NC State football general manager Andy Vaughn recently spoke on the Wolfpack Weekly Radio Show, where he discussed scouting the transfer portal, how he would fix college football, and much more!
Andy, I have visions of you in the back like Billy Beane in Moneyball, not watching any of the games and going and, like, working out because you're too stressed to worry. You don't control that part of this. That's not what you control.
You're not the X's and O's in the game. So where were you? Where are you during games? How much are you observing? I don't want to ask you too much about Virginia and find out that you're doing seated rows.
No, I know what you guys are talking about. I've seen that movie many times. It's awesome. But no, I can't go work out during the game. I just, I've been in it so long before this was a thing, and so I don't get so many opportunities on the field. And those are some very unique situations, and I'm blessed to be down there.
So I have to be down in the action. I love being on the sidelines and seeing how the coaches work. Maybe I'm a little bit more deliberate now. And I'll walk around and listen to the position groups when they're coming off the side of the ball, come off the field, and listen to those interactions, watch the body language of the guys, and see how they're going through the game.
Obviously, it's a little frustrating when you watch it, and you can't do anything about it. Our work is done at that point. But we're just hoping that we put the best team out there and give those guys the best chance to succeed. But we're always reevaluating everything we do, and it just goes on season after season.
But yeah, it's tough to sit there and watch, hoping you did the right thing, made the right moves, and pulled all the right levers in the offseason to make this thing work. But yeah, I'd love to be in the thick of it. There's no way I couldn't be down on the field. It's too special to miss that.
You answered my follow-up. And you embedded it in there; it's like, OK, in that you're appropriately moving on to the next thing, because that's what we all do. You said your work is the rosters here. There are more rosters to come, and there are changes made in the spring and in the portal and all these things.
So you're looking at this roster through a very different prism than anybody else, maybe in all of Wolfpack Nation, because you're assessing things, thinking about eligibility next year, well, next week in some cases, and who you need to get and when. So that's what I was going to ask you: you're in Charlottesville. You're in any game thinking, what during the game, during the game?
You're just trying to watch the guys that you brought in. Are they doing the things that we thought they could do? Tony Shields and I just went into the offseason and tried to make sure we were bringing in the best pieces with the coaches, finding those guys, bringing them in, and seeing who fits and who doesn't. And you want to see if what you thought was right is, in fact, right.
You're looking for some verification of things you thought you were going to see from guys, like, where do we still think we need help in the future? Who are the young guys on the roster that maybe we didn't expect to come along, that are coming along, or because that's a good thing?
But it's also something we have to prepare for as we head toward the end of the season: if this guy is coming on as a young guy and his contract is up, we want to make sure he stays. How can we start putting ourselves in the best position to keep that? So, yeah, you're looking kind of in the past to say, “Hey, we thought we were right on some of these evals.”
Were we right? Where do we still need help? Where do we think we're good? You know what, guys, as I said, young guys are coming along, and we need to prepare for the offseason. Hey, if this guy keeps progressing, we might be able to rely on him, and I'll have to go get somebody.
And then, where do we need to see things we need to shore up for next year? So, yeah, it's a constant evaluation of the current roster to help us prepare in the background for next year's team. And looking at the recruiting class, we're also already starting lists across college football, from FCS games to the Group of Five to other power conferences, for games that are already happening.
And those will continue as more teams come online this week: who are the preseason honor roll guys, who are the preseason all-conference guys, who are the All-American guys, especially at the FCS level, and those kinds of things we need to be tracking. So if we have a good evaluation of those guys and a hole to fill, we already think, based on our evaluation, that this guy could do it. We need to go get that guy. So there's a constant back-and-forth looking for.
In addition to games, how much is every day of evaluation and practice, and how are they in the weight room and everything else of your current roster?
Yeah, I mean, it is. I mean, we collect probably more data points than anybody in the building, I would say, because we're constantly getting information from Coach Thunder’s staff. How are these guys progressing? How are they? How are their body types? Are their body types what we thought they would be? Are they putting on weight? Are they getting faster and stronger? Which guys are ahead of the curve?
