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Andrew Scanlan, Northwestern Wildcats football, No. 82

Andrew Scanlan's a Philly kid who played both ways in high school, but projects as an outside receiver. There's a bit of a ways to climb up the depth chart, but he's a redshirt freshman with room to grow.

By Rodger Sherman
John David Mercer-US PRESSWIRE

The train keeps rolling with another redshirt freshman wide receiver. YO, DUDES WITH NUMBERS RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER: START BEING LESS SIMILAR. But whatever, it turns out they're actually different human beings with different attributes, skills, and possibly likes and dislikes! We'll figure it out. (NOTE: if you don't like guys with close numbers being similar, get out of here before the 60's.)

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAnyway, let's get on to Mr. Scanlan, a 6'2, 200-pound wide receiver.

Origin myth

Scanlan went to Royersford (Pa.) Spring-Ford, which is in the Philly suburbs, where every team is coached by former Texas high school coaches fulfilling their spousal duties in a loving, caring relationship that makes television viewers swoon. He was a bit of a stud there - school records in receiving yards, receptions, and touchdowns - and played both ways, earning third-team all-state honors as a receiver and defensive back. With Scanlan starring, the school won their first ever conference championship. However, his height made him project as a wide receiver, and he wavered between two and three stars. 247's composite has him as the No. 163 wide receiver in the nation and No. 51 player in Pennsylvania, with Scout putting him at No. 85 in the wide receiver department. He had offers from some pretty middling schools alongside the Wildcats - Northern Illinois and Akron. He chose Northwestern in an extremely unclimactic Signing Day hat ceremony. (Dude, don't enter the press conference wearing the sweatshirt.)

At Northwestern

Scan redshirted his freshman year.

Anagram of choice

Discovering the Wildcats' true inner selves through spelling

Andrew Scanlan, anagrammed, is

CLEAN DARN SWAN

This makes no more or no less sense than "WAR DAMN EAGLE," and I think better portrays Northwestern football's grace, unwillingness to use swear words, and general damn cleanliness. (Rejected options: "Wanna lend cars?", and some other combinations of things that are words but don't really make sense in unison.

Scan Tweets

Scanlan tweets at @Scan_man7, allowing me to learn that he's a Yankees fan (!), watches a bunch of basketball, and more:

YOU'RE DAMN RIGHT HOT COOKIE BAR SUNDAY.

Relevant musical selection

We'll take a joint from his Twitter:"Levels", Meek Mill Look, I'm not actually sure Meek Mill is actually good at rapping and not just Rick Ross' fourth-string weed carrier, but dude has songs. I mean, it's June 2013 and I'm still listening to "Amen." I think he's out of place on a lot of the Ross-esque BE REALLY HARD ominous beats - dude has some SERIOUS penance to pay for "TUPAC BACK/TWO GLOCKS STRAPPED" - and generally sounds like he's talking a huge game with even less believability than Ross. But he's got a knack for sounding like he's super-excited about everything in a consistent flow without and yet somehow not yelling, and he has a good line here and there, and I can live with that.

How he can help

We can write a lot of the same things we wrote yesterday. Scanlan is a relatively untouted wide receiver without much experience in a stacked corps. A few differences here: Scan was actually less highly touted than Mike McHugh. And there haven't been any positive reports about him out of practice making it seem as if he'll be a part of the rotation. But he's the ninth guy in a group with eight spots. He'll have a shot to earn snaps in training camp, and although his scouting reports don't make it seem as if that's likely, he's a youngster with lots of time to develop. Given his experience on defense, I expect him to be a contributing factor on special teams this year if he can't break into the wide receiver depth chart.

Depth chart projection

Scanlan doesn't crack our two-deep. Slower with a bit of size, Scanlan projects as an outside receiver, and quite frankly, there's a long hill to climb there to get playing time. But as noted, he is young - setting the world on fire, burning brighter than the sun, etc. etc. - so don't get too down on him yet.

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