Every year NFL teams must weigh the risk-reward factor of players with behavioral/character issues. Sometimes they go on to have stellar careers without any problems. Sometimes they're named Titus Young. Washington Redskins coach Mike Shanahan said they're not taking on those headaches. "If it's a big risk, we're not going there. We're not going there," Shanahan said at his pre-draft press conference, The Washington Post's Mike Jones reported. "We've worked too hard to build this football team to take big risks. Now, will you take a risk? It all depends on how much research you do and you decide if it's worth the risk, and sometimes we'll look at a guy and someone will think it is a big risk but we've done our homework so, if it was that big a risk, he wouldn't be on our football team. "So, you go ahead and do your homework, your due diligence. There's always mistakes made, but that's something that we put a lot of time in." Shanahan described their background check process. "Go back to high school. Go back to the college," Shanahan said. "Go back to the equipment man, the trainer. Not just the coaches that usually give you the standard line, 'Yeah, this guy's great.' Teachers in college. There's a lot of different people that you can find out about the true character of a guy and usually it's the people that aren't your coach or aren't the people that are talking to the scouts. "We try to do that and if you do it enough and you've got scouts that work hard enough, you start eliminating mistakes and that's what we're hoping to do." Source: NFL.com
Wrong philosophy in this era... Identifying what the problem is, what elements are there now that won't be in the future, the natural maturing of young guys, how strong a support staff you have are just some of the intangibles to consider. The Bears played that 'holier than thou' approach for years & missed out on some good players but they also had some key weaknesses in their staffs that wouldn't have been able to deal with issues. Shanahan's approach to in-depth scouting is fine but he's got no flexibility. Choir boys are hard to find nowadays in this media era.
