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NFL scouts return to Texas to scout players

About time.

By Wescott Eberts
Adam Hunger-USA TODAY Sports

NFL personnel types are once again making Austin a stopping point on their college football rounds, as the Texas Longhorns have hosted a number of scouts throughout fall camp.

In fact, nearly every team sent a representative to see Texas practice over the last few weeks:

While the presence of prospects like senior defensive end Cedric Reed, junior defensive tackle Malcom Brown, senior cornerback Quandre Diggs, and senior running back Malcolm Brown make this Horns draft class arguably better than the last group, the attendance of the scouts was an important step in the right direction for a program that failed to have a player drafted for the first time since 1938.

It was a clear indictment of former head coach Mack Brown and his staff in terms of their collective ability to develop players, a reality made even more pronounced by the fact that one of those players, defensive end Jackson Jeffcoat, was the first Hendricks Award winner as the nation's best defensive end to go undrafted.

No other Hendricks winner in the award's history had gone lower than the fourth round.

Even before the draft, it was clear that some NFL teams had essentially bailed on seriously evaluating the Texas program, as the Pro Day back in March was the most sparsely attended event in years. By that point, a number of teams had apparently decided

But the NFL teams clearly want to see the 2015 draft prospects and assess the player development under new head coach Charlie Strong.

The new Director of Player Personnel for the program clearly took that line of thinking:

The guess here is that the scouts liked what they saw better than what was happening in the past.

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