We have joining us right now, Sam Brookhouse. Uh, he's with Sumer Sports. Of course, he was a two lane linebacker. Just got back from the NFL combine and we have severe hail outside as we as we were joined by Sam. Sam, how are you welcome to the program. I'm doing well.
Thank you all for having me.
Always always a pleasure to have you here on the drive. I I really want to start here with the with the combine, right, so you you just got back from the combine, and I have a couple of questions. But first of all, so so what because things kind of shift or they kind of solidify themselves after the combine, you get prod age, you have all this stuff. What what is kind of maybe moved on the needle about draft draft order players. What's kind of the big news after after the combine.
I think the most interesting thing we've kind of seen is threefold. The first is the guys, particularly in the edge market, who had put up really big numbers, notably Schamar Stewart and James Pearce, kind of had interesting trajectory. Shamar Stewart has seen a shoot upwards given his size and his ability to show his athletic traits. On the field in Indianapolis. He's now about fifteenth on the consensus
big board. Earlier on in the draft season, he was more in the twenties, late second round excuse me, late first round type guy. He shot up and then you look at James Pearce. It kind of shows the flip side of the combine. This is the time where everyone can interview. There were questions about teams asking him about character concerns, and that's a very key element of the combine is asking those types of questions. And he's kind of remained still despite having you know, an eightieth ninetieth
percentile combine performance. So it's been interesting to see how it shakes out, especially given some teams don't even put any value in the combine anymore. In fact, the Los Angeles really didn't even send any of their executives this year. That's concurrent with a trend that they've been doing for the past couple of years. So it's interesting to see
how it shakes out. It seems like it's more tied to the news and noise and rumors that are coming out of these team interviews than the actual showing on the field.
You know, it's it's interesting because when I played in the NFL, we like, I hated the combine. I'll just tell you right now, it is like the worst experience of my life. And uh and and every shop you know, so I was drafted by the Miami Dolphins, and and every year coach Shula had they called it the mini Olympics, right, And so you you went through and did all the combine tests that that so you did the bench press, you did the shuttles, you did the the forties, and
then we ran for twelve minutes. And he just ran around the football fields for like twelve minutes. And and everyone said, like, what's the value in this? Like, like where where where? Because I'm fascinated by the rams and I know I know that they they're looking at different metrics here. Do you see that as a trend. That's kind of kind of moving because because I also hear, okay, fine, the combine marks all these like athletic traits, but they can't tell does the guy have a heart? Does the
guy you know? Does the guy have a sense for football? Does he have a football like you? And you've seen great examples of this with players through the years. So is that a trend? That's changing, or you know what different types of things are teams specifically the rams looking at to gauge and evaluate players.
Yeah, so we're big in a data here at Suomer Sports, and what the data shows is that the correlation between these events and the actual production on field really is minimal at best. But on the flip side, as a data scientist, there's such few data points that we really do have to track these college players on their way to the pros. We can look at their production, but
there's so much context. You know, did the player go to a place like Utah State or where they in the big leagues in the Pac twelve, in the Big twelve like Utah. There's there's so many questions that come along with production that it's kind of hard to look back in history and understand what was going on. We now have the tracking data, which is very key, but we only have a couple of years, given that the
technology has just now evolved to that spot. The copline has been going on for decades and as a result, it has a very deep, rich and uniform backlog of data that is somewhat helpful. But as a result, because we have that big backlog, we've been able to find out that the numbers just don't mean that much except for you know, a few key items like tight ends. You know, they have to be a certain level of athlete, a certain threshold of athlete to be good at the
next level. Makes sense because they have to receive and block. There's a couple of places where it's even close to like a fifty percent correlation, but that's very low in terms of correlation to begin with, pretty close to uncorrelated. And as a result, you know, we try to take what we can from it, but we all understand as data side scientist that it just is not something that
you want to pin your whole evaluation on. That's why with these guys like Shamar Stewart and James Pierce and some of the other running backs in particular, when they shoot all the way up the board, I tend to be really, really skeptical of whether that's a good evaluation.
Uh okay, I have I have a suggestion for some data analytics and maybe you do this, maybe you don't, and so maybe I'm going to give you an idea here because this was and again it wasn't scientific, It was just my observation from my time playing. And so I played in the NFL twelve years and every year, like new guys that come in and you always go, yeah,
that guy can play. That you knew like very quickly whether guys were going to make it or not, and and not necessarily to what degree, but just that they were going to make the team or not. And one of the things I noticed through the years is there was a decent number of players from big time programs who were who were massively at who really struggled like they did like they didn't. It was almost like you go, oh, this is a surefire guy because he played here and
he's this and he's all that. And I saw a decent number of those guys who didn't make it. I'm curious, do you do you track data like that or do you? Or am I? Am I throwing something new out at
you that maybe you might might consider watching. And my theory before you answer is they were always just better athletes than than most of the people they were against, and so they never really learned like the the craft, they didn't learn the art of their position, they didn't learn and they didn't realize that like everybody at the NFL is really good and if if you're gonna succeed, if you're gonna have a you've got to you've got to really understand. You can't just out athlete lead people.
