Doug Farrar goes from Sports Illustrated to Bleacher Report

Bleacher Report has beefed up their NFL coverage further, hiring Doug Farrar from Sports Illustrated. Farrar changed his Twitter account to reflect the move and announced the job change in a series of tweets Monday:

Big news tweet in 3… 2… 1…

— Doug Farrar ✍ (@NFL_DougFarrar) July 18, 2016

I've had an incredible three-year run with Sports Illustrated. I've been lucky enough to learn from amazing colleagues and experience a lot.

— Doug Farrar ✍ (@NFL_DougFarrar) July 18, 2016

However, there are those times in one's life when an offer comes along that you simply have to take.

— Doug Farrar ✍ (@NFL_DougFarrar) July 18, 2016

Bleacher Report has made just such an offer, which is why I'll be their NFL Lead Scout starting on 7/25. More on that soon.

— Doug Farrar ✍ (@NFL_DougFarrar) July 18, 2016

I'm so fortunate to have had that time with @SInow, and very, VERY excited for this new chapter with @BleacherReport. Thank you.

— Doug Farrar ✍ (@NFL_DougFarrar) July 18, 2016

This looks like a nice move for Bleacher Report, as Farrar’s well-known in the football community and has developed a particularly strong audience for his film breakdowns. He’s been writing about football since 2002, wrote for Football Outsiders for six years starting in 2006, edited Yahoo’s Shutdown Corner blog for a while and now has spent the last three years as a big part of SI’s NFL coverage, especially online.

Bringing Farrar on board should give B/R some solid credibility in the Xs and Os, and a “lead scout” role sounds promising. B/R colleague Matt Miller (who’s been doing some of this Xs and Os work for B/R) also noted that this frees him up to focus on the draft year-round:

This is exactly right. Doug frees me up to do Draft 365 days

— Matt Miller (@nfldraftscout) July 18, 2016

Which is good news for B/R, because we all know that Matt kills it on the draft. https://t.co/N3vlEvqZoI

— Doug Farrar ✍ (@NFL_DougFarrar) July 18, 2016

It’s interesting to see B/R making further moves on the NFL front. Their 2013 hire of newspaper and CBS Sports veteran Mike Freeman was a big move, and they’ve since added other names like newspaper and Yahoo veteran Jason Cole (in July 2014) and SI veteran Lars Anderson (in December 2014; Anderson does a variety of longform across sports, but some of it has touched on the NFL) and come out with ambitious projects such as their recent Michael Vick documentary.

It looks like the NFL might be a new focus for them, which makes sense given the league’s popularity. We’ll see how this move fits into B/R’s long-term plan, but bringing in someone like Farrar certainly seems logical for a company still looking to boost the prestige of their articles. His Xs and Os analysis is some of the best out there, and it may help pull in some readers who might not consider Bleacher Report otherwise.

[@Doug Farrar]