First, can you let us know what you’ve been doing since your time in the NFL as a scout?
I’m pretty much retired. I’m 70 and all that travel stuff is too much now – dealing with that is just too much.
After I scouted for Cleveland, five or six of us worked for ESPN’s Scouts Inc. That was an online service that previewed games for readers – mostly for gamblers and fantasy football league fanatics. It’s ironic because most of us in football didn’t understand the whole fantasy football thing. It was about individual numbers instead of team success.
They brought that in-house though. So after that, me, Charles Bailey and some others guys tried to start our own website – Pro Scouting Services. But you needed a really big following to make that work and we just didn’t want to risk putting in the kind of investment needed to make that work.
What got you into scouting in the first place?
It’s a funny story. I played soccer in college and did a brief stint in the North American Soccer League. I coaches soccer after at the high school level and encouraged players to play football to toughen up a bit. The football coach asked me to coach. I told him I didn’t know much about football but he told me coaching was more about your relationships with players. That anyone could coach if they could do that.
Well, in the 70’s the Seahawks brought in high school coaches to look at film of prospects – they wanted another set of eyes on prospects. You’d go in, punch a clock and pull out game film and watch it. Well, the director of football there said they liked what I was doing and wanted me to scout full-time for them. It was a no-brainer – making more money and working for my hometown team. That last for 20 years in Seattle. Most scouts are former players and coaches – I kind of just fell into it.
What did you learn in Seattle that helped you become a successful scout?
I think it was about really talking to the coaches to understand what they wanted and what fit best for them. Kenny Meyer was the offensive coordinator in Seattle. He told me that he’d try to change a quarterback from the hips down but not the hips up. Knowing that helped me to understand what to look for for him. What to understand when scouting for them.
I also learned that film doesn’t lie. Brian Bosworth – I know some say he was a bust due to injuries that knocked him out of the league. But when I scouted him I saw a guy that had amazing read and reactions at Oklahoma. The way he recognized and reacted to plays – it was instantaneous. It was amazing. The film showed that for me.
What is the biggest trap scouts fall into?
Falling in love with production. I scouted Dan McGwire – a college quarterback at San Diego State. He had an amazing season – he must have thrown 20 touchdowns for every one interception. His numbers were way off the charts. But the intangibles were the thing. The biggest failure of a quarterback is being able to read defenses and process information. And the film showed the concerns there even though the production was high.
How did you land in Pittsburgh in 2000?
That year was the first time I was ever let go. After the new coaches came in, I had no idea what I was going to do next. I actually applied for a job at the sheriff’s office when I got a call saying Pittsburgh wanted to talk with me.
Doug Whaley – I worked with him in Seattle and he recommended me to Pittsburgh. They brought me in.
What was different about working for the Steelers and how they scouted players?
That was the shortest tenure I ever had with a team, first of all. It’s the only job I ever quit, and it was the biggest mistake I ever made. Back then they had no contracts with scouts – just handshake deals. The Rooneys were honorable – but there is something about having the security of a contract. They also paid very poorly then.
Washington offered me a three-year contract that paid me twice as much. I didn’t want to leave but I couldn’t turn that down. I told Cowher and Dan Rooney and they understood. My timing was just bad. The next year they brought Colbert in and one of the first things he fought for was contracts and better pay for scouts!
What was different about the scouting process there?
Colbert had a phenomenal system on how to evaluate players. He marked every player with character or injury issues and it affected where they were on the board but he never took them off the board. He also didn’t care about what other teams did. They made their own decisions. He said Pittsburgh will make its own decisions and own mistakes.
Back then Pittsburgh ran the 3-4 so those outside linebacker types that no one else wanted – it made it easy for Pittsburgh to find them.
But what made the process successful was that the coaches trusted the scouts. Some teams, the coaches and scouts fight with each other. In Pittsburgh, they trusted each other and all understood their roles and process.
