New Bears general manager Ryan Poles announced several promotions and additions to the team’s scouting and football administration departments this week.
Breck Ackley has been promoted from area scout to assistant director of college scouting. Former pro scout Chris White is now assistant director of pro scouting. Former national scouts Sam Summerville and Francis Saint Paul have added “senior” to the their titles. Ashton Washington made a large leap going from a scouting assistant to player personnel coordinator. Fellow former scouting assistant Charles Love has been made a pro scout. In terms of area scouts, John Syty will now cover the Southwest area, Brendan Rehor will cover the Southeast area, Tom Bradway comes from the Raiders to cover the Northeast area, and former long-time Texans scout Ryan Cavanaugh comes from Ohio State to cover the Midwest area. Finally, Ryan Weese joins the staff from Montana State as a scouting assistant.
Mike Santarelli has been promoted from director of football systems to executive director of football technology. Former salary cap/pro scouting analyst James Cosh has been promoted to manager of football administration/pro scout.
Here are a few other staff hires from around the NFL:
- According to Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated, former 49ers vice president Ethan Waugh has been hired by Jacksonville in the role of assistant general manager, rejoining Jaguars general manager Trent Baalke, whom he worked with from 2005-16. With Waugh out of the picture, San Francisco’s player personnel hierarchy is much clearer with assistant general manager Adam Peters and director of player personnel Ran Carthon directly under general manager John Lynch.
- The Raiders have made an addition to their football analytics department, according to ESPN’s Seth Walder, hiring Brad Goldsberry away from Chicago to serve as director of football systems.
Niners keep having the coaching coffers picked clean every year maybe win a championship at some point Kyle
Forgive me, but what are the exact duties of:
Assistant Director of College Scouting
Assistant Director of Pro Scouting
Senior National Scout
Player Personnel Coordinator
Director of Football Systems
Executive Director of Football Technology
Salary Cap Analyst
Pro Scouting Analyst
Manager of Football Administration
As you can imagine, putting together a winning football franchise can be an extremely challenging responsibility that requires many hands. Without working directly for these teams or asking each individual in the position, it’s impossible to know the EXACT duties of each role, but I’d be happy to put forth some broad strokes based on my knowledge and experience.
Football Technology and Analytics (Director of Football Systems & Executive Director of Football Technology):
Technology and analytics in football are constantly evolving with teams utilizing these tools to track the efficiency of their practices drills, pre-game warmups, in-game executions, etc. There are wearable units that track speed and distance travelled during physical activity, for instance. I imagine there have been many more developments since my time in football that I couldn’t even speak of. As for “Director” and “Executive Director,” these prefixes are likely going to indicate hierarchy and salary.
Manager of Football Administration:
Again, there are usually many hands involved in football administration, so I can’t speak exactly to what the Manager’s responsibilities are (possibly overseeing interns or part-time employees or lower-level full-time employees). There are a plethora of duties covered under football admin. Some of those may include flight and hotel coordination, office equipment orders for other staff, event coordination for camps or charity, oversight of other football departments like equipment, medical, and diet, etc.
Player Personnel/Scouting:
There are so many people involved in the process of obtaining NFL talent to a franchise. Again, without working directly with the team I can’t be too specific on roles, so I won’t speak to prefixes like “assistant director,” “senior,” “coordinator,” or “analyst.” They likely indicate hierarchy and salary.
Starting at the top of your list:
College Scouting – It’s usually broken down into several areas, hence why the article indicated directional areas like Southeast and Midwest. It’s helpful to get multiple eyes on players, though, because everybody may have a different opinion, so National Scout’s will likely take a less specific or detailed approach to all the areas already covered by the area scouts, providing second opinions on players of interest.
Pro Scouting – While college is one way to obtain talent, free agency and trading is another, so it helps to have personnel on staff constantly evaluating who may be available around the league and how talented they might be. Pro scouts may also have their opinions sought when coaches want to know about what a future opponent is good or bad at.
Player Personnel – With the scouting departments analyzing all players potentially available to bring in, the player personnel department is responsible for analyzing the players already in the building. They help to point out any holes on the current (and future) roster and use this information to help inform who they target in the Draft or from other NFL teams.
Salary Cap – This one is a bit self-explanatory. As much as you may want your team to bring in all the best players, it may not be feasible under the salary cap. So it’s useful for teams to have a group constantly evaluating where the team stands with cap space. This group will be included in contract discussions, free agency and trade discussions, and much else, I’m sure.
This only being a comment and not an article, I likely won’t proofread this, so I hope you’ll all forgive any typos.