INDIANAPOLIS — If the people who make headlines during the annual NFL Scouting Combine are found lingering in the hotel lobbies and coffee shops of Indianapolis to swap hunches and tidbits, the NFL Draft’s most quintessential personnel can be a little tougher to spot.
They are NFL scouts, and though most fly under the radar even inside their own buildings, their scouting reports shape the entire league. During the long days of the combine, they often move in small packs, traveling the interconnecting walkways between hotels and convention center meeting rooms or the well-worn path to Lucas Oil Stadium, where players test.
Before any player becomes an NFL draft pick, he is the subject of a scouting report — which can be anything from sentences on a page to a series of color-coded messages, shorthand terms, emoji-like tags and most importantly, descriptive one-liners that tell his entire story to the team that will select him.
These aren’t just compilations of notes and observations over time about prospects. They reveal a team’s broader roster-building strategy, its use of new technology and its evaluation language. If a drafted player’s eventual performance with a team showcases results and coaching effectiveness, a scouting report illustrates how an organization thinks before that player ever puts on his uniform.
Most NFL coaches run the same plays, just strategically rearranged to highlight player and play caller strengths, opponent weaknesses and the strategy of that week’s game. Scouting departments operate similarly. Every scout gets the same tape on a player and the same information about his physical qualities.
Yet as four NFL scouts ranging in background, division and experience illustrated to The Athletic during the week of the combine, each team interprets and weighs this information — combining it with other intel such as character and scheme fit — uniquely.
Scouts aren’t starting with a blank slate. The college football programs and evaluation services provided by National Football Scouting scouts and BLESTO scouts (an acronym for the teams that originated the service in the 1960s: Bears, Lions, Eagles and Steelers Talent Organization) set the table for every team. They filter thousands of players into lists with grades at least one year before players are draft-eligible. Their evaluations are regimented, a senior AFC scout said. They identify position-specific traits and measurements to that point; the teams then weigh these measurements in different ways depending on their scheme or preferred physical thresholds. NFS and BLESTO scouts are hugely respected in the scouting community in part because they don’t miss anybody, especially in the era of the transfer portal.
Area scouts — scouts who are assigned regions of the country — receive those lists and start digging into tape and conferring with sources at schools in their region such as coaches, sports information directors and strength and conditioning personnel, often via in-person visits to the schools. They shape summer reports and early team-specific grades. They even begin gathering intel on the next year of players during pro day visits for the current class each spring.
“They don’t get enough credit,” the senior AFC scout said of area scouts, adding, “they do the majority of the work on player background (for most organizations) … they are the true soldiers of an organization.”
Scouts time prospects running the 40-yard dash. Most teams prefer to rely on GPS tracking data when evaluating players instead of the 40. (Bryan Terry / Imagn Images)
Scouts also go to two-a-days and other summer practices held at colleges. A senior NFC scout said not only can this period be an important first cross-check on the grades from NFS and BLESTO, but also that scouts should be thinking sociologically, too. They should be reading the room, the scout said, assessing a player’s confidence level and how he interacts with teammates and coaches. Is he just a captain in title? If so, who leads other teammates? The captain and the leader, the scout stressed, are not always the same person.
Summer reports are done by late August, an AFC area scout said. As the previous year’s draft picks take the field for their first NFL training camp, scouting departments — which can include anywhere from 10 to 30 scouts — are already meeting to determine how they’ll rank categories of prospects in that April’s draft class.
The number of games a scout watches per player varies based on his role. Area scouts might see every game for every player they’re scouting, but other scouts who are assigned a cross-check of those evaluations might need to watch only a few games (typically three at minimum). Many teams send scouts to games, too. Some scouts are better watching “live,” the senior AFC scout said, and others are best when they break down tape (such as if they’re assessing multiple players on one team).
As the AFC area scout shapes his reports, he likes to evaluate a player through an entire play. Typical notes from watching a quarterback: Excellent size. Strong frame and a pocket passing style player. Smooth drop. Can see the field and anticipate throws. Big strong arm that makes every throw. Accuracy is good, not great. Best on underneath ball. Loses placement downfield. Does know how to extend but limited athlete and runner outside the pocket.
