Nominee for the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award, Jaylon Johnson of the Bears, launched Kevvy’s Vision, a non-profit organisation. The group pays tribute to Johnson’s closest buddy, who was a mainstay of the Fresno neighbourhood before a tragic event altered everything.
I know I wrote about this recently, but I need to write more about it because I keep receiving questions and hearing certain things.
As of today, Tuesday, January 16, 2024, neither the Chicago Bears nor any other NFL team have decided who they will select in the first round of the April NFL Draft. That is not at all how the procedure operates.
The lengthy, methodical process of getting ready for a draft must be carefully followed to avoid errors. No team has a preliminary board set as of yet; instead, they rate each player scouted using their system. The first preliminary board won’t be built up until before the Combine in the following month.
Up until now, the only people who have produced reports and entered them into the system are scouts and decision-makers. This often translates to a maximum of four to five reports, many of which will have varying grades because few evaluators assign the same marks to athletes.
The coaches are only now starting to participate in the process. A list of names will be sent to each position coach for review, interviewing, and maybe working out. Their portion of the process will take around the next 10 weeks to finish, and depending on Pro Days and their availability for a private session, it might not be finished until late March or early April.
When the preliminary boards are determined next month, just position is taken into account. Clubs cover every player they are interested in, starting position by position on one side of the ball. They have a broad notion of each position board’s appearance, ranked from best to worst, by the end of these meetings. It is also decided at these meetings which players will be interviewed at the Combine. Because each club is only allowed to interview sixty players, they have to be picky about who they meet with at Indianapolis.
Who they can interview at the All-Star Games will influence a lot of that. The Senior Bowl and East-West All-Star Games are the remaining two major games that will take place over the course of the next two weeks. At these tournaments, there will be more than 200 players, and this will be the first time that less than 200 underclassmen will attend the games. A second interview may occasionally be conducted, however clubs that interview players at the All-Star Games are not required to interview them again at the Combine.
The coaches get their first in-person look at prospects during the All-Star Games and the Combine, even if the scouts have already seen the majority, if not all, of these players. In the process of evaluation, the coach’s viewpoint is crucial. A position coach needs to be inspired to coach a player and have faith in him. A team will never be able to choose that player if he doesn’t believe in him; it simply won’t work.
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