Tennessee Titans director of college scouting Blake Beddingfield spoke to the Huntsville (Ala.) Quarterback Club Tuesday night, and the Huntsville native and Alabama graduate had some interesting insights into the cycle of scouting an NFL prospect, according to al.com.
In short, Beddingfield cited: 1. The college football season; 2. All-star games such as the Senior Bowl; 3. The NFL Scouting Combine; and 4. The individual and pro day workouts that precede the NFL draft.
Beddingfield revealed a few telling anecdotes about a couple of those stages, mentioning 2013 first-round picks D.J. Fluker and Chance Warmack of Alabama, and the competitiveness they showed on Alabama's pro day in March. Beddingfield was there, and was taken by the way two high-end prospects, with little or nothing to prove in that setting, competed in drill work.
During the season, scouts are deployed to college campuses to evaluate players, though Beddingfield indicated that task has grown into something more than simply watching practices. The scouts are also charged with some level of character evaluation.
"We're half evaluators of talent and half private investigators," he said.
As for the combine, held in late February each year in Indianapolis, Beddingfield emphasized the importance of personal interviews with prospects. NFL clubs get to pick 60 players each for 15-minute interviews, according to the al.com report, and a player can torpedo his own career quite easily in that 15 minutes. Beddingfield, while withholding the player's name, told club members about a prospect who was preoccupied with charging his cellphone during an interview with the Titans, professed a higher love of women and video games than football, and admitted wanting to choke his college coach "at least five times."
Scratch.
*Follow Chase Goodbread on Twitter **@ChaseGoodbread.*
