Taken from The Athletic.
Interesting takes from Malik Jefferson
Stay or go? Numbers show players should listen to the NFL College Advisory Committee
Max Olson 6h ago
19
Virginia Tech safety Terrell Edmunds knew there were no guarantees.
His brother and Hokies teammate, linebacker Tremaine Edmunds, was viewed as a likely first-round NFL Draft prospect. For Tremaine, the Buffalo Bills’ selection at No. 16 overall, going pro was the obvious move.
For Terrell, the predictions were all over the place. But he made the leap, confident he could prove himself during the draft process.
On April 26, the first night of the draft, he was surprised by a call from Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin late in the first round. Terrell did not anticipate becoming the No. 28 overall pick. Neither did the experts.
“People were telling me between (Round) 1 and 4,” Edmunds told The Athletic moments after being selected. “A lot of people were saying between 2 and 3. I never really looked too much into the grades because I knew the type of player that I was. I just knew I was gonna work regardless of what round I went.”
Edmunds is the kind of unexpected first-rounder who proves, in the NFL Draft, it truly only takes one team to believe in you. Tomlin said he “checked all the boxes for us” with the versatility, size, smarts and toughness he showed on tape. So they made his first-round dream come true.
In reality, only a few underclassmen end up as fortunate as Terrell Edmunds each year. Their odds of beating the system and defying their projected draft grade are much poorer than most realize.
This year, a record number of underclassmen — 123 in all — decided to end their college football careers early and enter the NFL Draft. Thirty-six of those players heard their names called in the draft’s first two rounds, including 22 first-round choices. But 40 of those underclassmen were not drafted.
Since 2014, the College Advisory Committee (CAC) has been advising players who aren’t projected to go in the first or second rounds to stay in school. In a study by The Athletic of every underclassman who went pro since 2013, 35 percent became first- or second-rounders. The rest are taking a significant risk by leaving college early, especially considering more than 30 percent have gone undrafted.
“The percentage keeps getting a little higher every year,” longtime NFL personnel guru Gil Brandt told The Athletic. “I go over these pro-day results and I look at all the guys that have got agents on here. I just shake my head and say, ‘There’s just no way this guy is going to get drafted.’ He might get into camp as a free agent, but it’s very unlikely.”
Every player’s reasons for going pro are different, decisions shaded by so many objective and subjective factors. Some need money to support their parents, spouses or children. Some think they’ve achieved all they can in college football. Some are tired of playing a brutal game for no pay. And many who don’t go in the first few rounds still make it in the league and make good money. So making a “right” decision on entering the NFL Draft depends on one’s perspective.
But that decision is tougher and more permanent for football players than some of their collegiate peers. Many of college basketball’s top players, for example, will travel to Chicago this week for the NBA combine and compete while knowing they still have the ability to return to school. They’ll get real and direct feedback about their strengths, weaknesses and draft standing before making their life-changing decisions. In football, that choice is far more of a leap of faith. All they can do is request a CAC evaluation — doing so does not lock them into the draft — and listen to intel gathered by their coaches.
The number of NFL draft early entries from college football has doubled since 2011. From 2013 to 2017, the percentage of underclassmen who were third-round picks or worse was consistently between 62 and 67 percent. This year, it reached 70 percent. Many prospects are seemingly ignoring the CAC and clinging to the belief they’ll get drafted earlier than expected, only to find out they’re late-round prospects or undrafted free agents.
College coaches say they’re doing everything they can to provide players with as much information as possible to make better decisions. But they wonder how the system can improve in hopes of reducing the number of players making draft mistakes.
“There are 50 to 60 guys every year now that are going out for the draft that probably shouldn’t,” Alabama coach Nick Saban told The Athletic. “And they would all be in next year’s draft. So it becomes almost a vicious cycle, even for the people in the NFL, because if those 50 to 60 players didn’t come out, it would be a horrible draft, especially after the first couple rounds. Because there wouldn’t be enough players — they all left last year.”
The NFL’s College Advisory Committee has been handing out grades to underclassmen since 1994 in an effort to help steer them in the right direction. The committee is made up of senior personnel staffers from each NFL team plus directors of National Football Scouting and BLESTO, the league’s sanctioned scouting organizations. Schools can request their top underclassmen be evaluated in December, and the committee sends back a consensus grade. In 2014, their grading system was simplified to three categories: potential first-round pick, potential second-round pick or a recommendation to remain in school. These are best estimates, not promises.
“The guys that do this are very prideful,” Brandt said. “They want to be correct. And in wanting to be correct, I think the grades they give out on the round and position the players are going to be drafted are very accurate.”
The committee’s track record in recent years is indeed strong, both in predicting first- and second-round picks and in advising players to stay in school. According to the NFL, the CAC evaluated a total of 898 draft prospects from 2013-17 and told 110 of them they were likely first- or second-round picks. They were right about 95 of those players. In the 2016 and 2017 drafts, a combined 80 prospects declared despite being advised to remain in school. Only eight were selected in the first or second round.
