Introduction
When you prepare for a fantasy football league of any kind, you need to do your early scouting. When it comes to Campus to Canton leagues, normal scouting usually doesn’t cut it. If you want to get in-depth, you need to get down into the advanced scouting techniques that can really separate you from the rest of the competition. We’re talking about the advanced scouting techniques that you might need to identify the premier college football talent, and how you can evaluate them to the best of your abilities. This includes watching film, finding hidden gems, and even drawing comparisons to NFL players. Let’s get right down to it.
Evaluating Talent
It’s hard to get anywhere in a Campus to Canton league if you don’t put in the effort to evaluate talent. Evaluating talent can happen in numerous ways, but you want to find those diamonds in the rough and grab them before anybody else can get the opportunity to do just that.
Film Study
The best way to evaluate talent early on is by just watching film. Film studies can happen in a few separate ways. You can watch the full games, tune into available practice footage, watch highlights, and listen to interviews involving the players off the field. All of this can give you information on how they might be as a player and as a person. To some, this might seem silly as you normally only hear film study as a way for professional athletes to get a leg up, but this can be a method to help you in a Campus to Canton league as well if you put the time into it.
Tips On How To Effectively Study Game Film
The best tip to effectively study game film is to look for the little things. It should never get lost on you that opportunity can be the most important thing to a player succeeding in a Campus to Canton league. How do you know if a player is going to get an opportunity based on film studying? Well, easy, you watch and see if they do the little things. This includes throwing blocks for the runner, giving maximum effort on every single play, and finding a way to impact the game even if it isn’t directly on the stat sheet. Another tip would be to focus on the player specifically. Sometimes, it’s easy to get lost watching the flow of the game, and doing so allows you to miss what a player does. If you’re specifically watching game films, it’s okay to watch a play and strictly focus on the player you have in mind.
Key Traits To Look For In College Football Prospects
First things first, the most important trait to look for in a college football prospect is effort. That was briefly mentioned in the last section, but it should be reiterated because it is massively integral to a player’s future success. Other traits that you should look for depend upon the position. For running backs, you want to see if they will fight for extra yards if they have good ball carrier vision, and if they can catch out of the backfield. For receivers, you want to watch their route running, speed, their willingness to block, and how they react when the ball doesn’t go their way. And for quarterbacks, watch their arm strength, accuracy, how they handle pressure in the pocket, and their mobility when that pocket collapses. Keeping an eye on these traits for all of the positions can help maximize your film studying.
Statistical Analysis
Studying film and evaluating talent isn’t all just based on things that wouldn’t pop up on the stat sheet. You also have to take a deep look at that aforementioned stat sheet to truly get a good idea of the player’s potential and talent.
Importance Of Analyzing College Football Stats
College football stats are very important, but you have to figure out how to sift out the meaningless numbers and find the good ones. Why? Because college football schedules aren’t all built the same. Some players can put up legendary numbers on the stat sheet for a small school and play far less competition. However, other players can put up slightly worse numbers, yet they could be playing on Georgia and take on the best of the best in terms of competition. You want to find great numbers and combine that with their strength of schedule. Identifying a great mixture of both can lead you to find some unbelievable players to add to your fantasy rosters.
Metrics That Matter Most For Predicting Future Success
The first metric that matters when it comes to predicting future success is their numbers against top-tier talent. If a player has great numbers across the season, but you dive deeper and realize that they underperform every time their team is the underdog, it could show you that this might not be a top-tier player in the NFL. Perhaps they don’t have what it takes right now to take their game to another level. Maybe it’s the opposite for some players, and they only raise their game against better competition, then take it too easy on opponents they believe they‘re better than. Other metrics that matter depend upon the position. A receiver would want to come down to a high percentage of receptions based on their total number of targets. A running back would want a high yards-per-carry average, and a quarterback would want to have fewer turnover numbers.
Player Comparisons
Next, you might want to double down and really try to figure out college football prospects that you want to add to your team. How else could you try and evaluate talent? One other way you can do so is by comparing the player you’re looking into with another player from either college or the NFL.
