I read his profile before and thought, "Hey, this guy sounds like a fit for the Pats." And apparently the Pats feel the same way. Purdue DE Cliff Avril will be a guest of honor in Foxborough as the Patriots put him through the motions and under the microscope. The funny thing is, I didn't notice him until I found out the Pats took a closer look at his teammate, LB Stanford Keglar.
Based on scouting reports, Avril is expected to become a starter while Keglar is pegged for special teams/reserve role. Also coming for a visit will be DE Jason Jones from Eastern Michigan. Now this kid is huge at 6-5 273! The last time the Pats had a LB that big was long time Pat Willie McGinest. This youngin' intrigues me. Belichick likes his big linebackers and they don't get much bigger than that. I want to find out more about him, as well as other prospects.
One source of great scouting profiles is the nfl.com/draft page. They get their info straight from NFLDraftScout.com, maybe the best resource for draft information. The negative is going directly to NFL Draft Scout, to access their premium information requires a payment. But why pay when you can get what you need from nfl.com?
A bit of disappointment, though. Last year the NFL Network had player profiles through the On Demand menu of my cable provider. It was great because you could see the top prospects in action in various highlights and drills from the combine. It's not there this year.
The alternative is the nfl.com/draft page has a little video clip of the prospect as part of their profile. I tried it out for Jason Jones, but it had cheesy music, no narration, and no highlights from his games. Weak! I guess the alternative is to see if someone did the NFL's work and assembled a small highlight reel and posted it on YouTube.
Keywords: Cliff Avril, Jason Jones, NFL Draft Scout, NFL.com/draft