Put another way: The committee was right about 86 percent of the players they projected to go in the first two rounds since 2013 and also right about the third-round-or-worse draft position of 90 percent of stay-in-school prospects over the past two years. So deciding to ignore the committee’s grade would be incredibly risky. And too many players seem to think they’ll end up among that rare 10 percent who surpass expectations.
USC coach Clay Helton saw 10 of his underclassmen submit for evaluations this winter. Six decided to stay in school. Quarterback Sam Darnold was selected No. 3 overall, running back Ronald Jones went in the second round, defensive lineman Rasheem Green was a third-rounder and receiver Deontay Burnett was not selected. Three more USC underclassmen went pro a year ago. How have the CAC evaluations performed on judging Helton’s players?
“It’s been pretty much spot-on,” he told The Athletic. “It’s been very, very close.”
Before a USC player makes his decision, Helton sits down with him and walks through all the pros and cons of staying and going. He talks out the round projections and the financials. He tries to give him honest, fair feedback. No matter what, he wants to be supportive.
Giving that counsel to a player like Darnold with a top-five pick projection is relatively easy. Giving advice to a borderline second- or third-rounder in mid-January is a tougher deal. And that’s why coaches must start having these conversations earlier, argues West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen. He laughs as he points out the irony of this. Coaches love to preach about the importance of eliminating distractions. Talking with players about the NFL during the season is antithetical to that agenda. But they have to do it.
“You can’t wait. You can’t wait,” Holgorsen told The Athletic. “If you talk to ’em the day your season ends or the day after your season ends, it’s already over. Because they’re fair game and you don’t really see ’em, everybody goes their separate directions. You’ve got to do the uncomfortable thing, which is talk to them about it before the season is over.”
Getting that conversation started early and gathering as much data as possible helped two of his star players, quarterback Will Grier and receiver David Sills, determine they should return for their senior seasons. Grier told The Athletic the feedback he received varied from second round to fourth round, making his decision fairly straightforward.
West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen (right) was proactive in the draft evaluation process with quarterback Will Grief (left). (Ben Queen / USA TODAY Sports)
Holgorsen has gone through this process in recent years, though, and lost three players who were advised to stay in school: cornerback Daryl Worley (2016 third-round pick), running back Wendell Smallwood (2016 fifth round) and receiver Shelton Gibson (2017 fifth round). All three are on NFL rosters today. Smallwood and Gibson are even getting Super Bowl rings as members of the Philadelphia Eagles. Holgorsen tried to sell them on the upside of staying, but they found success taking the riskier route.
“Here’s our selling point: If all three of those guys come back, now they have a chance to get first-round money,” Holgorsen said. “And that’s the conversation you have with them: ‘You guys have an opportunity to be first-round guys.’ The first-round money is life-changing. Third-round money isn’t.”
Saban has those tough conversations year after year with his coveted players, and nearly all of them have listened to his advice. Of the 31 Alabama underclassmen who have entered the NFL Draft since 2009, 17 became first-round picks and seven went in the second round. And just one of the 31, Adrian Hubbard in 2014, went undrafted.
“We’ve only had maybe three guys, in my opinion, who have gone out for the draft that would have been better served staying in school for another year,” Saban said.
Why have so few Alabama players made draft decisions they would regret? Saban says he has to start talking about the realities of this from the very beginning — during the recruiting process — so families understand it’s a developmental process, and he leans on his relationships with NFL talent evaluators to yield as much feedback as possible.
“I’m going to get the best information from the NFL so I can sit down with a player and tell him exactly where he’s going to get drafted, so he can make a better choice,” Saban said. “Our players here have seen a lot of players who have gone off and done well, and those few examples of guys that made errors. They know about that, too. We’re trying to use education from Day 1 to get them to understand the reality.”
So why are many prospects still ultimately making mistakes?
Some are jumping into the draft without seeking their College Advisory Committee evaluation. According to the NFL, only 10 of the 30 underclassmen who went undrafted in 2017 requested an assessment. All 10 were advised to stay in school. It’s also instructive to note the CAC has successfully steered a long list of players back to school.
Of the 898 players evaluated by the committee from 2013 to 2017, 313 decided to go pro and 585 returned to school. From that standpoint, the committee arguably has helped a lot of players avoid potentially career-ruining decisions. But of those 313 who entered the draft, only 110 (35 percent) did so after receiving first- or second-round grades.
After a junior season in which Texas linebacker Malik Jefferson earned Big 12 co-Defensive Player of the Year honors, he requested draft feedback from the CAC. And the committee advised him to stay in school.
