NFL teams obviously don’t start their scouting process for the following year in the following year. It’s a year-round process. Area scouts are readying for the 2022 college football season. Scouting directors are coordinating the whole things, and general managers are crunching a bit of tape whenever they might be able in bite-size pieces around the daily business of getting ready for their own seasons.
One thing that tells all those people what their needs might be in next year’s draft is this year’s preseason. You have a pretty good idea at this point what your team’s strengths and weaknesses are, and while you may get a slight kick from somebody else’s castoff in final cuts, you kind of have what you have unless you’re thinking about making a major trade before the deadline.
