Reddit reviews Football Scouting Methods
We found 9 Reddit comments about Football Scouting Methods. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
We found 9 Reddit comments about Football Scouting Methods. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
I'm going to recommend a handful of books for you.
I'm also going to say that Moneyball is a great sports book and can really contribute to your understanding of how today's analytics-focused front offices are starting to do things differently. So when you see an FO hoarding picks and refusing to overpay for talent in free agency, if you've read Moneyball it will make perfect sense to you.
Lastly, I'm going to say that most player autobiographies are not worth reading, and "NFL Unplugged", a memoir by a referee, is definitely not worth buying. They're usually full of name-dropping and war stories, which is fun, but they rarely give you any insight into how the game is played.
$9.09 on Amazon? Just bought myself a copy.
I'm a keeper, too!
I've always watched a lot of CFB and have a particular affinity for defensive players and the defensive side of the ball.
Last year I just kind of went off the games I had watched, combine, rumors and how Mayock felt about guys.
This year I am actually watching these guys snaps on youtube - usually 3-4 games per prospect. I've worked through the defnsive side of the ball over the past month top 7-8 guys at each position. It's pretty hard to see the cb snaps and deep safety play though.
March I am going to be watching a lot of the offensive players. It'll be interesting to see how my opinions on guys will actually pan out in the draft. I am hoping to watch 20-23 minutes of snaps for 4-5 rounds worth of players come draft day.
HAve also been reading Steve Belichik's Scouting Methods
High school coach here. Coaching Team Defense by Fritz Shurmur is considered the "Bible" of defense by many in the coaching profession. This book, along with Bill Walsh's Finding the Winning Edge and Steve Belichick's Football Scouting Methods, are on every list of coaching "canon." I don't know if you're looking for something this technical, but reading Shurmur's book will change the way you watch teams play defense forever.
Smart Football is pretty good for small bite-sized articles on topics- even comes in book form too, though I'm guessing that the book is just a compilation of the blog posts.
Some other books that I liked were mainly ones on Belichick- so War Room was pretty good, easy to read, albeit more about drafting, less technical game-time discussion.
Steve Belichick's Football Scouting Methods is pretty good too, but written in the 50's / 60's and more leaning towards scouting.
Grantland does occasionally have some good articles.
Football Outsiders is also similarly great at smaller analysis articles.
/r/footballstrategy has a few good links, but it's a quiet(er) subreddit and doesn't get much traffic. Some of the articles that I liked from there came from x and o labs.
Smart Football, and the book. Slightly dated bible on scouting.
If you like stats, read The Hidden Game of Football. Search for Football Outsiders, Advanced NFL stats, Drive-By Football, and Football Study Hall.
Pretty sure his dad wrote a scouting book.
EDIT - http://www.amazon.com/Football-Scouting-Methods-Steve-Belichick/dp/0978588150
First, look on YouTube for basic info. You can find videos about positions and plays and even schemes like the spread pretty easily.
Second, I recommend looking up some film breakdowns. Bill Belichick does them weekly (I think it's weekly) on a local Boston channel, but you can find some of them on YouTube by searching for Belichick Breakdown.
Third, try to find some guides for how to watch football and how to breakdown a game. Articles like this can provide you with a greater understanding of what everyone is doing during a play.
Fourth, do some reading.
I highly recommend Take Your Eye Off the Ball: How to Watch Football by Knowing Where to Look to help you while watching the game, but be sure to get the paperback version so you get all the diagrams. It will teach you the progression of the reads, the route running, the blocking and everything that happens on defense as well.
To help you cut through some of the jargon announcers use, I recomment Blood, Sweat and Chalk: The Ultimate Football Playbook.
If you want to learn more about strategies, try The Essential Smart Football.
To learn more about evaluating players, Football Scouting Methods is a must read. It will take you to the football of another era, but with the foundation from all the other info I've provided you will be able to start putting the pyramid together and learn how the game became what it was today.
Tim Layden's Blood, Sweat, and Chalk does a fantastic job of marrying scheme innovations with the stories behind them.
Same goes for Chris Brown's The Essential Smart Football and The Art of Smart Football. I really like his writing.
If you're into the college game, Mark Schofield's 17 Drives does a great job recounting pivotal drives from the last season. He does a great job describing the plays and you can basically imagine it playing out in your head.
I've also read Steve Belichick's Football Scouting Methods. It's pretty straightforward and dry but there's a lot of good information in there if you're looking to scout opponents. It's pretty amazing how much of the process from 60 years ago translates to today.