“I threw the papers away,” Jefferson told The Athletic before Day 2 of this year’s draft began. “It’s not really good feedback. If a guy wants to come out early, they have to make a decision on their own. Really, if you’re not like a top-10 guy coming out early, it’s just up in the air from there. You just don’t know. Anything can happen.”
Later that night, Jefferson got the call. The Cincinnati Bengals made him one of 14 underclassmen drafted in the third round when they took him with the 78th overall pick.
Former Texas linebacker Malik Jefferson (right) has questions about the value of the CAC evaluation. (Jerome Miron / USA TODAY Sports)
Jefferson said he did not take the committee’s stay-in-school advice seriously for a number of reasons. He thought only a couple NFL organizations contributed to the CAC evaluation he received and that it did not reflect the entire league’s judgment of him. He said the evaluation did not include feedback on his perceived strengths or weaknesses, only a grade. Players know, too, that the evaluation does not factor in how strong or weak their position group is in the upcoming draft nor how they might fare at the NFL combine or pro days.
But there’s a bigger reason than all that why Jefferson suspects many players are not taking the advice to return to school seriously.
“You say stay in school, but a kid wants to better himself and his future,” he said. “So you can be making money for the university, struggling, trying to eat dining hall food, waking up early, having to go through extreme pressures and not getting paid for none of that. Or you can not go to school, just play football all day, study film and get better and work out all day and max yourself out.”
Jefferson, a former five-star recruit, thinks he could have put together a dominant senior season and established himself as the No. 1 linebacker in next year’s class, maybe even a top-10 pick. But he felt ready to move on and made a business decision.
Assuring a player he’ll go higher in next year’s draft if he comes back is easy to say. But how often does that speculation actually come true? According to the NFL, the CAC data from 2013-17 indicate 23 players who received remain-in-school grades (third round or later) ended up going back to school and becoming first-round selections a year later, including Western Michigan’s Corey Davis, Alabama’s O.J. Howard and Mississippi’s Evan Engram in the 2017 draft, as well as future superstars like Buffalo’s Khalil Mack and Pitt’s Aaron Donald. Brandt said he proudly told N.C. State’s Bradley Chubb that, by returning for his senior season and developing into the No. 5 overall pick by the Denver Broncos, he probably increased his value by roughly $6 million.
Now that schools can help provide loss-of-value insurance policies for their top draft-bound players, Texas coach Tom Herman points out, the injury risk of returning to school isn’t what it once was.
“If you go, you’re gambling,” he told The Athletic. “If you come back, you’ve got the insurance, so you’re not gambling there.”
Brandt, the 85-year-old legendary former Dallas Cowboys executive, does not hesitate when asked to explain the rising number of underclassmen going pro. He argues this predicament is the fault of the player agents and the information they provide when trying to lure clients. The number of agents certified by the NFLPA rose to 830 last year.
“It’s a very lucrative business as far as representatives are concerned,” he said. “Whenever you have a business that’s very lucrative, it’s very competitive. Whenever you have something that’s very competitive, you start stretching the limits. And people are stretching the limits by taking underclass guys and painting a rosy picture for them that they’re gonna go high in the draft.
“It’s like, if you’re an agent, would you rather have one lottery ticket or 10 lottery tickets? Your chances of hitting are very minuscule, but every once in a while, one comes along and you hit on it and he becomes a good player.”
Jefferson agreed that agents he encountered “liked to sell the dream.” He said he heard assurances from some that, if he went pro, he’d be drafted in the 15 to 32 range of the first round. He didn’t buy the empty promises. But the CAC feedback suggested he’d be a third- or fourth-round choice. Are most players in his position going to listen to the optimism or the skepticism?
A review of all underclassmen who entered the NFL Draft from 2013 to 2016 revealed 86 percent of first-round picks are still in the league. But 85 percent of players selected on Day 2 (second and third round) are still on rosters right now, too. That percentage drops to 68 percent for Day 3 selections and just 22 percent for undrafted free agents. But the argument that a second- or third-round pick having as good a chance of sticking in the league as a first-rounder, though interesting, can be dangerous when used to convince a stay-in-school graded prospect that he might be a second- or third-round pick.
“My views of the draft completely changed,” Jefferson said. “It doesn’t matter what round you go. It doesn’t. I mean, the money, yeah, for sure. But you’ve still got to go work.”
There are already enough built-in pressures these players encounter, with the chorus of voices — agents, family, friends — chiming in throughout the decision-making process. And don’t forget the big-picture problem that heightens the stakes for all NFL hopefuls: There’s no going back. There is no minor league system for their development like in basketball, baseball or hockey. There’s the CFL, and that’s about it.
“There’s no alternative,” Saban said. “There’s no option where I can go play in Lithuania. There isn’t one. You’re out. … Every player thinks they’re going to play in the NFL, and only 2 percent of the players make an NFL team. Somebody is creating an unrealistic reality.”
There must be a better way.
