Vikings Insider: Scouting as simple as 1.2345

Back in the day at Winter Park -- well, earlier this decade -- the Vikings divided all 700-plus draft prospects into five color-coded categories.

The top 8-10 players were listed on a wall underneath what looked like a blue poker chip. (Hence, "blue-chip" prospects.) An orange dot projected the player as an immediate starter. Green players were eventual starters who needed some development time; purple designated likely backups and red described a marginal prospect deemed worthy of a free-agent shot.

This relatively simple process introduced us to Randy Moss and Daunte Culpepper while also entering "Dimitrius Underwood," "Michael Boireau" and "Raonall Smith" to the Minnesota lexicon. Broad evaluations can minimize the chances of overthinking the obvious, but they can also allow important details to slide by.

Suffice it to say, no draft minutiae will slip through the layered net the Vikings have cast under Vice President of Player Personnel Rick Spielman, who joined the team in May 2006.

Spielman's approach allows for 21 different player classifications, separated by distinctions so subtle that scouts needed extensive training to learn the differences. To stack his final draft board, Spielman relies on a numeric grading system that pushes decimal points into the ten-thousandths -- as in, a player with a grade of 1.2344 is better than a player who grades out at 1.2345.

Mind-numbing as it might seem, this level of quantitative analysis is hardly unprecedented among NFL teams. Rather, it reflects the complexity with which many teams -- a group that now includes the Vikings -- approach the industry's most important team-building exercise.

"It can get pretty complicated," Spielman said without a touch of a irony during an interview in his Winter Park office earlier this month.

As next weekend's NFL draft approaches, the Vikings are hoping Spielman's system will generate a crop similar to the one it produced last year. Tailback Adrian Peterson, cornerback Marcus McCauley, defensive end Brian Robison and receivers Sidney Rice and Aundrae Allison combined for 27 starts among 54 appearances, and all figure to play prominent roles in 2008.

Owner Zygi Wilf was so impressed that he extended Spielman's contract through 2011, cementing the draft approach as a foundation of the franchise. All of which brought the obvious question: What is the formula?

When the topic moved toward his ranking system earlier this month, Spielman popped up from his chair.

"Hold on," he said. "Let me go get the cheat sheet."

Spielman darted into the Vikings' draft room across the hall from his office, emerging a moment later with a single laminated sheet of paper. He left it within sight of a reporter, but the print was so tiny it needed no security encryption.

In providing an outline of the process, Spielman said the first job for scouts is to place each player into one of the 21 categories -- all of which carry nuanced, descriptive titles. The top category, Spielman said, is called "A Rare Prospect, Immediate Impact Player, First-year Pro Bowler, Future Hall of Famer."

Then Spielman rattled off the next four categories:

• ''A guy you think is going to be an impact player in the league and has the potential to be a top-three or top-four at his position."

• ''Guys who will be solid starters for you. He's going to come in, for someone he's going to be a first-game starter his rookie year."

• ''Someone who is going to be a solid player that you can win with. You can play 16 games with him, but it's going to take him maybe halfway through his rookie year before he gets into a starting role. It's going to take him a little longer to develop."

• ''A guy who is going to be a starter you can win with, but he might not be a starter until his second year."

And so on.

As the scale moves downward, Spielman draws a line to mark where the players are no longer considered future starters.

"Is this a guy who will develop for a few years and can be a role player but will be a 16-game starter in his third year?" he said. "Or is this guy going to be a role player that you can start five or six games and win with, but you wouldn't want him to be a 16-game starter?"

Of course, it could be awfully difficult to differentiate between a college player who will need two years to become a 16-game starter and one who will be ready to start only five or six games in his third season. Even when that larger issue is resolved, scouts must come to an agreement on a numeric grade that culls from one of 9,000 possible combinations.

Yes, Spielman's scale technically runs from 1.0000 to 1.9000, with 1.0000 representing the draft's best player. Will all scouts know, for example, a 1.7856 player when they see him? Or will some see him as a 1.7855, or a 1.7834?

Spielman said he uses the numeric grades only as a way to line up players within each category, and that any discrepancies are hashed out during the weeks leading up to the draft.

"When you use the finite numbers," he said, "it just allows you to really hone in and say that if you have two guys, this is the order you would take them."

Indeed, the result is to produce one list -- in this case, a draft board -- that ranks every player in the draft. Once it is complete, Spielman will sprinkle up to 17 different types of "alerts" onto that list based on individual concerns about a player -- character, health, underclassman, etc. We'd get more into it, but our eyes are glassy and our own laminated sheet is running out of spac

Kevin Seifert • kseifert@startribune.com