What made Pittsburgh so successful relative to other teams in the draft?
They didn’t try to get too smart. Some programs try to out-think others and think they can take highly productive guys in college and teach them the things they couldn’t do in college. If a receiver dropped a lot of passes but was fast, some coaches felt like they could teach them to catch better. Well, it doesn’t usually work like that. People forget most of those kids had good college coaches too!
Some teams let ego get in the way thinking they can coach players to be better than their film. Pittsburgh kept it simple. They didn’t look at just production or let ego get in the way. They trusted the film.
Offensive line coaches on some teams were especially guilty of that. If a lineman was big and fast but couldn’t block well, they felt they could teach them to block in the NFL – they had all the tools. But if they couldn’t do it in college, there’s a good chance they won’t in the NFL.
We had that same concern with outside linebackers being able to drop into coverage. We had to understand if they could.
How do you get to that level of understanding?
You have to be able to talk to the college coaches. You have to have their trust so they really speak to you about players’ character and ability.
That’s one thing Pittsburgh really stressed. They dug deeper in talking to coaches and staff about players. They wanted to know about a guy’s character. And character is a word I hate to use – it doesn’t mean if the guy is a choirboy or not – if he’s a good or bad person. It means if football is important to them – if they’ll do everything they can do get the job done – practice hard, stay late….is football something they love.
How do you earn the trust with coaches to get that understanding?
You have to earn their trust. It takes time to establish those relationships – they have to know they can tell you something and it’s done in confidence.
I remember talking to one coach on the practice field and he looked at a bunch of other scouts and told me he has no idea who any of them are. He wouldn’t talk to them – he didn’t know them. You have to spend time to develop those relationships.
How has scouting changed from when you were doing it?
From what I hear from the guys I speak to, they spend less time now on players’ skill levels. It’s more about stats and production and less on film study.
We were always told it takes a minimum of three games worth of film on a player before you could write a report on them – and they had to play a lot of downs in those games. You need a body of work to evaluate a player. Now, it’s less about film study and more about production and less digging into a guy’s background.
Any good stories of your time in Pittsburgh?
I just remember Bill Cowher being such a nice guy – one of the best I ever worked with. He was such a down-to-earth guy. Folks in Seattle told me Holmgren was more posh – he liked a flower and a tablecloth when he ate. Cowher – he had the same locker as his assistant defensive line coach. He had no pretense at all. That’s just the way he is,
He asked me to recommend a defensive backs coach to him once. Willy Robinson – I worked with him in Seattle. He wanted to know my thoughts on him. I told him Willy was one of the best teachers I had ever been around.
Well, five years later I’m at the combine and Bill came up to me. He told me I was spot on with Willy. That’s the kind of person he was. He was a people-person and had a great memory for those things.
Any good scouting memories?
I was scouting Duke and watched the Duke-Clemson game – I was looking mostly at their quarterback – Ben Bennett. As I watched the film I noticed William Perry – “The Fridge” – jump offsides like six times. Now, he’s a pure nosetackle lining up right over center – there was no reason he should be jumping offsides.
So, later I asked the head coach of Duke why that was happening – what they were doing to make him jump. He just chuckled and told me to ask his center. Later on I spoke to the center and he told me that the guard was whispering to him on purpose that he forgot the snap count, and Perry would overhear what the center told him. He would say “On two” and it was on three. Bennett would notice this too and would add an additional inflection on the two count to help Perry jump. Perry even argued with the referee saying he couldn’t be offsides because the center said the snap was on two!
Lastly – in Pittsburgh, the new guy always had to get donuts. Even though I was more experienced than most of those guys Bill said I still had to get them. Well, Dan Rooney would pick me up on the way to the facility and we’d get the donuts. He told me “Don’t tell my dad, but I’ll put these on the credit card. I want to make him pay for it!”
Read more by former Steelers via the book Steelers Takeaways: Player Memories Through the Decades. To order, just click on the book:
