Rams regional scout Vito Gonella is constantly on the road during football season. He covers the entire west coast of the country, as far east as Utah and as west as Hawaii, evaluating college prospects for the Rams. It involves long stretches away from his home in San Diego, Calif., and days off are few and far between.
"You will miss birthdays and weddings and funerals and important events that happened during that football season that you're going to have to sacrifice," Gonella said. "So it does take a toll, but once again, it's one of those things where it's like, if you love it so much and you're so passionate about it, you will always battle through it."
Gonella has always possessed a deep passion for football player evaluation, and he's dedicated the entirety of his adult life to doing it at the highest level. In his 10 years with the Rams, Gonella has recommended numerous players that have become difference-makers for the team, including wide receiver Puka Nacua and safety Quentin Lake.
Gonella started as a scouting assistant/analyst for two years, then was promoted to West Coast area scout and now holds the title of regional scout after a recent promotion. Here's an inside look at Gonella's role with the Rams and some of his successful evaluations:
### **Responsibilities**
The initial scouting grind starts in August and stretches all the way to Thanksgiving for Gonella. He must create extensive profiles for any draft-bound prospect from the 20 FBS programs in his jurisdiction, as well as any stragglers from FCS or Division II schools.
After a summer of familiarizing himself with the upcoming draft class from afar, Gonella has a good feel for who he'll be evaluating at each school. All his college visits are relatively the same, and after eight years on the job, he's settled into a routine.
Gonella starts each visit by obtaining character assessments on prospects through conversations with sources. He'll talk with coaches, trainers, pro liaisons, everyone who has perspective on the person behind the player, "even the janitor if you're able to grab him," Gonella said.
"What kind of person is he? What is his motivation? Does he love football? How smart is he? How good of a human being is he? Is he a model citizen? Does he fit our Rams culture, which is very high-character players?"
Those are the types of questions Gonella wants answered. From there, he'll head to practice in the afternoon, noting players' body types beyond just the measurables. Different aspects of a physique can tell him things about a players' training habits.
"You can kind of tell how hard their work ethic is if their body is all ripped up, good looking, then you know they've been hitting the weights and working extremely hard through their entire college career up to that point," Gonella said. "And then you get guys that have very sloppy bodies and you could probably tell a little bit that they have not been taking the weight room as serious."
As practice commences, he'll appraise habits, speed, athleticism, explosiveness and other physical traits compared to what he's seen on tape. Afterward, he's talking to the coaches again. He wants to know how players learn, if they can be coached hard, if they're a leader, how they are socially and details on their family life. If players have been through adversity, Gonella said he needs to know how they responded.
The Rams have "critical factors," that they look for in players' character and positional skills. The character traits are consistent across the board, and the football-centered attributes vary based on the player's position. Gonella focuses on unearthing those during his visits, but, above all, he's looking to discover if prospects are smart and unproblematic.
"(Intelligence) is probably on the top of my list," Gonella said. "If they can learn and how they learn and can they retain, and figuring out how fast they can pick (things) up is extremely important."
After all that, Gonella goes back to his hotel room, types up his findings and goes to sleep. At 5 a.m. the next morning, the whole process starts over again at a different school in the area, or else he starts driving to the next college on his route.