Chiefs GM Brett Veach explains three of the biggest pre-draft challenges in 2021

The Kansas City Chiefs and the rest of the league will face some unique challenges this draft season after a year in college football altered by COVID-19. The 2021 Scouting Combine has been canceled, two of the most prominent All-Star games were canceled, Top-30 visits won’t happen and the 2020 calendar year is generally a tough evaluation due to opt-outs and challenges related to the virus.

Chiefs GM Brett Veach offered his thoughts on three of the biggest challenges that his staff will face in the evaluation process leading up to the draft. He also shared how they intend to tackle those challenges.

Medical evaluation

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Without the 2021 NFL Scouting Combine and Top-30 visits, the Chiefs and other teams will not have standardized medical evaluations on the top players in this draft class. The NFL is collaborating with teams to devise a safe way to get players in for medical evaluations, but it won't be the same as it was in the past. “It’s extremely challenging," Veach told reporters on Monday. "The medical is something that I know the league has been working on, and I actually had some conference calls with Rick (Burkholder) last week and they’re putting in a plan to bring in the players that would’ve been invited to the combine to get their medicals. It won’t be probably as detailed or as exact as we had in the past. That is always an issue. That was an issue last year when we couldn’t bring guys in-house for top-30 visits or go out and work those players out. When we get guys in for top-30 visits we have the ability to medical those guys, so any player that you didn’t get at the combine you would just invite them to the in-house facility and then do the medical here, so that’ll be a huge part of it." How much information that the Chiefs are able to acquire in these new medical evals will be important for players with injury histories. Several of those players have already been earmarked as targets for the Chiefs such as Landon Dickerson, Walker Little, Jaelen Phillips.

Deciphering what's real in Pro Day workouts

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Another challenge presented with the lack of the combine will be deciphering what is real and what isn't real in terms of Pro Day athletic testing. "The numbers too I think will be interesting, and we’ll have to work through that," Veach explained. "So, last year we at least had the combine and we had the top 100 or so players there and we had verified's in regards to height, weight, speed, 40s—all that stuff is verified—and we had basically one comprehensive sheet. Now, what you’ll have this year is you’ll have the numbers. There will be limited access to these pro days— there will be NFL representation there, but you won’t have full access and you’ll have to be selective in where you go." Typically, you have a highly-controlled environment at the combine and you can compare the Pro Day numbers. Now, the Chiefs will have to dig a little deeper to understand what those Pro Day numbers actually are. "It’s always interesting to me when you see 40-times. At the combine, you know what they are—they’re run indoors, on turf and the environment is similar. Now, when you go to these pro days you’ll have certain players working out in an indoor facility with a faster track under weather-controlled conditions and then you’ll have some colleges that they’ll be running in 40 degrees and the wind will be blowing in their face. So, when you click on the report, you’ll see the numbers, but it’s going to take a lot of historical research. There are schools that typically produce faster 40-times. I don’t want to name names, but we all know there’s a list of schools that we always say, ‘Do they run it 38-yards there or 39-yards there,’ because you’ll have player X go to the combine and run a 4.5 and then go to their school and run 4.4, 4.38. So, I think it’ll take a lot of work going back into some of the historical archives and formulating a metric that really stabilizes all the information that you’re getting. So, that will be challenging. At least with the combine you knew the surface and you knew the conditions, and everyone was on that level playing surface." Beyond your typical college Pro Day, you also have sports performance companies like EXOS attempting to fill the void of the combine by offering their clients a Pro Day. The problem is that EXOS produced a number of incredible times and numbers for their clients like Minnesota WR Rashod Bateman, Louisiana Tech DT Milton Williams, Arkansas State WR Jonathan Adams, Jr. and Oklahoma State WR Tylan Wallace. The company has a vested interest in their clients doing well, so how can you trust that the numbers are accurate? Were these guys running a 38-yard dash as Veach suggested happens at some schools? That's going to be the big challenge for Veach and his staff moving forward. "So, trying to differentiate between which are closer to that time and which aren’t will be a challenge," Veach said. "I think we have a little bit of an idea how to do that. I think like all teams that will be a challenge of trying to figure out are these guys really 4.3 guys or would this have been a 4.45 at the combine? That will be a little bit challenging, so that will be interesting, but again, all teams will have to face that scenario.”

Lack of film on small-school prospects

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One area where the Chiefs have been really great in the past few years is identifying talent from schools for later in the draft and undrafted free agency. That'll be an even greater challenge this year because of a lack of film and a lack of opportunities at All-Star games for those players. "A lot of these small school guys, they really benefit from, not so much the Senior Bowl and look, the Senior Bowl does a great job of bringing those highly celebrated lower school guys," Veach said. "You saw this year with the Wisconsin – Whitewater center and the Northern Iowa tackle, I mean usually the marquee small school players that the league knows about, they’re all there and it’s a great game for them and it kind of helps guide where these players are in regards to their draft stock. Some of these All-Star games that you really miss, the East-West game, that’s where Terk (Tershawn) Wharton really popped on the screen for us last year, the NFLPA game. Some of these other games that these guys pop off the screen and they make you go back and look at their tape and you’re kind of anxious for their Pro Day to come in and see what they run and jump." Some of those small-school players won't even have a Pro Day this year. In the past, bigger schools would accept those players into their Pro Day, but due to COVID-19 restrictions that won't be happening as frequently this year. As a result, a number of them have resorted to recorded Pro Day workouts. The access that the teams has to these players is shrinking. For Veach and the Chiefs, it means they'll be relying that much more on the evaluations from area scouts. "That will be the challenge so that’s where you have to have depth in your scouting department and you know we got a lot of experienced guys out there, guys that have been doing this for 15-20 years whether that be Pat Sperduto, Willie Davis, Terry Delp, Trey Koziol on the west coast, I mean these guys, that’s what they do and that’s why their great at what they do. They spend a lot of time on the road and their usually ahead of the game before these guys even get to the All-Star game. It’s just going to require more work and just more deliberation with our area scouts and reviewing these games and it’ll be tough." While this poses a challenge for the Chiefs and the rest of the league, it also presents them with an opportunity. If they can rely on those area scouts and land an impact player or two in undrafted free agency, they'll be in good shape heading into the 2021 NFL season. "I think you’re going to see – my guess would be, every year you have a ton undrafted free agents make the team, I suspect this season you’ll not only have undrafted free agents make teams, but actually have some big impacts right away just because of the lack of additional exposure that they would’ve had in the past," Veach said. "They won’t have that (exposure) this year, so I think it’ll be our goal and our objective to make sure that we’re one of those teams that identifies and lands one of those guys like we did last year with Terk Wharton."

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