I have been a little frustrated with early draft picks completely tanking in ratings i.e. potential ratings dropping by +20 points. This is completely random and seems a bit of a wildcard.

Is there any way to add a "scout" position to the coaches requiring teams to spend funds to hire a good scout that provides insight in to a draft picks potential for exceeding expectations / underachieving.

I.e. I draft a player who is way off on potential after training camp and at least I can blame the scout and look to replace him vs. just bad luck.

Aren't draft picks luck anyway even with scouting in the NFL?

They probably are but have to agree with the OP on this one because really people complain about busts with this game and really it is kinda of extreme to have the busts like they supposedly do if they are telling the truth.

heck the drafting busts in this game is a lot worse than the NFL and it is not like a team is going to draft busts every year maybe once every 3 years .

Even then NFL , NBA , MLB , etc. do have scouts and scouting reports to minimize the damage of picking a bust though sometimes all their scouts and scouting reports do miss on a player either he was suppose to be a great pro but busted or they think not highly of a player but that player really turns out great.

I do find most of my draft picks improve instead of bust; certain traits may decrease the likelihood of busts.

For example DEs with 100 speed will always be good even if their other stats drop. Also I look for players that already have some skill in important areas, such as CBs with a higher man coverage rating relative to other players in the draft.

Also, if a player with a potential rating of 90 drops 20 and ends up at 70, he's still a pretty good player, depending on whether his bars actually compliment your game plan.

This. When I'm scouting a draft, I start by downloading the entire draft into a CSV file and then do my first sort of position players (so all non-QBs and non-P/Ks) by the attributes that do not change, specifically SP and AC. There are other attributes that don't change as well, but those are the two I start with.

I then start excluding players from my draft list that are too slow, not fast enough off the line. This helps me quickly eliminate 70-80% of the draft. At that point, I can start digging into the secondary attributes.

Long story short. You can already scout the draft. It just requires some patience and spreadsheets.