When asked if he’s figured one out, Herman initially suggested a system more akin to college baseball’s. A player is permitted to hire an adviser during the draft process, and if he doesn’t like where he’s drafted, he can come back to school. After mulling this over, though, Herman recognized the obstacles and talked himself out of it.
How could you bring a player back into your program in May? What about all the spring practices he’d miss? How many recruits do you sign if you don’t know who’s coming back? How do you stay under the 85-man scholarship limit with that uncertainty?
Allowing a player, especially an undrafted one, to return to school after the draft would be an ideal outcome. The Rice Commission wants to see this practice allowed in college basketball. But coaches say it simply does not work within the more rigid structure of college football’s offseason calendar.
“I don’t see how it fits,” Holgorsen said. “We’ve got a bunch of guys preparing for the draft here, who are focused on just the combine and the draft. They don’t want to go to school for 12 hours. They’re not gonna sit in class. And they’re not gonna pull out and re-enter the spring football conversation. I would have a hard time inserting one of those guys back in, you know what I mean? It doesn’t fit.”
Former Virginia Tech safety Terrell Edmunds is a rare exception to the relative rule of pre-draft grades. (Tim Heitman / USA TODAY Sports)
Holgorsen has been paying attention to the NBA’s changing draft process, though, and thinks it has some merit. College basketball players can enter the draft without signing an agent and participate in the NBA’s combine plus one team workout before deciding whether to sign with an agent or return to school. Whether they get invited to Chicago or get snubbed, they learn exactly where they stand.
Last spring, 138 college basketball underclassmen declared for the draft and 73 returned to school after the May 24 decision deadline. Only eight of those players got NBA combine invites. One of them was Michigan’s Moritz Wagner, who shined in this year’s Final Four. Whether coming back significantly helped his NBA stock remains to be seen, but the first line of the statement Wagner made when returning is worth noting: “I gained a great deal of confidence from this process and I have a clearer picture of what I need to do in order to fulfill my dreams of playing professionally in the NBA.”
“There’s got to be a way for these guys to find out for sure – or at least as close to sure as possible — what their value is before they make this momentous decision,” Herman said. “They get a lot of bad advice. A lot. I don’t know that I have all the answers. But there’s got to be a better way to give them better advice and more trustworthy advice.”
Sending all of the underclassmen to the NFL Combine is still problematic for a number of reasons. This year’s event was March 2-5, which conflicts with spring practice schedules at the college level. And having an extra 150 underclassmen in Indianapolis would create headaches. This year’s combine had 336 invites despite the fact the NFL has 256 draft slots, so at least 118 combine participants went undrafted. Adding underclassmen would make for a stronger talent pool, no question, but there’s also no telling how many would ultimately go back to school and what ripple effects that might create.
But this leads to perhaps the most sensible solution: What about an underclassman combine? Wouldn’t an invite-only combine, scheduled before the one in Indy, yield the best possible evaluation and exposure? Jefferson would love to see that happen and thinks a lot of draft prospects would, too.
“Because that’s real feedback,” he said. “People sitting down with you and talking to you, teams meeting with you already. Teams saying, ‘Hey, I want to see you play another year.’ If you get more of that ‘I want to see you play another year,’ of course you’re coming back. That’s easier then.”
NFL decision-makers already gather in Mobile, Ala., in late January for the Senior Bowl. An underclassman combine scheduled around that time and location might fit nicely. If a junior with NFL aspirations didn’t receive an invite to that combine, he’d be wise to stay. And those who come back to school wouldn’t miss a snap of spring ball.
This is not a new idea. Saban and Ohio State coach Urban Meyer started pushing for it in 2016, publicly and in their conference meetings. They also held a conference call with the NFL’s competition committee to pitch their ideas. But even college football’s most powerful head coaches uniting in pursuit of a common goal has not spurred action. A change that significant, and one brokered between the NCAA and NFL, takes time.
One shift that has happened is coaches can now let five of their underclassmen participate in a pro day, though it appears few have taken advantage of this. South Carolina did let tight end Hayden Hurst and two other players get measured by scouts at their 2017 pro day, but the 2018 first-round pick skipped on-field workouts.
Another step toward providing more valuable information: The NCAA held its Elite Athlete Symposium in March, a gathering of roughly 20 junior and sophomore players who could be first-round picks a year from now. They met in Indianapolis during the NFL Combine to begin learning about what to expect from the path to the draft and life in pro football.
For Houston’s Ed Oliver, Michigan’s Rashan Gary, Ole Miss’ Greg Little and many more of those sophomores who flew to Indy, the outcome 12 months from now seems predictable. Their class might not be the one to break the cycle. But until real solutions arise, it’s best to begin the education as early as possible.
As USC’s Helton put it: “You just want to provide as much clarity as you can in an unclear world.”
