Draft broadcast has helped Shaw become a better coach on the field

Stanford coach a mainstay of NFL Network broadcast team since 2012

It began as something more than a whim for Stanford coach David Shaw, but far less than a dream realized.

Absolutely, Shaw told the NFL Network in the spring of 2012: He’d be happy to join its broadcast team for the first round of the NFL Draft.

Shaw only not had just coached the presumptive No. 1 overall selection, Andrew Luck, along with several potential first rounders (Coby Fleener, David Decastro, Jonathan Martin).

He had faced a handful of top prospects the previous season (Oklahoma State’s Justin Blackmon, USC’S Matt Kalil) and brought an NFL perspective from his days on staff with the Raiders and Ravens.

The experience worked so well that the NFL Network has invited Shaw back for the first round of every subsequent draft, and he’ll be on the set Thursday in Dallas.

He enjoys evaluating personnel, values the exposure – he’s the only college coach on the first-round broadcast team – and recognizes an additional, perhaps unintended benefit: Stanford head coach David Shaw on the sideline of a game in 2013.

Preparing for the draft broadcast has made Shaw a better coach.

“While I’m evaluating these guys, I’m still a football coach,” he explained recently, “so I get a chance to see lot of things that are done around the country. I watch a lot of film.”

Shaw records the NFL Combine coverage each year and uses it as a reference for his evaluations. But he doesn’t draw conclusions from the Combine film, ever.

“I think of it the same way I did when I was an NFL coach, which is: The combine is confirming, it doesn’t make or break guys,’’ he said.

“People on the outside make a big deal of what happens there, but guys get drafted off their film. They don’t get drafted off their 40 time or their three-cone drill or their vertical jump. Those things are confirming: ‘Yes, he is as fast as we thought,’ or ‘He’s not as fast as we thought.’

“Two or three weeks before the draft, every NFL team puts the film back on, and that’s really what they base their decisions on.”

Stanford ends spring practice in mid-april, and only then does Shaw begin intensive preparation for the draft broadcast. His limited role on the NFL Network is designed to reflect his expertise and the time he has available to prepare.

Shaw works the first round only and doesn’t concern him-

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