“About 10 years ago somebody saw in Daniel Jones what the New York Giants just found out and they didn’t say anything,” NFL Hall of Famer and analyst Marshall Faulk, one of the most versatile and explosive offensive players in history, told The Shadow League on Sunday.
The Giants waived the former sixth overall NFL draft pick on Friday, a little more than 20 months after he signed a four-year, $160 million contract with $92 million in guaranteed scratch.
“There’s a reason Daniel Jones was at Duke,” Faulk added. “You have to find those things out before he gets to the league.”
“There was a reason why I went to San Diego State,” adds Faulk, who was clearly good enough to attend any college in the country. “It wasn’t because I couldn’t play. It was because I needed to learn how to play at a high level,” Faulk tells TSL, “and somebody was able to show me and teach me what I was going to need to do to get to the next level.”
What Is All Pro Scouting?
Helping to avoid the evaluation process that failed Daniel Jones, is something, Faulk says, that ratings publications such as Rival.com don’t offer.
That’s why Faulk and 12 other Hall of Fame players teamed up with Anthony Nichols, disgruntled father of a women’s college basketball recruit, and started Allproscouting.com.
The new age of high school player rankings and evaluations are here, and it’s being led by a brain trust of elite former NFL players, focused on eliminating the influence of computers in compiling high school rankings and providing “Hall of Fame intelligence” to parents and more bang for their buck in the ranking and evaluation process.
All Pro Scouting is the new standard in youth and high school athlete talent evaluation. Each athlete is individually scouted and evaluated by a former professional athlete or coach at their position.
Why Did Anthony Nichols Start All Pro Scouting?
Nichols, the founder and CEO of allproscouting.com, was watching the Super Bowl a few years back and they flashed a graphic of certain guys and their Rivals high school ratings, “and Aaron Rodgers was a three-star and Tyreek Hill had 0 stars and Sauce Gardner was two or three-star coming out of high school,” Nichols told TSL. “How did all of the ratings miss on some of the all-time great players in NFL history?”
In addition to the erratic ranking systems, Nichols adds that the inspiration for the company also “started from years ago watching people on morning shows present their opinions as fact and have the audacity to sit across from players who played the game and were in the Hall of Fame and try to argue with them, and it always looked so absurd to me.”
Seeing how over the last few years media has shifted, where players are now narrating their own stories through podcasts and social media, Nichols felt it would be great to do that on a larger scale, with talent evaluation.
“I have a daughter who is a freshman basketball player in college and the things they gravitate to starting in middle school is what’s my star rating? What did this online publication say about me today?” Nichols griped.
“Or my teammate or somebody I’m chasing. So, getting to the bottom of that and how they produce the ratings and the content all of the stuff it revolves around, I realized its algorithm based,” Nichols contends. “It’s not human beings speaking on talent and skill, it’s more popularity based and its really geared for these publications … their algorithm tells them what’s going to generate the most traffic on their site.”
Nichols Brings Hall of Famer Marshall Faulk Into The Loop: Technology and Expert Opinion
Nichols and Faulk both agree that this method of evaluating talent is moving in a bad direction.
“With NIL having taken precedence,” Faulk, who says APS also has the highest technology to bring the latest information to parents, tells TSL, “We have kids whose NIL money is affected by where these publications rank them. We don’t think it fair to have a computer decide who’s the No. 1 quarterback in the country.”
With that in mind, Nichols came up with a plan to put qualified people in a position to actually speak on these high school players’ games “and protect the reputation of it.”
Nichols Gets Advice From Hall of Fame Tight End and Executive Ozzie Newsome
One of the people Nichols reached out to when he was building the model for his company was Hall of Fame tight end and two-time Super Bowl winning executive Ozzie Newsome, who Nichols says offered Nichols some crucial advice.
“If you’re going to get into scouting, my rule for myself is … as many players as I’ve drafted and all of that, at the end of the day tight ends and receivers are my thing,” Newsome told Nichols. “Thats where I spend my time, and it was up to me to get other people to recognize greatness in other positions and trust them to evaluate properly.”
From there, the model for Allproscouting.com was created.
Position Specific Evaluations From Highest Level Of NFL Experts: Nick Fury & Tony Stark
“We needed informed position specific data and traits and characteristics produced by guys who played that position at the highest-level,” said Nichols, who was introduced to Faulk a few years back and immediately sold him on the vision.
“I liken myself to Nick Fury,” Nichols told The Shadow League. “I’m just a regular guy who needs superheroes to execute a certain plan.”
“We got Tony Stark first, which was Marshall,” Nichols said. “It was his credibility and reputation that allowed other great Hall of Famers to take a chance on me and see what we could accomplish with this.”
All Pro Scouting Employs 60 Former Players, Founded By 12 Hall of Famers
The Hall of Famers that co-founded and currently work with Allproscouting.com are: Faulk, Warren Moon, Charles Woodson, Ray Lewis, Dermontti Dawson, Warren Sapp, Tim Brown, Rod Woodson, Tony Gonzalez, Isaac Bruce, DeMarcus Ware and Jackie Slater.