I mean there's a couple, you know, Barry Sanders, maybe a Dion sand A few of these guys could do it, but most guys you had to really be a master of your craft. Is that something that you am I? Am I telling you something new? Or is this something you actually track? Or am I crazy? I think no.
I think you hit the nail on the head here. It's it's never clean when it comes to the data. And that's why at Summer Sports we try to blend the subjectiveness. You know, you talked about the heart the IQ, the understanding of the game with the actual evaluation of the tracking data, how they're moving on the field and how fast they're moving and their production, which we can
get down again to the tracking level. We can get down to how they finish after two seconds on a pass rush, you know when you really got to dig deep and try that second effort and stuff like that. But I think you really nailed on the head looking at the data, typically the star system from the two four seven ratings typically is pretty good, but it's just
that pretty good. There's probably like twenty five percent or more of those guys who are looked out at big time recruits who have immense athleticism and just can't make
it at the next level. Because everyone at the next level, as you well know, and I'm sure you can talk about a lot better than me, just me being the college guy, has the athleticism to succeed at the college level, athleticism to succeed at the pro level, and the IQ to succeed at the pro level, which in my mind is like one hundred x what it is at the college level. You're dealing with guys who had been in the league for ten fifteen years. They've seen everything, they've
done everything. I think about all those Patriots guys, or even Joe Tooney who just got traded, for example, from the Kansas City Chiefs, he's a Patriot guy too. Can you imagine all the things that that guy had seen that a young, strapping defensive tackle hasn't even a concept of when he's going up against him. And so that's really the difference and the guys who can kind of pick up on it quick. Jayden Daniels is a great
example of this. He was able to use VR to kind of get himself up to speed at the next level. He used it like two x speed and that helped him out a little bit. But it's good to notate who the guys that can do that are. But it's really a crapshoot, and it's something that we like to use our subjective analysis coming from our scouts and general managers to get a better sense of. But it's really really difficult.
Yeah, it almost seems like if you you maybe don't get all the data right, but if you can figure out just just something like a little little tweak or something that just gives you a little bit of an advantage over over you know, other people like you could you can. You can look at the data and you can draw something out from it that maybe other people aren't. And just because I would imagine just a little bit of a of a bump, like you know, like the Rams,
because they really bucked a trend. I remember them talking about this and it wasn't so much about someone's speed, it was about their speed on a football field, right that they could get and they use Cooper Cup as the example, like like what makes him so good as he gets from point A to point B as fast, if not faster than anyone around, and so evaluating those data points to prove to be more more valuable than maybe a traditional way of looking.
At Yeah, here's an interesting ten trend just talking about the Rams, which I'm going to be deeply tracking in the next couple of years. Uh, given the rise of the transfer at the college level. The Rams have four guys on their defensive line, all four transferred up a level at the college level, and we're able to be really successful. We talk about Braden Fisk coming from I believe it was Western Michigan. He came from to Florida State, all of a sudden, he's an All American level player.
Jared Verse, who was, you know, a Rookie of the Year candidate this year. He transferred up to Florida State from Albany. And then you have guys like Brian Byron Young and Kobe Turner who transferred up from various different locations as well. I'm wondering if they picked up on something there. Maybe it was a little bit more subjective. They like guys who can overcome and succeed at the Power five level after doing it at a lower level.
But I'm wondering if we're not going to see more than that, particularly at those offensive defensive line positions, which require such a high level of IQ at the NFL level, despite not necessarily needing it at the college level where you can kind of out athlete people.
That's an interesting observation because I, you know, so I'm out here in Utah and and the color analysts for for Utah football, and and you know, been doing it for about eight years, and so I've had a chance to watch some of uh these players, specifically Shador Sanders and cam Ward and and even Jayden and Daniels. Jade Daniels was actually initially recruited and he committed to Utah and then and then he decided to go to Arizona State.
And I remember watching Shad or not Chadur, but Jayden as a freshman, and he he looked terrible, Like I was like, I'm not really all that impressed with him, and and he was just and and and you talk about he transferred to l s U and and he was really good in cam Ward, you know, came from Incarnate Ward and that word and and went to Washington State and what And I watched him at Washington say, I'm like, okay, you know, he's okay. I mean he's
real raw and all this stuff. And then and then he went again to Miami and just you saw that that if it was part of transferring it because I'm thinking of my own experience, and I know, like when I went for high school to college, that transition going to a new program, boy, that was so hard, Like my freshman year of college was terrible, And it was actually easier transitioning the second time, you know, when I went into the NFL, even though it was harder, the
transition to it was was actually a little bit easier. And I wonder if there's some of that involved where you get used to and kind of the mystery of new places kind of wears off, or you know, I think of you know, I went in the NFL and I was a quarterback, played behind Dan Marino for my first few years, and I went back, I went to the World League and played in an off season and
came back so much better a player. And that's a fascinating thing you're looking at, and I think there's really something there, and it may be not just for you know, those offense defensive line positions, but maybe maybe even more for quarterbacks and others. Having to learn new systems and getting comfortable in new places might might have an impact. Who knows.
