Bucs Beat: Psych eval will be Winston’s biggest pre-draft test
Teams need to learn whether Jameis Winston’s off-field misdeeds were acts perpetrated by a bad person or an immature kid. ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO By Roy Cummings | Tribune Staff Published: February 28, 2015 For Florida State QB James Winston, the most important part of the pre-draft process is yet to come.But it’s not his on-campus pro day later this month or even the private workouts he’ll have with NFL teams. For Winston, the most important part of the pre-draft process was always going to be the psychological evaluations he will undergo.What teams need to learn is whether Winston’s numerous off-field misdeeds were acts perpetrated by a bad person or an immature kid.Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Lovie Smith and general manager Jason Licht say their research so far has led them to believe Winston is the latter. That’s important, because the Bucs very well might spend the first pick in the 2015 draft on Winston. But Smith and Licht won’t know for sure until after Winston has gone through some standard psychological evaluations.Even then, they still might not know. Keep in mind, former Patriots TE Aaron Hernandez, now on trial accused of murder, was reportedly given a perfect pre-draft score by at least one of the services that does psychological testing of NFL prospects.Still, the results of those tests will go a long way toward Winston’s fate. After all, he’s passed all the on-field tests already.Winston is, in the eyes of most scouts, the most NFL-ready quarterback in this year’s draft class. But what kind of person is he?That’s what teams, and particularly the Bucs, need to find out, and at least one notable NFL scout says the answers lie in those psychological evaluations.“I knew that he would stand up there and say, ‘Hey, my bad. I take full responsibility,’?” NFL Network analyst Mike Mayock said of Winston’s remarks to the media at the scouting combine last week. “That’s what anybody would say.“But you don’t want to look back. You want to look forward. And that’s hard to do. So, it comes down to the individual security reports that teams get and these psychological reports that they do. And believe me, all the teams are using these reports now.“And they should. If I’m an owner in today’s NFL, I would demand psychological testing on these high-level guys that have had issues off the field. And I would want to see the results because the whole thing about predictive behavior, whether a guy is going to do what he did in the past or not, that’s pretty important here.’’Especially for Winston.
