When do the draft services start their breakdowns?

[shirtsleeve]

Reading player bios from their schools doesn't go very far. I am still waiting for the draft services to start breaking these players down with strengths and weaknesses, etc. The bowl season is over, so when does this happen?

[Hawg73]

Originally posted by shirtsleeve on 01-08-2008 at 02:30 AM
Reading player bios from their schools doesn't go very far. I am still waiting for the draft services to start breaking these players down with strengths and weaknesses, etc. The bowl season is over, so when does this happen?

Depends on if you are talking about pay or free. If it's pay you're looking for then you're guess is as good as mine, because I'm not nuts enough to pay for draft info.

Generally, the free sites (probably pay ones too) won't have a handle on things until well after the combine and usually the prospect profiles aren't really complete until the 2 or 3 weeks before the draft. By then the first couple of rounds have started to take shape and the "name" guys who are pretenders start sinking out of sight and the sleepers start rising.

The combine ends 2/27 and the draft is in April, so generally most of the more savvy reports are compiled during the month of March from what I have seen.

I used to go through all the free sites like Great Blue North, draftcountdown or Rob Rang's, but every year some of those sites go members only and you can get pretty damn good free profiles from NFL.com as of last year.

These profiles will have fairly complete bio's of the prospects high school and college experience and stats along with combine performance and reasonable projections of how they could perform as pros. Mike Mayock is their point man on the draft and I find him much better informed than a lot of others like Gil Brandt (clueless) or Mel Kiper.

[Hawg73]

One big key that I forgot to mention is that most of the draft reports you will see over the next month and a half will be for seniors only and until the juniors declare you won't really know whats available and the first couple of rounds will change drastically when they do.

That's why I don't usually get cranked up until March or so.

[Box_O_Rocks]

What Hawgie said, I'm seeing updates on the one site I pay for, but they are currently doing their end of season updates so it's slowly filtering in. Juniors must declare by Jan 15. The All-Start games start soon and run through the month. Then the Combine, followed by Pro-Days.

NFL Network uses a pay site's work, but it just covers the top 15 or so players per position. They've used a couple different pay sites since I've started tracking, the one I use and another I'm not impressed with.

[Box_O_Rocks]

From gbnreport.com:

The annual psot-season all-star game schedule gets under way this week with two games on the weekend. The Hula Bowl will be played on Saturday in Hawaii, while the Cactus Bowl for Division II players will go in Friday night in Kingsville, Texas. While the Hula Bowl kind of plays third fiddle to the Senior and Shrine games, this year’s Hula rosters feature some intriguing talent for the 2008 draft including QBs Paul Smith of Tulsa, Ricky Santos of New Hampshire, San Diego State’s Kevin O’Donnell and Alex Brink of Washington State; RB Yvenson Bernard of Oregon State; WRs Jason Rivers of Hawaii, Maurice Purify of Nebraska and Evan Moore of Stanford; DT Maurice Murray of New Mexico State, LB Jordon Dizon of Colorado and Arkansas State safety Tyrell Johnson. Meanwhile, small school stars that will make the trek to Hawaii include Chadron State RB Danny Woodhead and Gardner-Webb DE Brian Johnston. Not surprisingly, the Cactus Bowl rosters don’t have the same depth, but there are still some hidden gems worth a long look including Stillman CBs Brian Witherspoon and Denatay Heard, North Dakota WR Wes Dressler and Grand Valley State OT Branden Barnes.