Evaluating talent remains an imperfect science

PHYSICAL TESTS: Mekhi Wingo #DL27 of Louisiana State participates in the 40-yard dash during the NFL Combine. Pic: Stacy Revere, Getty Images

Two options. Pick the player or don’t. One analyst reckons he is “in the conversation as one of the best prospects of all time.” Another says, “One thing is clear, he is not special.” Boom or bust. You’re on the clock.

The player is former USC quarterback Caleb Williams. The 2022 Heisman Trophy winner is the favourite to be the top selection in the NFL draft this April. Currently, the Chicago Bears hold the No. 1 pick. Now is prime time for drunken projections that will look inspired or foolish depending on the sober aftermath.

Everyone has to do their homework. Scouts and evaluators pore over All-22 breakdowns, crunching tape in search of indications and confirmation.

Can Williams’ awesome playmaking ability transfer to the NFL? Does it matter that the 22-year-old came from an air raid system? Will the “hero ball” habits be fixed? What does it mean that he cried in his mother’s arms after a defeat to Washington? How about the fact he paints his fingernails?

Welcome to the madhouse. These are real conversations whistling around the hallways in the world’s richest sports league. This is the price of ensuring an 18-week regular season commands headlines every day of the year. This week the league descended on Indianapolis for the combine.

One of the biggest weeks in the lives of 300-plus prospects, which includes the Irish kicking crew, hoping to make it in the paid ranks. Every facet of their game, bodies and personal lives are dissected. On-field workouts. Athletic assessments. Cognitive tests. Medicals exams. No stone is left unturned or unexamined, then placed at the centre of all sorts of ludicrous debates. It’s a multi-billion-dollar business. And they all still overwhelming get predictions wrong.

Fans get it wrong. Pundits get it wrong. Teams get it wrong. They live with those miscalculations every single season. The recent Super Bowl featured two quarterbacks billed as worlds apart. Mr Irrelevant Brock Purdy of the San Fransico 49ers vs a live GOAT contender in Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs.

Purdy brought inevitable Tom Brady comparisons; an underdog overlooked in the draft who exceeded all expectations. Even as he charted a course to the Las Vegas decider, there were relentless talking-head segments about his actual ability and how much credit he truly deserves.

Mahomes ultimately won his third ring, a feat matched by only four other quarterbacks. He then set his sights on an unprecedented three-in-a-row. From the start he was special. Fifty touchdown passes and MVP in 2018, Super Bowl in 2019, runner-up in 2020, an iconic overtime play-off triumph over the Buffalo Bills in 2021, another Super Bowl and MVP in 2022.

Here Bears-inclined readers already concerned about the Williams decision are screaming through the screen at oncoming disaster, like Walt in that Breaking Bad scene. They know the dig that is coming. It has been pilloried and derided ever since.

Notoriously, Mahomes could have been theirs. They took Carolina quarterback Mitch Trubisky instead. He has been a backup for the Pittsburgh Steelers in recent years after a disastrous stint in Chicago. Their draft war room made the wrong call. The only thing worse than missing out on the golden ticket is having first overlooked it. Was it the wrong pick or did the environment not get the best of him? Could it be both?

And still there were plenty of takes at the time validating that decision. Mahomes had his fair share of critics too. This is the reality of evaluating talent in elite sport. The process is constantly refined to strip away any emotion, but it is still humans assessing humans.

No sport is immune from this disorder. Every few months a team surfaces on social media featuring the famous intercounty stars who never made it as a minor. Five years ago, former Cork manager Brian Cuthbert presented at the National Coaching Conference on ‘Modelling Best Practice in Talent Academies.’ He wanted to delve deeper. What is talent? How do we recognise and encourage it? One of his slides was 10-time All-Ireland winner Henry Shefflin.

“At 17 he wasn’t going to be the player he became,” Cuthbert said. “Something sparked in him, I want this. I will keep going in a good environment. He obviously had help. He was motivated and turned into what he became. That wasn’t an accident.

“But if I was a coach and I saw him at 17, there is a good chance he’d have been pushed to one side. We’re so focused on today and tomorrow that we don’t think about next year or the year after. Sport is about being patient. Coaching is about patience, empathy and understanding. I think we’re in a bubble that wants instant gratification. We want to win today.” 

In doing so he touched on every element that comes with Talent ID and development. Nature, nurture and the continuum they exist on. In the audience was former Kerry footballer Fionn Fitzgerald, who has published illuminating research on relative age effect. The MTU Tralee lecturer has shown how someone born in January is much more likely than someone born in December to be selected for representative underage sides. The proposed solutions are elaborate: Biobanding, increased awareness of early maturation bias.

Late developers and juvenile sensations are pieces on the same board, as susceptible to a misstep or redress. For every Hugo Keenan, there is the U20 star who never kicks on. It is still astonishing to study the number of potential reasons why.

At the start of the year, this paper undertook a Gaelic football and hurling ‘24 for 2024,’ profiling the contenders to step up from under-age big hope to fully-fledged inter-county senior.

While researching that it was noticeable how many complicated factors can influence their prospects. How many minor stars caught the eye? How many never flourished?

In some cases, education takes precedence over their sport, so they aren’t committing. Others have sporting priorities above GAA. Injuries, personal circumstances, coaching conflicts, bad environments, the road is rife with potholes and ditches.

Sport science always progresses but process of picking will never be perfected. It can be hard to identify real talent. It can be unfathomably difficult to ensure they realise it.