Which guys are kind of, maybe behind the curve a little bit, and which guys are leaders, which guys need a little bit of help, which guys maybe are coming along at practice? We're constantly gathering data points because the more information we can get from as many different sources as possible, the better we can make our decisions.
You're never perfect, but we try to gather as much information as we can from different sources to filter out the misses, so to speak, and make the most informed choices we can. And, like, we'll do as we go through this season; we get to the bye weeks.
We're going to meet as a staff, look at the roster and the position groups, and get input from the trainers and the strength staff on where we think these guys are. How do they stack up so that Tony and I have a great idea as we go forward of, “Hey, like, this group might need some help. This group is pretty good,” which helps. We only have so many hours in the day, and that helps us as we go through these evals across the country; we don't need to spend as much time in this room.
We need to spend more time in this room on evals and stuff. So, yeah, as much data as we can get. And we're doing some creative things, I think, in the background with some partners to try to shore that up and use new technologies and eyes above the world, but like trying to find ways to use those things to help us be more efficient with the hours that we have in the day with North Dakota State at the Mountain West level.
There are 138 FBS teams, and then you've got the FCS. There's not enough. You mentioned time and limited resources. There's only so much time you can watch ball. There are so many guys that enter the portal now. How do you slice that up? Is it by position group and need? And so, therefore, you can look at cut-ups.
Do you watch a lot of games? Do you have time to watch a lot of games? Probably don't. So then it's got to be targeted somehow, right? So how do you go in the summer and go, all right, we're going to attack film viewing this way nationally, like even preparing for ACC games when we watch film? That's a lot.
That's just the league. And that's just — I'm selfishly thinking of my process right now, but not like, hey, I got to know about the backup freshman D-lineman at North Dakota because he's popped. How do you determine where to use your time?
A couple of layers to that. Again, Tony Shields is a fantastic asset to our department. He does advanced scouting for us. And so he's watching the two-deep for every team that we play this year. So there's already that kind of baseline because he's going to see opponents, but he's also going to see the teams they play against. So he's keeping lists of guys in the conference or opponents that we play.
So there's that list. And then we have, as I said, technologies we can utilize that will pull a lot of computer vision-type stuff. So you're looking at miles per hour. You're looking at speed. You're looking at statistics and how those compare. OK, this is our baseline as a team. These are people who match that across the country. We'll throw them on a list.
As I said, we'll use preseason honors to start a list and say, "hey, let's just track these guys." We do internal studies. Here's a study we did last year, though I can't remember all the details. But if you look at FCS offensive alignment, guys that were All-American in their freshman or sophomore year, I think there's an 80 percent chance they're going to make it to the league. The NFL.
So those are pretty good prospects. So that's just an example of how we can use metrics. And some of it works; some of it we run through, and it doesn't work. It doesn't make sense. But how can we use information and technology to improve the funnel and filter we're using?
So how do you have another list of guys who were recruited to come here but didn't come? Do you still keep them on a list and follow what they're doing?
Yeah, absolutely. We do. That's how some guys that were on the roster the last couple of years came back from those other schools, and, like, recruiting is not a zero-sum game anymore. It's you who wants to win every battle you fight. But sometimes it's OK to be one, be, or are high, too.
And so when that guy goes somewhere to chase, it may be dollars. It may be a logo, whatever it is. And he gets there, and he's not happy, or he's not getting to play in time. He remembers the relationships that he had here. And then that helps us in that process, because you're always, when you're in this thing, and there are thousands of kids across the country, but you want to try to base those decisions on people that you trust.
And so 100 percent, what we'll do is we'll take our recruiting board every year. The guys we don't get here at state, we'll put on a list. They're in our portal list. And then their stats and everything will be tracked to say, hey, how's this guy doing? Is he doing what we thought he would do? And/or is he kind of behind? Is he happy there? So, yeah, you're constantly monitoring that, because those should be the guys that you thought were really good before you had the relationship.
