The anonymous scouts are back for draft season.
Real information about the NFL Draft is distressingly sparse. Sure, we’ve got the NFL Combine and mock drafts and the ever-evolving machinations of the rumor mill, but in terms of what NFL teams and personnel people actually think, there’s basically nothing out there.
Except for Bob McGinn’s annual draft reports. Working with Tyler Dunne, his former colleague at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, McGinn parcels out a series of reports on the various groups of players available in a given year’s draft class. Just today he dropped his first offering for 2025, diving deep into this year’s wide receivers.
But that’s not entirely accurate: McGinn actually doesn’t dive into the receivers much at all, instead passing along a set of anonymous reports from personnel executives and scouts from around the league. McGinn used to make people put their names to their takes, but dropped that requirement in 2015 “at the request of most scouts.”
And boy, you can see why people want to be anonymous. For starters, trying to parse the consensus on players reveals some oddball takes; in this year’s class, scouts compared Tetairoa McMillain to Mike Evans, Drake London, and Rome Odunze. Maybe he’s like one of those players, maybe he’s like all of them, but the spread of opinions gives me pause, at least. What are we all watching here?
But beyond that, scout assessments invariably get way too comfortable in their anonymity. There will no doubt be more, but just in the wide receiver roundup, McGinn presents quotes from scouts saying Luther Burden’s “mom is a problem” and Isaiah Bond is a “selfish, diva wide receiver.” That’s pretty par for the course for McGinn’s sources, which previously labeled Romeo Doubs as “mentally frail” among many other quotes over the years. You don’t have to look far to find scouts willing to speak their mind — even if they should maybe think for a second before they do.
And that’s where I start to wonder if even the precious information we’re getting here is worth it. Yes, it’s good to get a glimpse into what scouts are thinking. Yes, it’s good to have a reminder that NFL front offices are full of people who still seem to embody the scouting scenes from Moneyball — in 2015, one even expressed concerns about Jameis Winston because his smile was similar to that of JaMarcus Russell. The good face test indeed.
But that information comes at a cost. Sure, it’s part of the territory for players making a living playing a game watched by millions of people to take some criticism. But why give people who think “raised by women” is a legitimate worry about someone’s football makeup a mouthpiece? Why pass along troglodyte takes better left in the dark ages of football? In an era where we have access to mountains of high-quality data and up-to-the-second video of virtually every workout that takes place between the end of the season and draft day, this is the best that we can get from the most plugged-in football journalist covering the draft?
I think we should aim higher; I think McGinn should aim higher. Does he want to? I wonder sometimes.
In 2016, McGinn included a startling nugget in his year-end assessment of tight end Andrew Quarless. Between a police blotter line about Quarless being sentenced to a year of probation and a note about Quarless starting the season behind Richard Rodgers on the depth chart, McGinn made sure we knew that “Later in July, [Quarless’] daughter was dead upon delivery.”
Is that relevant to the conversation at all? Considering Quarless missed all but five games that season due to a knee injury, I doubt it, but apparently, McGinn thought otherwise, giving Quarless a “D” grade for the year.
In light of that, maybe nothing that comes out of his draft series is surprising. But, you know, what price glory?