We recently explained that there may not be a significant correlation between number of pre-draft visits and actual interest in a player. In some cases, a player makes the rounds extensively because teams have extensive questions to ask him.
The reverse is also true. If a team has no questions about a prospect, there’s no need to bring him in for a visit.
Commanders coach Ron Rivera recently explained to Rich Eisen that the team didn’t bring first-round receiver Jahan Dotson to town for a visit before selecting him for that very reason.
“We had a good stack of players that were available,” Rivera told Eisen, via NBCSportsWashington.com. “One of the guys in that group was Jahan, who we felt very, very good about. We felt so good about him that we didn’t bring him in on a 30 visit just because we felt like we knew enough about him, that he was the kind of guy that we had hoped to get a chance at, and sure enough we did. . . .
“He was a guy we didn’t have really any questions on. We had over six of our personnel there for his pro day, they did a lot of background on him while they were there. We’ve done a lot of background on him throughout. We just felt like this was a guy we didn’t have any questions on, so we didn’t want to raise any flags as far as he was concerned, so we opted not to bring him in.”
That’s another reason to not bring a guy in or a top-30 visit. Other teams will find out about it, and then they may think that the Commanders are targeting him. As it happened, they were able to trade down and still get him.