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Dane Brugler has released his 2024 NFL Draft Big Board. 

Nobody sifts through chaos quite like a football scout. And when a full team of them combines, the results can be fascinating and exhaustive.

The latest example: The 2024 “Shrine Bowl 1000.”

Eric Galko, the East-West Shrine Bowl’s director of football operations and player personnel, and his team — currently featuring eight scouts and director of college scouting Shane Coughlin, along with counsel from an advisory board — scoured every level of college football to find what they believe are the 1,000 best, all star game-eligible (college seniors) players in America.

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Eventually, they’ll narrow that initial list to choose the rosters for the 99th Shrine Bowl, which will be held on Feb. 1, 2024 in Frisco, Texas.

Below is a conversation with Galko about the scouting process, what his team discovered, the loaded 2024 quarterback class and some of the most recent developing trends in football.

(This interview has been lightly edited for style, length and clarity.)

Congrats on finishing the project, first of all. How did you land on 1,000 players and what inspired the initial idea?

In 2021, we realized, “There are a lot of good players out here.”

That was the first year after COVID, so we realized there were a lot of good players who could also come back to school and still be eligible. Instead of us trying to narrow and cut guys, we kind of just turned this into 1,000. It’s a fun, round number, but it’s a purposeful thing, too, because of how much we’ve learned over these last few years.

🚨The #ShrineBowl1000 represents the BEST all-star game eligible players from all levels of college football, handpicked by our scouts.

Get ready to preview the future stars of the 2024 East-West Shrine Bowl and NFL Draft.💫

View Full List: https://t.co/tMYelDz23Y pic.twitter.com/6jai1F10UX

— East-West Shrine Bowl (@ShrineBowl) July 17, 2023

How much human power went into this? Because, to me, I think this is a tool — not just for people like me, but for the smart football observer (and even people in football). It’s also something the public really hasn’t gotten to see, at least in a form like this, which I think is pretty cool.

I do hope it establishes itself as a tool. I think at the beginning, we kind of thought it’d be pretty easy to manage, right? But then you had COVID and there were just so many great players out there. So for us, it’s turned into a multi-year project. Our staff obviously scouts the entire country. We get reports on sophomores and juniors who aren’t eligible so we have them ready. By January, the month of the Shrine Bowl, when me and the event directors are focused on the game, our scouts have already started on the next year.

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It’s six, seven long months of watching players, reviewing backgrounds — which are so important. Talking to NFL personnel. And, generally, NFL and team personnel scouts don’t know these players like we do, as we’re ahead of their timeline. We’ve got a great young scouting staff and a board of advisors we lean on, listening to friends in the business and trying to do our best.

Going 1,000 for 1,000 is impossible. But I haven’t gotten a text yet from anybody in the league saying “you missed this guy,” so we’re doing OK.

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One of my favorite things about this is how much football is covered beyond the Power 5 and even the FBS. This list includes players from 179 colleges and 83 non-FBS prospects; four levels of football (FBS, FCS, DII, DIII) are evaluated. We can look back at recent drafts —and even UDFA periods — and see there’s gold in those hills.

I agree, 100 percent. It’s a point of pride for us. We start our list before most NFL teams start their own. You’ve got your NFS and Blesto scouts … We’re done before they are, so we can’t even rely on their lists. So, for us, it’s about adding relationships like an area scout would — trying to talk with the schools themselves, be there as much as possible. It’s a huge credit to our scouting staff, and we take a lot of time developing our scouts on how to truly identify talent vs. just getting a list and saying, “I’ve watched these guys.”

We take a lot of pride in NFL people knowing we’re going to be early on guys. This past year, we had a bunch of non-combine guys that got drafted. Hopefully, that shows our scouts don’t really need a list and we can do our own thing. And the small-school representation really shines with that.

How important is life context for you in scouting — a player’s story versus his athletic profile?

This is the absolute pinnacle of what we focus on as a staff. That context matters more than anything else, including the scouting report. I’m not an analytics expert, but I value it a lot. We use it all the time and we’re learning more every day. A player’s background still (has) some matter of subjectivity about what it means. But it is there. We know that player’s background and use that to look at other players who’ve had success in the past and use our own intuition.

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Scouting, we’re talking about speed and hit fluidity and a lot of subjective stuff. But that player’s background, we can use that information to really get a sense of who this person might be. We train our scouts, and so often, if you really look at a player’s background — what they’re doing and where they’ve been — you can kind of see that player’s background on the field.

Jalen Travis, left tackle at Princeton. He’s got this really cool background as a 6-foot-7 basketball player, and you watch him move and you’re like: “Yeah, this is a basketball player playing left tackle.” That makes sense. We focus so much on background, we train and develop scouts to look at the background first, and it’s a huge percentage of the evaluation in the end of “who is this person.”

