No QB Interviews.... Why?
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We interviewed Jimmy Garoppolo and another, also from a small school in Illinois. Check out the 'combine interviewees' thread.
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I am sure before all is said and done, we will have all the top QBs in to Berea for a interview.
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at each of the QBs pro days teams have a chance to talk to guys. i'm sure there was a lot more to think about and do just to get the hello and what do you want to do with your life 15 mins at the combine.
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Browns add their own wrinkle to the sophisticated NFL job interview process
Mar 06, 2014 -- 6:00am
By Tony Grossi | ESPNCleveland.com
Photos/AP/Getty
The Morning Kickoff âŚ
The interview game: On the first day of the NFL Combine in Indianapolis last month, new Browns GM Ray Farmer talked of the importance of face-to-face interviews with the top prospects.
âYou really want to get a chance to truly interact with the player,â Farmer said. âThe number one thing at any of these events is really to get a good takeaway of the person. Everyoneâs talent has kind of spoken for itself. Youâve watched the film. Thereâs no more football being played. These guys have been judged on how they play football. The athletic gifts and the tools theyâll display on the field are really just confirmation of what your eyes saw. What you really want to look for in these events is to truly get to the core character of the kid.â
Every team was permitted formal, 15-minute interviews with up to 60 players at the Combine. As it turned out, the Browns did not devote a single interview to a quarterback, which, presumably, is their No. 1 priority in the draft.
How could this be? What are they doing? Why would they waste their time interviewing prospects at positions other than the most important one on the field?
The likely explanation is that the Browns will reserve their time with quarterbacks for the individual visits closer to the May 8 draft, when teams are permitted up to 30 player visits to their facility. In those visits, the Browns can have each of the top quarterback prospects run through their gauntlet of football and psychological questioning without the constraints of a 15-minute time limit.
These longer sessions will give the quarterbacks ample time to ponder the now-infamous query reportedly posed by the Browns to some prospects at the Combine: "How many different things can you think of that you can do with a paper clip?"
A cottage industry evolves: This whole over-psychoanalysis of draft prospects probably can be traced back to Ryan Leaf, the No. 2 pick after Peyton Manning in the 1998 draft who blew up as perhaps the biggest draft bust in NFL history.
âHe exhibited a lot of behavior that people thought should have been determined before the draft, and wasnât,â said an NFL source deeply involved in the draft process for many years.
After the Leaf experience, teams began dedicating time and resources to psychoanalyzing prospects more closely. Face-to-face interviews were conducted for the purpose of extracting hints of a playerâs character and psychological makeup that may foretell future success or failure.
Unsuspecting prospects were subjected to not one or two coaches in an interview but to five to nine team representatives, including, at times, a team psychologist. The interview was videotaped and broken down like a game video.
As teams became more sophisticated in conducting their job interviews, so too did the prospects. Agents started training clients for the pressure-packed 15-minute interviews, ostensibly to avoid bombing out and costing themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in draft position.
About 12 years ago, retired NFL team executive Ken Herock (Raiders, Bucs and Falcons) saw a real market and started his own company, Pro Prep, to prepare prospects for the grueling pre-draft interview process.
Herock said he has about 20 agents as clients and worked this year with 80 draft prospects â all that he can handle in his one-man shop.
âIâll take a kid and train him right from the beginning of the process, starting with how to walk into the room, just like he would for a job interview with IBM or Coca-Cola,â Herock said. âI will address every question they may be asked.
âI train my guys not to be robots. I want them to be natural. When they answer a question, I donât want them saying the same damn thing.â
Herock said he is prepped on a playerâs background by his agent. If there are off-field incidents in the playerâs history, Herock will pepper the player with the same questions he will hear in the team interviews. He also preps the prospect on specific football questions he may encounter. If the player is deficient in explaining plays, he receives tutoring from a coach retained by Herock.
There is also training for the off-the-wall questions like the one purportedly posed by the Browns.
âI tell them, âYou will hear some dumb questions, and they mean nothing. Just respond naturally. That question will have no importance,ââ Herock said.
âI heard one question, âWould you rather be a dog or a cat?â Those kind of questions, thatâs a neophyte asking those questions. I donât know their point. Youâre not there to stump the players. Youâre there to find out information.â
Back to the quarterbacks: At the Combine, the training received by the top quarterbacks was evident in their mass interviews with the football media.
Johnny Manziel sought to dispel his image as a selfish partier off the field and a schoolyard scrambler on the field. He spoke at length about his commitment to his team and also to a commitment to stay in the pocket more as a pro.
And Blake Bortles sought to depict himself as the anti-Manziel. He used the word âtrustworthyâ to describe himself five times in a 15-minute press conference.
The Browns will sort out Manziel and Bortles and Teddy Twatwater and Derek Carr and the other QBs in their personal visits closer to the draft. Whether or not the Browns wasted their 15 minutes at the Combine with these prospects is an issue that comes with the territory of Farmer being a first-timer in the role of GM.
âNFL fans for some reason enjoy seeing how the sausage is made,â said the league source, who has represented quarterbacks. âWhat does it matter, as long as their team gets the result right? I just want to have a good kosher beef dog. I donât care how itâs made.â
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yep, totally agree with the above article and don't underestimate the Browns throwing people off the scent early too. It could easily be a case where they love one QB but don't want to show their hand.
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Guys like Aaron Goldhammer were on the radio yesterday whining and crying because the Browns chose not to conduct these superficial interviews with these QBs....even saying that even he conducted interviews with these guys. But I thought to myself: What did you learn in your interview....and the answer I came up with is: NADA. Nothing.
The Browns want to take 3-4 hours on an in depth interview, not a superficial 15 minute one where nothing can be learned.
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