A Week On The Road With A Seahawks Scout

During down time, there’s the typical small-talk you might find between co-workers in any field, just with a lot more swearing and ball-busting. Told that the unfamiliar face following Dodds around was there to write a story about this trip, the usual response from scouts ranged from “Sorry, you must have drawn the short straw,” to “Hey, Ed, you’re big time now. When does the 30 for 30 come out?”

It’s an incredibly close-knit community despite also being incredibly competitive.

“Every scout would probably say the same; there’s guys you respect and are close with,” Dodds says, mentioning, among others, Mingey, Liipfert, Oakland’s Calvin Branch, Minnesota’s Mike Sholiton, and Miami’s Matt Winston. “Calvin, we worked together at the Raiders. As close as we are, we never discuss, ‘Hey, what do you think of this player, grade-wise?’ You don’t even talk about it.”

As serious as this business is from a results standpoint — scouts who don’t find talent don’t last long — plenty of fun is had. When Ole Miss quarterback Chad Kelly had to cut short his workout due to a wrist injury, a few scouts, Dodds included, lobbied for Jeremy Liggins to take over throwing to receivers. Liggins played offensive line and tight end for the Rebels, but was a standout quarterback in high school, and he still has the same strong arm that helped him get recruited by LSU.

Liggins didn’t end up throwing to receivers, but later in the day when defensive backs and linebackers were going through their drills, Liggins fired off a few short-range lasers that likely left bruises, as well as effortless 60-yard spirals. It was part of a very busy day for Liggins, an exceptional athlete with very limited playing time on his résumé. In addition to that unexpected quarterback duty, Liggins also worked out in both offensive and defensive line drills. 

Liggins played only 41 snaps in 2016 and 153 in 2015, splitting time between offensive line and tight end, meaning at times it wasn’t even clear to scouts who they were watching on tape due to in-game number changes. Watching 2015 Ole Miss game tape, Dodds, who knew Liggins as a tight end who wore No. 15, was impressed with No. 66 at right tackle, even though he didn’t realize at the time that No. 66 was Liggins. There wasn’t much to go off of, but it was enough to cause Dodds and southeast area scout Jim Nagy to do a bit more work on Liggins. 

“He’s just a (expletive) athlete,” Dodds said of Liggins, who is expected to sign as an undrafted free agent, though to play defensive line, not offense. 

One thing you quickly discover on a trip like this is that it’s important to be flexible — and to book hotel reservations you can cancel on short notice. Dodds’ original itinerary had him heading from Oxford to Hattiesburg for Tuesday’s pro day at Southern Mississippi. But on Sunday night, Dodds received word that Southern Miss had changed the schedule, moving what was to be a Tuesday morning workout to an afternoon session, meaning Dodds’ arrival in Baton Rouge that night would be delayed. This was a problem because Dodds had a dinner set up with a couple of LSU players Tuesday night, a dinner he wasn’t going to make if he was in Hattiesburg into the evening, and a dinner he decided was more valuable than Southern Miss’ pro day, especially since southeast area scout Jim Nagy was able to hit Southern Miss. So Southern Miss would have to be skipped this year, and instead Dodds reached out to one of his contacts in Baton Rouge to schedule a dinner for Monday night. After a five-plus hour drive from Oxford to Baton Rouge—on his 37th birthday, no less—Dodds was sharing grilled oysters with two members of the Tigers’ athletic department, talking about the upcoming LSU pro day while the NCAA men’s basketball national championship game played in the background.

At one point in the conversation, Dodds’ LSU contact asked if he wants a list of what drills each player would participate in on Wednesday. That list, which arrived Tuesday morning, included a name that had not been on earlier Pro Day lists: Cyril Grayson. With a day to work at his hotel in Baton Rouge, Dodds did some quick homework on Grayson and came away intrigued enough to make a call to the league office to inquire about Grayson’s draft eligibility. What Dodds learned, something a lot of teams didn’t figure out until it was too late, was that the combination of Grayson being a fifth-year senior and someone who never played college football meant that he was a free agent who could sign with any team immediately.

Dodds called Grayson and invited him to the dinner at Roux 61 that had already been scheduled with a couple of other LSU players. Coincidentally, Grayson was already planning on eating at the popular Baton Rouge seafood spot before that call, but now he had to ditch his friends.

Grayson and two other LSU players joined Dodds for a dinner the night before their pro day. One player mentioned that he had to eat light before such an important day, but Grayson, who weighed in at only 178 pounds the next morning, wasn’t opposed to eating a bit more and possibly packing on an extra pound or two, enjoyed some grilled oysters (yes, this is a popular dish down there), wings, and an entree called the Delta Queen, which is blackened redfish and shrimp served over pasta.

“(Dodds) calling me definitely threw me for a loop,” Grayson would say later after signing with the Seahawks. “Right before, I had just told my guys that we should go to Roux 61 for dinner. Then probably five minutes after that, I got the call, he asked me all the background questions, then I got off the phone and it was like, ‘Wow, I just got off the phone with a scout from the Seahawks.’… We had good conversations at the table. It was just kind of chill and relaxed.”

Dinners like that one, in Dodds’ opinion, are more valuable late in the draft process than a meeting with a top prospect. The Seahawks ended up picking LSU’s Ethan Pocic in the second round of the 2017 draft, and Dodds obviously knew there was a lot of interest in Pocic within the organization, but he and co-director of player personnel Scott Fitterer had already done plenty of homework on the offensive lineman. Instead, this was a chance to meet with possible undrafted free agents who, given the chance to sign with multiple teams, might remember the night that a representative of the Seahawks took them to dinner. Spring pro days and meetings are also just as important for Dodds to help the Seahawks learn more about players on whom less work had been done up to that point.

“I think the biggest thing is the later-round types who weren’t invited to the combine, this is their first time to run and get a verified speed, which is always important,” Dodds said. “A lot of times it’s also the first time we can talk to those guys. The other kids who were at the Senior Bowl and the combine, there’s not as big of an issue… A lot of teams will schedule dinners and interviews with the more marquee names, and to me, that’s kind of a waste of your time, because you’ve had time with them, you’re not recruiting them — they’re getting drafted. The guys we’re having dinner with are potential later-round or free agents, so if they do slip through, now they might remember, ‘This guy was talking to me, he took me to dinner.'”

Once again, scouts began arriving well before sunrise, while across the street, Tiger Stadium’s lights turned the pre-dawn sky a bright shade of yellow. Inside LSU’s indoor football facility, Tigers coach Ed Orgeron greeted the early arrivals with his unmistakable deep, gravelly voice.

“Anything you guys need, don’t hesitate to ask,” Orgeron said.

Now that things have moved across state lines Dodds was the one taking the lead organizing the day’s drills, though Mingey was still involved as well. Anywhere you walk within LSU’s football facilities, people seemed to know Dodds, who has been scouting this area for more than a decade. Dodds gathered the players who would be participating in the pro day in a lounge next to LSU’s locker room, going over the schedule for the day. Scouts went over the list with players to confirm who would be doing what drills, a few scouts jokingly — or maybe not entirely jokingly — giving Leonard Fournette, the eventual No. 4 overall pick, a hard time about what he wasn’t taking part in that day.

While Ole Miss, another SEC school, had a pretty big turnout two days earlier, LSU’s pro day was still at another level. Several NFL head coaches and general managers worked among the scouts as they watched a large group of LSU players, eight of whom would get drafted four weeks later, three of them in the first round.