When the Miami Dolphins interviewed prospective draft picks at the NFL combine in Indianapolis this year, they brought a 31-member contingent including their coaches, scouts and trainers as well as assorted front-office staff, their chief of security, a psychologist and a priest.
Rev. Leo Armbrust is known for his ability to divine character, good and bad, with his distinctive interviewing style. Didn’t hurt to have a man of the cloth on hand to pray for a little good luck, either.
The draft, as every NFL employee and fan knows, is an inexact science. Just the same, it is no longer the adventurous leap of faith it once was. While talent evaluation has become more sophisticated, so has a team’s ability to delve into off-field conduct that may reveal the moral fiber of potential multimillion-dollar investments.
NFL Security has been in place since 1961, and “pre-employment checks” have gone on for years. But for 21 of 32 teams, the NFL’s network of former federal agents and private investigators entrusted to safeguard the league’s image and integrity is now supplemented by additional security personnel who aid in making sure no one ends up with a criminal for, say, right offensive tackle.
Unless that team has weighed its options, weighed the right offensive tackle and decided to take its chances.
“It tells you the character of the team,” Bears general manager Jerry Angelo said. “Some teams do know [the problematic backgrounds of their draftees] and don’t care . . . There are four or five teams where that is totally irrelevant. The bottom line is height, weight and speed and how he plays the game.”
Character is a slippery proposition, however, and Angelo acknowledges that a team’s standards are often weighed against draft position.
“We don’t want to reward bad behavior,” he said. “That’s not saying you wouldn’t take a questionable guy at times, but when you do, you have to have leverage. If you got him in the fourth, fifth or sixth round, he’s not making a lot of money and you can always cut him. There’s no such thing as a fourth-round bust. And you tell them that.”
Although tight end Alonzo Mayes was known to have used marijuana, the Bears determined he was a good risk in the fourth round of the ’98 draft, and not deemed that great a loss when he was traded two years later for a seventh-round pick.
But after the murder trial of the Baltimore Ravens’ Ray Lewis and the murder conviction of the Carolina Panthers’ Rae Carruth two years ago, many teams began saying they would no longer draft players with questionable backgrounds.
Before the 2000 NFL draft, The New York Times reported that the league investigated 323 draft-eligible players and that 68 of those had “reportable information,” which includes everything from traffic violations to drug charges.
NFL vice president of security Milt Ahlerich would not reveal such numbers for this year’s draft but said the “common misconception” about so-called problem players is “very unfair . . . the number is very small.”
Ahlerich is a 25-year FBI veteran. Some teams, he said, employ former Secret Service agents, former police chiefs and a former postal inspector as security specialists.
“Some teams fly investigators to cities where the young man was in college, go to their home towns, have firsthand interviews with those who know him and the player himself,” Ahlerich said.
The Bears send approximately 30 staff members to the combine, including a psychologist hired to evaluate players. They’re one of 11 NFL teams not to employ their own security people for investigative purposes, a decision Angelo defends.
“We put the onus on the scout during the year,” he said. “Are you going to be 100 percent? No. But I would be shocked if somebody is a 180 [-degree difference] from what we’ve already described him.
“To me you can’t get enough information but you can only digest so much.”
The Bears rely on the NFL for background checks.
“We’re not looking at personalities,” Ahlerich said. “What we’re looking at is, has he had problems with the law consistently? Has he had three DUIs and two speeding tickets? Certainly the whole area of associations and gambling is very much a hot-button issue. Anyone can influence a player.”
Through the league’s security system teams have access to everything that is public record on prospective players. Ahlerich said most teams are “intensely interested” in such data.
The Bears assign a staff member to call the phone number provided by the league, enter the team’s code number, then go through a list of every potential draft choice, getting responses of “nothing,” to specific transgressions for each player.
Players eligible for the draft are asked to sign releases allowing the NFL to learn of any financial problems they may have. A player who won’t consent to having his background examined is suspected of having something to hide.
Sometimes, however, even the best intentions and most intense checking will not reveal a potential problem player. Carruth is a perfect example.
“We wouldn’t have caught anything at all,” Ahlerich said. “There was no suggestion whatsoever, not a thing in Carruth’s background. He was clean as a whistle.
“But what we’re looking at is public record information. There is this really wrong perception that we go out sneaking around, talking to old girlfriends, aunts and uncles, but it doesn’t happen that way. It’s all controlled by employment law and it’s a common practice in many organizations hiring highly paid employees.”
The Dolphins have become more vigilant over the years after four years of controversial signings under then-coach Jimmy Johnson, including running backs Lawrence Phillips and Cecil Collins. Current Miami coach Dave Wannstedt also has been burned in a sense.
After the Bears took Curtis Enis with the No. 5 pick in the 1998 draft–Wannstedt’s last with the Bears–Enis acknowledged previous alcohol problems, announced he had joined the controversial Champions for Christ and basically displayed personality traits totally inconsistent with what Wannstedt had seen in two meetings with Enis on the Penn State campus.
Angelo said the Bears would not repeat the mistakes of Enis or John Capel, a seventh-round pick in 2001 who had been arrested for marijuana possession. Yet the Bears did sign former Virginia Tech punter Jimmy Kibble last fall without knowing he had been released from jail three days earlier. They then rescinded the offer.
“You do as much as you can,” Angelo said. “Make sure the guy we put on the board we know inside and out, we’ve talked to enough people, we’ve done our due diligence, we’ve canvassed that campus. Everybody who has contact with that kid on a daily basis, from an academic adviser to his position coach and everybody in between.”
Angelo said the traditional way of checking out players–simply asking their college coach for an honest appraisal–rarely works anymore. Interviewing players doesn’t tell much either, according to defensive coordinator Greg Blache.
“More and more they’re trained by their agents to give you the pat answer,” he said.
Angelo says experienced scouts, personnel people and GMs have to rely on longtime associations and their own reputations to find the real truth about players.
“You go to these schools, they stick you in a room and one guy talks–the pro liaison. You ask a question, he says, `Great guy.’ How does he learn? `Fine.’ Give me a little bit about his toughness. `Real tough.’ How does he play with pain? `He plays with pain well.’
“What you wrote for the first guy, you wrote for the last guy. That’s their protocol, and you can’t talk to anybody else but the pro liaison. So it’s hard to get that information.”
NFL Security has been accused of playing Big Brother. But the NFL Players Association is publicly supportive.
“We use them for identity theft cases, for players checking on prospective investments. They’re very thorough and very helpful,” said assistant NFLPA executive director Doug Allen. “There used to be much more information the club would have and players wouldn’t know it, but that was decades ago. Now it’s all about protecting the integrity of players, clubs, everything associated with the league.
“Our primary concern is confidentiality of information so that if they find something, you don’t read about it in the newspaper the next day.”
Teams can only hope that when a player’s name shows up in the papers it’s for performance on the field. Then again it’s all largely a game of chance.
“We’re not looking for boy scouts and citizens of the year,” Angelo said. “We want our players to be good citizens and good models for our youth and for our community. I don’t look at that as an option. It’s a responsibility they have based on how they’re looked at and the attention they get and the money they make. But you’re dealing with human beings.”
