During a game, how often is a running back or wide receiver, not wearing pads and completely uncontested, going to break on the snap, run 40 yards in an absolute straight line and await his time, broken down to the hundredths of a second?
Or how about a lineman or a linebacker?
Yet that’s what happens at the NFL Combine.
The way all tend to react to a sprint that only marginally replicates the in-game experience sometimes is farcical. Barry Sanders could twice change direction in one stride. That’s what made him great. Not flat-out, straight-ahead speed.
But that darned 40 time becomes a major definition of a player’s worthiness as a prospect.
Forget what he did against Wisconsin, what he did over, say, three seasons, or even last November.
Or even in his private workout back on campus.
So those posting “disappointing” 40 times at Indy have lessened their “stock”!
But Henry Ruggs III of Alabama ran a 4.27!
Vegas should just post an over-under date for his Hall of Fame induction date now!
The media subculture that considers the Combine so important that it should come with a Roman numeral, and whose real football expertise ranges from the extensive and legitimate to the (more often) minimal and faked, gets all excited over this stuff.
Speed is vitally important, of course, and 40-yard dash times are part of the measurement, but not necessarily the way it’s weighed at the Indianapolis proceedings. That, along with the the broad jump and 3-cone drill … and more irrelevancies.
This week, the size of Joe Burrow’s hands has become to the Combine what, “If you could be a tree, what kind of a tree would you be?” was to the Super Bowl.
Is the Combine important?
Of course it is. But only as a cross-checking, supplemental information vehicle, especially because full participation isn’t universal. Confirm physical measurements. Evaluate injuries. Get an additional feel for the players in the individual team interviews. But don’t blow it all out of proportion in relation to what they’ve done in games.
I realize NFL teams say that’s how they use the Combine.
But I’m convinced teams often succumb to the temptation to use it for more than that.
Over the years, I’ve often wondered if teams would be better off “scouting” only with the eyeball evaluation.
There is only one question that matters.
Can he play?
Evaluate game video or off the reports of scouts who visit campuses, watch practices and talk to coaches and trainers.
In other words, the less teams judge off the postseason pre-draft events – Senior Bowl practices, private workouts, the on-field part of the Combine – the better off they are.
They don’t reward the workout warriors for their fanatical preparation.
In the past that could mean that workout warriors came in looking as if they had used artificial means to prepare for a Mr. Universe competition.
And many of them later were proven to be brittle or frauds – or both.
Now I put it this way: Overreacting to and over-reliance on the actual on-field part of the Combine is worse than completely discounting the Combine as part of the information gathering.
The Combine process itself has evolved.
There actually was a time when NFL teams “joined” one of the three central scouting organizations. Those organizations also could have their own scouts who contributed to the pool of information. Team scouts would go to the headquarters of the individual organization — one was in Tulsa, for example — for meetings. And the organizations also put on camps in advance of the draft. Eventually, they merged and the result was the NFL Combine, which has been anchored in Indianapolis since 1987.
In 1994, when I was at The Sporting News, I asked NFL men about whether there was an intriguing — but perhaps not high-profile — prospect who might significantly help or hurt his draft prospects at the Combine.
I settled on a Division II offensive lineman from Sonoma State because, essentially, the NFL still was trying to figure out how good he was after his college career against St. Mary’s and Chico State. He also was coming off a rotator cuff injury, yet some were saying he might even go late in the first round.
I spoke with him before the Combine for profile material and caught up with him over his three-day stay in Indianapolis. This is the part that’s hard to believe. The on-field work at the Combine was a closed proceeding. No media were allowed in. There were no news conferences for the prospects or even for the NFL coaches and executives attending.
Then after the story ran, I did a brief update with him when I covered the draft in New York.
That lineman, Larry Allen, was very excited to be drafted by the Cowboys in the second round.
Nineteen years later, he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
He had uncanny speed for a big man. So if the Combine drove that home, fine. But it certainly wasn’t the only time scouts timed him.
So, yes, the Combine is valuable. To a point. In the interviews, though, I’m not sure it’s a badge of dishonor to get a bit peeved by the repetitiveness and even at times insulting questions that can be designed to test their poise.
Now, the Combine has morphed into a league convention and media availability as part of the league’s successful positioning in the spotlight year-round.
Scouts, coaching staffs and executives tend to enjoy the Combine and consider it networking, given the volatility of the profession. Frankly, I’ve never completely understood why teams would let assistant coaches have major voices in the draft process, given the short-term tenures as they move around.
Input? Sure. Major influence? No.
Actually, the real test at the Combine is not the 40.
It’s who has enough pull to get a table in St. Elmo Steak House.
About Terry: Terry Frei is the author of seven books. His novels are Olympic Affair and The Witch’s Season, and among his five non-fiction works are Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming; Third Down and a War to Go; and ’77: Denver, the Broncos, and a Coming of Age. Information is available on his web site, terryfrei.com. His woodypaige.com archive can be found here.
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