Ryan Powell works for the New Orleans Saints, but he didn’t watch Saturday’s Divisional championship from the sidelines. He watched the Saints hammer the Arizona Cardinals 45-14 on TV from the airport in Minnesota, where he had just arrived to scout Sunday’s game between the Vikings and Cowboys.

Powell was a standout linebacker at Mountain View high school, who went on to play and coach at Linfield. But he knew early on that his future wasn’t as a player.

“I’ve wanted to do this since I was a sophomore in high school. I knew there weren’t a lot of 5-foot-9, 200 pound linebackers in the NFL,” said Powell in a phone interview from his hotel room in Minnesota. “It’s the best job I could ever have!”

Powell spends the NFL season scouting the Saints upcoming opponents. He scouts an opponent, writes up a report, gets it to the coaching staff and gets ready to hit the road for another NFL game. This week, the Saints will be using Powell’s report to prepare for the Vikings defense (that was his scouting assignment this weekend).

Right now it’s all about who the Saints play next. But Powell also does a lot of individual player scouting during the year.

“We have a report with strengths and weaknesses on every player,” he said of keeping track of potential additions to the roster. “This year was nice, the first 6 -10 weeks of the season we didn’t make a lot of moves. Then we started getting dinged up and had to bring some guys in. That’s when it helps that you’ve scouted the guys all year.”

Before working for the Saints, Powell gained experience scouting individual players for “National” a scouting agency which provides combine information to 20 of the 32 NFL teams. “I was out on the road looking at juniors (in college) writing reports on them,” said Powell.

So while most of us play “fantasy football” Ryan Powell gets to live it. And based on the results the Saints have had so far, he’s pretty dang good at it.