Inside Rams’ scouting of DT Bobby Brown III, from laugh-out-loud domination on tape to long-term fit
By
Jourdan Rodrigue Jun 1, 2021
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THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. — Rams senior personnel executive Brian Xanders was just a few plays into his study of then-Texas A&M defensive tackle Bobby Brown III’s film when he started chuckling. Brown was, quite literally, everywhere — and he was doing some damage, too.
“He played nose tackle, five-technique and three-technique,” Xanders said. “Literally all three of our defensive line positions, he’s played them all.”
Xanders saw Brown hit a guard so hard that his legs buckled and split out from under him. He saw Brown block a couple of kicks on special teams. And then he got to the offensive cut-ups — yes, you read that right.
“And then they also put him on offense as a goal-line fullback,” laughed Xanders. “So there’s plays of him running right through the defensive line, just crushing them.”
Xanders began work on what is called a “cross check” on Brown in February as a part of the Rams’ typical process. First, Brown had been studied for several months throughout 2020 by area scout Steve Kazor, and then Kazor’s reports on Brown landed on Xanders’ desk. Scouts and personnel people often intersect on their evaluations of prospects so that a variety of opinions and observations about that prospect can come to light, and for the Rams, area scouts are hugely important in setting the first “draft boards” and then providing updates and input as cross-checkers weigh in.
The Rams had not caught a ton of additional buzz on Brown via external boards through the pre-draft process in the spring (such as media draft boards, top-50 or top-100 lists or even in standard press clippings), but because Kazor had done a good deal of work on Brown by the time his report got to Xanders’ desk, Xanders was intrigued by Brown’s measurables and Kazor’s notes on his power within certain plays and alignments. He also had a light afternoon — so he decided to watch all of the defensive tackle’s snaps in one sitting.
“I had a lot of time that day, so I loaded up his entire career — the pass-rush, and then the run defense,” he said. “He was a fun eval.”
Three things stuck out to Xanders about Brown: His frame
(6-foot-4, 325 pounds with a seven-foot wingspan), the torque and anchor with which he maneuvered and held his gaps (“they tried to double-team him and they’d just stand on the line of scrimmage, they got no movement,” Xanders said), his toughness off of blocks (“he destroyed whole blocking schemes”) and of course, his versatility.
“Some of the big splash plays were impressive, because he’s going through double-teams and knocking the guard into the backfield, and then the tight end falls down and then he falls into the running back,” Xanders said. “There were just some really powerful plays that stood out. And I’m like, ‘This guy … this guy could be a scheme fit in all three (interior defensive line) positions — in a massive body. He was an interesting eval.”
By the time a team gets to the fourth round of the draft, they know they won’t always find a “complete” player, and so smart teams match specific traits of prospects to those needed within their positional rotations — like a small puzzle piece slotting into a much larger image. After the 2020 college football season was derailed by COVID-19, teams also knew that projecting players’ development into their respective systems would be harder than ever.
Especially starting in the fourth round this draft, the Rams focused on prospects with hyper-athletic traits and measurables, then tried to match those with the player’s frame and their understanding of how his frame will mature, plus data points within either the on-field testing process, their own person-to-person intel, and/or the medical evaluation process that backed up what they saw on tape. The idea was to take care of the things “you can’t coach” (physical gifts), even if they were more raw than the typical prospect in a “normal” year, and then rely on pairing those players with assistants such as (in Brown’s case) defensive line coach Eric Henderson to help turn the prospect into a more “complete” player — or even simply into an important role-player.
In a fourth-round defensive lineman, for example, the Rams of course weren’t looking for a Day 1 starter — but they
were looking for long arms/wide shoulders and wingspan, plus moldable power and torque that projects well into their gap-and-a-half defensive scheme. In Brown — similarly to their evaluation of
Sebastian Joseph-Day, who they previously drafted in the sixth round — they see a player whose ceiling is as a starter, yet whose floor can still be as a key role-player based on athleticism alone, and whose flashes of versatility were an added bonus in their grading of him.
Bobby Brown III (John Reed / USA Today)
The Rams began their intel process on other teams’ draft boards as the third round drew to a close on Friday night, and cross-referenced them with their own. There was an emphasis on adding more picks beginning on Day 3, multiple sources told
The Athletic at the time, but they also knew that if Brown fell to them at No. 117 (obtained via previous trade with San Francisco), he was a prospect for whom they would stay at the pick point and find another place to trade back.
Early Saturday morning, before the final day of the draft began, Rams senior personnel advisor Taylor Morton and his staff called their sources at Texas A&M and elsewhere to double check that there weren’t any red flags on Brown, because despite his tape and strong athletic traits he had still fallen out of the second day of the draft.
“(General manager Les Snead) is the type where he’s going to dot every ‘I’ and cross every ‘T’,” Morton said. “He’s so thorough and demands us to be so thorough. So first thing that morning, I’m calling around to people I know … triple checking our sources and even digging for more sources, and just confirming all of the data that we’ve collected over all these months. And everybody gave their thumbs up on Bobby Brown.”
Xanders and Morton say they don’t know why he made it to them at that pick point (Xanders speculated that some teams may have been leery of his relatively limited experience, with just 18 starts in his collegiate career).
“It’s the same thing, kind of, that happened with (Joseph-Day),” said Morton. “How did we get him in the sixth round? … To get Bobby Brown in the fourth round, people ask ‘why’ because (of his physical traits) and because, when he wants to, he can dominate the line of scrimmage. We’re hoping that he can develop.”
Xanders and Henderson — who were working remotely with Snead in his garage and a small group of staff at the Rams’ draft house in Malibu, Calif. — began texting Snead as their pick drew closer, continuing to pitch Brown.
“We were texting back and forth, I was texting Coach Henny, it was a fun day,” said Xanders. “You just hope for the best — like, ‘If we take him, it’s our job to help him fit in our environment and culture. It’s his job to create his own role.’ Just like every other rookie. Nothing is handed to anybody in this league – it’s a meritocracy, the NFL. Everything is earned, and everything is created by that player creating their own opportunities.”
Brown is just 20 years old — launched into Los Angeles and the world of the NFL before he can even legally crack a beer to celebrate it. Xanders said the Rams’ defensive staff saw a lack of “wear-and-tear” on Brown as a bonus — not just for health reasons, but also because they believe it makes him more malleable as a prospect (in just a year or two, he’ll have taken less practice reps outside of their system than within it).
Having Brown, who will only be turning 24 by the time his second contract comes up, learn about the NFL in a position room with three-time Defensive Player of the Year
Aaron Donald was also one of the reasons the staff felt comfortable drafting him despite his young age.
“I think that’s the No. 1 asset for Bobby Brown, and I said it in our meetings,” Morton said. “He’s got all this talent, and then you put him in the room with professional, grown men like Aaron Donald. There’s peer pressure there. Usually, those kind of guys, they’re going to rise to the occasion — to that peer pressure. And (Brown) is an intelligent person. So when he gets in the room with (Donald), he knows that now he’s in a business. He’s not in college anymore — he’s in a business with grown men … it’ll definitely get him going in the right direction.”
Another reason was Henderson, whose voice was prominent in the discussion on Brown and who Brown said stayed in touch with him throughout the pre-draft process.
“With all the hard work and how tough (Henderson) is on all players,” said Xanders, “how great a coach he is with enforcing accountability and coachability whether it’s Aaron Donald or all the way down to the practice squad defensive linemen … we felt that adding (Brown) in there, there’s nowhere to go but up.”
In Brown, the Rams see a player whose ceiling is as a starter, yet whose floor can still be as a key role-player based on athleticism alone.
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