Yeah, I think it's going to be an interesting test this year because we talk about the guys who have been highly drafted in past years, and we're talking about Jayden Daniels who transferred from P five school Ariasona State to P five school. Joe Burrow didn't really get a chance to play, but he was at Ohio State and then he went to LSU. Cam Moore and Shade or Sanders are going to be an interesting test case because, like you said, Ward succeeded at the FCS level, at
the Pac twelve level, at the ACC level. This is a dude who has succeeded at the lowest rung of college or of major college football to the highest rung of the of major college football. And it's really the same thing with Shade Door Sanders at Jackson State. Immensely successful and again incarnate word. I'm from South Louisiana. I grew up in Southland Whack Country, and I grew up around all the HBCUs and Jackson State and Karnate Word are not the easiest places to win by any means.
I mean, there's some powerhouses in those conference that bully those teams from year to year, and they were able to turn those programs around and really win. And then you look at Shade Door Sanders too. You know all the discussion of did he interview well, didn't he interview well? Well, I know one thing, he turned Jackson State around, It really turned the whole college around with his dad as well, and then he went to Colorado really off his poor
team all of a sudden. Now they're in contention for a Big twelve title this year. I mean like, at some point we just got to look at the record and understand that this dude clearly has at least some ability to lead a program, given he's done it twice in two different pretty difficult scenarios.
So I was going to ask you about Shadeur because I've also been around him a little bit and interviewed and I actually found him to be cocky, right I did. I was like, wow, this, okay, this gets pretty brash, you know, it's like whatever, And I wasn't. I wasn't rubbed the wrong way and cam Ward very different, like very different personalities, different different mindsets. And it's kind of fun to be able to, you know, because you have a one on one personal interview with these guys for
a decent amount of time. And and and Shadur was was pretty uh, you know, he's pretty arrogant. I'll just I'll leave it at that. How much of though, really do NFL teams buy into that? And and there you know, there's been some discussion about that maybe being a knock on him. You know, I'm just curious what your thoughts are about, you know, a player with a little bit of an attitude or or you know, or or confident what what kind of what kind of what? How do
teams rate that? Or how do teams evaluate a person's confidence level or their personality for that.
Yeah, So as a core data scientist, this is something that we can't really measure, and frankly, we like to stay out of a little bit because, as as you mentioned, it can kind of become he said, she said, or a team throwing smoke about something and and then a snowball falls and all of a sudden, the guys starts tumbling down draft boards or tumbling up draft boards, depending on how it goes. I just think it's it's it's interesting in general because a general manager is not just
building a football team, he's building a culture. And Thomas de Menchrov talks about this all the time about how he learned the different types of culture from the Patriot paradigm when he was there and then his own attitudes, thoughts and believes. So when he went down to the Falcons are president here at Summer Sports and a close mentor of mine, and so you really have to build a culture in a workplace that allows a team to
go well. And you know that well as a former quarterback, you've got to be able to command the huddle and have the respect of the guys around you, and I think that is key. I do wonder about how well we can predict at at any given point in time. And one thing I also note about schedule. You mentioned the arrogance, and maybe that comes from prime time baby, like you know, his dad was like that back in the eighties and nineties, and it brings a certain air
of confidence. But I think something that people don't recognize now is all of these players coming in are professional athletes. They've had to deal with agent, they've had to deal with money, They've had to deal with all the noise that comes with those two things. And I think, you know, the hoop to jump through to being an NFL athlete with big money and a full schedule of football is a lot less than it used to be even four
or five years ago, back when I was playing. Because now these guys are pretty much fully professional, jumping teams every year, agents going out and taking offers and having
to negotiate for themselves and their value. I think it's just much less of a hoop to jump through, and I really think it's going to end up resembling more basketball, where maybe every once in a while we'll get a guy who is way off the reservation, but for the most part, they're pretty well media trained and pretty professional coming into the NBA. I think it's going to start resembling that a little bit more than the tales of your of the guys jumping to the NFL.
Hey, Sam, I have really enjoyed this, I really have. It's given me a lot to think about it. I think it's really cool what you're doing, and I've just had a great time here thanks for coming on the show and have have a great rest of your day.
Yeah, I appreciate it.