1 on 1 with Auburn Director of Scouting and Development Drew Fabianich

Auburn General Manager/Director of Scouting and Development Drew Fabianich joined Auburn’s recruiting podcast, Inside the 20 with Jeffrey Lee and Keith Niebuhr. He discussed his role within the Auburn staff and how he is working with recruiting. Here are five key quotes from our interview with Fabianich that should give an idea of what impact Fabianich is having on Auburn recruiting as well as what he could do with the future of Auburn recruiting.

Getting offers out more quickly

–On his first priority at Auburn: “To figure out what everybody did. That was the biggest thing. You have to break everything down, you almost have to reverse-engineer everything and find out what was working, what wasn’t working. Quite honestly, they had a lot of good things working. I just wanted to streamline the process and make it faster, get things done a heck of a lot quicker. Get offers out faster. These guys, they’ve done a really good job of identifying players, I just wanted to make it a cleaner process.”

–On the challenge of going from scouting fully-developed players to younger high school players: “Well, it goes back to just one word that I think is universal: they’ve got to have traits. If they don’t have traits to play, they can’t play regardless of how old you are or not. The hardest part I’m having, I have a real tough time offering 9th graders. I can’t wrap my arms around a corner that’s 5-foot-9 and 148 pounds and thinking maybe he’s going to be 6-foot and he’s going to be 185. Well, what if he’s not? That’s the hardest part I have. It’s not the projection of the player, it’s the projection of the body type I’m having a tough time with.”

Evaluating recruiting and the current roster

–On talent evaluation on the current roster and what the team needs: “My first project, I mean, I came up here to sign my contract, and took a laptop back with everything loaded in it from the spring. He asked me to evaluate every single player on the roster. By the time I got back, I had done that. We moved in nine days, so I spent most of my evenings knocking that out and getting unpacked in the mornings. When I got here I was ready to give the evaluation and he asked me to do it in front of the entire coaching staff. I was like, you sure you don’t want to just offense defense? He said no, the offense needs to hear this, the defense needs to hear this on both sides. So, yeah there’s some needs. To be blunt, there’s a whole class of junior offensive linemen that are missing. I don’t know how that happened, don’t care how it happened, but it needs to be rectified. It needs to be fixed. Yes, I spend time evaluating the roster. We also did it again during fall camp in August. I thought it was a great teaching tool for the younger scouts that are on staff. There are needs everywhere. What I’m trying to tell you guys is that I think the way this is built now, the transfer portal and the way things go. If it doesn’t go a kid’s way, it’s deuces, I’m out. Well, we have got to be prepared for that. You’ve got to be prepared for everything becuase this is free agency just like in the NFL. But, it’s free agency without a contract, which is quite honestly a little messed up. I personally don’t like the idea of it, but it’s part of the landscape now, so you have to deal with it.”

Respect for Bryan Harsin

–On what his sell/recruiting pitch is to a recruit: “Well, I prefer to keep that between me and the kids, but what I can tell them is there’s probably not a question that they can ask me about the NFL that I can’t answer. In 18 years I should know exactly the answer. And if I don’t, I can make two calls, or maybe one, and find the answer out for you.”

-On why he decided to leave the NFL and come back to college: “Well, the thing was–and I’ve known Coach (Bryan) Harsin for a while. We weren’t tight, but we kind of admired from afar. I met him down in Austin (Texas) when I was living down in Austin. Knew him through his whole career, through Boise, through Texas, Arkansas State even. The one thing that intrigued me about this whole thing is that I did exactly the same thing every single day for 14 years. The only thing that changed was the players. I averaged 65 flights a year, 210 hotel days a year in a hotel room. I spent 18 years with the Cowboys, but I spent 13 and a half of it in a hotel room. When you get to where you’re doing exactly the same thing, it gets to where you almost become robotic and you lose a little bit of motivation. I got to tell you, this thing here, this changes every ten minutes. Guess what, you have to deal with this, ok, fix it. I like that, it’s a challenge. I respect Bryan Harsin. He’s a hell of a football coach. That’s the other thing. I respect what he does on the field and always have.”