A second senior AFC scout shared some of what he’s looking for in receivers from snap to catch: Acceleration off the line to top-end speed. What do their breaks look like? … Can they sink down, gather themselves and get out of those cuts cleanly and efficiently? How do they attack edges? How precise are they in their routes? If their routes aren’t polished yet, do they have balance? Athleticism? Ankle flexion, ability to get in and out (of breaks)? … Separating and how they do it; with quickness or speed or smarts. … Is he staying rooted through the catch? Jumping at the catch? Contorting his body? Is it smooth? Plucking the ball or soft hands? Aggressive hands? Can he catch through contact?
The scout used to write all of these notes as separate details in his report, but over many years and hundreds of evaluations, he now is able to put the puzzle together on a player much faster — and in turn, use fewer words to describe the player as his report takes shape. That helps with his communication when coaches get involved in the pre-draft process in the spring.
Early scouting reports always include basic height-and-weight measurements, but for a player to continue through the process for a team, there must be two core elements in a report, the senior NFC scout said: Does this player have the foundational traits his position demands? Does he seem wired the right way? Both elements are influenced by a number of team factors, including the head coach/play caller and scheme, and how a team weighs football IQ or character red flags.
The scouting report is referred to as a “living document” into December, when most teams ask their scouting departments to finalize their grades on players, the senior NFC scout said. Scouts update their reports through the fall as they watch more games and visit schools. Layers are added: cutups of good and bad film packaged into a reel the group can easily access later in the process, notes from interviews with coaches, intel on character from college sources and more.
NFL scouts gather every year at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis. (Kirby Lee / Imagn Images)
Even 20 years ago, film wasn’t as accessible or easily clipped together. Scouts used to have to watch film of a player while at his school, and then put together their own VHS tapes for their general managers, using footage borrowed from the colleges. Sometimes they’d be missing the entire defense, because another team had forgotten to return it, or a coach at the college was buried in an office somewhere watching it. Now, teams just have to click a couple of buttons in whatever software they subscribe to (such as PFF Ultimate) to aggregate their clips.
There are still pen-and-paper note takers roaming the scouting ranks. But most teams have a digital internal database where they file the information for their reports. The technological range of these databases varies dramatically. Some are juiced-up spreadsheets or are built solely to aggregate and organize reports on players and store catalogs of previous reports. Others are very advanced, and built and developed over years of testing by team-employed computer engineers and coders. Such systems also house analytics programming, sections where mock drafts are monitored to gauge external chatter about players, video libraries of film cutups, charts with testing results and more advanced metrics such as play speed. Some teams run surveys to understand how and why their scouts are forming conclusions about players, which are also housed in their internal databases.
“The backbone is the internal database — player profiles, grade entry, report archiving, alerts. Everything lives there,” the senior NFC scout said. “Analytics and player tracking tools run alongside traditional scouting evaluations, with formal processes to compare the two and identify where they diverge. Video integration provides context to what you’re seeing on film and in character reports, and predictive modeling gets worked directly into the process by the analytics team.”
The systems can also include displays of the GM’s draft board as he constantly adjusts it.
A well-told story in the scouting community details a team that has an advanced internal program but also a draft room with 20-foot walls that are covered in long sections of magnetized player headshots and profiles. As the GM moves prospects up and down his digital board, an employee is tasked with also changing the order on the walls — using a massive ladder to do it.
Scouts can input their notes directly into advanced versions of these internal digital programs, which will organize their information into player profiles.
“If you don’t have a detailed system where you can go in and everything is right there at your fingertips, I don’t see how you can make an informed or accurate decision,” the senior AFC scout said.
“I think scouts like (having an advanced system),” the second senior AFC scout said, noting a few teams still do not. “Scouts see how efficient it is. It’s less typing. It’s less repetitive, more intuitive. … You can spend more time watching film.”
The best programs intuitively work with the language of the evaluators as they write their reports — and this isn’t always traditional. Though some teams write sentences and paragraphs with the standard alphabet, most have an entire shorthand developed over time and programmed into the internal system.
