NFL Visits

[Jason3123]

I have never paid a ton of attention to NFL visits but this year I decided to track them. I've heard others reference visits on podcasts and articles so I thought it might be a good exercise. I definitely see the value in tracking what teams are doing, as the draft is the 1 time a year NFL teams can't lie to us. I know a visit doesn't mean there's a sure thing in drafting said player or even that position, but considering the Bears met with 16 running backs, I think we can all agree the likelihood of them drafting a RB based on their depth chart and visits is probably 80% or higher.

What I wanted to see was more from the player perspective, to gauge how much interest an individual player might be receiving and who is specifically looking at them.

There's obviously a ton to unpack here but here are a few things/trends I found interesting:

TE Jace Sternberger met with 17 teams, more than any other fantasy relevant position player. I think this almost guarantees he will not only be a top 100 pick but possibly much higher, as in round 2, and maybe even the 3rd tight end off the board ahead of Irv.

WR Gary Jennings met with 9 teams, which is quite a bit compared to others. I have done no research on this guy. He also met with some premier teams, such as the Patriots, Saints, Steelers and Chargers. I say premier as in they're either really well-ran or they have been good at drafting fantasy relevant players.

WR Deebo Samuel met with 12 teams, the most of any WR.

The Rams looked at only 2 fantasy relevant players, RB's Devin Singletary and Darrell Henderson. Henderson met with 9 teams in total, including the Bucs, Raiders, Texans and others. Singletary met with 10 teams, including the Chiefs, Eagles, Bucs and others. Obviously a lot of intrigue in the NFL for these 2.

The Patriots met with almost all the top WR's and TE's. I imagine they invest early in the skill positions.

The Bucs met with 12 WR's including Deebo, Isabella, Anthony Johnson, Campbell, Mecole Hardman. They also met with Butler, Hurd, and others. What I find interesting is most of these are very versatile WR's and a lot of slot experience. I think it's a near lock they invest a day 2 pick in the WR position.

The 49ers met with 8 skill players, 6 WR's and 2 TE's.

The Chiefs met with 15 players including 8 RB's.

WR David Sills met with some elite teams including the Chiefs, Falcons, Pats, Saints, and WR factory Pittsburgh.

RB Myles Gaskin met with only Chicago, who also scouted every other RB.

WR Stanley Morgan only met with the Saints.

RB David Montgomery met with the Eagles and Jets.

The Seahawks only met with 4 skill players as they continue to hate Russell Wilson.

The Colts met with 4 RB's, Josh Jacobs, Miles Sanders, Mike Weber, AND....Karan Higdon?

All 7 of the Redskins players were WR.

That's all for now. Excited to see how it unfolds in the draft and see if there's maybe any indicators that resulted from these. I'm sure there will be a few.

[FantasyDumDum]

Thanks, but it is a bit more complicated when you really dig in.

Take KC for example. I count 72 player meeting, not 15.

A little more than half of those are just perfunctory Combine interviews, which are the least important of all the meetings. There are also meetings/interviews at the East West Shrine Game and Senior Bowl and Pro Day visits, which are similarly low in importance as the Combine interviews. Then there are the real meetings that show significant interest, like second interviews in a hiring process: the private visits and private workouts. These are limited by rule and coveted meetings for players. The most likely players to get drafted are met with multiple times, often at Combine/Senior Bowl etc and in a Private Visit or Workout.

So the Chiefs, for example, met with RBs in the following ways:

Alex Barnes Private Workout
Dexter Williams Private Visit
N Young Pro Day
R Anderson Combine
M Sanders Combine
J Hill Combine
D Singletary Combine
T Williams Combine
N Brossette Combine
M Weber Combine

That is 7 Combine visits, one Pro Day visit for a back not invited to Combine, and 2 next level Private Visists/Workouts. That would generally tell you that they are most interested in 4-6th round level backup, non-pass catching/2 Down RBs in Alex Barnes and Dexter Williams. But they are also investigating round 2-3 level backs in Sanders, Hill, Singletary, Anderson, as well as late 5-7 round backs in Weber, T Williams, N Young, and Brossette.

The majority of their significant meetings, private meetings, and players that they met with more than once(no RBs in this category), were at the following positions:

Edge
CB
S
LB
OT
WR
DT
TE

Of those it looks like they are looking at early round players at S, CB, LB, Edge, 2nd day players possibly at DT, WR, and late round players at OT, previously mentioned RB, and other positions.

But, as seen every year, sometimes these meetings are smokeshows/smokescreens whatever you want to call them, and teams zig when it looks like they will zag, taking a player or two that they seemed to have little interest in officially.


If I had to use this information as part of my prognostication, I would say the KC draft looks like:

Pick 29 - S/CB
Picks 61 + 63 - S/CB + Edge/LB
Pick 92 - LB/WR/TE
Pick 167 - DT/OT/RB/TE
Picks 201 + 214 + 216 - RB/anything