The History of the Draft

SCOUTING CHANGES THE DRAFT

For many years, scouting was an afterthought for NFL clubs. Most allocated little of their front offices’ resources to player evaluation.

Still, as early as that first draft, the ability to identify football talent proved to be critical for one club, which came away with a future star that other teams had ignored.

With a second-round pick, the New York Giants selected fullback Alphonse “Tuffy” Leemans. Although the Giants didn’t have a scouting department, the team benefited from the informal analysis of a high school student (Wellington Mara, son of the team’s owner, Tim Mara) who had seen Leemans star in a college game. In his third season, Leemans led the Giants to the 1938 NFL championship.

Successful NFL clubs separated themselves from the competition by identifying future talent through the draft.

With limited resources for scouting and thousands of collegiate players to evaluate each year, NFL clubs started to enter into partnerships to share the costs and labor (and eventually the expensive computer equipment required to crunch the numbers).

Two of those partnerships began in 1963: the Lions, Eagles and Steelers Talent Organization (LESTO, which became BLESTO when the Chicago Bears joined in 1964) and National Football Scouting (NFS), formed by the Baltimore Colts, the Cleveland Browns, the Green Bay Packers and the St. Louis Cardinals.

 

The following year, the Dallas Cowboys, the Los Angeles Rams, the San Francisco 49ers and the expansion New Orleans Saints created a group that would come to be known as Quadra Scouting.

These services allowed teams to focus on scouting and better evaluate players they were considering for the NFL Draft. Over time, the draft became an increasingly important tool in building a successful franchise.