“Alerts, flags, letter designations that carry specific meaning internally — character notes, projection tags, special teams indicators. Each one has a (definition),” the senior NFC scout said, adding, “the more important thing is speaking the same language across the building. What terms do your coaches use to describe a technique or a concept? What does your offensive coordinator call a specific blocking assignment? Make sure the shorthand in your reports matches that. When a scout writes it and a coach reads it, there shouldn’t be a translation step in between.”
The Los Angeles Rams use emoji and color gradients to express different qualities and traits in players, which can be selected in their system as they write their reports, but they’re not the only ones. Other teams call them “tags,” and if a staff has a certain level of continuity — and inside jokes — they have fun building them.
A senior front-office source shared examples of some of his own team’s tags, which appear as small pictures within the reports in their system:
Bounce dryer sheets — player lacks bulk, strength
Picture of a raw steak — raw player
Orange juice carton — player has juice
Pacifier — player is immature
T. rex — player has short arms
Eddie Haskell — team feels player is not being honest
Stick figure — player weight is below a certain threshold
Two scouts likened reading a report containing tags and shorthand to a play caller reading his call sheet, which is full of the letters, numbers and code words that bring a concept to life in rapid fashion in his mind. By using tags, a scout can paint a clearer picture — faster.
Scouting reports are updated again after combines and all-star events. The NFL Scouting Combine, which concluded last week, especially is important for getting the latest and most uniform medical data on prospects. Every attendee goes through the same examination process with groups of doctors working jointly across all 32 teams. All findings are shared among teams — and as with everything else, medical information is weighed uniquely in a scouting report and overall evaluation.
Washington Commanders general manager Adam Peters and San Francisco 49ers general manager John Lynch chat during a Senior Bowl practice in 2025. (Vasha Hunt / Imagn Images)
Many teams believe watching prospects in person at all-star event practices is a crucial part of the evaluation process.
“You see way more things in person that help you perfect your report,” the AFC area scout said. “Quarterbacks throwing live; skill positions catching the ball; the sound of offensive and defensive linemen punching the bag. Similar to the major touch points (all-star games, combines, pro days), it either validates your thoughts or makes you go back and watch more. … You need to see receivers at an all-star game or combine (for example), because certain guys come from schemes that only have three to four routes and your offensive coordinator wants him to run eight to nine routes, so you have to see him do it to wrap up that report on him.”
There are outliers. Neither the Rams nor the Jacksonville Jaguars attend the all-star events en masse, though they do send some scouts and other executives. Rams general manager Les Snead believes quality work can be done more efficiently by watching the tape of the drills, which are sent to every NFL team the same day. He also leans on his area scouts early in the evaluation for character and personality assessments, then on two specialists for any follow-ups in March and April, and finds little use for the 15-minute interviews with players that happen at such gatherings. The Rams scouts who do attend the events in person use interview time to give players a digital personality assessment stored in their database.
Many teams run intense meetings with their scouts after the NFL Scouting Combine ends, then the staff breaks apart again for pro days and final intel-gathering.
Coaches and scouts come together again before the draft for final thoughts and to run through a “dress rehearsal” of their draft, gaming out trade scenarios and making final tweaks to the board. Here, a scouting report’s most impactful tool is in focus: the one-liner.
Essentially, it is a statement about who the player is or is not and how he can or cannot help the team. The senior NFC scout described it as the one thing a scout would tell a general manager about a player if the two were passing each other in the hall; this statement is where the scout can commit to the player.
They can be lengthy — some teams use a summary instead of one line, condensing strengths and weaknesses found in their report into a paragraph. Others go for impact: Who is the player, and who does he beat on the current roster?
“I do think it’s an art to turn everything you scouted on the player into a snapshot for the GM,” the AFC area scout said. It also reveals how effective a communicator the scout is.
“A lot of times those creative, descriptive ways will stick with you so much longer,” the second senior AFC scout said, “especially as a decision-maker. Don’t describe the player — you already have (in the rest of the report). What do you really think?”
If scouts have enough clout in the building, they might be able to get away with being as simple and memorable as possible. The second senior AFC scout remembered a favorite one-liner from another scout on his staff. That scout believed a prospect would eventually outperform his late-round draft grade. The one-liner was actually just three words: “David over Goliath.”
