously.

The article really only gave positives for each player, Andy Cohen style. It's like they deleted the paragraph for each on negatives (after all, the listed players were undrafted for certain reasons).

Nevertheless, we have quotes from different scouts/personnel folks. We can see what intrigues them about each player. That has some value.

As to the undrafted players, I wouldn't be shocked at all if 5-6 make it. We were woefully thin going into the draft, and then landed only six draft picks, plus Rosen, so there are spots.

Beyond that, we are in the seven round era, but history is littered with guys who came after the seventh round. On the '72-'73 championship teams, you had late picks or free agents all over the place, from Manny Fernandez to Kuech, Langer, Little and others.

Later, we had starters like Jeff Cross (ninth round, on the list of all time sack artists for the team), JB Brown (twelfth round), etc. I think Doug Betters was eighth round but I don't care enough to look it up. I am not trying to be comprehensive with my list. It's just that a number of the undrafteds would have been drafted in an earlier time.

Agree the article looks encouraging. I suspect negatives aren't included to protect the ego of the UDFAs and not discourage them.

I'm more pessimistic about the number that may make the team (excluding PS). There will likely be additions from released players and these should/could endanger UDFAs.
 
There was a video series of this they put in YouTube and this article was just a transcript of that.

They rotated staff members to where it basically had the look of each 'sponsor' of a particular UDFA talking about what they saw in the player to add him.

I honestly don't think it's necessary for them to give some exhaustive breakdown of the player's weaknesses. Bill Parcells and I believe Bill Walsh always used to say, in the draft room, don't tell me what a guy can't do, tell me what he can do. They're giving a draft room rundown of why they'd like to think about adding this player. I don't even see the point in exploring their negatives. They're UDFAs. Tell me what you like about the player.

In some cases it's a valuable look into the themes they're trying to hit on as a staff in order to follow the lead of what Brian Flores, Chad O'Shea, Patrick Graham, and Josh Boyer want from the players fitting into their systems. That came through several times with the way Ron Brockington and Adam Engroff discussed some of the defensive backs. Hell I thought Engroff all but said Tyler Horton is Josh Boyer's guy, if you read between the lines. I think it sort of came through in the way Marvin Allen talked about Patrick Laird, too.
 
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