Former NFL players such NFL quarterback EJ Manuel, tight end Jeremy Shockey and offensive linemen Will Shields and Kevin Mawae are among the 60 employees doing film review of these players.
“Hall of Fame guys who created the criteria and then on top of that we have former NFL players who played the game at a high level, evaluating and grading your position-specific tape,” Nichols said.
What Made NFL Legend Marshall Faulk Help Start All Pro Scouting: Life After Football
Faulk says his main inspiration for being a part of the company is two-fold. Parents are sacrificing so much and spending thousands of dollars to get their kids to the next level of opportunity in sports and also investing in the game itself.
Faulk told The Shadow League, “Why not give them the best resources possible to let them know exactly where their kid is in his development process?”
Faulk continued: “We don’t just tell you where your kid is with ratings and rankings. We then give you advice on what the kid needs to do to get to the next level, and that’s what most people aren’t doing in this field.”
Pay a fee and you also get the sensibility, experience, engagement and wisdom of Hall of Famers.
This isn’t just a money-making operation. When Nichols came up with the idea and roped in Faulk, the selling point was that the company would also give back to the game and the players who helped shape the game over the years by providing them with a task that involves football and some employment.
With APS, Faulk stresses, Hall of Famers set the criteria, which gives the site credibility and also provides jobs for NFL players once they leave the game. These players have a specific skill set, says Faulk, “that once you leave the game — other than coaching or working in television — you don’t get to use the skill set as much.”
“When we retire sometimes you don’t want to coach and do other stuff, but you don’t know what you want to do. Our company employs guys and allows them to work on their own time, watch film, communicate with these kids and grade them. It’s a great opportunity,” Faulk explained.
“We are going to employ as many guys as possible to watch tape,” he added. “Most guys that played on the NFL, they are somewhere coaching kids trying to get them to the next level and this would be another resource to help those kids as well.”
In addition to the staff and 12 founding Hall of Famers, the All-Pro Scouting Executive Team is composed of Nichols and co-founder Brian Davis, special adviser to the CEO and lawyer Michael Traylor, and legendary NFL PR and media and communications guru Tony Wyllie, who serves as ASP chief communications officer.
Other Ratings Publications Don’t Have Personal Evaluations, Communication Offered By Hall of Famers
Other rating companies don’t have the element of former players doing the evaluating that APS brings to the table.
“As pro players we evaluate one another on a weekly basis,” Faulk added. “That’s what we do. Now we are bringing that to this recruiting arena, and it’s sorely needed. It makes so much sense and not to sound cocky, but it will become the standard in recruiting evaluation and other companies will then probably start hiring pros to evaluate high school players.”
Since leaving the sport and entering the booth, Marshall Faulk has been a valuable mentor to mega stars in the game such as Christian McCaffrey and Odell Beckham, who reach out to Faulk for advice and encouragement.
That’s another element, Nichols says that make APS different.
“The value we add as mentors, it’s a unique thing,” Nichols boasts. “We are not just saying we are here to get to help you get in college. These guys will give you the road map to Canton if you want it. There’s less than 400 NFL Hall of Famers who can offer you that expertise, and we have a bunch of them working and ready to provide these services.”
There are so many different aspects to being a highly touted high school recruit entering college now. NIL, branding and big bags being dispensed to young athletes.
“Who are you going to ask general questions about navigating these situations,” Faulk asked in citing another deficiency in the current rankings system while highlighting the extra resources that APS provides in comparison. “If you are an elite player and need to speak to someone about these things imagine being able to call or DM someone such as Faulk and get advice from a reliable source.”
How Does All Pro Scouting Work?
For a fee, aspiring college players and recruits get two of their games watched by a Hall of Famer that played the same position.
The former player watches two game films of the recruit.
He makes professional notes, detailing the strength and weaknesses of the player and the areas of improvement they need to address, as well as picture in picture video messaging. It’s very personal interaction for the kid.
And it’s already showing results.
For example, Class of 2012 Hall of Fame center Dermontti Dawson, a seven-time Pro Bowl and six-time All-Pro selection, graded an offensive lineman, and the player tweeted out his evaluation from Dawson. According to Faulk, Dawson graded an offensive lineman, and the kid tweeted out that evaluation and literally got his first offer the same day he tweeted it out.
Faulk says that situation is an example of how their company gets eyeballs and credibility.
“We aren’t putting out random grades,” Faulk said.
It’s also harder to get a five-star rating from All Pro Scouting, Faulk says, “but it means so much more when you get a five-star rating, because if you are a quarterback, Warren Moon looked over your film and then put his name on it.”
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So Max Preps, Rivals, AllSports 247 and the many ranking companies should beware. It looks like the new standard for high school recruiting and evaluation is here.