The Colts are turning to the Green Berets to build a better roster

The Indianapolis Colts took a step to think outside the box under new general manager Chris Ballard by hiring Army Lt. Col. Brian Decker as the team’s new player personnel strategist, according to ESPN’s Seth Wickersham.

It’s not the first NFL job for Decker, who previously spent two years with the Cleveland Browns, but it may be the first real opportunity for him to implement his system of evaluating the character of NFL draft prospects.

It was former Browns CEO Joe Banner who first thought hiring Decker would be a good idea back in 2013. But by the time Decker was hired by the team in January 2014, Banner had been fired and Ray Farmer was placed in charge as general manager.

While Decker had warned the team against the selection of Johnny Manziel a few months later, it went unheeded.

But Decker’s résumé that qualifies for his job with the Colts comes from his time in the military, not his two seasons with the Browns.

In 2011, Decker was placed in charge of running the Special Forces Assessment and Selection program to determine which prospective soldiers were most apt to become Green Berets. In a feature written by Wickersham, Col. Glenn Thomas told ESPN about Decker’s mission to redefine that process:

After three years, Decker had devised a program that collected 1,200 data points on each candidate, from peak physical performance to psychometrics, the science of measuring mental processes. He could effectively predict the profile of a Green Beret: college-educated with an IQ around 122, in his early 30s, probably from a suburb of a major city, someone who responded to trauma in his life with increased self-motivation. As a result, the washout rate of Special Forces was 30 percent lower than when he took over. “We can train a guy to do a few extra pullups, but we can’t make someone adaptable and able to work as part of a team if the traits aren’t there,” says Thomas, sounding not just like a decorated colonel but like, well, a football coach.

With Decker at the helm, the washout rate of Special Forces was 30 percent lower than when he took over.

“The Army Special Forces Selection and Assessment process is the gold standard worldwide,” Decker told ClevelandBrowns.com. “Militaries from all over the world would visit us to benchmark their program against ours.”

Now, Decker believes similar character models can be applied to the NFL, where about 50 percent of first-round draft picks do not pan out. In many of those cases, the character and drive of those athletes is the reason why they never realize their potential.

With Ballard taking the reins in Indianapolis, the Colts are first trying to undo all the things Ryan Grigson did as a general manager. But the team is also taking an innovative step toward filling the roster with players ready to buy in and maximize their potential by hiring Decker.