The decisions made in the draft go a long way toward determining the success of a team on the field. The teams that draft the best typically field the most competitive rosters on a yearly basis. When there is that much riding on the process of evaluating college prospects, the scrutiny of those players is at an extremely high level.
That scrutiny has apparently made its way to social media as well.
According to Jim Corbett of the USA Today, Minnesota Vikings general manager Rick Spielman says the team has flagged several prospects because of comments made on their Twitter accounts.
“There were guys I found on Twitter this year that I can’t believe they would post and re-Tweet some of the stuff they were saying,” Spielman said. “We wrote a report just on their Twitter accounts.
“I won’t say the names. But out of the 60 that we did, there are eight guys that we have concerns about their Twitter feeds that we will address here (at the combine).”
Spielman pointed toward prospects posting their partying habits and their drug use online as signs of their immaturity.
It’s unlikely that a few questionable tweets would be enough to truly have a negative affect a team’s view of a player. However, if a team already has serious questions about a player on their board, maybe it’s enough to be the final straw to remove the player altogether.
Either way, NFL teams are truly looking at everything they possibly can to determine who they will select in May.