Contributing: Stewart Mandel
(Top photo: Tim Heitman / USA TODAY Sports)
Interesting takes from Malik Jefferson
Stay or go? Numbers show players should listen to the NFL College Advisory Committee
Max Olson 6h ago
Virginia Tech safety Terrell Edmunds knew there were no guarantees.
His brother and Hokies teammate, linebacker Tremaine Edmunds, was viewed as a likely first-round NFL Draft prospect. For Tremaine, the Buffalo Bills’ selection at No. 16 overall, going pro was the obvious move.
For Terrell, the predictions were all over the place. But he made the leap, confident he could prove himself during the draft process.
On April 26, the first night of the draft, he was surprised by a call from Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin late in the first round. Terrell did not anticipate becoming the No. 28 overall pick. Neither did the experts.
“People were telling me between (Round) 1 and 4,” Edmunds told The Athletic moments after being selected. “A lot of people were saying between 2 and 3. I never really looked too much into the grades because I knew the type of player that I was. I just knew I was gonna work regardless of what round I went.”
Edmunds is the kind of unexpected first-rounder who proves, in the NFL Draft, it truly only takes one team to believe in you. Tomlin said he “checked all the boxes for us” with the versatility, size, smarts and toughness he showed on tape. So they made his first-round dream come true.
In reality, only a few underclassmen end up as fortunate as Terrell Edmunds each year. Their odds of beating the system and defying their projected draft grade are much poorer than most realize.
This year, a record number of underclassmen — 123 in all — decided to end their college football careers early and enter the NFL Draft. Thirty-six of those players heard their names called in the draft’s first two rounds, including 22 first-round choices. But 40 of those underclassmen were not drafted.
Since 2014, the College Advisory Committee (CAC) has been advising players who aren’t projected to go in the first or second rounds to stay in school. In a study by The Athletic of every underclassman who went pro since 2013, 35 percent became first- or second-rounders. The rest are taking a significant risk by leaving college early, especially considering more than 30 percent have gone undrafted.
“The percentage keeps getting a little higher every year,” longtime NFL personnel guru Gil Brandt told The Athletic. “I go over these pro-day results and I look at all the guys that have got agents on here. I just shake my head and say, ‘There’s just no way this guy is going to get drafted.’ He might get into camp as a free agent, but it’s very unlikely.”
Every player’s reasons for going pro are different, decisions shaded by so many objective and subjective factors. Some need money to support their parents, spouses or children. Some think they’ve achieved all they can in college football. Some are tired of playing a brutal game for no pay. And many who don’t go in the first few rounds still make it in the league and make good money. So making a “right” decision on entering the NFL Draft depends on one’s perspective.
But that decision is tougher and more permanent for football players than some of their collegiate peers. Many of college basketball’s top players, for example, will travel to Chicago this week for the NBA combine and compete while knowing they still have the ability to return to school. They’ll get real and direct feedback about their strengths, weaknesses and draft standing before making their life-changing decisions. In football, that choice is far more of a leap of faith. All they can do is request a CAC evaluation — doing so does not lock them into the draft — and listen to intel gathered by their coaches.
The number of NFL draft early entries from college football has doubled since 2011. From 2013 to 2017, the percentage of underclassmen who were third-round picks or worse was consistently between 62 and 67 percent. This year, it reached 70 percent. Many prospects are seemingly ignoring the CAC and clinging to the belief they’ll get drafted earlier than expected, only to find out they’re late-round prospects or undrafted free agents.
College coaches say they’re doing everything they can to provide players with as much information as possible to make better decisions. But they wonder how the system can improve in hopes of reducing the number of players making draft mistakes.
“There are 50 to 60 guys every year now that are going out for the draft that probably shouldn’t,” Alabama coach Nick Saban told The Athletic. “And they would all be in next year’s draft. So it becomes almost a vicious cycle, even for the people in the NFL, because if those 50 to 60 players didn’t come out, it would be a horrible draft, especially after the first couple rounds. Because there wouldn’t be enough players — they all left last year.”
The NFL’s College Advisory Committee has been handing out grades to underclassmen since 1994 in an effort to help steer them in the right direction. The committee is made up of senior personnel staffers from each NFL team plus directors of National Football Scouting and BLESTO, the league’s sanctioned scouting organizations. Schools can request their top underclassmen be evaluated in December, and the committee sends back a consensus grade. In 2014, their grading system was simplified to three categories: potential first-round pick, potential second-round pick or a recommendation to remain in school. These are best estimates, not promises.
“The guys that do this are very prideful,” Brandt said. “They want to be correct. And in wanting to be correct, I think the grades they give out on the round and position the players are going to be drafted are very accurate.”
The committee’s track record in recent years is indeed strong, both in predicting first- and second-round picks and in advising players to stay in school. According to the NFL, the CAC evaluated a total of 898 draft prospects from 2013-17 and told 110 of them they were likely first- or second-round picks. They were right about 95 of those players. In the 2016 and 2017 drafts, a combined 80 prospects declared despite being advised to remain in school. Only eight were selected in the first or second round.
