INDIANAPOLIS — In the basement of her parents’ home east of Charlotte a couple of weeks ago, Panthers scouting assistant Jordan Trgovac — with a remote-control clicker in one hand and a notebook in front of her — watched film of several college defensive players with her father.
It was similar to when Trgovac was growing up and would join her dad for at-home film sessions when Mike Trgovac was coaching in Charlotte and Green Bay.
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But this was different. This was her job, and — dad bias aside — Mike Trgovac realized quickly she was good at it.
“I really didn’t want to say a lot because I wanted her to tell me the things that she was seeing,” said Mike Trgovac, the Panthers’ defensive coordinator under John Fox from 2003 through 2008. “It was a lot of fun, listening to her talk and then I’d ask her a question. ‘What do you see on this guy?’ Or, ‘What did you think of that play?'”
As they broke down the film of a South Carolina defensive lineman, Mike questioned the player’s technique on one play. But Jordan said it was possible he was playing what he’d been taught, so she didn’t want that to factor in her evaluation.
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“I thought, that’s a nice little comeback,” Mike Trgovac said.
This is Jordan Trgovac’s first combine since making the jump from the Panthers’ public relations department to scouting last May. Trgovac, 28, who played softball at the College of Charleston, is part of a small but growing number of women in scouting.
According to the NFL’s Jordyn White, there were 33 women in full-time scouting roles in 2022, a 9 percent increase from the 2021 season. Trgovac is participating this week in the NFL’s two-day Women’s Forum, which will connect 41 women — 60 percent of whom are women of color — with NFL leaders in a networking opportunity in the fields of scouting, coaching and football operations.
Despite her background and those impromptu film nights with her dad, Trgovac said she didn’t give much thought to a scouting career when she started as a Chiefs PR intern six years ago.
“There were definitely women doing what I’m doing. But I just didn’t know because there wasn’t as many as there are now,” she said during an interview Monday. “So I just never really thought about it as an option. And then I had been in PR. That’s kind of what I knew, so that’s where I went.”
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Trgovac was with the Chiefs for their Super Bowl-winning season of 2019, by then in a full-time role under Ted Crews, a Panthers PR assistant when Mike Trgovac coached in Carolina. Chiefs general manager Brett Veach mentioned a potential scouting opportunity to Trgovac in 2021, but the Panthers offered her a PR position around that same time.
Jordan Trgovac (Joe Person / The Athletic)She liked the idea of working for one of her dad’s old teams and living near her parents (who are retired and building a house on Lake Tillery in North Carolina) and brother (a grad student at Appalachian State). When she comes to work at Bank of America Stadium, Trgovac (pronounced TUR-go-vac) walks through the lobby where family members would wait for players and coaches after games.
She missed a week of school for the Panthers’ Super Bowl in Houston in 2004 and cried when Adam Vinatieri’s 41-yard field goal with 4 seconds left lifted the Patriots to a 32-29 victory.
“Dad’s gonna be so mad,” Jordan told her mother. “All he wanted to do was win.”
Angela Trgovac assured her daughter everything would be OK, just as she did again five years later when Mike Trgovac left Carolina after a contract dispute and took a job with the Packers while Jordan was in high school. Trgovac helped out in the press box during Packers home games and would drop by Lambeau Field some days after school to “bother” her dad and Green Bay defensive coordinator and former Panthers coach Dom Capers, whose office was two doors down.
Trgovac recalls grabbing a marker and adding to the plays and formations on her dad’s whiteboard. “I would write on it, but it was by no means anything that meant anything,” she said. “I would pretend to make plays. And then he would be like, ‘Get that off of there.'”
But Mike Trgovac said his daughter picked up things fast when he would turn on the tape at home.
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“We’d be watching tape and she’d make a comment on someone. I was kind of like, the hell she learn that from? Did that just come natural or did that come from her hearing me talk throughout the years?”
Capers, who returned to the Panthers this month on Frank Reich’s staff, wasn’t surprised to see Trgovac make the switch to scouting.
“Growing up a coach’s daughter, obviously she has a different perspective of the game, watching her dad all those years,” Capers said. “I really think that’s an advantage, whether it’s a son or a daughter.”
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Still, Trgovac was anxious last May when she shifted to the scouting role before the Panthers’ rookie minicamp.
“When you start anything new, your brain is just on overdrive of information. It’s just kind of like listening and learning a lot,” she said. “I was like, I know I can do it. But I was just nervous. You want to do well when people take chances on you to come and do something.”
Mike Trgovac didn’t have any misgivings about his daughter working in a male-dominated field but wanted assurance she would be working with a good group.
“Sometimes (in) the business world, the media world, when a female enters this unknown territory, some males don’t want them there. I said, ‘Just make sure you’re around the right guys,'” he said. “And she assured me the guys with the Panthers are awesome.”
One of them — assistant general manager Dan Morgan — was a Pro Bowl linebacker for the Panthers during Mike Trgovac’s tenure as defensive coordinator. Morgan said Jordan’s early scouting work has been impressive.
Like the team’s other two entry-level scouts, Trgovac helps with college and pro scouting. She has a handful of schools she visited last fall — East Carolina, Western Carolina, Citadel, Charleston Southern and Newberry — while also writing reports on young players on other teams who might come across the waiver wire.
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Trgovac said she’s particular with the wording in her reports, wanting to be sure to give Morgan and others in the scouting department a clear picture of the prospects she’s evaluating.
“Nasty finisher” is probably her favorite scouting expression, as in: Ikem Ekwonu is a nasty finisher who “works to bury the defender,” as Trgovac put it.
Morgan said Trgovac demonstrated a good feel and knowledge of the game, whether in her written reports or when she presented 10 to 12 prospects during the Panthers’ pre-combine meetings.
“I think it’s just been a natural progression for her to come to our side. She’s done a great job so far,” Morgan said. “She’s really locked in. She asks a lot of good questions, works her butt off and she’s super smart. I think she has a really bright future.”
Trgovac isn’t sure how her career path will unfold, saying she’s focused on doing her current job well so she’ll be given more responsibilities. “Then you just keep growing in the job and see where it takes you,” she said. “I don’t like to (say), I want to be a GM. Because there’s 32. That’s a tough task.”
But Capers, who remains close with the Trgovacs and has land near them on Lake Tillery, has talked with Jordan a couple of times since coming back to Charlotte. With the Panthers moving from a 4-3 to a 3-4 under new coordinator Ejiro Evero, Trgovac told Capers some of the parameters have changed when evaluating defensive players.
Capers said Trgovac brings a different perspective and predicted big things from her.
“When your dad’s in coaching and you see what he goes through, how he feels about things, I just think she’s unique. There aren’t that many females doing what she’s doing in the personnel area,” Capers said. “But I think probably if we fast forward it 10 years from now, there’ll be an awful lot more.”
(Top photo of Jordan Trgovac: Carolina Panthers)
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