Letter from the Senior Managing Editor

Reprinted with permission from the "Sporting News Pro Football Draft Guide 2007"
By: Mike Nahrstedt

He never played organized football. Nor did he coach it. When he was in college he just started taping football games and writing player reports that he assembled into a book and sent to every NFL team, begging for a job. He wanted to be an NFL scout.

There were no takers, of course. He didn't have a lick of experience and he was flying by the seat of his pants. But in 1994, the Rams saw something in Russ Lande -- strong work ethic, ambition, a willingness to work for free -- that prompted them to let him get his foot in the door. He started as a goffer in the pro scouting department.

"Jack Faulkner had certain assignments for me, but not a ton, so he would let me sit with him while he graded all the pro guys," Lande says. They spent hours and days and weeks in the film room and Lande soaked it up. He got a crash course in scouting, and before long he was evaluating college and pro players, too. The Rams even started paying him.

After four years with the Rams, Lande became an editorial consultant for The NFL Today, but his passion for grading players only intensified. On the side, he wrote the first two editions of GM Jr, a 400-plus-page draft guide in which he ranked and analyzed prospects. He then was hired by the Browns as an area scout. "I wanted to go on the road to see what it was like and I thought I was going to do that for the rest of my life," Lande says. "But it's a lot of travel, and it's not a lot of money."

After three years he left the Browns to resume publication of GM Jr, which he researches through exhaustive film analysis. He watches each prospect play several games, and he reviews each play in each game more than a dozen times. "If you base your entire grade on watching film," he says, "you'll be right most of the time. That's where you see what the players are."

Though his analysis was strong, it wasn't being read by the masses -- until now. Lande and his three-man staff continue to produce GM Jr, but they also became Sporting News' draft content supplier in the summer of 2006. It is their work that fills most of the pages of the Pro Football Draft Guide. Their player analysis, mock drafts and draft dishes also keep the Pro Football War Room, Sporting New's premium online content area (sportingnews.com/nfl/warroom), well-stocked in year-round draft information.

"He's outstanding," says Dick Vermeil, who worked with Lande in St. Louis. "I've never worked with a young kid that had the passion he had for evaluating talent. He had a little cubicle, almost like a closet, and he'd sit there for hours studying players. He was very bright and very opinionated. He wouldn't back down if you didn't agree with him, which was good."

For Lande, the greatest joy in scouting is finding the diamond in the rough. Marc Bulger was such a player. "I gave him a top 10 grade in the whole draft, and most scouts had him as a free agent," Lande recalls. "He went in the sixth round and got cut by three teams. Now he's a Pro Bowl quarterback for the Rams. I loved him."

Who does Lande love in the 2007 draft? Well, he's pretty fond of JaMarcus Russell and Calvin Johnson. Small-school guys such as Jacoby Jones and Ben Patrick get some love, too. He's not too crazy about Brady Quinn and Dwayne Jarrett -- at least not in relation to the high draft status they'll undoubtedly command.

I could go on, but that's what the rest of this Draft Guide is for. We start with Lande's analysis of more than 425 prospects, then finish with a close examination of team needs and draft outlooks by our network of NFL team correspondents. It's an unparalleled one-two punch of draft expertise that will get you ready for the biggest weekend on the NFL calendar between now and September.

The Raiders are on the clock. Let's see what they have to pick from.