Put another way: The committee was right about 86 percent of the players they projected to go in the first two rounds since 2013 and also right about the third-round-or-worse draft position of 90 percent of stay-in-school prospects over the past two years. So deciding to ignore the committee’s grade would be incredibly risky. And too many players seem to think they’ll end up among that rare 10 percent who surpass expectations.
USC coach Clay Helton saw 10 of his underclassmen submit for evaluations this winter. Six decided to stay in school. Quarterback Sam Darnold was selected No. 3 overall, running back Ronald Jones went in the second round, defensive lineman Rasheem Green was a third-rounder and receiver Deontay Burnett was not selected. Three more USC underclassmen went pro a year ago. How have the CAC evaluations performed on judging Helton’s players?
“It’s been pretty much spot-on,” he told The Athletic. “It’s been very, very close.”
Before a USC player makes his decision, Helton sits down with him and walks through all the pros and cons of staying and going. He talks out the round projections and the financials. He tries to give him honest, fair feedback. No matter what, he wants to be supportive.
Giving that counsel to a player like Darnold with a top-five pick projection is relatively easy. Giving advice to a borderline second- or third-rounder in mid-January is a tougher deal. And that’s why coaches must start having these conversations earlier, argues West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen. He laughs as he points out the irony of this. Coaches love to preach about the importance of eliminating distractions. Talking with players about the NFL during the season is antithetical to that agenda. But they have to do it.
“You can’t wait. You can’t wait,” Holgorsen told The Athletic. “If you talk to ’em the day your season ends or the day after your season ends, it’s already over. Because they’re fair game and you don’t really see ’em, everybody goes their separate directions. You’ve got to do the uncomfortable thing, which is talk to them about it before the season is over.”
Getting that conversation started early and gathering as much data as possible helped two of his star players, quarterback Will Grier and receiver David Sills, determine they should return for their senior seasons. Grier told The Athletic the feedback he received varied from second round to fourth round, making his decision fairly straightforward.
West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen (right) was proactive in the draft evaluation process with quarterback Will Grief (left). (Ben Queen / USA TODAY Sports)
Holgorsen has gone through this process in recent years, though, and lost three players who were advised to stay in school: cornerback Daryl Worley (2016 third-round pick), running back Wendell Smallwood (2016 fifth round) and receiver Shelton Gibson (2017 fifth round). All three are on NFL rosters today. Smallwood and Gibson are even getting Super Bowl rings as members of the Philadelphia Eagles. Holgorsen tried to sell them on the upside of staying, but they found success taking the riskier route.
“Here’s our selling point: If all three of those guys come back, now they have a chance to get first-round money,” Holgorsen said. “And that’s the conversation you have with them: ‘You guys have an opportunity to be first-round guys.’ The first-round money is life-changing. Third-round money isn’t.”
Saban has those tough conversations year after year with his coveted players, and nearly all of them have listened to his advice. Of the 31 Alabama underclassmen who have entered the NFL Draft since 2009, 17 became first-round picks and seven went in the second round. And just one of the 31, Adrian Hubbard in 2014, went undrafted.
“We’ve only had maybe three guys, in my opinion, who have gone out for the draft that would have been better served staying in school for another year,” Saban said.
Why have so few Alabama players made draft decisions they would regret? Saban says he has to start talking about the realities of this from the very beginning — during the recruiting process — so families understand it’s a developmental process, and he leans on his relationships with NFL talent evaluators to yield as much feedback as possible.
“I’m going to get the best information from the NFL so I can sit down with a player and tell him exactly where he’s going to get drafted, so he can make a better choice,” Saban said. “Our players here have seen a lot of players who have gone off and done well, and those few examples of guys that made errors. They know about that, too. We’re trying to use education from Day 1 to get them to understand the reality.”
So why are many prospects still ultimately making mistakes?
Some are jumping into the draft without seeking their College Advisory Committee evaluation. According to the NFL, only 10 of the 30 underclassmen who went undrafted in 2017 requested an assessment. All 10 were advised to stay in school. It’s also instructive to note the CAC has successfully steered a long list of players back to school.
Of the 898 players evaluated by the committee from 2013 to 2017, 313 decided to go pro and 585 returned to school. From that standpoint, the committee arguably has helped a lot of players avoid potentially career-ruining decisions. But of those 313 who entered the draft, only 110 (35 percent) did so after receiving first- or second-round grades.
After a junior season in which Texas linebacker Malik Jefferson earned Big 12 co-Defensive Player of the Year honors, he requested draft feedback from the CAC. And the committee advised him to stay in school.
