Scouts tasked with finding the next big thing in football have an embarrassment of information available to them for players at the college level, both in terms of how they’ve performed in training and games and the other attributes that make them attractive prospects for a professional career. Whether their college production or their projected impact on the NFL post-callup matters more in determining whether a prospect is a good pick is not a binary matter, and each has its place in determining a scout’s final decision. Here’s a look at the positives and downsides of each, and how scouts can split their trust across the two to get the best overall outcome.

College Production as a Proof of Concept

College football is a tried and tested proving ground for players, and if a prospective professional footballer is able to make their mark at this level, proving their skills with consistently impressive performances on the field and hitting all the right metrics that scouts care about, that’s definitely a good sign that they have the fundamentals in place. However, raw box-score stats can be deeply deceiving due to high-tempo spread systems, massive talent disparities between college teams, and scheme-manufactured touches.

Production helps weed out players that might be incredible physical specimens, but lack what it takes to turn this into success on the field. But at the same time, numbers don’t paint a full picture or provide wider context, and so you might find a wide receiver running quick screens in a gimmick offense and racking up 1,200 yards without ever executing a pro-style route or winning against press coverage. That’s the sticking point for scouts, and one they have to watch out for.

These are the things that an NFL sportsbook also takes into account when calculating odds for matches and in-play wagering purposes. Serious analysts know there’s all manner of variables to account for, and that you can’t solely base future predictions on past performances.

NFL Projection as a High-Ceiling Gamble

Speaking of odds, the role of NFL projections in helping scouts pick prospects is more of a high risk, high reward aspect of the process. Rather than looking into game stats from college, scouts will get into the nitty-gritty of a player’s physical attributes, including their size and strength, looking for the unteachable must-haves that are undeniably vital for any player who aspires to a place on an NFL team.

For the purposes of ensuring a prospect will be able to hang with the hard-hitters already in the professional leagues, projections are critical. Unfortunately, scouts also run the risk of being overawed by players who are more committed to working out than putting in time on the field, or those who simply have natural athletic gifts but no usable instincts for the actual game. If a player never developed basic football instincts or technique in three years of college, NFL coaching rarely fixes it overnight.

A Middle Way

Scouts trawling college football for new NFL stars now put the emphasis on contextualized production in place of trusting production or projections alone. The aim is to determine how production was achieved in a college context, and whether this will translate to the big leagues, taking into account the meeting of baseline physical thresholds. Consistency and repeatability of performance cues, combined with skills and physical attributes, cut through the noise during scouting sessions.