The Commanders said goodbye to 2 veteran personnel staffers yesterday as area scouts Paul Skansi and Chuck Cook decided to retire. Former scouting assistants Alberto de la Guardia and Miles Turner have been promoted to fill their roles, and former scouting and R&D associate Toby Junker was promoted to scouting and R&D assistant.
Skansi and Cook have each been with the franchise since 2017 and have a combined six a long time of experience between them. Skansi played professionally within the NFL and CFL before stepping into coaching on the collegiate level at Washington (his alma mater) and Idaho. He made the move to scouting in a job with the Chargers and worked for the team for 16 years before joining the Commanders.
Cook also began in coaching before finding his strategy to the NFL in 1984 as a regional scout for the Chiefs. He was promoted to director of school scouting in 1997 and held the role for 11 years. In 2008, Cook joined the Dolphins as a regional scout for 2 seasons before making the in-division move to the Bills. He worked his way from area scout to national scout to director of school scouting over six years in Buffalo before arriving in Washington.
De la Guardia joined the Commanders as a scouting assistant two years ago following a scouting internship with the 49ers and a scout/recruiting role at Syracuse. Turner was hired similtaneously de la Guardia and likewise worked previously with the 49ers. Turner actually worked as an investments analyst with San Francisco before turning to scouting in Washington. Junker arrived in Washington last yr after 4 years in Detroit. With the Lions, Junker served a yr as a football information intern and three years as a football information analyst.
In operations, Bryan Porter was promoted from director to senior director of football operations, and football operations intern Sam Walsh was promoted to football operations assistant. Lastly, in analytics, Gayatri Namblar was promoted from football solutions developer to senior football solutions developer, and Preston Biro was elevated from football data scientist to senior football data scientist.
Porter was a longtime Panthers staffer before following Ron Rivera to Washington in 2021. He began in Carolina as an intern in public relations and equipment in 2001 and have become an operations assistant in 2003, an operations coordinator in 2006, an operations manager in 2011, and director of football operations in 2017. He was named to the identical role when he arrived in Washington and has earned his first promotion for the reason that move. Walsh served two training camp internships in football operations in Washington before working a seasonal football operations internship last yr. The promotion grants him his first full-time role with the team.
Namblar joined the Commanders five years ago after working over a decade within the tech industry. She’s worked as football solutions developer since joining the team, designing and developing internal football applications and database systems and collaborating with R&D to deliver tools that support roster management, player evaluation, and football operations.
Biro was hired three years ago as a football data scientist. With Bachelors degrees in Electrical Engineering and Applied Mathematics from Texas A&M and a Ph.D in Statistics from Texas, Biro began in analytics as an information scientist and training assistant at Presbyterian College. His first NFL opportunity got here with the Lions, allowing him to work in game management evaluation and advanced scouting before joining the Commanders.