April 23, 2003
East Rutherford, N.J. - Jerry Reese attended a meeting of the Giants scouting department soon after he joined the organization as a scout in December, 1994. Reese closely observed then director of player personnel Tom Boisture, who ran both the meeting and the department.
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| Director of Player Personnel Jerry Reese has refined the Giants scouting system. |
"When we had our meetings where we'd talk about all the players," Reese said recently. "I'd look at Tom and think, `Man, he has a great job.'"
On May 1 last year, Reese got that job. He succeeded Marv Sunderland, who had taken over for Boisture four years earlier.
"Little did I know the job is a pressure cooker," Reese said. "I thought it was a pretty cool deal. There's a little more to it than the title."
Reese will discover just how much more this weekend, when he stands in front of the draft room and leads the discussions before each of the Giants' picks in the seven-round NFL draft.
"Obviously, all that matters is what players we get," general manager Ernie Accorsi said. "But in his first draft as director of player personnel, he exhibited a tremendous organizational ability and ran terrific meetings for his first time. And it doesn't surprise me."
Reese, who leads a staff of nine scouts, loves the job, just as he did when he first observed Boisture at the front of the room.
"I'm a facilitator," Reese said. "We have quality scouts. The scouts do the work. They should get more credit than they do. I've got the title, but the scouts do the legwork. They dig out the players."
Reese has refined the organization's grading system. Last season, his partial itinerary included stops at Tulsa, Northwestern, Virginia Tech, Maryland, Michigan State, Michigan, LSU, Wisconsin, Memphis, Murray State, Southeast Missouri, Nashville and the University of Alabama.
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"After I got here and saw what the scouting was all about, and what the Giants organization was all about, I knew I had made the right decision. From Mr. (Wellington) Mara all the way down to the last guy, it felt like a family atmosphere here. It was rewarding to come to an organization like this. And when I was out on the road, guys would always come up to me and say, `You're lucky you got to go there, because the Giants have a great organization.'"
- Jerry Reese |
But his most visible contribution to the scouting department is a thick white notebook that sits on his desk. It is the team's scouting manual for the 2002-2003 season, approximately 400 pages that include everything a Giants scouts needs to succeed in his job. Each scout received a manual last year at training camp. It includes college and pro schedules, bowl and all-star game schedules, a list of prospects, calendars of NFL events, policies and procedures, how Reese wants the scouts to operate when they visit a campus, the kind of information they should get, the responsibilities in their areas.
"I didn't want them to leave with questions," Reese said. "Everything they need to know is in this book."
Reese, 39, has always been a stickler for detail. He enjoyed a successful coaching and playing career at the University of Tennessee at Martin. Reese never had any aspirations to be a scout or join the NFL until he was approached by Jeremiah Davis, who has been scouting for the Giants since 1988.
"He was the secondary coach at Tennessee-Martin when I was a grad assistant," Reese said. "After he left, I took his spot as the secondary coach there. We kept in touch, and after about six or seven years he called me and asked me if I wanted to scout. The Giants were looking for a scout in the southeast. I really didn't want to do it. I didn't want to be on the road like that. But he told me to think about it. Finally, I agreed to talk to Tom Boisture. My wife and I decided to give it a shot. And the rest is history. It was a blessing in disguise kind of thing.
"After I got here and saw what the scouting was all about, and what the Giants organization was all about, I knew I had made the right decision. From Mr. (Wellington) Mara all the way down to the last guy, it felt like a family atmosphere here. It was rewarding to come to an organization like this. And when I was out on the road, guys would always come up to me and say, `You're lucky you got to go there, because the Giants have a great organization.'"
After four seasons as a colleges scout, Reese became Dave Gettleman's assistant in the pro personnel department, a position he held for three years.
"I liked pro personnel," Reese said. "It was a good experience to see how the pro end of it works. You're looking at the players in the league and evaluating free agents, guys who will be free agents. The difference between pro and college scouting is that in college you have to project a little bit more. In the pro end of it, what you see is pretty much what you get. It was a good experience to see the level of the players who are in the league. When you're a college scout you sometimes say, `no way this guy can play in the league.' Then you get on the pro side and you see some of the guys playing in the NFL and you're surprised by some of the marginal talent that makes it in this league. There are so many teams and there aren't enough players to go around.
"That experience helps me being on the college side. I tell my scouts, `I've seen these type guys make it. You can't just write them off, because these guys can play in the league.'"
Reese's nine scouts are divided by geographic region. The Giants begin each year with a list of hundreds of potential draft-eligible players compiled by the Blesto Scouting Combine. When the season begins, Reese and his scouts traverse the country, studying any player that even remotely interests them.
In a typical week during the season, Reese will spend Monday through Wednesday looking at film, writing reports on players he's scouted and studying reports sent in by other scouts. He communicates regularly with the scouts via e-mail, voice mail or phone conversations. (Reese also credits his assistant, Rita Giordanetti, for keeping the department running smoothly. "She is incredible. I couldn't make it without her," Reese said.).
Reese generally departed New Jersey on Thursday morning to attend a game that night. Fridays are spent traveling to another campus and watching tape of the two teams he will scout on Saturday. If possible, he attends the Giants game on Sunday.
"I try to go see the top players," Reese said. "But I'll go anywhere I have to go for an A rated player."
Those, of course, are the country's best players. The scouts follow basically the same schedule as Reese, but they don't attend Giants game because they live in various outposts around the country. When they arrive on campus, the scouts must look at their selected players on tape, and see them live, either in practice or in a game.
"Watching tape plus live scouting, we call that a solid look," Reese said. ". You can't write a report without both. Scouts go to games every weekend to get live looks. Guys look different on tape than they do live.
"Everybody we write a report on, we want a solid look. We try to get three solid looks at schools with A rated players. That's three scouts looking at the same guys. The schools with B rated players get two looks, and those with C rated players get one look."
During the season, the scouts and Reese turn in hundreds of reports. Players are added to the original list of prospects to be scouted as the season progresses and new players emerge.
After the bowl and all-star games are completed, the scouts convene at Giants Stadium for the initial draft meetings. Every player is discussed and those the team has no real interest in are eliminated from further consideration. Later, grades are assigned to each player. In the weeks leading up to the draft, more extensive meetings are held and each draft-eligible player is discussed in more detail. It was in those meetings that Reese so impressed Accorsi.
All this work, of course, is to pick 11 players over the two-day draft - assuming, of course, that the Giants keep all of their picks.
"It's not a crapshoot, but it's not science," Reese said. "You're trying to get the best information you can, then it's an educated guess. It's a ton of work that's involved and then you pick seven guys. But you want to pick the best seven guys to help your team."
The burden for doing just that falls on Reese. He will stand in front of the room on draft day, with the eyes of the team's scouts, coaches and executives on him as he recites the pros and cons of each player under consideration for a particular pick.
"I'm looking forward to it," Reese said. "It's not a me thing, it's an us thing. We want to pick the right guy."
For the Giants to remain competitive, they have to.
Reese Leads Giants into Draft Weekend
