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Scout's Tales: Benny Cunningham and Zac Stacy
Posted 5 hours ago
By StLouisRams.com
There are numerous ways NFL teams acquire players, and the Rams’ scouting staff is always hard at work trying to find the next guy who can help them win. In Scout’s Tales, we’ll visit with members of Les Snead’s personnel department and they’ll share stories of how the process brought certain current Rams to St. Louis.
J.W. Jordan on using analytics to identify Benny Cunningham
and Zac Stacy.My main role within our department revolves around making sure the organization is at least aware of every draft-eligible college player that has a chance to play in the NFL. It differs from our college scouts because they travel almost all year, visiting their assigned schools, while I do most of my work from the office. Also, our area scouts know their areas intimately. They dig deep at their schools and really unearth every last detail about every player they evaluate. I, on the other hand, get to watch more players than they do in a given year, but I only see a relative snap shot of each compared to what the scouts do.
Because I work from Rams Park, I am also able to do a good number of research projects and studies. I get to dive into what some might call 'analytics.' To be clear, what we do is by no means as scientific or extensive as Moneyball or anything like that, but we do at least make use of the data we get, like combine workouts, pro day measurables and players’ stats. Put simply, throughout the year, I mine for players who stand out in some way - whether it be stats, measurables, or anything else - and make sure the organization knows about them.
Sometimes a guy might surface through a study I do, like if I analyze the sizes and speeds of combine attendees - looking for trends, as an example. But sometimes, it's pure chance. And that is actually what happened with two of our running backs, Zac Stacy and Benny Cunningham.
With Benny, I ran across his name pretty early on in the fall. I was skimming through the news of the day on the internet and saw a blurb about how one of the nation's leading rushers - Benny - tore his ACL and would miss the rest of the year. "Nation's leading rusher" caught my eye, so I figured it was worth taking a few minutes to peek at some film. When I did, it was pretty easy to see he had talent. From there it was a matter of not forgetting about him.
We keep a list throughout the year of what we call "value players." They are typically guys with draftable talent, but for one reason or another, might not get drafted. In Benny's case, it was the injury that got him on this particular list. Being on this list meant at some point before the draft, our decision makers would take a look at him and decide if he was worth targeting after the draft as a free agent. In this case, obviously, they decided he was.
With Zac Stacy, initially, we probably had him graded a little lower than he should have been. Most of the time our grades from fall scouting are on target, but just to be safe, we have a system of checks and balances designed to keep players from falling through the cracks, so to speak. One of those checks is a player's stats, and they are how Zac's name popped up. A few weeks or so before the draft, I was taking a break at work, just surfing the internet. I fell into one of those Wikipedia wormholes where you just start clicking link after link until you can't remember where you started or what you were doing in the first place. Somehow, I ended up on a list of the SEC's all-time leading rushers. On it were all the greats - Bo Jackson, Emmit Smith, Herschel Walker, Shaun Alexander.
The only name I didn't recognize was this guy from Vanderbilt. I figured he must have played in the '50's or something because otherwise I would have known who he was. Simply out of curiosity, I Googled his name. When I saw he was eligible for the 2013 draft, I started to get pretty interested. I popped on some 2013 game film - Vanderbilt vs. Florida - and saw this Zac Stacy almost immediately break off about a 60 yard touchdown. I watched a few more games, but right then, some other people needed to look at him so I gave Les and Coach Sirmans a heads up. They watched him and liked him, told Coach Schottenheimer and he liked him, too. The rest is history, I guess.
We never know how players will come up or how we will find them. The most important part of the process is our scouts on the road who are the first to see and evaluate most prospects. But we all have a role in the process, and seeing our work result in a player come to the Rams and help the team is what makes this job so rewarding, and a lot of fun too.
