Inside the Rams’ draft process, ‘the most in-depth system in the NFL’While Aaron Donald was routinely wrecking opposing offenses at Pitt, that penchant for defensive domination caught the attention of Billy Johnson, a young assistant scout for the Rams whose duties included cutting game video of college prospects.
Johnson was so green at the time he probably should have just kept his mouth shut and focused on the immediate task, which basically meant churning out highlight videos as fast as possible. To expedite the process, each prospect’s tape got cut in four-game increments, nothing more.
For all the terror Donald was creating in college during his senior year in 2013, you didn’t have to be Vince Lombardi to figure out he was barely 6 feet. That might have been fine for the Big East and ACC. Was Johnson really going to make a smallish defensive lineman the hill he died on so early in his scouting career?
But there was just something about Donald’s sheer dominance that Johnson couldn’t resist. And the...
[
theathletic.com]
