Report: Colts fire director of college scouting, make other scouting department moves

With the NFL Draft ending yesterday, some teams have begun to make changes to their personnel department. Earlier today the Buffalo Bills fired general manager Doug Whaley, and the Indianapolis Colts are also making moves in their scouting department.

According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, the Colts have fired their director of college scouting, T.J. McCreight, and also have fired other people from their scouting department. CBS Sports’ Jason La Canfora reports that the Colts will “make a run to add” Ed Dodds, who is a national scout and senior personnel executive for the Seahawks.

McCreight was the Colts’ director of college scouting for the past five years, as he was brought in by Ryan Grigson in 2012. Before that, he spent time with the Arizona Cardinals as the director of pro personnel and then before that was the director of player personnel for the Cleveland Browns.

For those wondering why the Colts are making scouting department changes just a day after what is viewed to be a very successful draft, it should be noted that this shouldn’t be any surprise whatsoever. Chris Ballard was hired as the new GM earlier this offseason, but at that time scouts and personnel guys are already in the thick of evaluations for the upcoming draft. So new GMs typically don’t make too many scouting department changes right away, as the time most teams do that is after the draft. So this is not surprising nor abnormal.

One of the biggest reasons for praise that people had at the time the Colts hired Ballard was that it is widely expected that Ballard will assemble a very good and strong scouting staff, so he likely already has a number of guys in mind that he’ll be interested in. Furthermore, the last few months working with the guys already in-house have given Ballard the chance to evaluate them and determine which ones to keep around.

We should see the Colts bring in some new faces to the department soon, ones that are hand-picked by Ballard. That’s been expected all along, and it seems to be starting already.