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Report: Redskins Reached Out to Scot McCloughan for Personnel Job

The Redskins are reportedly looking to bring in one of the NFL's top talent evaluators

By Scott Jennings
Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports

NFL.com's Ian Rapoport is reporting that the Washington Redskins have reached out to Scot McCloughan for a top executive position with the team.  Last week the team was reportedly going to offer A.J. Smith an "enhanced" role with the team.  Have the Redskins finally realized that Bruce Allen needs top personnel men in the building to build the team properly?

JUST BEFORE 9 O'CLOCK the next morning, McCloughan is checking out college football players on video. He runs his own scouting business and says a handful of NFL teams pay him $75,000 each to evaluate players. He moved to Ferndale from Seattle because the open space reminded him of his hometown of Loveland, Colorado, but his farmhouse has the feel of a temporary residence, the marks of someone straddling worlds. Rented furniture, no pictures on the walls. On the floor are framed photos of his three children from a marriage that began to collapse when his life did. In one, son Caden, 15, leans into his dad's chest as confetti falls after last season's Super Bowl; in another, twin daughters Adison and Avery, 11. They live in Northern California with their mother, Scot's ex, Kelli. He talks to them every day, and before they hang up he asks them to pray.

He has two Super Bowl rings locked in a safe. Each of the three teams for which he has worked in his 20 years in the NFL -- the Packers, two stints with the Seahawks, and the 49ers -- has reached the Super Bowl during his tenure or shortly afterward. McCloughan had a part in drafting six players who were on the Pro Bowl roster last season, including Patrick Willis and Vernon Davis. His report on Russell Wilson for the Seahawks a few years ago read: "Obviously we are really interested in passers with better height, but this guy may just be the exception to the rule. He has the 'it' factor."

So does McCloughan. He has an "exceptional ... uncanny" gift, in the words of his mentor and former boss Ron Wolf. It's why he named his business Instinctive Scouting. This morning, he is consumed with an FBS middle linebacker projected by many to be a sixth- or seventh-rounder. But on a play in which the linebacker sprints to the sideline to make a tackle on a bubble screen, McCloughan sees something others might miss. The linebacker smelled a screen before anyone else and was just fast enough to get to the receiver. "You can't teach that," McCloughan says. He leans forward, quietly rewinding split seconds of the clip again and again.

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