“I threw the papers away,” Jefferson told The Athletic before Day 2 of this year’s draft began. “It’s not really good feedback. If a guy wants to come out early, they have to make a decision on their own. Really, if you’re not like a top-10 guy coming out early, it’s just up in the air from there. You just don’t know. Anything can happen.”
Later that night, Jefferson got the call. The Cincinnati Bengals made him one of 14 underclassmen drafted in the third round when they took him with the 78th overall pick.
Former Texas linebacker Malik Jefferson (right) has questions about the value of the CAC evaluation. (Jerome Miron / USA TODAY Sports)
Jefferson said he did not take the committee’s stay-in-school advice seriously for a number of reasons. He thought only a couple NFL organizations contributed to the CAC evaluation he received and that it did not reflect the entire league’s judgment of him. He said the evaluation did not include feedback on his perceived strengths or weaknesses, only a grade. Players know, too, that the evaluation does not factor in how strong or weak their position group is in the upcoming draft nor how they might fare at the NFL combine or pro days.
But there’s a bigger reason than all that why Jefferson suspects many players are not taking the advice to return to school seriously.
“You say stay in school, but a kid wants to better himself and his future,” he said. “So you can be making money for the university, struggling, trying to eat dining hall food, waking up early, having to go through extreme pressures and not getting paid for none of that. Or you can not go to school, just play football all day, study film and get better and work out all day and max yourself out.”
Jefferson, a former five-star recruit, thinks he could have put together a dominant senior season and established himself as the No. 1 linebacker in next year’s class, maybe even a top-10 pick. But he felt ready to move on and made a business decision.
Assuring a player he’ll go higher in next year’s draft if he comes back is easy to say. But how often does that speculation actually come true? According to the NFL, the CAC data from 2013-17 indicate 23 players who received remain-in-school grades (third round or later) ended up going back to school and becoming first-round selections a year later, including Western Michigan’s Corey Davis, Alabama’s O.J. Howard and Mississippi’s Evan Engram in the 2017 draft, as well as future superstars like Buffalo’s Khalil Mack and Pitt’s Aaron Donald. Brandt said he proudly told N.C. State’s Bradley Chubb that, by returning for his senior season and developing into the No. 5 overall pick by the Denver Broncos, he probably increased his value by roughly $6 million.
Now that schools can help provide loss-of-value insurance policies for their top draft-bound players, Texas coach Tom Herman points out, the injury risk of returning to school isn’t what it once was.
“If you go, you’re gambling,” he told The Athletic. “If you come back, you’ve got the insurance, so you’re not gambling there.”
Brandt, the 85-year-old legendary former Dallas Cowboys executive, does not hesitate when asked to explain the rising number of underclassmen going pro. He argues this predicament is the fault of the player agents and the information they provide when trying to lure clients. The number of agents certified by the NFLPA rose to 830 last year.
“It’s a very lucrative business as far as representatives are concerned,” he said. “Whenever you have a business that’s very lucrative, it’s very competitive. Whenever you have something that’s very competitive, you start stretching the limits. And people are stretching the limits by taking underclass guys and painting a rosy picture for them that they’re gonna go high in the draft.
“It’s like, if you’re an agent, would you rather have one lottery ticket or 10 lottery tickets? Your chances of hitting are very minuscule, but every once in a while, one comes along and you hit on it and he becomes a good player.”
Jefferson agreed that agents he encountered “liked to sell the dream.” He said he heard assurances from some that, if he went pro, he’d be drafted in the 15 to 32 range of the first round. He didn’t buy the empty promises. But the CAC feedback suggested he’d be a third- or fourth-round choice. Are most players in his position going to listen to the optimism or the skepticism?
A review of all underclassmen who entered the NFL Draft from 2013 to 2016 revealed 86 percent of first-round picks are still in the league. But 85 percent of players selected on Day 2 (second and third round) are still on rosters right now, too. That percentage drops to 68 percent for Day 3 selections and just 22 percent for undrafted free agents. But the argument that a second- or third-round pick having as good a chance of sticking in the league as a first-rounder, though interesting, can be dangerous when used to convince a stay-in-school graded prospect that he might be a second- or third-round pick.
“My views of the draft completely changed,” Jefferson said. “It doesn’t matter what round you go. It doesn’t. I mean, the money, yeah, for sure. But you’ve still got to go work.”
There are already enough built-in pressures these players encounter, with the chorus of voices — agents, family, friends — chiming in throughout the decision-making process. And don’t forget the big-picture problem that heightens the stakes for all NFL hopefuls: There’s no going back. There is no minor league system for their development like in basketball, baseball or hockey. There’s the CFL, and that’s about it.
“There’s no alternative,” Saban said. “There’s no option where I can go play in Lithuania. There isn’t one. You’re out. … Every player thinks they’re going to play in the NFL, and only 2 percent of the players make an NFL team. Somebody is creating an unrealistic reality.”
There must be a better way.
