NFL GM explains why players who play will be prioritized over those that opt-out
By Keith Farner
Published:
The lasting effects of the coronavirus pandemic on college football are just beginning to take shape. But one of the main things in the short-term will be how players who don’t play this season, because of opting out or their conference chose to sit out, will have their talent and experience evaluated by NFL scouts.
Pittsburgh Steelers GM Kevin Colbert recently shared what talent evaluators will do with this new information.
“The one thing, the conferences that chose not to play, and the players that opted out, we understand all that. Obviously, they are doing it for safety and health, first and foremost, and we respect that. However, the players that get the opportunity to play and choose to play, we feel more comfortable in their evaluations,” Colbert told The Ringer. “Because I just don’t know, sitting out a year, what those players are going to look like having missed the season. There’s just not a real natural source of information saying, ‘Well, when this player sits out, he’ll be this’ because we just don’t know. We respect the fact that they aren’t playing, but we also have to make the best decisions and I think the best decisions we’ll be able to make are the ones where we can see them play in 2020.”
The obvious area this would come into play is a tiebreaking situation between two prospects.
“So, I asked: If there are two similar prospects and one skipped 2020, would he prefer the player that played a college season? “No doubt,” he said. “If there are two players that are close or equal, we’ll take the one that has played most recently. We’re hopeful that the other conferences get up and running. If they do, we’ll add that to the evaluations. If they don’t—again, all we have is 2019 and we’ll make the best decisions we can.”
This will obviously have a bearing on the futures of the likes of LSU’s Ja’Marr Chase and Georgia’s Jamie Newman, who are more high-profile players. But if Colbert’s opinion is shared across the board, this approach will really take a toll on the mid-tier to lower-level NFL prospects and their draft stock.
A former newspaper veteran, Keith Farner is a news manager for Saturday Down South.