Comping Prospects To NFL Players
Every single season, we see top-ranked rookies coming into the NFL get compared to players who have already been in the league. Often, these professional comparisons don’t make much sense because they raise the bar high. For example, a player being compared to Patrick Mahomes does not mean that they will turn out that way. What it does mean is that some analysts think highly enough of them to give them such a generous comparison. After all, you’d rather that type of comparison than with a player who isn’t exactly getting starting reps. However, it is probably better to try and compare these prospects to NFL players on your own. Find NFL players who came from similar schools and situations, look at their numbers and how old they were when coming into the league, and at the end, you might come away with some very valuable information.
How To Draw Comparisons Between College Prospects And Successful NFL Players
The only way to really put up these comparisons between college prospects and already successful NFL players is to identify the little things they do. At the end of the day, it’s the stuff that doesn’t occur on the stat sheet that warrants comparisons to begin with. You want your player to have poise, confidence, and a type of energy that everybody can rally behind. This usually winds up with a college prospect getting compared to some big-name NFL athletes. So, the best way to draw these comparisons is by taking into account what you see visually, as opposed to what you see on the stat sheet with the numbers.
Tips On Using These Comparisons To Project Future Performance
I believe that the best tip you can use in order to maximize the way these comparisons help, is by doing it in a sort of tier-based ranking system. If you find that a college prospect you like is compared to a player at the top of their respective position in the NFL, then you can place them into the top tier. If they are lower, then, of course, you can place them lower. This helps you better visualize a projection of future performance because you’d rather see your guy get comparisons to top-tier talent in the NFL as opposed to backup options.
Spotting Hidden Gems
If you want to have any chance at winning a Campus to Canton fantasy league, then you have to have a unique ability to spot hidden gems before others do. That way, you can begin to stack up a significantly talented roster across the board.
Identifying Under The Radar Prospects
We all know what it’s like to find a prospect that not many people know about, yet we have a keen eye on it. If you don’t, well, there are a few ways that you can identify these types of prospects. The first is by watching college games that you normally wouldn’t. Most people watch the big-time games with the best players, but some of the best-hidden gems can be found in a game that many deem meaningless. Another way that you can identify talented prospects is by hearing about them off the field. Maybe you catch one of them appearing on a podcast or an interview and their words lead you to believe their work ethic is off the charts. Perhaps this could lead you to keep a closer eye on them and watch their tape when you normally wouldn’t have otherwise.
Strategies For Finding Undervalued Players
There are hidden gems, and then there are undervalued players. Sometimes a player can be very well known, yet you are well aware that they aren’t as valued as you believe they are. A good example of this could be when you’re looking at a backup running back on a team with an aging starter. People may look at that and believe the backup would have no value with a solidified number one back already on the roster, and others can see that the backup has become undervalued due to the fact that they can take over that starting job down the line. The key here is to really dive into each player’s situation and their environment because there are many circumstances where a player gets undervalued for reasons that nobody can explain.
Importance Of Focusing On Smaller Schools And Lesser-Known Conferences
This was mentioned earlier, but I can’t stress enough how critical it is to focus on smaller schools and lesser-known conferences. While there are so many great NFL players that come from big-name schools, there are great hidden gems that come from lesser-known schools. Just look at a guy like Puka Nacua. He was a fantasy football revelation last season in the NFL, and he started his college career at Washington before transferring after one season and spending the rest of his time at BYU. These smaller schools can create some unbelievably talented hidden gems, and the best part of this is that not many of your fantasy competitors will know about them. More likely than not, these opposing managers won’t focus too heavily on the lesser-known schools, leaving that talent free to scout as much as you’d like.
Conclusion
With all of that being said, where does that leave us? When you’re preparing to get into a Campus to Canton league, you need to be well aware of how important it is to identify and scout college football prospects. You can’t just lay back for this type of scouting, you need to be in-depth and as certain as you can be. To recap, it is best to try your best and evaluate film by watching games or taking a look at practice highlights, then you can attempt to draw comparisons between prospects and current NFL players, and finally, you can pay attention to lesser-known schools and conferences to find hidden gems that most fantasy managers wouldn’t. It is heavily recommended that you take all of this into consideration when scouting yourselves and use these strategies to the best of your abilities.