When asked if he’s figured one out, Herman initially suggested a system more akin to college baseball’s. A player is permitted to hire an adviser during the draft process, and if he doesn’t like where he’s drafted, he can come back to school. After mulling this over, though, Herman recognized the obstacles and talked himself out of it.
How could you bring a player back into your program in May? What about all the spring practices he’d miss? How many recruits do you sign if you don’t know who’s coming back? How do you stay under the 85-man scholarship limit with that uncertainty?
Allowing a player, especially an undrafted one, to return to school after the draft would be an ideal outcome. The Rice Commission wants to see this practice allowed in college basketball. But coaches say it simply does not work within the more rigid structure of college football’s offseason calendar.
“I don’t see how it fits,” Holgorsen said. “We’ve got a bunch of guys preparing for the draft here, who are focused on just the combine and the draft. They don’t want to go to school for 12 hours. They’re not gonna sit in class. And they’re not gonna pull out and re-enter the spring football conversation. I would have a hard time inserting one of those guys back in, you know what I mean? It doesn’t fit.”
Former Virginia Tech safety Terrell Edmunds is a rare exception to the relative rule of pre-draft grades. (Tim Heitman / USA TODAY Sports)
Holgorsen has been paying attention to the NBA’s changing draft process, though, and thinks it has some merit. College basketball players can enter the draft without signing an agent and participate in the NBA’s combine plus one team workout before deciding whether to sign with an agent or return to school. Whether they get invited to Chicago or get snubbed, they learn exactly where they stand.
Last spring, 138 college basketball underclassmen declared for the draft and 73 returned to school after the May 24 decision deadline. Only eight of those players got NBA combine invites. One of them was Michigan’s Moritz Wagner, who shined in this year’s Final Four. Whether coming back significantly helped his NBA stock remains to be seen, but the first line of the statement Wagner made when returning is worth noting: “I gained a great deal of confidence from this process and I have a clearer picture of what I need to do in order to fulfill my dreams of playing professionally in the NBA.”
“There’s got to be a way for these guys to find out for sure – or at least as close to sure as possible — what their value is before they make this momentous decision,” Herman said. “They get a lot of bad advice. A lot. I don’t know that I have all the answers. But there’s got to be a better way to give them better advice and more trustworthy advice.”
Sending all of the underclassmen to the NFL Combine is still problematic for a number of reasons. This year’s event was March 2-5, which conflicts with spring practice schedules at the college level. And having an extra 150 underclassmen in Indianapolis would create headaches. This year’s combine had 336 invites despite the fact the NFL has 256 draft slots, so at least 118 combine participants went undrafted. Adding underclassmen would make for a stronger talent pool, no question, but there’s also no telling how many would ultimately go back to school and what ripple effects that might create.
But this leads to perhaps the most sensible solution: What about an underclassman combine? Wouldn’t an invite-only combine, scheduled before the one in Indy, yield the best possible evaluation and exposure? Jefferson would love to see that happen and thinks a lot of draft prospects would, too.
“Because that’s real feedback,” he said. “People sitting down with you and talking to you, teams meeting with you already. Teams saying, ‘Hey, I want to see you play another year.’ If you get more of that ‘I want to see you play another year,’ of course you’re coming back. That’s easier then.”
NFL decision-makers already gather in Mobile, Ala., in late January for the Senior Bowl. An underclassman combine scheduled around that time and location might fit nicely. If a junior with NFL aspirations didn’t receive an invite to that combine, he’d be wise to stay. And those who come back to school wouldn’t miss a snap of spring ball.
This is not a new idea. Saban and Ohio State coach Urban Meyer started pushing for it in 2016, publicly and in their conference meetings. They also held a conference call with the NFL’s competition committee to pitch their ideas. But even college football’s most powerful head coaches uniting in pursuit of a common goal has not spurred action. A change that significant, and one brokered between the NCAA and NFL, takes time.
One shift that has happened is coaches can now let five of their underclassmen participate in a pro day, though it appears few have taken advantage of this. South Carolina did let tight end Hayden Hurst and two other players get measured by scouts at their 2017 pro day, but the 2018 first-round pick skipped on-field workouts.
Another step toward providing more valuable information: The NCAA held its Elite Athlete Symposium in March, a gathering of roughly 20 junior and sophomore players who could be first-round picks a year from now. They met in Indianapolis during the NFL Combine to begin learning about what to expect from the path to the draft and life in pro football.
For Houston’s Ed Oliver, Michigan’s Rashan Gary, Ole Miss’ Greg Little and many more of those sophomores who flew to Indy, the outcome 12 months from now seems predictable. Their class might not be the one to break the cycle. But until real solutions arise, it’s best to begin the education as early as possible.
As USC’s Helton put it: “You just want to provide as much clarity as you can in an unclear world.”
Contributing: Stewart Mandel
(Top photo: Tim Heitman / USA TODAY Sports)
