Tom Modrak, a former NFL executive and scout who was the executive director of the BLESTO scouting combine, died Tuesday. He was 74.
Several media outlets reported that Modrak was diagnosed with a neurological disease in December and that he was in Hospice care.
Modrak had a long and distinguished career in the NFL. The Pittsburgh Steelers hired him as a scout in 1978, and he stayed in that job for 20 years. From 1998 to 2001, he was general manager of the Philadelphia Eagles. He was then named vice-president of college scouting for the Buffalo Bills, and he served in that role for 10 years, until 2011. He became executive director of BLESTO in 2012.
The Bills praised Modrak in a statement released today:
BLESTO is a service in which teams pool resources to do a preliminary assessment on the thousands of possible NFL prospects. There are now 12 teams in BLESTO.
