Meet The NFL’s Most Infamous Talent Evaluator
“Think of the most important thing you’d want to know about an NFL prospect,” Barry Petchesky wrote for Deadspin on Thursday, ahead of last night’s draft.
“The piece of information that should be listed first on his NFL.com draft profile. It is, almost certainly, nothing like these:
Texas A&M WR Mike Evans: “His father, Mickey, was murdered when Mike was 9.”
NIU safety Jimmie Ward: “Has a child.”
Oregon TE Colt Lyerla: “Grew up poor in an unstable environment.”
“The man behind all these evaluations is Nolan Nawrocki, known around some parts as Trollscout. Perhaps most famous for his dog-whistle evaluations of Cam Newton and Geno Smith for Pro Football Weekly, Nawrock is now part of the official NFL media machine.”
Click through to read Chicago writer Daniel Libit’s profile of Nawrocki, re-posted from last month.
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“Nolan Nawrocki’s NFL.com draft profiles are fantastic, but normally point out some very odd points about players,” the CBS sports radio station in Houston points out.
“(Example: ‘Overly emotional and prone to outbursts following a dysfunctional childhood that offered little direction and much confusion related to a divorce.’)
“Here are our Nolan Nawrocki-esque Draft Profiles of SportsRadio610 Jocks.
Nick Wright: Blew $70K gambling in an 11-month span, an admitted marijuana user, encourages race mixing & rabble rousing.
John P. Lopez: Mexican-American. Grew up with four siblings and four cousins in the same inner-city barrio house. Once got stabbed in the knee in a fight. Ate beans and rice with every meal until the age of 18. Hid in an alley for three hours after getting caught in crossfire of street gunfight. Eats menudo.
And so on. Click through for the rest.
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“Nolan Nawrocki is back, which means the NFL Draft’s Silly Season has commenced,” Ty Duffy wrote last month for The Big Lead.
“The analyst who believed Cam Newton was a delusional con artist and Geno Smith was ‘not a student of the game‘ is back. Topping his list of ‘most controversial prospects for the 2014 Draft,’ ahead of Colt Lyerla and Jeremy Hill are Johnny Manziel and Jadeveon Clowney.”
To be fair, those guys topped everybody’s lists as risks with red flags. But, yeah.
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“Nolan Nawrocki is like the Punxsutawney Phil of the football world. Ignored all year until he suddenly emerges each February, usually to piss everyone off,” Brad Gagnon wrote for Awful Announcing.
“The former senior editor at Pro Football Weekly, who is now at NFL.com, unofficially ushers in draft hype season on an annual basis by throwing at least one promising quarterback prospect under the bus in exaggerated, sensational fashion.”
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“Nawrocki isn’t racist, he’s gutless,” Jason Whitlock wrote for Fox Sports last year.
Click through to see why.
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Comments welcome.
Posted on May 9, 2014