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What Cowboys can do to avoid 2013's draft-day confusion
Dallas Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett, Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones, Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones and others watch the TV's in the war room during the first round of the NFL draft at Dallas Cowboys headquarters at Valley Ranch in Irving on April 25, 2013. (Vernon Bryant/The Dallas Morning News)
Club works to get scouts, coaches on same page, streamlined system since mix-up on draft day last year
RAINER SABIN
RAINER SABIN The Dallas Morning News Staff Writer
rsabin@dallasnews.com
Published: 01 March 2014 06:18 PM
Updated: 01 March 2014 06:18 PM
Inside the Cowboys’ labyrinthine Valley Ranch headquarters, the coaching and scouting departments are located in the same vicinity. Depending on which route is taken or what door is open, a person can cover the distance between the offices in less than a minute.
It’s hard to imagine a communication breakdown happening in such a confined space.
But as the club’s executive vice president Stephen Jones confessed in Indianapolis, it did last year, prompting the team to make changes aimed at bridging the divide between the coaches and scouts.
The problems were exposed in the Cowboys’ war room last April as management weighed whether to take Florida defensive tackle Sharrif Floyd with its first-round choice.
Floyd was an intriguing prospect whose stock soared in the months leading up to the draft. A slew of prognosticators predicted he would be among the top five players selected. Some pegged him as the No. 2 overall pick. A 6-3, 297-pound interior lineman who could run the 40-yard dash in 4.92 seconds, Floyd had size and straight-line speed.
It’s why the Cowboys’ scouts ranked him fifth on the draft board, which was inadvertently leaked the following month. But the defensive coaches, particularly current coordinator Rod Marinelli, had a different impression of Floyd. They questioned whether he had the quick-twitch quality needed to rush the passer consistently.
Floyd collected only 4½ sacks in his career with the Gators, and the Cowboys needed high production from their under tackle — a premium position in the 4-3 scheme the team began installing in 2013. But the reservations Marinelli had about Floyd weren’t conveyed to the scouts. Apparently, neither was the profile of the ideal defensive lineman he wanted in this new system the Cowboys had just adopted.
“I felt like we had him graded right, yes,” Jones said. “Did we have him graded right for our system? That’s debatable.”
War room trouble
The disconnect between the scouts and coaches may never have surfaced had Floyd been plucked early in the first round. But he wasn’t. He was still available when the Cowboys were on the clock, deliberating about what they were going to do with the 18th pick.
Eventually they came to a decision, choosing to trade their first-round selection to San Francisco for the 31st and 74th choices. A camera inside the war room captured the scene in real time as the moves were made. Tom Ciskowski, who had the title of assistant director of player personnel then, didn’t look thrilled.
“That was unfortunate with Sharrif,” Jones said last month. “I don’t want to single a guy out, but I think that can happen when you change a system and you move from what we were doing. We were so into that and all of a sudden you move to a 4-3 and you’ve got new coaches in the room and what they’re trying to accomplish. That one kind of slipped through the cracks a little bit on us. It won’t happen again.
“We had a great couple of weeks with the coaches and really got hard into what they want and what they need for their defense to be successful. And obviously we’ve got to take into account that you want to take players who can be successful in any system. But at the same time, how you value it and where you put them should be weighed.”
As it turned out, the war room mishap didn’t cost the Cowboys. Floyd, chosen by Minnesota with the 23rd pick, started one game and made 2½ sacks. Meanwhile, the two players chosen with the picks the Cowboys acquired in the trade with San Francisco — center Travis Frederick and receiver Terrance Williams — each became key contributors.
Still, the Floyd episode revealed issues the Cowboys quickly addressed.
They gave Ciskowski a new role as director of scouting, allowing him to focus solely on the evaluation of college prospects instead of splitting his time between that heavy duty and the equally monumental task of monitoring players on other NFL rosters.
In addition to streamlining Ciskowski’s job description, they promoted Will McClay to assistant director of player personnel. In his role, McClay scours the pro ranks, looking for undervalued talent. He is credited for bringing in contributors off the street, including receiver Laurent Robinson, linebacker Ernie Sims and defensive linemen George Selvie and Nick Hayden. His most recent accomplishment is synchronizing the coaching and scouting departments.
“The communication in our building is critical,” Garrett said, “and Will has been a big part of that.”
Faith in McClay
McClay is uniquely suited to be the chief liaison between the men who find player personnel and the ones who supervise them on the field.
A year after serving as the assistant director of pro scouting for Jacksonville in 2001, McClay joined the Dallas Desperados, the former Arena Football League outfit, as a defensive coordinator. He later was the team’s head coach for five seasons before moving exclusively to the Cowboys’ offices, where he had been working in player personnel during his time with the Desperados. As the director of football research, he used statistics and analytic methods to modernize the scouting process.
“We got real comfortable with some of the things he was recommending, how he verbalizes, how he communicates with us and the coaches,” Jones said. “It seems like every step of the way he’s done a good job for us … I think his arrow is up, for sure. I think he has a talent and a nose for finding talent.”
The confidence the organization has in McClay is so strong that he will have a major presence in the same war room where dysfunction was unveiled last April. Along with Ciskowski, he will help assemble the draft board and make sure it is the most accurate representation of the consensus decisions made by the people on the front lines.
“We use all of our resources and we spend millions of dollars in our scouting department and we spend a lot of money on our coaches,” Jones said. “And everybody has tremendous input. I think it’s a good system. I think everybody will do a good job and the process will work in a good way.”
If that happens, then the distance between the coaches and scouts, in a metaphorical sense, will be as small as the actual space separating them at Valley Ranch. And that can only be positive.