SLEEPER SUNDAY: Two of the 2024 class’s most intriguing OTs will be from the @IvyLeague@YaleFootball’s Kitan Amegadjie (@1the2kkiran5): Physical, finishing blocker@PrincetonFTBL’s Jalen Travis (@TravisWJalen): Athletic, versatile lineman

Both 2024 picks. Question is how high pic.twitter.com/JjCkKigQcx

— Eric Galko (@EricGalko) July 23, 2023

This year’s QB class is potentially elite at the top. But it’s also great across the board, and your list highlights this. There are a ton of senior quarterbacks this year who are at least capable of earning an NFL look, right?

We probably have too many quarterbacks on the list (64 are included), but there are just too many good college quarterbacks right now. There were probably five or six quarterbacks we left off the 1,000 that we’re going to keep an eye on. There are a couple teams where two guys competing for a job are both possibly NFL players.

It’s a fascinating and much longer discussion about why that is right now. There has been a significant rise in quarterback talent from the high school feeder programs up. NIL has made some guys stay, and that’s cool, but adding even five or six more good quarterbacks to that pool is harder. The transfer portal made it easier to leave and some guys still get stuck. It’s a fascinating discussion.

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Why do young QBs seem more capable now than they’ve been in recent years? 

I think confidence is the biggest thing I’ve noticed. More young quarterbacks are confident because they’ve been getting private coaching, down through the youth level. They’ve also seen and been around players who have been great and don’t feel (as intimidated). That’s a big benefit of these camps, like the Manning Camp and a bunch of others, where these quarterbacks all get together and compete. It kind of humanizes things for kids.

It’s: “I see this guy who is a five-star kid, and I’m that much further behind him and I can be more confident now.” That’s a good thing. Nobody’s going through the motions in a camp. They’re there like, “It may not be my turn, but when it is, I’m ready.”

And as an evaluator, that is awesome. When kids are confident and successful, suddenly you’re a college coach with two guys on the roster who should be a starter, and you’ve got a hard decision.

Speaking of transfers: Are there some names in new places you’re particularly excited to monitor this fall?

A few off the top, non-quarterbacks: Trey Sanders, the running back at TCU (Alabama transfer). He’s immensely talented. He’s had some injury issues, but if he winds up one of the best backs in the country this season, I won’t be surprised.

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(Wide receiver) Adonai Mitchell at Texas. I think Quinn Ewers will (help him). I think we’ll end up having a conversation about Quinn Ewers being one of the best two or three quarterbacks in this class. I think he’s that good, and I think Mitchell benefits there.

Quarterback-wise, it’s fascinating. Joe Milton isn’t a transfer, but he’ll be the guy. He’s so, so talented. His issues at Michigan were accuracy. I think he’s fixed them, based on what I’ve seen and (from) talking to him at Manning Camp, but we’ll have to see. Devin Leary being coached by Liam Coen (at Kentucky), that alone is exciting.

DJ Uiagaleili at Oregon State. Clemson had a great quarterback behind him and that maybe made it easier to make the transition. But as a scout, when you just isolate the NFL throws he made at Clemson you say, “This is a first-round pick.” He has third-down issues, the mistakes he made are there and you don’t ignore them. But some of the throws he’s made, there aren’t 10 quarterbacks in the country who can make those.

You and your staff watch ball at every level and see trends develop before they’re trends. What are some of those you’re seeing right now?

I think the tight end/fullback positions — those guys are becoming a little more self-aware. Ben Sinnott at Kansas State is a guy who jumps out, he’s embraced those types of things (NFL teams will ask of an H-back or fullback). A lot of offensive lineman are appreciating the value of being more versatile, at a younger level.

I’ve seen a lot of NFL players tell younger kids, “Hey, play multiple spots — don’t just be this or that.” A lot of offensive linemen, historically, they’re smarter players. Lean into that. I’ve seen a lot of tackles who can play both sides as freshmen or sophomores, and they’re allowed to work on that more now — a lot of guards playing center, vice versa. Last year at the Shrine Bowl we had Juice Scruggs, Jon Gaines.

Younger players now are more focused on how to get to the NFL than even five years ago. Even then, you’d get, “I’m a starter at Texas, I’m good.” Now, it’s more of a “how can I use Texas to get to the NFL?”

I love it, it makes my job easier as a scout — but it’s definitely different at the college level.

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(Top photo from the 2023 Shrine Bowl: Jeff Speer / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

The Football 100, the definitive ranking of the NFL’s best 100 players of all time, goes on sale this fall. Pre-order it here.

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