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Dallas Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett, Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones, Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones and others watch the TV's in the war room during the first round of the NFL draft at Dallas Cowboys headquarters at Valley Ranch in Irving on April 25, 2013. (Vernon Bryant/The Dallas Morning News)
Club works to get scouts, coaches on same page, streamlined system since mix-up on draft day last year
RAINER SABIN
RAINER SABIN The Dallas Morning News Staff Writer
rsabin@dallasnews.com
Published: 01 March 2014 06:18 PM
Updated: 01 March 2014 06:18 PM
Inside the Cowboys’ labyrinthine Valley Ranch headquarters, the coaching and scouting departments are located in the same vicinity. Depending on which route is taken or what door is open, a person can cover the distance between the offices in less than a minute.
It’s hard to imagine a communication breakdown happening in such a confined space.
But as the club’s executive vice president Stephen Jones confessed in Indianapolis, it did last year, prompting the team to make changes aimed at bridging the divide between the coaches and scouts.
The problems were exposed in the Cowboys’ war room last April as management weighed whether to take Florida defensive tackle Sharrif Floyd with its first-round choice.
Floyd was an intriguing prospect whose stock soared in the months leading up to the draft. A slew of prognosticators predicted he would be among the top five players selected. Some pegged him as the No. 2 overall pick. A 6-3, 297-pound interior lineman who could run the 40-yard dash in 4.92 seconds, Floyd had size and straight-line speed.
It’s why the Cowboys’ scouts ranked him fifth on the draft board, which was inadvertently leaked the following month. But the defensive coaches, particularly current coordinator Rod Marinelli, had a different impression of Floyd. They questioned whether he had the quick-twitch quality needed to rush the passer consistently.
Floyd collected only 4½ sacks in his career with the Gators, and the Cowboys needed high production from their under tackle — a premium position in the 4-3 scheme the team began installing in 2013. But the reservations Marinelli had about Floyd weren’t conveyed to the scouts. Apparently, neither was the profile of the ideal defensive lineman he wanted in this new system the Cowboys had just adopted.
“I felt like we had him graded right, yes,” Jones said. “Did we have him graded right for our system? That’s debatable.”
War room trouble
The disconnect between the scouts and coaches may never have surfaced had Floyd been plucked early in the first round. But he wasn’t. He was still available when the Cowboys were on the clock, deliberating about what they were going to do with the 18th pick.
Eventually they came to a decision, choosing to trade their first-round selection to San Francisco for the 31st and 74th choices. A camera inside the war room captured the scene in real time as the moves were made. Tom Ciskowski, who had the title of assistant director of player personnel then, didn’t look thrilled.
“That was unfortunate with Sharrif,” Jones said last month. “I don’t want to single a guy out, but I think that can happen when you change a system and you move from what we were doing. We were so into that and all of a sudden you move to a 4-3 and you’ve got new coaches in the room and what they’re trying to accomplish. That one kind of slipped through the cracks a little bit on us. It won’t happen again.
“We had a great couple of weeks with the coaches and really got hard into what they want and what they need for their defense to be successful. And obviously we’ve got to take into account that you want to take players who can be successful in any system. But at the same time, how you value it and where you put them should be weighed.”
As it turned out, the war room mishap didn’t cost the Cowboys. Floyd, chosen by Minnesota with the 23rd pick, started one game and made 2½ sacks. Meanwhile, the two players chosen with the picks the Cowboys acquired in the trade with San Francisco — center Travis Frederick and receiver Terrance Williams — each became key contributors.
Still, the Floyd episode revealed issues the Cowboys quickly addressed.
They gave Ciskowski a new role as director of scouting, allowing him to focus solely on the evaluation of college prospects instead of splitting his time between that heavy duty and the equally monumental task of monitoring players on other NFL rosters.
In addition to streamlining Ciskowski’s job description, they promoted Will McClay to assistant director of player personnel. In his role, McClay scours the pro ranks, looking for undervalued talent. He is credited for bringing in contributors off the street, including receiver Laurent Robinson, linebacker Ernie Sims and defensive linemen George Selvie and Nick Hayden. His most recent accomplishment is synchronizing the coaching and scouting departments.
“The communication in our building is critical,” Garrett said, “and Will has been a big part of that.”
Faith in McClay
McClay is uniquely suited to be the chief liaison between the men who find player personnel and the ones who supervise them on the field.
A year after serving as the assistant director of pro scouting for Jacksonville in 2001, McClay joined the Dallas Desperados, the former Arena Football League outfit, as a defensive coordinator. He later was the team’s head coach for five seasons before moving exclusively to the Cowboys’ offices, where he had been working in player personnel during his time with the Desperados. As the director of football research, he used statistics and analytic methods to modernize the scouting process.
“We got real comfortable with some of the things he was recommending, how he verbalizes, how he communicates with us and the coaches,” Jones said. “It seems like every step of the way he’s done a good job for us … I think his arrow is up, for sure. I think he has a talent and a nose for finding talent.”
The confidence the organization has in McClay is so strong that he will have a major presence in the same war room where dysfunction was unveiled last April. Along with Ciskowski, he will help assemble the draft board and make sure it is the most accurate representation of the consensus decisions made by the people on the front lines.
“We use all of our resources and we spend millions of dollars in our scouting department and we spend a lot of money on our coaches,” Jones said. “And everybody has tremendous input. I think it’s a good system. I think everybody will do a good job and the process will work in a good way.”
If that happens, then the distance between the coaches and scouts, in a metaphorical sense, will be as small as the actual space separating them at Valley Ranch. And that can only be positive.
